Energy crisis alert sounded by Sauger, RCF speaker
America is heading toward an energy crisis.
“We need more power plants. How are we going to do it?” asked John Sauger, retired chief nuclear officer with EnergySolutions, who retired in 2024, speaking to Rotary Club of Farragut members during their meeting in Fox Den Country Club Wednesday, Feb. 26.
“We live in a country, very advanced,” he added. “You walk into any room; you flip the switch; the light comes on.
“For the most part, they work all the time, but energy, power, electricity cannot really be stored. When it’s generated, it’s consumed right away.
However, “there are some stored systems — batteries,” Sauger added.
He noted when electric cars came out in the 1990s, “people thought that was cool.” The premise was people would charge up the cars at night, when the demand was low, and drive during the day, which was “better for the grid.”
However, Sauger added, “It turns out they’re putting so many electric cars on the road, there’s not enough power, but it was a good attempt.”
He said the average U.S. home uses about 2 ½ killowats an hour.
“We talk in trillion of watt hours because that’s how big the network is,” he said. “We have 92 remaining nuclear plants in the U.S., and they provide about 20 percent of the power to the country.”
With the Inflation Reduction Act passed during the Biden Administration, Sauger said there was a piece of the bill that saved the nuclear power industry.
“Prior to that bill being passed, nuclear power plants couldn’t compete with gas plants,” he said. “The price of gas, through the’90s, and up to 2010, was like a sawtooth: up and down. Around 2010, the price of gas started stabilizing … the price of gas was so low that nuclear was more expensive than gas.
“Nuclear is a business,” Sauger added. “I was the undertaker for the nuclear business. If the plant could not make money, it got turned over to me, I took it apart and turned it into a park.
“At least eight plants came off line between 2010 and 2020 because they couldn’t make money, and their owners said ‘this is crazy’,” he said.
Even though the United States is the largest nuclear energy generator, Sauger predicted the U.S. is going to run short on energy production.
“We’re going to lose to the Chinese,” he added. “China is about half (in nuclear production), but China is currently building six large nuclear units a year. They’re going to rapidly blow by us.”
Nuclear plants initially were designed to last four years, but Sauger said today’s plants are expected to last 100 years because “they are so overdesigned and overbuilt.”
A nuclear power plant generates 1,000 megawatts and needs about a square mile of land. “A solar farm, to generate that amount of power, needs about 10 square miles of land,” he said.
Sauger pointed out a wind farm can have 200 wind turbines but cannot put any power on the grid unless there is a nuclear plant or a gas turbine next to it.
Coal, wind, hydroelectricity and gas also are sources, and he said all sources will be needed by 2035 to generate enough power.
