SUN VALLEY, IDAHO — Young people are more interested in building out zero-carbon energy technologies like advanced nuclear reactors than addressing spent nuclear fuel storage, an advanced reactor company executive said here Monday.
People under 35 are more concerned about “waste from a tailpipe” than they are about waste from nuclear power plants, X-Energy CEO and former Deputy Secretary of Energy Clay Sell said Monday during a panel at the Nuclear Industry Council’s annual Advanced Reactors Summit in Sun Valley, Idaho. X-Energy is developing advanced reactors and fuels.
“I’ve been on the road for two years straight: talking to customers, raising capital, giving speeches and engaging with lots of people,” Sell told Exchange Monitor after the panel. “You talk to people my age about nuclear, and they say, ‘oh, what about the waste? What about safety?’ But you talk to younger people, and they say, ‘we have to have nuclear to save the world.’”
Young people recognize that the “relative risk” of nuclear power is lower compared to greenhouse gas technologies and wide-scale renewables, Sell said.
Part of the decreased interest in nuclear waste issues among young people is because they understand that “it’s not a safety issue,” Sell said. “We know exactly where 100% of the waste that the commercial nuclear industry has produced is. We can characterize exactly what’s happening with it, and it’s secure and not harming anyone. I think [young people] recognize that.”
The U.S. commercial nuclear power industry has generated over 80,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel. Most of that waste is currently stored onsite at power plants or nearby at independent spent fuel storage installations.
The Department of Energy is currently exploring the possibility of siting a federal interim storage facility, but that effort is still in the development stage. Two private companies, Holtec International and Interim Storage Partners, are also looking to build interim storage sites in the southwest U.S.
There is still no effort underway within the federal government to build a deep-underground geologic repository for nuclear waste. Yucca Mountain, the only site authorized by Congress for such a facility, remains essentially mothballed due to political resistance from Nevada.
