When you get home at night, you want to be able to hit the light switch or charge your phone or watch TV. You can’t do those things if your power is out due to an unreliable grid. The key to keeping that grid reliable and clean could just be more nuclear energy.
Want to learn more about reliability? We’re asking the expert, Jonathan Rund, NEI’s Deputy General Counsel and Assistant Secretary.
Why is reliability such a focus in energy policy discussions?
So, reliability is becoming such a focus because the way we're using electricity is changing and it's changing really quickly. Over the last several years, the technologies that we're using have shifted pretty dramatically. When you look at things like AI, electric vehicles, advanced manufacturing; these are all things that we have not been focusing on or really using a lot.
And they are all technologies that use a tremendous amount of electricity. So, that increased demand has really shifted the profile about what we're expecting to see in the future. There are a lot of different projections out there in terms of how quickly we're going to continue to adopt those technologies and what that's going to do in terms of demand.
But all the realistic forecasts that are out there all show a pretty dramatic continued increase in demand. And on the supply side, we're not really keeping up. We have plants that are retiring; older plants. We also have a lot of new technologies, but they're not coming onto the system quickly enough. So that disconnect, that shift in what's happening on the demand side and the supply side is creating potential shortfalls in the future.
So, we've got grid operators that are increasingly projecting that we're going to have shortfalls. So, that means we’re going to see increased grid events. We're going to see increased potential for imbalance. And so, it's obviously about preventing blackouts, but it's not just about that, we're also trying to make sure that the grid is resilient, and we have a system that allows us to get the power that we need to where it needs to go. And when you have that type of imbalance, and we have a mix of technologies changing, that’s creating a lot of concern.
So, we're seeing policymakers more often call for what's known as clean, firm technologies. And that's the power plants that are able to deliver 24/7. And increasingly be able to do that on a basis that’s providing clean power. Nuclear obviously checks all those boxes.
What role does nuclear energy play in ensuring a reliable, 24/7 power system?
So, nuclear plays a huge role in ensuring reliability. Nuclear is what's known as firm, clean power. It's able to operate essentially 24/7 through extreme conditions, whether we're talking about droughts in the summer, we're talking about cold snaps in the winter. Nuclear is essentially always there basically doing a lot of work behind the scenes, sort of the unseen hero of the grid.
So, nuclear obviously provides what's known as real power. So, that's what powers our devices and our appliances at home. But nuclear also provides a big role in terms of providing reliability services. So, there's things like reactive power and voltage services that you don't necessarily see or hear a lot about, but those are essentially the services that allow power to get from the power plants to the to the customers at home.
And so being able to provide that stability, that backbone for the grid is key to essentially allowing us to maintain our way of life today. And so, nuclear obviously plays a big role there in terms of providing reliability.
What can help nuclear contribute more to reliability?
One of the big challenges right now is time. Whether you're talking about getting a license renewal, you're talking about a power upgrade, restarting a plant or building a new plant. It takes time. And one of the major contributors on the time front is the permitting process. So, a lot of the rules that were originally designed for permitting and approval and grid connections, a lot of those rules are essentially decades old now, and they were established at a time when we weren't seeing the huge types of demand and call for clean, firm power that we're seeing today.
One of the big issues on the federal approval and permitting side is the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. A very important environmental statute, one of the first environmental statutes that Congress passed and serves an important purpose. But it strayed over the years from the central focus of studying environmental impacts to a number of issues that have really bogged down and added years and years to the permitting approval process.
Increasingly, policymakers, whether we're talking about Congress, the administration or the courts, have recognized that it's time for a course correction or NEPA. And so, there's been a lot of good work to get things more focused and speed up the NEPA process.
What policy or regulatory steps could help get dependable capacity online faster?
So, a lot of what we need to do to get clean capacity onto the grid quicker isn't about inventing new processes, it's about continuing efforts to improve the processes we already have in place. So, on the NEPA front, there's been a lot of work recently to establish clear timelines for how long it should take for an agency to review an application for NEPA purposes.
There's been a lot of focus on improving coordination among federal and state agencies as part of those reviews. There's also been increasing focus on making sure the agencies are studying the issues that matter most, from an environmental standpoint and not worrying about sort of second order type issues. So really making sure we continue to institutionalize those efforts is going to be really important to reduce the amount of time agencies are spending on their NEPA reviews. So, they can go ahead and get that firm, clean capacity online quickly.
