We Need More Power!
Nuclear, Oil & Gas, and Something New Required ASAP
Short Read: In the 1950s, Shell Thought US Oil Production Was About to End and Nuclear Was The Only Future.
In 1956 the Shell Development Company produced a report that believed petroleum production in the US was about to peak just before 1960 and be replaced by #nuclear forever more.
In 1956, the US was producing ~6.95M barrels of crude oil per day and in 2022 they produce almost 12.65M per day (just under 100% growth).
Nuclear generating capacity has grown from 0 MWh in 1956 to 771,537 MWh in 2022.
Those nuclear stats start from the first commercial plant located in Shippingport, Pennsylvania going live to the 2nd last commercial reactor commissioned which is the Watts Bar Unit 2 in Tennessee that began commercial electricity generation in October 2016.
Not included (yet) in those stats is the newest reactor to enter service which is the Vogtle Unit 3 at the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia which began commercial operation on July 31, 2023. There will also be a surge in nuclear power generation as small modular reactors begin coming online in the next decade.
Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMRs) are a proposed class of nuclear fission reactors which can generate 300 MW(e) per unit and can be built in one location, shipped, commissioned, and operated at a separate site. These are a perfect for industrial operations, remote areas with limited grid access, or areas of shifting power needs.
Shell underestimated how much nuclear power would be generated today by approximately half (though as highlighted, their high case was almost exactly on!) and their petroleum production estimates represented <1% of actuals today. It was unimaginable to them how much power would be utilized by the individual family for a large house cooled by AC and/or heated by a furnace, homes & offices filled with electrical gadgets, ~1.5% of all cars on the road being plug-in electrics, and the rise of massive data centers.
Massive data centers like those run by Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google, etc that power almost every technology company and application out there utilize immense power.
US data centers alone utilized more than 90 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2023 with global data centers using roughly 416 terawatts (or about 3% of the total electricity produced in the world) in that same period. For context, that is ~40% more electricity than the entire United Kingdom consumes in a year!
Even more interesting is that with the growth of these data centers, the need for ever more powerful chips to fuel applications like AI (more powerful chips = more power usage), and more citizens in more countries joining the modern world of technology the electricity needed just for compute power alone by 2045 is expected to be equivalent to the entire base capacity of electricity generation in place today.
The lesson: The world needs, and will continue to need, more energy & power than we could ever imagine. We need oil & gas, we need nuclear, we need new technologies not yet developed, we need it all if our lifestyles and pace of growth are to be sustained.