Rudolph Sutherland | Clarity on Jamaica’s energy future

It has often been said that, here in Jamaica, and for the whole world, there is enough free sunlight or wind to power our future.

So, why haven’t sunlight and wind taken over the energy sector here and around the world? Why is it that we are seeing the rise of a fourth generation of small modular nuclear reactors, SMRs, that build on 70 years of experience with submarine and aircraft carrier reactors?

The answer is, everything has pros and cons.

Jamaica has but little hydroelectric or geothermal potential. So, in a world where there is a global push to shut down fossil fuels as the main base for energy services, we must find a technology to reliably provide our electricity base load and follow our load peaks. It is hard and expensive to directly store up electricity, especially at grid scale. Similarly, apart from nuclear materials, the most concentrated, convenient, reasonably safe forms of energy storage are diesel fuel and gasolene.

To store water, we do what beavers have always done: build dams. Such dams release water as needed. Indeed, as falling or flowing water has in it a lot of energy, dams are also a good stored source for electricity, as we can see for Canada, the United States, Norway, Guyana and Haiti.

There is even a pumped storage technology that uses off-peak capacity on some grids to pump water uphill to a dam, then allow it to flow back down to a lower reservoir or a lake or the sea, spinning a generator during peak hours. Yes, a dam is here serving as a battery.

Solar and wind energy are both highly intermittent and fluctuating: we have days and nights. We have clouds, sometimes for days on end. The wind blows, and it stops too – just watch the Wigton wind turbines.

So, if wind and solar energy are to carry our base load and follow our peaks, we need massive grid-scale energy storage; which simply is not there. As a default, we would be forced to rely on the next fossil fuel due for shutdown: natural gas. Already, there are regulatory attempts in the US to restrict or ban gas stoves.

So, we face Sherlock Holmes’ logical challenge: “When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”.

Jamaica is at un momento de verdad – a moment of truth. We had better face and act on the truth, before the truth faces us; to our cost.

The reason Prime Minister Andrew Holness, Minister Daryl Vaz and investor Michael Lee-Chin have pointed to small modular reactors as an option we must consider in a world that. because of climate concerns is shutting down fossil fuel, is that SMRs are the last man standing.

That’s why, across the world, there are some 80 initiatives under development after a long nuclear energy holiday. That’s why, a year ago, China cut in its first HTR-PM, 210 MWe pebble bed, modular reactor at full power, and it is why it is forging ahead with a 600 MWe development. It is why, as at February 21, 2023, yes, early this year, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission certified NuScale’s VOYGR light water, 77 MWe per module, light-water reactors, which are capable of using up to a dozen factory-built Power Module units. It is why our sister Commonwealth country Canada has a national SMR initiative – the one Mr Lee-Chin is investing in – anticipating that the global market will be over US$100 billion per year by 2040.

No, SMRs are not mere readily dismissed ‘paper tigers’.

Likewise, let us remember that, since the late 1980s, through partnership with Canada, the Mona campus of The University of the West Indies has run a small CANDU research reactor, right next door to the Mona reservoir, the Mona housing estate, Papine, August Town and the University Hospital – all without mass panic and without damage to our tourism industry.

Then, too, we should take due note that France – see: https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/count... – which still gets about 70 per cent of its electricity from its 56 operating nuclear power plants and hosts the exploratory fusion reactor, has world-famous, vibrant tourism and arts-culture sectors. About a sixth of France’s nuclear power uses recycled fuel, and, in February 2022, announced “plans to build six new reactors and to consider building a further eight”.

Nor do we see lurid headlines over how Spain, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Holland, Germany, Italy and Switzerland are in a panic over France’s dangerous plans.

Instead, we see that, in recent decades, France has been “the world’s largest net exporter of electricity due to its very low cost of generation”, and gained “over €3 billion per year from this”. Italy is the leading importer, 18.4 TWhr/year. We can also see that “policy, set under a former administration in 2014, aimed to reduce nuclear’s share of electricity generation to 50 per cent by 2025”. However, that target “was delayed in 2019 to 2035, before being abandoned in 2023”.

What do the French, Spanish, Italians and others know that we need to learn?

Similarly, because SMR units are factory-built, Jamaica would not face a waste management challenge. When the module is used up, we simply ship it back. By that time, molten salt reactors, et cetera, would be on line to recycle our ‘waste’.

Of course, through public-private partnerships, the lion’s share of required investment funding would come from the developer. As for earthquakes and hurricanes, the answer is that SMR units and their plants are engineered to be resistant to such hazards.

Arguably, SMRs should be a key part of Jamaica’s energy future.

Rudolph Earl Sutherland, PE, is a nuclear engineer who has worked in the nuclear power plant since 1975. He has worked with Bechtel Power Corporation/Savannah River Nuclear Solutions and was assigned to the Three Mile Island nuclear power disaster analysis team.esuther1942@aol.com