The 2021 hurricane season is already off to a strong start with four named storms to date. The latest storm, Elsa, earned its status as the season’s first hurricane in the Caribbean, making landfall in Cuba before traveling north to Florida. Although spared from the brunt of Elsa’s force, Puerto Rico is no stranger to hurricanes. The tiny island is still recovering from the devastation caused by Hurricane Maria in 2017, which took down the electric grid and left residents without power for nearly a year.

Today, Puerto Rico is focused on building a resilient, robust and flexible electric transmission grid that can weather future storms while also reducing its reliance on carbon-emitting generation sources. Inspired by this challenge, the Nuclear Alternative Project (NAP)—a nonprofit organization comprised of Puerto Rican engineers—is leading the charge to explore the use of advanced reactors to help Puerto Rico.

I recently interviewed Jesus Nunez, chief executive officer of the Nuclear Alternative Project, about the group’s mission and its efforts since first coming together in 2015.

NAP published a feasibility report in 2020 on the deployment of advanced reactors on the island. Based on the report’s findings, why is nuclear a good idea for Puerto Rico?

It can reduce electricity costs and dependence on fossil fuel imports and provide zero-emission baseload electricity and a strong degree of energy security and reliability. We need that for a robust manufacturing and industrial sector. Pharmaceuticals and biotechnology make up almost half of the gross domestic product of the island, and they need reliable power. Our oil-fired generators have breakdowns 12 times more frequently than the average United States generator. Additionally, nuclear energy has a strong record of being available during extreme weather. Reactors are designed and built to handle extreme natural events. Their design standards for hurricanes are stricter than any other power generation asset being considered for the island.

Does the island have the technical capacity to build and operate a reactor? 

The island has a head start in developing the technical capacity to install and operate a reactor built in a U.S. mainland factory. The nuclear industry in the United States mainland benefits from the knowledge and expertise of hundreds of Puerto Ricans. Puerto Rico has a high capacity in manufacturing and great experience in construction and power plant operations. The plant operators on the island can be trained by reinstalling the nuclear engineering program in the University of Puerto Rico and by having a direct collaboration with the U.S. nuclear industry.

Why do you believe nuclear is preferable to other generation sources—specifically natural gas plants, which most people would argue are less costly to build and cheaper to fuel? 

[Natural gas] is not always cheap or reliable. It is estimated by Puerto Rico’s Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) that fuel costs account for approximately 67 percent of the total price of delivered energy at its generation stations. And it would require frequent shipments to the island, which would leave Puerto Rico vulnerable to future supply disruptions in case of extreme natural events or market disruptions. In contrast, shipments for nuclear fuel for each small modular reactor (SMR) would be needed every two years or so, and every 10 to 15 years for micro-reactors.

Isn’t Puerto Rico already investing heavily in building out wind and solar capacity? How would nuclear carbon-free energy complement these renewables?  

These energy sources are a great alternative that support the island’s zero-emissions goal and can be applied more efficiently to residential and small industrial applications in Puerto Rico. However, renewables are harder to build and run on an island. On the mainland, you can build wind farms and solar farms in diverse locations to reduce the variability of output. You can’t do that on an island.

The electric grid in Puerto Rico needs generators that can provide voltage, frequency control, load following and flexibility. Also, Puerto Rico needs a scalable baseload energy source to provide incremental increases in capacity as electricity demand grows. SMRs and microreactors can be designed to provide these grid capabilities, which will ensure a reliable and resilient electrical grid.

The combination of nuclear, wind and solar will help Puerto Rico to achieve the zero-emissions goal faster and will make the island a global leader.