You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap...
In the middle of the D segment on CNN's Late Edition, we find this interesting exchange between Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA):
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If electric heat is made the less expensive option, not only will that lessen dependence on oil, but would free natural gas for transportation use.
This is just one example of how nuclear power can replace oil.
If we had high-temperature reactors like LFTR or PBMR that could produce synthetic hydrocarbons fuels from thermochemical hydrogen, that would be one thing. But LWRs aren't displacing much petroleum. Some, but not much.
The diesel generators could be replaced by a small nuclear power plant. If this were a cheaper option I'm sure shipping lines would look closely at it. Any reactor for commercial shipping would need either online refueling, a long core life, or rapid refueling that fits the drydocking schedule of commercial shipping. To make the investment in such technology, shipping lines would also need a stable regulatory environment and the ability to call at all ports that they currently service.
None of this is impossible, but until the price of fuel oil gets so high that it becomes an economic necessity to change, change probably won't happen. If change does happen, it will probably come rapidly.
In fact, nuclear power is being proposed to expand oil production and export from Saudi Arabia and the tar sands of Alberta, Canada.