A Texas Company Plans to Tranform Nuclear Power - 2023

Nuclear Power Industry

Halper reported in the Washington Post in early 2023 that the nuclear industry has long said that the power plant of the future will be smaller, cheaper, and quicker to stand up than the behmoths of the past. But the bid to reinvent nuclear power has created its own costly engineering and safety challenges, leaving innovations in limbo for years. And plans to expand existing projects like Vogtle nuclear power plants in Georgia have saddled ratepayers with increased costs.

A start-up company called Last Energy thinks it has a better solution. It's using scaled-down versions of old nuclear technologies to build small, modular reactors (SMRs). The company say's its "microreactors" can be mass produced and sold in the form of a simple kit that companies can use to power factories (or neighborhoods).

The reactor is housed in nine modular units, each slightly larger that a shipping container. They are delivered by truck and then bolted together on site. They include a simple, plug-in ready electrical system and reactors that double as waste-storeage caskets. The design is meant to make nuclear power as cheap as possible.

Some are skeptical that the parts, massed produced using repurposed oil & gas industry machinery, will hold up to the strict scrutiny of nuclear regulators. ... click above to read on what Last Energy has in store ....