The Future of Nuclear Energy
Nuclear energy is the optimal choice to help meet decarbonization goals by integrating and complementing renewable resources to maintain a clean, reliable, and resilient electric system. Nuclear energy provides firm, baseload power 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This consistent, predictable generation of carbon-free electricity ensures electricity is available when it is needed and provides a foundation for the electric grid. Nuclear power is also cost-competitive, and each plant supports thousands of direct and indirect family-wage jobs, with major economic benefits to surrounding communities. The reason for nuclear power's cost advantage is not in its plant-level costs. Instead, it resides in its overall cost to the electricity system. Renewables have seen tremendous reductions in cost but their intermittency – they generate electricity only 25-35 percent of the time – means additional energy sources are needed to fill the gap when the sun isn't shining, and the wind isn't blowing.
The importance of the nuclear energy industry to the nation's energy security is becoming increasingly clear.
Nuclear power is the only large-scale, carbon-free electricity source that the country can widely expand to produce large amounts of electricity. Currently, nuclear energy produces 19% of all electricity generated in the United States and almost half of the carbon-free electricity – and all of this comes from only 93 existing nuclear power plants. The energy density of nuclear power leads to abundant electricity being created from a very small footprint.
In 2019 Washington state passed the Clean Energy Transformation Act, also known as CETA, which sets the state on a path to 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2045. Energy Northwest, with its portfolio of 100% carbon-free resources, began an intensive analysis of how to accomplish this ambitious climate goal. In 2019 the agency commissioned a study by Energy + Environmental Economics (E3), a San Francisco-based consulting group, to calculate the energy capacity needs in the northwest over the next several decades and analyze a suite of clean, reliable and affordable energy resources available to meet that demand. The resulting study, released in 2020, found the optimal energy portfolio is a combination of current and new renewable and clean resources, including the deployment of advanced nuclear energy technologies and small modular reactors.