Reinvention of Atomic Energy Plants
ZAKARIA: President Obama recently announced big plans to cut carbon emissions from power plants. Will this be a death blow to fossil fuels and lower CO2 emissions? Well, no. Under these new restrictions carbon emitting coal and natural gas are still expected to make up about 2/3 of American electricity in 2030. So it led me to wonder, is there another way? My next guest says yes. Leslie Dewan is co-founder and chief science officer of Transatomic Power. She's one of "Time's" 30 people under 30 changing the world. She has a fascinating idea that could be a game changer. And I wanted to have her on to talk about it. So, Leslie, you came up with this idea after finishing your qualifying exams for a Ph.D. at MIT. You had some free time and so you and a friend decided, what?</s>LESLIE DEWAN, CEO, TRANSATOMIC POWER: Well, my classmate and I, Mark Massie, right after we finished our qualifying exams decided that we wanted to do something big, and different, and interesting. We figured that this was the smartest we were going to be for a while because we had just finished studying for 14 hours a day for about two months.</s>ZAKARIA (voice over): So Dewan and her classmates started looking into nuclear reactor designs. They reasoned that nuclear power is carbon free, sustainable, scalable and can generate great quantities of electricity. In fact, they couldn't imagine tackling climate change and keeping up with the world's energy demands which are projected to increase by 50 percent in the next three decades without a significant expansion in nuclear power, so in 2011 she incorporated a company called the Transatomic Power Corporation. (on camera): What are the problems that you are trying to solve?</s>DEWAN: So, each conventional nuclear power plant in the U.S. today produces about 20 metric tons of high level waste that's radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. And there isn't really a solution for it yet.</s>ZAKARIA (voice over): Until now perhaps. Using a design that was invented 50 years ago, they created the Waste Annihilating Molten Salt Reactor or WAMSR. The WAMSR uses molten salt to dissolve nuclear fuel. That ultimately reduces both the radioactivity and the amount of waste. The new reactor could create just 10 to 20 kilograms of long lived waste per year instead of the 20 metric tons produced by a traditional commercial plant. 20 kilograms of waste is about the size of a grapefruit.</s>DEWAN: And the remaining waste that comes out, it's waste that's radioactive for just a few hundred years, so much shorter than the hundreds of thousands of years from other plants.</s>ZAKARIA: And here's another big plus. Around the world today there exists about 270,000 metric tons of high level nuclear waste. WAMSR could eat that waste and turn it into electricity. (on camera): So this sounds great. Why wouldn't everybody -- why wouldn't everybody adopt this design?</s>DEWAN: That's what we're hoping ultimately.</s>ZAKARIA: Is it more expensive? Is your plan more expensive?</s>DEWAN: We -- it's actually about half the cost per megawatt overnight construction of conventional nuclear reactors. And that makes it - we can be on par with coal, and we're trying to reduce the costs further to make it on par with natural gas.</s>ZAKARIA (voice over): The idea may be cost effective, but innovation in nuclear is often thwarted because of concerns over safety. While coal, natural gas and even air pollution kill many more people every year than nuclear power, nuclear energy does have the potential to be catastrophic. Everyone remembers the disasters, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima. (on camera): So what would have happened if your plant had been at Fukushima?</s>DEWAN: So my plant uses the liquid fuel rather than a solid fuel so if it lost electricity, if the operators had to leave the site, the liquid fuel would drain out into an auxiliary tank completely gravity fed, just based on the inherent physics of the design, and it would freeze solid over the course of about two or three hours, so if it fails it fails in a solid state rather than a meltdown liquid state or gaseous state.</s>ZAKARIA: And the big problem with Fukushima, is that it is in a liquid state and it is therefore producing huge amounts of radioactive water?</s>DEWAN: Yes, that was one of the biggest issues there.</s>ZAKARIA (voice over): Transatomic power has about $3.5 million in funding and the Department of Energy recently awarded its founders the first ever energy innovation award but Dewan faces several obstacles. She'll need to convince companies that it's worth up ending the industry and investing in new technology, and perhaps the biggest hurdle, the regulators. She'll need the federal government's support and money. (on camera): Do you think looking at this whole world of advanced nuclear reactor designs that American technology in this area leads the world?</s>DEWAN: I think that for now the U.S. is still leading the world in nuclear technology, but one of my biggest concerns is that that won't always be the case. Just to put some numbers on it, the U.S. right now has 100 operating commercial power reactors and five new ones under construction, and China has I believe 21 reactors operational, another 86 under construction or planned to be under construction soon and then another 150 plants proposed.</s>ZAKARIA: Is it realistic that, you know, between issues of not in my backyard and all those kinds of issues and regulatory issues, is it likely that you're going to be able to build this plant in the United States or is your best hope that your first plant will be built in China?</s>DEWAN: We're committed to building the first plant in the United States for a range of reasons. This is American technology. It was invented here 50 years ago and so we want the U.S. to gain the benefits of it first before we bring it somewhere else.</s>ZAKARIA: Dewan hopes to have a fully built environmentally friendly nuclear reactor within eight to ten years, and then she'll have to sell it, of course, but if she can make it happen in an industry that's impervious to change, the rewards could be great. She could help get rid of much of our nuclear waste and generate enough electricity to power the globe for the next 72 years. Up next, a culture map that will explain to you how to deal with the various and different cultural types you're going to encounter as you live and work around the world these days. Stay with us.