Hundreds of people gathered in Columbia on Thursday to discuss nuclear energy expansion in Missouri.
The Missouri Nuclear Summit convened lawmakers, business leaders and state and federal energy officials for discussions on how nuclear power plants could meet projected demand for energy.
“It's a priority of mine to make sure Missouri has ample power for the future, and we know nuclear technology can be a critical piece in meeting that goal,” said Gov. Mike Kehoe.
In the past few decades, utilities haven’t built many nuclear power plants in Missouri or the rest of the country. That’s mostly because of their high cost and concerns about the lack of a federal plan to store spent fuel.
But at the summit, panels focused on demand from energy-thirsty sectors like artificial intelligence and on Missouri’s need to compete with other states to attract businesses. The National Governors Association, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy held the summit.
“Nuclear is really what comes to the forefront in terms of dispatchable power that doesn't have an associated carbon emission,” said Kurt Schaefer, director of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. “And it really hasn't been in the discussion for a while, and so we were very glad to do that.”
Ameren President Mark Birk said the company plans to rely more heavily on nuclear in the future because as Ameren increasingly uses wind and solar power, it will need an energy source that can be quickly turned on when there isn’t enough sun or breeze.
“When you look toward the future, and you look toward carbon-free energy, and more importantly, dispatchable energy, to help integrate the renewables, nuclear has got to be a key, key part of that,” Birk said.
Ameren’s Callaway reactor is Missouri’s only nuclear power plant, generating 14% of the state’s electricity. By 2045, the company expects nuclear energy to make up the largest share of its generation, about 40%.
There is also a federal push to build more nuclear energy. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in May that calls for 10 new nuclear reactors to be under construction by 2030. The Biden administration also implemented pro-nuclear policies.
In Missouri, a new law could make it easier to build nuclear plants. The law, known as SB4, allows electric companies to charge its customers for power plants as they are being built, known as construction work in progress. Birk said that will ultimately mean the plants cost less.
“Without construction work in process, you're putting it on a credit card, and you're paying at the end of the period when it gets operational,” Birk said. “If you do have construction work in process, while customers pay as we go, their overall cost to build the plant is going to be lower.”
But consumer advocates fought the law, saying construction work in progress for nuclear plants could cause household bills to go up by as much as $1,000 a year on average over the next 10 years. That’s partly because nuclear plants are notoriously expensive to build.
After decades without constructing new nuclear plants in the U.S., two new projects recently went up in Georgia, but they took significantly longer and cost much more to build than was originally planned. A representative from the company that built the plants spoke at the Missouri summit and said she hopes to share the lessons learned from that “very storied adventure.”
“We were the ones that carried the banner and got beat up all over the place for being over budget and delayed with the AP 1000, but somebody had to do it,” said Lizzy Yates, director of communication for Southern Nuclear. “Somebody has to go first.”
Yates and others said to bring costs down, the U.S. has to get back in the habit of building nuclear plants. Abroad, as countries build more, the cost and timeline to do so go down significantly. Many of the summit’s speakers hope the same could soon happen in Missouri.
