Not Your Father’s Data Center - How The Nuclear Energy Industry Has Taken Safety Seriously To Become A Viable Alternative To Fossil Fuels

Episode Date: August 13, 2020

There may still be a stigma around nuclear energy, which can conjure up images like the eerie scene painted in the 2019 HBO mini-series about the Chernobyl disaster. The infamous Three Mile Island incident sparked a series of reforms, though, that led to the creation of a stringent federal oversight body. “That was a pretty serious wake-up for the industry. That set off a path to really emphasize safe operations and make sure these kinds of challenges and threats were not a feature going forward,” Crozat said. Now, Crozat said, things are designed in a much safer way than they were when Three Mile Island opened in the 1970s and certainly than when Chernobyl opened in a way that even modern American scientists of the time wouldn’t have opted to design a reactor. That opens up nuclear as an option as an energy source for things like data centers, which have helped lead the transition to an economy increasingly reliant on jobs in the technology sector. “I think, as we continue to see the economy evolve and embrace the role of data and digitization, making sure the energy system is evolving along with it to meet the goals we’re talking about [is important],” Crozat said. “This isn’t just a nuclear question, and this isn’t just a wind question or a solar question. It’s how we find the right tools to bring them all together at the same time. “I think those that are leading this economic evolution can also lead the energy evolution.” With safety measures in place and no dependence on fossil fuels, nuclear has a role to play in powering the data centers that are helping change our future.

Welcome to Not Your Father's Data Center podcast, brought to you by Compass Data Centers. We build for what's next. Now here's your host, Raymond Hawkins. Matt, as you think about strategy and policy and you think about the image of your industry, if the person or the voice that you guys have the most struggle with, if they were on the podcast with us today, what, what, what challenge would they be throwing at you or what, what different perspective would they offer? And, and just help me think about it from that perspective. One I could think of is what do we do with the waste, the byproduct? You know,

we're not throwing carbon in the atmosphere, but we are producing nuclear waste. That might be one, if that's not the one, if there's another one. But could you talk about it from that perspective, the folks that stay up at night worrying about your industry? Well, I think that we already touched on part of it, which was the safety and the fear and uncertainty that comes with these technologies that often many people think of them as a black box. They don't know much about them, and therefore they fill that uncertainty with the bits that they do get, be it either news of alarming events or popular culture that move from the actual truth, like The Simpsons, for example, and The Simpsons. But it turns out The Simpsons might not be a great guide to understanding technology.

Truer words have never been spoken. But there are, I think, a lot, even going back to things like Spider-Man and the radioactive spider. And so there are these elements in there that have been associated with fear and concern, safe operations has been a key part of what we need to do to create a better appreciation of. But also I think you mentioned used nuclear fuel. Everyone knows there's a big problem with how to safely store nuclear waste, and that's been a constant challenge and part of the overriding understanding of the issue of nuclear is this kind of seemingly insurmountable problem.

And that's where I think from where I sit, my perspective, when I went to the Department of Energy and I said I was trying to figure out how we could have a system with hundreds of nuclear reactors more than I have, I was trying to think of, well, how could you imagine creating a system that would do a better job of managing this used nuclear fuel? And what really stands out to me is the extent to which this is more of a political challenge than a technological one.

So the first thing to appreciate on nuclear fuel is that it is solid, unlike the Simpsons where they have green bats. It's not green, it's black. But it is these long rods of ceramic, kind of like a plate but heavier, and in metal tubes inside of either a very large swimming pool, or once they've cooled enough, you can then stick them into steel and concrete lined containers that you can stick in a parking lot at the plant,

waiting for them to be removed. And part of the challenge to politics was back in the 1980s, shortly after Thermal Island, the Congress passed a law that said the federal government would be in charge of the long-term management of used fuel. And we'll come pick up from these nuclear sites starting in the late 1990s. That didn't happen. As they tried to find a location, there was a great deal of political pushback because

the people in the state of Nevada, which was the selected site, felt that they were being unfairly singled out and treated without a say in the process, and they fought it. And so what's happened is over the last 30 some odd years, the nuclear plant operators have been paying a fee to the federal government to manage this fuel in the long term. And the federal government hasn't been able to execute its side of the bargain, which means that right now I have used fuel stored at all of my nuclear power plants. It's safely there. It hasn't harmed anybody. It shouldn't be there. That's kind of annoying. We don't like it.

