How to Scale Nuclear Power

The baggage around nuclear power largely stems from an inaccurate, almost mystical notion of how it works. In reality, contemporary nuclear power plants boast exceptional safety records and produce astonishingly minimal waste relative to their immense energy output. Additionally, their compact footprint allows for versatile placement: They don’t require areas with ample sun or wind, are dispatchable when needed, and realistically could be placed on-site at particularly important facilities as a steady supply of clean power. 

But if we’re going to normalize nuclear power as a reliable and well-understood energy source, it’s essential to understand how we’ve ended up in our current situation. It’s also important to recognize that although much of this post focuses on large-scale nuclear fission reactors — because that’s what have been delivering civilian power for the past several decades — smaller, more modular reactors will likely play a major role going forward, perhaps as a means to address more local, and even hyper-local, energy needs.

I’m taking all of this with a grain of salt because it was written by the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, but I did find this to be a fascinating overview of the history of nuclear power.

In particular, I enjoyed the explanation of a nuclear meltdown and why, thanks to evolutions in technology, those are unlikely to ever happen again.

There were also plenty of phrases used (carbon rod, Diablo Canyon) which sparked my inner Simpsons nerd.