Connecticut has some of the highest energy prices in the country, and experts and lawmakers are in a race to find a cheaper, environmentally friendly option.
WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Jan Ellen Spiegel to discuss her article, “Could CT have a nuclear energy future? Not if you’re in a rush,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short. Read Jan’s article here.
WSHU: Hello, Jan. Policymakers have been discussing small modular nuclear reactors as a more accessible and faster way for Connecticut to increase power production, particularly in the wake of the Trump administration's limited support for new wind and solar energy projects. What prompted you to write this particular story?
JES: What prompted me to do this particular story is, in a sense, exactly what you said, that they were not putting any emphasis on other forms of carbon-free energy, and states like Connecticut have laws on the books where they have to do a certain amount of that. So what are the alternatives here? And I wanted to look at a whole series of things to really understand what's out there, what's real, and do some reality checking on what all this actually can mean. And nuclear gets talked about, as you just pointed out, all the time. And I knew enough, I guess, to be dangerous to know that that probably wasn't quite an accurate way of looking at it. And it turns out it is not quite an accurate way to look at it.
WSHU: So basically, you found out that small modular nuclear reactors don't actually exist.
JES: For the most part, no. They have been talked about for quite some time. Various sorts of newer reactor technology have been out there, and it's not so new, because it's been around somewhere between 50 and 70 years. Countries, various companies have been working with this, and they really haven't got it to a point where it's going to work very well, so there's going to be a very long time before any of these can really get built.
WSHU: You found out that they're not that small either.
JES: There's a category called advanced nuclear energy. It's kind of what I refer to as a garbage pail term, in which you put a whole bunch of stuff in there. There are these supposed small modular reactors, which can be, you know, 300-400 megawatts. They can go smaller than that, but at this point, that's pretty big for a power plant. Then there are also these micro reactors, which can be very, very, very small. They exist even less than the small modular reactors do, and have really been used anywhere. But they're kind of a different sort of animal, and there's still a whole lot of action that would need to happen in the US and other countries as well, before these things can really come into existence. They also cost a ton of money.
WSHU: Okay, let's talk a little bit about cost. We haven't had a nuclear reactor built in years in the U.S. The last one was built in Georgia. How long ago was that?
JES: There were two reactors that were added to some existing reactors in Georgia, and those were finished in 2023 and 2024. They are a new type of reactor, but they're full-size reactors. They were more than double their original budget. They were seven years late. They were developed by Westinghouse, which has been in the nuclear reactor business for a long time. Prior to that, it had been like 30 years. A lot of it has to do with the various nuclear accidents that happened over time. And there was a lot of, hey, let's think twice about doing another one of these. But those reactors, what I was hearing from a lot of different people, and uniquely in this story, I was hearing the same things over and over again from people. Usually, you get a certain amount of nuance and slightly different opinions, but I was hearing the same thing over and over again, the big reactors that were built down in Georgia, they feel are actually a really good technology. Now, whether you can take those big reactors and make them into a smaller one would remain to be seen. We don't know that yet.
WSHU: Now, even in Connecticut, Millstone, the operator of Millstone, doesn't appear too keen on this, although there was talk about having some modular reactors set up at the same site where the Millstone reactor is right now. You talked to them, and they didn't seem too keen on the idea of these modular reactors. Could you talk a little bit more about that?
JES: Yeah, what I need to do first is kind of explain the pricing issue on this, because this is where their reluctance comes in. Yes, the upfront costs of building a smaller reactor are going to be less. They're smaller. They may take up less space. The front-loaded price is just going to be lower. But if you look at the long term, and I heard this over and over and over again, if you look at the price per unit of power produced, it will actually be more expensive. And it's basic economies of scale. The bigger you go, the smaller the price per unit. I mean, this goes for nuclear plants. It probably goes for toilet paper too. That is where the issue comes down for Connecticut, where we have a deregulated utility system, where rate payers will bear the costs of power development of any sort.
And as I'm sure everyone is aware, there have been tremendous concerns about this over the last, well, forever, but you know, really seriously over the last 10-15 years. So it's that deregulated system that we have that concerns the owners of Millstone Dominion, which is looking at potentially developing a small modular reactor down in Virginia. And, you know, frankly, it was a surprise to me when I got a comment back that what the spokesperson said, we're not opposed to an SMR at Millstone, she said, but it might not have the regulatory environment for run, for one, the upfront costs of an SMR, though less expensive than traditional nuclear, are significant enough that Connecticut's deregulated market might not support such a project. Now, I have been hearing that. I heard that from her, and I heard that the commissioner of unsolicited from the Commissioner of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection said the same thing. Various nuclear experts said to me, Well, you know, Connecticut has a deregulated utility. It might be really tough to do there. So this kept coming up over and over again, and that might be the issue for Connecticut, at least the way things exist right now.
WSHU: Now, also, you have a situation here where Katie Dykes, the Commissioner, also spoke with you about the fact that you need a lot of lead time for any of this new technology and energy generation, and there's a lot of money, so you have to plan years ahead. And she gave the example of the wind power that ran into some problems from the Trump administration this past summer, which took quite a while to get to where we are with wind. And so this is energy that will not be available in the very near future.
JES: Yeah, and again, it is something I heard from everybody. There are two components. Number one, just planning ahead on a technological basis, with that much of a lead time, the actual technology, the odds of it potentially changing, are extremely high. We see that happen all the time. You know, think about your computer, as soon as you take it out of the box, it's dated, right? This stuff changes. The other piece of it is the need for additional power. Seems to be more of a now thing, not 10-15, years in the future, and in talking to a former chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Allison McFarlane, she basically said, if you're looking to address climate change or address the needs from AI, something like that, which is, you know, presumed to use up a lot of power, she said, it means you have to address it immediately, like yesterday. And none of these technologies are available, even if they were available this very second, you're still talking 10-15 years down the road. Everyone has said, don't even think about this stuff before, sometime in the 20-30s, that is not going to do a whole lot of good if you need the power now.
WSHU: I like the quote you ended your article with, which is a quote from MacFarlane herself, and she says, to put all our treasure in nuclear energy right now is not very smart.
JES: This is someone who ran the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a while, but you know, again, it's what you also hear from all kinds of people who are looking at various forms of power. And what you go with, what you often hear them say, is, we want an all of the above strategy, and that is what goes. For nuclear, it goes for wind, it goes for solar, it goes for all those things. And the notion that you would go entirely nuclear is really not in keeping with that, or in keeping with any kind of strategy that would really be able to keep your grid stable.