But that's more because we had a deal, and we'd kind of like to see that fall through on you. If I took all of that used fuel and moved it to a football field, it would stack up to less than 10 yards high. From the point of view of the volume of material is small relative to the political challenge we've created around it. On top of that, I mentioned the fees that have been collected. The federal government also has over $40 billion sitting on the books to go take care of this problem.

So we have resources. We have it safely managed. But we do need a political process that can get past the challenges that we've created to find a more workable solution going forward. And that's where NEI is trying to find the way to work with Congress in particular and the administration to see what that path forward can look like to get to the point where we have a working system instead of one where people are at water heads over political battles that hopefully we can get past before long. So, Matt, how many facilities in the fleet today here in the U.S.? Right now we have 95 nuclear reactors at 57 sites in 29 states.

95 reactors, 57 sites, and how many states? 29 different states. And those are the ones that are operating right now. So these 57 sites are storing all of the waste today because we're in this limbo between moving it to the federal facility. And between all 57 of those sites, the total waste wouldn't stack higher than 10 yards deep in On a football field. That's correct

As far as a good visual there there are there are a number of sites that have closed over the years for different reasons and This is a different frustration too, which is I have some plants that plant itself is gone. I removed it I restored the entire property except for the one little pad of fuel that is there. So I have more than 57 sites with used fuel, but the vast majority is at the ones that are operating plants. So we're hopefully trying to find an opportunity to create a system that can at least begin the process of moving this fuel perhaps to interim sites that can provide a consolidated place to store them for a while just to begin getting out of the the rut that we're in and the the challenges that we've been having of trying to stand this system up and see

the kind of progress that other countries have managed to work out. We see places being built for long-term storage in countries in Europe. France has a system to recycle a lot of their fuel that has always gained interest. And so there are other countries that have demonstrated that there are paths forward here. But we need to get our political system

in a better place to help us move forward, and that's what we're working towards. Now, I don't want to pick on any particular state, but I think of something like the vastness of Alaska. Isn't there a corner up in the inside the Arctic Circle that we could just, I mean, a football field's just not that big. Is it really not in my backyard? Because it seems to me with the vastness of our nation that we ought to have, if we want to store it, we ought to have a couple places that it would be fine to store it, or if we want to recycle it, that we could figure that out. Is it really just a political football, Matt? That's the real problem. I mean, there are probably all kinds of different places you can

imagine citing some facilities. I think that the key though is rather than saying, aha, we want to put it where you are, instead have a conversation that allows more cooperation and partnership as opposed to making people feel like something's being imposed on them they didn't have a say in. So I think as we begin to, I think, hopefully evolve the conversation, it's one that's less about forcing something upon somebody and instead trying to find a more partnership that will allow us to move past the conflict that we've had. I got you. Okay. So fuel storage is one that your critics would cite. Fear and fear really

around safety. Do you mind taking two minutes? Let's go back to the safety one. What's the safety record look like? I remember as a kid, Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 79. What does the safety record in the U.S. look like from a nuclear industry perspective? I mean, the safety record in the U.S. has been really exemplary, especially in the last 40 years. We have different metrics that I

think aren't particularly easy for outsiders to appreciate. But one of the things that the reason we have this safety record is we also have a strong independent government regulator. So we have an entire branch of the U.S. government called the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, whose job it is to oversee and set the rules to ensure that these plants are being operated safely and that facilities are complying with these rules. And this is an independent agency that has a technically capable workforce that knows the technology, that has a great deal of experience with it, and provides a very strong force to ensure that these plants are being safely operated.

We've seen incidents in other parts of the world that have given some concern, like in the 1980s there was Chernobyl, which had a very different Soviet stamp on how to approach these things. The incident in Fukushima, I think, showed that the relationship between the companies and those doing the regulation needs to have some independence, but also that you can think about absolute worst case scenarios and then beyond that as well. And we've got examples in the US of how we've approached some of that too.

