The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Modular Nuclear Reactors Are Not the Future of Energy || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: November 28, 2023

A while back, I talked about a few technologies I was most hopeful for - small modular nuclear reactors being one of those. Unfortunately, we'll be drawing a line through it (for now). Donate to MedShare HERE: https://www.medshare.org/zukraine/ Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/modular-nuclear-reactors-are-not-the-future-of-energy

Hey, everyone. Good morning from Chile, Colorado. It's a balmy 10 degrees today. I got some bad news. So for those of you who have been following me for a bit, you know that over the summer I recorded a video of the five technologies that I was most hopeful one for. The issue we're facing is that we're entering into a period of extreme capital of earth and a shortage of people in the 20s and the 30s. Well, the people in the 20s and the 30s are the folks who get together to imagine the future and develop the technology. And a lot of cheap capital is required to bring it to mass. manufacture. And without those two factors, the pace of technological change that we've been used to seeing these last 20-25 years is going to slow considerably, and that's before you consider any sort of general dislocations because of demographic aging or draps of consumption or breakdowns and globalization. So the pace is going to slow incredibly. And the question is which technologies are kind of already at the hump, where they're just right on the edge of mass manufacturing mass application. And one of the technologies that I identified was something called small modular nuclear reactors. The idea is you have a reactor that's small enough to fit on the back of a semi-trailer,

and you can just plug it into any other power system. So if you've got a coal plant, for example, that you are looking to decommission, you can pull one of these in or two of these, based on the size, you know, up to 10, and just plug them in and they're good to go. And the 20% of electricity that the United States gets from nuclear currently could continue in perpetuity. Well, over the course with the last couple weeks, the companies that were involved in building the prototype of abandon the project, they say the numbers no longer make sense, they could get enough sponsors. So if this technology is going to continue, it's going to continue at a later time with different players in an environment of even sharper limitations on technological development and capital availability, which means it's probably not going to happen this decade at all. Which means the 20% of the electrical grid that is supplied by nuclear right now is going to fade away, because it's probably not going to fade away. with a couple of exceptions, all of those reactors are older than I am and I turn 50 very, very soon.

So, not only do we need to massively increase the amount of power generation we have to double the size of the industrial plant as a Chinese break apart, and we need even more power in order to do the green transition and maybe move to a more electric future, we also have to replace 20% of our total energy supply, which is at the moment all baseload, which is something that wind and solar can't come up with, or can't work with because they're too intermittent. So we just saw our overall challenge for the next decade become inordinately more difficult unless, of course, someone picks up this technology very, very soon.

Sorry. All right, bye.