A Plan to Create an Energy Infrastructure in Rwanda Focused on Small Nuclear-Based Microgrids
Nearly 35% of Rwandan residents lack access to electricity and the country has no oil reserves and few gas reserves.
To help provide electricity and improve the quality of life in rural areas, small nuclear reactor provider Nano Nuclear Energy, working with the Rwandan government, plans to create an infrastructure based on microgrids that include nuclear microreactors – which have a capacity of less than 20 MW – and small modular nuclear reactors, which range in size from 12 MW to hundreds of megawatts.
Electricity for water and food
The microreactors and small nuclear reactors would help power critical services such as medical facilities, desalination plants and vertical farming operations – along with powering homes – ensuring residents have improved access to water and food, said James Walker, CEO of Nano Nuclear Energy.
“If you have a remote community and there's no power there, even things like water and food become pretty difficult to navigate,” Walker said.
With the nuclear-based microgrids, small desalination operations can be created to produce clean water, along with vertical farming operations that
can provide food.
The company plans to deploy its small reactors in Rwanda. Nano Nuclear is now developing prototype microreactors and small modular nuclear reactors, but has none commercially operating.
Nano Nuclear has signed an agreement with the Rwanda Atomic Energy Board to provide training, technical assistance and educational programs to help jump-start the nuclear industry, said Walker.
The Rwandan government will pay for the training, and Walker expects some funding to come from international investors.
Decarbonization efforts spur interest in nuclear power
With efforts to decarbonize power systems as soon as possible, interest in small modular reactors and microreactors has jumped in the U.S. as well as abroad. The Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that the U.S. will need approximately 700 GW to 900 GW of additional carbon-free and firm electricity capacity to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
Oklo, the small nuclear reactor design firm backed by OpenAI founder Sam Altman, is seeing early opt-in for its technology to power commercial and industrial facilities.
Oklo’s second quarter financial update reported its customer pipeline has grown 93% to 1,350 MW in the past year. Many of the customer agreements are nonbinding letters of intent and term sheets that Oklo hopes to turn into power purchase agreements (PPA) over the rest of this year and early 2025, although the company has some PPA deals already committed. Much of the interest comes from data centers.
In June, the DOE announced a notice of intent to fund up to $900 million to support deployment of new small modular reactor technologies. The funding, made possible by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, will incentivize growth of smaller, advanced nuclear reactor projects.
Safety concerns about waste disposal
Some microgrid providers have expressed concerns about the safety of deploying nuclear power in microgrids, especially in urban settings. By definition, microgrids are located close to the load, and it’s unclear whether homeowners or businesses would want nuclear-based microgrids located close by. To ensure safety, nuclear plants need to be secure – leak-free – and operators need to be able to safely store nuclear waste.
Despite such concerns, efforts are picking up to deploy nuclear power as a microgrid resource.
Idaho National Laboratory (INL), working with software company Xendee, has developed a model that allows users to compare the economics of adding small nuclear reactors to microgrids along with other sources of energy.
Meanwhile, INL is focusing on industrial decarbonization in microgrid applications, said Timothy McJunkin, distinguished researcher at INL. “Those applications are expected to require the high grade heat that nuclear energy supplies to get to zero carbon,” he said.
Developing nuclear-based microgrids that cost less than diesel generators
In Rwanda, one of the goals is to replace diesel fuel – which is generally imported – in microgrids in rural areas, or to build new microgrids based on microreactors or small modular reactors in regions that lack power, said Walker. That means developing nuclear-based microgrids that cost less than remote diesel generators. Nano Nuclear’s research has shown that it’s possible to deploy the smaller nuclear reactors in remote northern Canadian communities of about 800 people at lower costs than using diesel generators, Walker said.
To conduct its research, Nano Nuclear began conversations with many different industries and regions where the microreactors would be deployed to get a sense of the cost of remote diesel. The talks focused on remote Canadian communities, mining sites and island communities, Walker said. The company also talked with a major diesel generator supplier. Once it had established the diesel costs, Nano Nuclear brought in two Wharton School modelers to work with Nano Nuclear’s engineers to examine whether the reactors could outcompete the costs of the diesel over the lifetime of the system.
“The capital costs of the microreactors came in way under the cost of the diesel over the lifetime of the reactor–especially as the number of reactors produced was increased–which meant that selling power over a contracted period of time to an end user could potentially be done more inexpensively than regularly importing diesel,” Walker said.
Initially, the plan is for Nano Nuclear to provide nuclear expertise courses for graduating Rwandan students as a means of developing the industry.
The role of renewable energy
Eventually, microgrids deployed in rural areas of Rwanda could use nuclear microreactors or small modular reactors as baseload power and add solar, wind or geothermal power. Or, if existing microgrids include renewable resources, nuclear energy could be added. In some cases, Nano Nuclear would partner with local microgrid companies to deploy the facilities, Walker said.
The plan would require Rwanda to establish licensing requirements and standards, possibly based on International Atomic Energy Agency licensing requirements.
“We want them to have a national regulator and a competent workforce and once you have that in place, you can begin deploying the reactors,” Walker said.
Deploying small modular nuclear reactors would be more complex than installing microreactors, Walker said. “A microreactor you can think of as similar to a big diesel generator. It can be shipped in and plugged in and start operating.”
The only microreactors that are now deployed are research reactors, mostly at U.S. universities, Walker said.
Regulations and licensing can slow deployment of nuclear
It will be easier to develop these smaller nuclear plants in Rwanda because the country has less bureaucracy than other parts of Africa. “The larger African countries like Nigeria are more bureaucratic, whereas the Rwandan system would be very streamlined and very easy to work with,” Walker said.
Nano Nuclear also plans to deploy microreactors and small modular reactors in the U.S., but existing standards from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) could slow down that process and create extra licensing costs, he said.
Nano Nuclear expects to start deploying the smaller reactors in Rwanda by 2028.
“We'll complete the design and construction of our prototype in the next two to three years, during which time we would have started the licensing process to get this reactor certified by the NRC, and at that point, once it’s been licensed, we can start deploying it as a commercial product,” said Walker.
However, NRC approval doesn’t necessarily mean that the numbers will work out.
Cost concerns about small nuclear reactors
NuScale Power received NRC’s standard design approval for its NuScale Power Module, a small nuclear reactor, in September 2020. But the company and the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems terminated the Carbon Free Power Project in November 2023. NuScale wanted to develop the six-reactor 462-MW project with the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems and launch it in 2030, but as costs increased, several towns pulled out of the project.
Meanwhile, nuclear startup TerraPower broke ground, ceremonially, in June on its planned Natrium reactor demonstration project in Wyoming. The first advanced reactor project to move from design to construction, it isn’t expected to be completed for five years.
With the clock ticking on decarbonizing the energy sector, nuclear power can potentially provide advantages over other energy sources, under the right conditions.
“A lot of these zero-carbon-emitting energy systems like wind, solar, geothermal and hydro are locationally dependent,” Walker said. They need wind, sunshine, dams, rivers and geothermal vents. “For nuclear, you can put it anywhere,” he noted.
But safety and cost concerns remain – concerns that Nano Nuclear hopes to overcome in Rwanda.
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