But it is noteworthy that worker safety record at the nuclear plants is really exemplary. You don't see anything like what the worst fears of the critics would have you believe. And it really extends to really things that sound trivial, but not at all nuclear. For example, every meeting that we have with our company, we open with a safety moment, where

somebody tries to have anything safety-related that should be front of mind. Things like making sure someone's holding a ladder if you're going up to clean leads out of your gutter. Those kinds of reminders are a constant part of the culture of how the US fleet has been trained to operate, and that has really had an effect of not just in terms of worrying about radiation or that, but even simple things like making sure you don't trip on power cords

and hurt yourself on a fall. I mean, it really does kind of permeate all the way through how the industry approaches these issues. Matt, in the data center business, we build data centers. We're in the data center development business, and we track lost work hours. That one, we've reduced that number to so tiny that we now actually track what we call near misses. So not that anyone has actually lost any work time, but that it was a near miss so we can learn lessons from those. Are there similar metrics in safety? Because it sounds to me like you're talking about, hey, Raymond, it sounded very similar. Hey, Raymond, we don't have issues nuclear related. We have issues with cords and

ladders, which sounds very much like my business, right? We have managed to cut the fatality or lost work hour rate so little that we track near misses. What's an analogous metric in your industry for that? I don't know that I have an analogous one on near misses. We might, to be clear. That gets closer to plant operations, which is going to bless my day-to-day expertise. But what I will point out is is much like what you're saying, that the philosophy of you manage what you measure is an important part of how we think about this. And part

of what the, I mentioned earlier, the Institute for Nuclear Power Operations, part of what they do is measure a lot of these kinds of operations. So we do have the data. I don't necessarily have that because a lot of that tends to be proprietary, but it does speak to the same kind of culture and philosophy that we want to see throughout the industry. Gotcha. You mentioned, as we talked briefly about the safety, you mentioned both Fukushima and Chernobyl. When I think about the fear related to your industry, some of that I think is fueled, forgive the pun, based on some of the really tragic stories. Could you give us three or four

minutes of what happened in Chernobyl, what took place, lives lost, sort of the history of that, the lessons learned, and then how that might compare to a U.S. design and a U.S. response to a tragedy? Sure. One of the things that I think really drives a lot of the thinking is the HBO miniseries that won lots of awards last year. And I think that brought a lot of attention to both the things that were a key part of the event, but also some things that might have ventured into the dramatization as opposed to the document of the event. Wait a minute, Matt. I want to make sure I understand. You mean to tell me movie makers might have sensationalized what happened? Hard to imagine. No, no. All good.

It is. I'm not even trying to be difficult to the guy who produced it. He said as much that from his point of view, the lesson of Chernobyl wasn't about nuclear power. It was about the lesson of chernobyl wasn't about nuclear power it was about the culture of suppressing criticism that was endemic in the soviet state right and that's where i think a lot of it came down to so you know there's two things that really stand out the first is the design of reactor that the soviets were using there something that would not have been acceptable anywhere else in the world outside of the Soviet bloc. It was known to have a certain problem that if it lost coolant,

then it was going to have its nuclear reactions speed up, which is the exact opposite of what you want to have happen. And sure enough, at the Chernobyl incident, the miniseries does a very good job of showing, you had operators who were running an experiment where they turned off water and things went badly and they couldn't catch up, leading to an explosion. That design is something that itself,

no one in the rest of Europe or any other part of the world in the United States ever would have had. The second part, too, is for reasons that they're still perplexing, every reactor in the United States has a containment, is in a containment building. So even if there is a release from the reactor core itself,

it's not going anywhere. There's a building right there to trap it. And that's what happened in Fernand Island. Why nothing, no health effects. The Soviets for these reactors didn't have a containment building. So one thing went badly, and you had an explosion. You had a lot of radioactive material

spread out into the nearby area. And so from a design point of view, it's a huge difference, and one that was well understood before that event even. But the second thing that really mattered, and what the mini-series gets at a little bit, more a little bit, was that the response from the Soviet authorities was one of largely denial, and rather than taking some pretty basic precautions that

would have minimized the impact, they instead attempted to pretend that there was no event for a while and tried to hide it. Right. And that's a pretty remarkably difficult thing to think about even in hindsight. Which is, this is by far the worst nuclear accident we've ever seen. The total number of deaths experienced in the Chernobyl event were 28 workers at the facility died.

And the best estimate was about 15 cases of thyroid cancer that led to death. So even in the worst incident in the history of the technology, the death count probably is less than people would have expected. But it really did try to create a better appreciation of needing to work to change the institutions. And so I mentioned how in the US the response was to create an institute.

