UPR ENERGY

Simple economic nuclear

OUR STORY

Our story begins with the clean energy challenge… 

Reducing, stopping and reversing the effects of climate change requires a global move to greenhouse-gas-free energy.  We need a fully clean grid with a reasonable cost. 

Renewable power sources (wind, solar, hydro, geothermal) at their best can be economic but cannot meet the modern requirement of constant energy availability on a global scale.  Hydro and geothermal are limited to specific locations (i.e. are not globally available), while wind and solar are intermittent (i.e. cannot provide power all the time). 

Wind and solar combined with energy storage is a potential solution, however, energy storage is only economic on very short time scales. It is much too expensive to bridge the large energy supply gaps produced by wind and solar (see Library for analysis). Renewables are therefore not a full solution

The remaining available option is nuclear.  It can produce greenhouse-gas-free energy on a continuous basis and back up renewable power.  However, new plants constructed in open markets are too expensive, too complex and take too long to build (see Library).  

New nuclear technologies using new materials are in development but will take many years to prove their safety and reliability.  Even if cost-friendly, their broad availability is too many years out to be of any use in our current climate change challenge.

Given the theoretical solution of combining renewables and nuclear, our work over the last 10 years, commenced at Dydex Research and Capital, has focussed on determining if there is any economic nuclear solution based on proven technologies.  The answer is yes. 

Our research determined that the key to an economic nuclear reactor is a reasonable capital cost, even if other cost elements (e.g. fuel) rise a little bit.  This is because capital costs currently make up 80-90 percent of nuclear’s overall cost.  Complexity and very long construction timelines have made the capital cost unreasonably high. 

The solution is a reactor that maximizes simplicity to greatly minimize complexity and construction time. We have filed patents for such a reactor and will be publicly disclosing the new technology in 2027. Once in production, the reactor could be constructed in as little as 2 years and produce baseload power for as low as 7 cents per kilowatt-hour.

THE LIBRARY

Our research has delivered some key economic and technological insights about the road to a 100% clean energy system. Our articles about some important perspectives and/or questions to consider:

  • What is the actual cost of clean power?  (Sept)
  • The very hard problem of 100% clean energy.  (Sept)
  • Nuclear is not the final piece for a clean grid (yet).  (Sept)
  • The road to a greenhouse-gas-free energy system.  (Sept)