Energy 2.0: What Comes From After Oil

What happens after the world hits peak oil and prices skyrocket? Or when coal pushes the carbon count in the atmosphere into the danger zone? Soylent Green might turn out to be more prophetic than you thought. But, luckily, entrepreneurs are devising new ways to produce energy even beyond solar and wind. Here are some of the more intriguing and far out ones.

1.Nuclear Goes Mod(ular):

NuScale Power, Sandia National Labs, TerraPower and Babcock & Wilcox all want to build and/or license small reactors that could produce 45 to 125 megawatts of power. Some of the smallest modular reactors will be about the size of a hot tub and sit in sealed chambers filled with water to keep them cool. These reactors could provide power to equipment at isolated oil fields or to allow mid-sized communities to get off the grid. Some utility associations in the Seattle area have begun to study the viability of the concept.

Modular nukes, potentially, could be installed in far less time and with far less real estate than conventional reactors. By connecting 12 or 24 of its reactors in an array, NuScale hopes to build power plants that will produce power for 6 to 9 cents a kilowatt hour.

“Our principal market is the conventional market for providing power to the grid,” said Bruce Landrey, who runs marketing at NuScale. “We anticipate that the costs will be competitive, perhaps slightly less than the larger [nuclear] plants.”

CBS