Assertion Partly supported
DeWitt: Nuclear requires the least materials per lifetime gigawatt-hour
“And when you look at that, nuclear by far requires the least of all energy sources available to us today. And it's a significant difference in advantage.”
Assertion Partly supported
DeWitt: Fast reactors can reduce nuclear waste storage timelines to centuries
“Fast reactors in particular have some neat attributes where they can not just use this fuel efficiently, but they can use waste from other reactors and themselves quite efficiently and economically so, right? That's been one of the big hangups and holdups for …”
Disclosure
DeWitt: Oklo submitted a 600-page NRC application instead of 10,000+ pages
“Instead of being a 10,000 plus page document, it was, you know, 600 pages. It was, which by the way, mind you, is actually still a higher page per megawatt count than other plants, so it doesn't scale perfectly like that, but still significantly more efficient…”
Assertion Supported
DeWitt: All US commercial nuclear waste fits on one football field
“Nuclear power has produced, you know, a lot of energy for decades right? Producing 20% of our energy for, well, I don't, 30 plus, 40 plus years, and then before that as well. And the amount of waste it's produced would fit on a football field, being like, you …”
Assertion Supported
DeWitt: Large Western nuclear builds face multi-billion-dollar cost overruns
“The challenges with new builds, especially in Western countries with these big, Light water cooled, in other words, just water cooled power plants that produce like a thousand megawatts, you know, they're years behind schedule, billions of dollars over budget …”
Assertion Supported
DeWitt: Nuclear systems produce heat much more cheaply than electricity
“Nuclear systems fundamentally produce heat that we then do things with. And so they actually produce heat much more cheaply than they even produce electricity.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
DeWitt: Very few Western nuclear applications succeeded in the past 40 years
“There have been very few successes in the last 40 years where plants that have submitted their initial applications to not just the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but any Western regulator and had those plans actually built and operated.”
Prediction Held up
DeWitt: Advanced reactors will see only small-scale deployments before 2027
“Yeah, I think you're right on the timeframes for what that looks like in that five-year window. I think we start to see deployments happen in, in, in smaller scales in that timeframe, but you're still talking about just a couple plans here and there.”
Assertion Supported
DeWitt: Nuclear provides under 20% of US power but majority of clean electricity
“You know, on average, it makes about nine percent of the world's energy. In the U.S., it makes just under 20% and does make the majority of the U.S.'s clean power, which is a pretty important piece of it.”
Assertion Supported
DeWitt: China announced plans to build at least 150 new nuclear plants
“China recently announced they're going to be building at least a 150 new nuclear power plants.”
Assertion Partly supported
DeWitt: France recently announced plans to build at least 14 new nuclear plants
“France, who just recently announced, you know, one of the world leaders in nuclear power that they're going to be building at least 14 new plants which is pretty exciting to see.”
Assertion Supported
DeWitt: Fission releases almost 50 million times more energy than combustion
“When you split an atom, you're releasing almost fifty million times more energy than when you're doing sort of a combustion reaction with like, you know, a fossil fuel.”
Assertion Supported
DeWitt: Liquid metal reactors operate at high temperatures unpressurized
“They can operate at high temperatures, which is valuable, but they can also operate at high temperatures without needing to be pressurized. So you can use smaller simpler components and simpler systems to do that.”
