Dr. Conca reports that Epcot city still has a city council with a planning committee with complete authority. The rights granted to Disney by the State of Florida provides them with immunity to laws from surrounding areas, like Orlando. Disney has eminent domain authority, explaining why the vast amount of forested land surrounding Disney World has mostly gone unused. The nuclear angle was key to the futuristic plan for Epcot. Disney wanted this city to be self-reliant, and nuclear is the best way to do that. It was during an era more supportive of nuclear, more in need of big power and big dreams, and it wasn’t that long after Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace initiative.
Disney even put out a book called "Our Friend the Atom" in 1956. Thus, something like NuScale Power’s small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) would fit right in to a vision that also includes Tomorrow Land. That’s because a SMR is the kind of thing Walt Disney himself envisioned for our future. Compact, can’t melt down, doesn’t even need to shut down to refuel, can operate for many decades, no emissions, can ramp up and down quickly to load-follow their solar and future wind farms (if needed at all), and is cheaper than anything except natural gas – there is nothing better that represents the future of power in America.
Of course, the present leadership of the Mouse’s Kingdom has no plans to build nuclear. In place of the envisioned nuclear plant, sits a natural gas-fired power plant. At least it is not a coal-power plant. But Disney World is trying to go green. The Cinderella Castle’s holiday display of 170,000 lights has been painstakingly switched to LED lighting, reducing the amount of power needed down to that required to power four coffee pots.
But they have been building a lot of solar as well as using lots of natural gas. Their new 270-acre, 50-megawatt solar farm near Epcot Center is in the shape of Mickey’s head, is made of 48,000 solar panels and is operated by Duke Energy. Disney World’s total annual operating costs exceed $10 billion, and requires over a billion kWhs of electricity, costing about $100 million dollars a year. That’s the output of only two NuScale SMR modules which would be the most efficient and cost-effective source for the Park. It would also be the most resilient and reliable power source in a state prone to extreme weather events and now threatened by rising sea level.
It’s not like Disney World doesn’t presently use nuclear power. Florida has four nuclear reactors at two nuclear power plants run by NextEra Energy - one in St. Lucie County and one at Turkey Point in Miami-Dade County. They generate about 12% of the state’s power, some of which flows to the Magic Kingdom. While the Kingdom is still powered mainly with fossil fuels, there is room to replace all fossil fuels at the center of Walt’s future with nuclear and renewables. He would have liked that.
Original working URL: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/02/21/disney-world-could-have-gone-nuclear/#2889d0a35393
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