We did something similar after Chernobyl, with a world association trying to create a similar kind of feedback to holding each other accountable, which is difficult across countries. But the recognition that the issue isn't so much, well, how many people died? It's like, no, this is not acceptable. We're not going to just move on from this. We're going to try to reform and understand

what happened and make sure that the culture of safety is better integrated in the operation of these facilities. So Chernobyl, the design was bad, no containment building, nothing like what we would see in other developed countries. The reaction was bad, meaning the way the safety and security protocols were bad. And then I also think it's helpful to remember Chernobyl happened in 86. The Berlin Wall came down in, what, 89. The Soviet Union collapsed in, what, 91? So this was still in an era when the Soviet Union controlled all the news and controlled all the messaging and controlled the way things were perceived because the way the party and the way the country was to be viewed was managed tremendously. And I think that contributed to the problem as well. I think that's certainly true. And part of why I make a big deal

about having an independent regulator is in the United States, there is no opportunity. No one even tried to hide it. But there is this understanding that you always have somebody there whose job it is to check on you and be the one sounding the alarm.

Denial isn't an opportunity for you. And that's, I think, an important institutional correction. And although in perspective the loss of life was relatively small, we don't want to be cavalier about the loss of any souls, but the thought being that even in the worst tragedy in a nuclear incident, the loss of life was not what might be perceived based on the news or at least the reaction to it. And here in the U.S., loss of life in a nuclear accident, that's not even a thing. It's never happened, has it?

Not in any case from radioactivity, no. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, one thing I do want to say is that what we have seen in not just since Chernobyl, but just in the context of realizing that there's a role for nuclear energy going forward as we think about reducing carbon emissions,

we've seen a lot of new technology development being advanced today. And that's something that I think is really interesting because it is building in these lessons learned from the outset. So rather than trying to retrofit a facility to take on a new lesson, it's like, well,

if I know all of these things, bringing all the experiences from things I've learned over the way, can I design a better reactor from scratch? And we've seen a generation of often very young scientists and technology developers, often inspired by the Silicon Valley kind of startup model, to bring new fuels, new materials, new configurations to try to create a broader range of technologies that aren't just in terms of very large nuclear power plants, but also smaller, but all built

with all these safety ideas in mind from scratch. And that's been one of the really exciting parts of being part of this industry in the last two years is seeing so many new companies and developers and the kind of support we're getting for it. This is one of the few areas where we've seen consistent bipartisan support in Congress for, well, frankly, anything. But the recognition that there's a real opportunity to develop and demonstrate new nuclear reactor designs is something we've seen a great deal of enthusiasm for and some of the highest funding levels that the research and development that we've ever seen in technology and I think that's a real opportunity that as we look forward

building the next generation to encompass everything we've learned along the way is a real opportunity it can really expand how we can think of using the technology, both in terms of the markets it feeds, but also in terms of the size and scale and flexibility of how we operate them. So Matt, I just want to know with all these new investments and openness in Congress to look at new uses for nuclear, how long will it be until I have a DeLorean that's powered by nuclear power? So I think the DeLorean that's powered by nuclear power? So

I think the DeLorean might not have made it long enough themselves. Darn it, okay, alright. I give them a restitution. So we have designs that are currently being evaluated by the Nuclear Preparatory Commission and they should have, they might have

approval as soon as this year to confirm that the design is going to be safe. We also see a whole range of, in some cases, very small units. Like instead of the thousand megawatt units I have now, maybe a single digits of megawatts that can provide remote operations and almost like a nuclear battery. The military has taken a great deal of interest in how they can use nuclear technologies to provide power even in forward operations. So rather than seeing the need for long lines of diesel trucks to run generators that are very much a target for combatants, that instead can I use these technologies to eliminate that risk and provide better safety for the forces.

And so you are seeing these new ideas really come around to, well, what are the possibilities if I can think about nuclear beyond the large-scale gigawatt-sized plants? And those are coming to the fore pretty quickly. How small can we get? I think of plants that are in remote parts of the planet, not powering the big U.S. power grid, but in maybe even a third-world country. How small a power plant can we get today? I certainly think about the ones that were on the ships when I spent time in the Marine Corps. They're probably much smaller than that today. How little can we get, Matt? Oh, I mean, I know there were designs for as little as one or two megawatts. I mean, one of the things that I think isn't often appreciated is there are actually a bunch of

small nuclear reactors all around the country. They tend to be at universities or test reactors, and for the most part, they don't produce electricity, but they run at the hundreds of kilowatts at times. And so we do have this kind of sprinkling of small units all around. So we know how to make them small. I think it's trying to find that right balance between making them small and making them efficient, which goes back to the issue from earlier. And that's where trying to match the right market need with the technology is going on now. We've seen a lot of interest in places like Alaska and northern Canada where power supplies are very expensive because I'm trucking in diesel again. And so those can sometimes support very small units, remote islands, not even remote, islands in general. So there are big spots where you can see a real opportunity for a power production that

is carbon-free, runs 24-7, and doesn't need constant refueling. Those are emerging. I think we're still a few years off from seeing anything concrete develop, be deployed, I mean. But those plans are being developed now. I think it speaks to the recognition that as we think about sustainability in the longer term, it's more than just about replacing one technology with another. It's how it fits in each of these communities and each of

these markets. And what are the tools that we can bring to bear and how do we combine them to make an efficient system? So you talk about an island deployment. Instead of building all the infrastructure to produce a traditional power plant, you would just put a nuclear facility there, and then someone's coming and replacing the fuel every year, year and a half, just like we would here. Is that where you're headed there? I think on some of these designs, you can set them up

so you don't need to refuel them for a decade or so. Oh, my goodness. Okay. Well, I'm not in the business of buying an island anytime soon, but I will put this in my hip pocket as hopefully things go good in the data center business. But as I think about the things in the data center business, one thing that does come to mind is how the data centers themselves think about matching their load with trying to offset the emissions that come with electricity use. And this is where I do think there's an opportunity going forward for an evolution in

how the conversation is taking place. Google, for example, a couple of years ago had a report that looked at, for all of the renewable energy credits that they purchased to offset every megawatt hour that they use, they recognized that depending on where they were geographically, they might be running the data center at a time when the only thing available was fossil fuels. And that meant they still had a carbon footprint even though they had bought a renewable energy credit to offset emissions. And that's led to thinking about, is there a way to think about evolving this renewable energy credit system

to not just offset a megawatt hour with a wind production in one spot or solar at a different time of day, but try to do a more close matching of where the energy is being used and where the clean energy is being generated. And I think that there's an opportunity to evolve the renewable energy infrastructure to better match the challenge that we're going to face in meeting some of these really ambitious

climate goals these companies have set forward. And to that end, I think there's a chance to have a conversation about looking beyond just the wind and solar recs to evolving the possibility of thinking about time of day and is there a role for nuclear to play as part of that kind of a conversation that can think about a more comprehensive product that matches the load use and the clean energy needs. And I think there's a conversation that your audience can certainly be a part of and help to bring forward. Yeah, Matt, there's no question. Our biggest customers are very focused on sustainability, very focused on, I mean, you hear their CEOs talk about being carbon neutral or even carbon negative. And the notion that the grid has got carbon-emitting electrons on it and non-carbon-emitting electrons on it.

And carbon credit is nice, but the idea of having electrons that don't produce and don't emit any carbons is a better answer. And there's clearly a role for nuclear to play in that. Well, Matt, this has been great. We've enjoyed the hour with you, and if there's any parting thoughts you'd like to give the data center industry, I think the notion that non-carbon emitting electrons is a great one to end on, but we'd love any other thoughts from you, and we just thank you for the time. No, I think that as we continue to see the economy evolve and embrace the role of data and digitization, I think that making sure the energy system

is evolving along with it to meet the goals that we're talking about here. And this isn't just a nuclear question. This isn't just a wind question or a solar question. It's how we find the right tools to bring them all together at the same time. And I think those that are leading this, the economic evolution can also help lead the energy evolution as well. So I look forward to working with you and the folks you work with. Matt, we really appreciate your time. We appreciate the work that you do at the Nuclear Energy Institute and helping bring electrons into data centers so we can do all the things that the technology revolution is doing for our country and for our planet. Thank you so much for joining us today, Matt.

My pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed this edition of Not Your Father's Data Center. I'll ask that you'd please join us again next time for our very informal chat around the businesses, the people, and the technology driving the data industry today. If you have any questions or comments about this episode, or if you'd like to make suggestions about future topics, we'd love to discuss it. You can email me at rhawkins, that's R-H-A-W-K-I-N-S, at compassdatacenters.com, or you can reach me on our Twitter feed at CompassDCS.

That's Compass, C-O-M-P-A-S-S-D-C-S. Thank you again for listening to Not Your Father's Data Center, brought to you by Compass Data Centers.