Nick O’Hara

Ja­copo Buon­giorno

One Au­gust day four years ago the skies cleared, al­low­ing one of these au­thors to pick pump­kins in Moru­ga, on land farmed by a neigh­bour’s friend who was not har­vest­ing his crop that year. In the pro­ceed­ing days, trop­i­cal show­ers had in­ter­mit­tent­ly swept in to turn the farm­land plots to bog. Lug­ging heavy sacks of pump­kins, knee-deep in mud is not an ex­pe­ri­ence one quick­ly for­gets.

Many read­ers will know Moru­ga as home to the Scor­pi­on pep­per, re­put­ed­ly the world’s hottest. They may not have dri­ven through the large­ly flat land­scape of acre up­on acre of arable fields, sec­tioned off by nar­row tracks, pro­duc­ing a va­ri­ety of fruit and veg­eta­bles.

This agri­cul­ture must be pro­tect­ed. T&T needs to in­crease self-suf­fi­cien­cy in food pro­duc­tion and can­not af­ford to sac­ri­fice the fields of Moru­ga to en­er­gy needs, just as we must pre­serve our pris­tine trop­i­cal forests. But it is ex­act­ly such ar­eas of the coun­try that would even­tu­al­ly need to be sac­ri­ficed if T&T pins its clean en­er­gy fu­ture on so­lar.

We should ap­plaud the Gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts to make T&T a clean­er na­tion. As re­port­ed by Guardian Me­dia, the Project Lara So­lar Park will see con­struc­tion of so­lar sites near Point Lisas and Trinci­ty, gen­er­at­ing a com­bined ¼ (or .24) Ter­awatt-hours of elec­tric­i­ty an­nu­al­ly.

Based on T&T’s cur­rent elec­tric­i­ty us­age of 8.63 Ter­awatt-hours per year, 35 projects on the scale of Project Lara would be need­ed to sup­ply all of T&T’s elec­tric­i­ty, us­ing a few hun­dred square kilo­me­tres.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, elec­tric­i­ty ac­counts for on­ly 4% of T&T’s over­all an­nu­al en­er­gy con­sump­tion of around 200 Ter­awatt-hours. For so­lar en­er­gy to pro­vide the oth­er 96% of T&T’s en­er­gy, the coun­try would need to de­vote more than 60% of its land area to so­lar farms, or 815 Project Lara-scale sites.

Along­side south­ern farm­land, this would in­evitably mean cut­ting in­to the forests of the north­ern or cen­tral moun­tain ranges. This would amount to a de­struc­tion of valu­able re­sources of the high­est or­der and de­stroy the prospects of a ma­jor po­ten­tial rev­enue stream: eco-tourism.

Like wind and oth­er re­new­able en­er­gy sources, so­lar makes us feel good; that we are do­ing some­thing to meet the cli­mate emer­gency chal­lenge fac­ing our plan­et. But we need to be open-eyed about the re­al­i­ties of what re­new­ables can de­liv­er.

As else­where, T&T needs to de-risk its en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture whilst si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly adapt­ing to cli­mate change. How­ev­er, if re­new­ables are the cen­tre­piece of the en­er­gy strat­e­gy mov­ing for­ward, then a se­ri­ous re­think is re­quired.

Let’s fac­tor in the in­ter­mit­tent and un­re­li­able na­ture of re­new­able en­er­gy pro­duc­tion. Re­new­ables re­ly on the ex­ist­ing en­er­gy dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem, name­ly the na­tion­al grid.

This cen­tralised ar­chi­tec­ture lacks the re­silience to with­stand the ex­treme weath­er con­di­tions—both pre­dictable and un­pre­dictable—T&T in­creas­ing­ly faces. Those who live in Moru­ga and across rur­al south­ern Trinidad are ac­cus­tomed to pow­er out­ages and re­new­ables will not fix this.

The so­lu­tion, as we adapt to a warm­ing cli­mate and ris­ing sea lev­els is to re­duce our re­liance on the grid. The so­lu­tion is a new type of dis­trib­uted en­er­gy source that is low-car­bon, com­pact, sta­ble, flex­i­ble and ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly un­con­strained.

The so­lu­tion is portable “plug and play” nu­clear mi­crore­ac­tor tech­nol­o­gy, such as the Nu­clear Bat­ter­ies (NB) be­ing de­vel­oped by US com­pa­nies West­ing­house, X-en­er­gy and BWXT. This rev­o­lu­tion­ary in­no­va­tion pro­vides on de­mand, clean, eco­nom­ic, re­silient and safe en­er­gy in any lo­ca­tion.

The NB is a small but pow­er­ful stand-alone en­er­gy plat­form that can be di­rect­ly in­te­grat­ed in­to man­u­fac­tur­ing func­tions or in­dus­tri­al plants, in­clud­ing an off­shore oil rig.

It’s a so­lu­tion by­pass­ing the need for mas­sive, low-use cen­tralised in­fra­struc­ture such as the na­tion­al grid, en­er­gy stor­age, and fu­el dis­tri­b­u­tion net­works. The NB can op­er­ate for 5-10 years, pow­er­ing vir­tu­al­ly any­thing with no need for con­tin­u­ous fu­el sup­ply, af­ter which they are “recharged” with nu­clear fu­el.

Whilst in­no­v­a­tive, the con­cept of small portable mi­crore­ac­tors is not new. In the ear­ly 1960s the US. Army de­signed, built and test­ed ML-1, a 500-kW gas-cooled mi­crore­ac­tor that could be hauled around by truck and pro­vide pow­er in the field in less than a day and for over one ef­fec­tive full pow­er year with­out re­fu­elling. Of course, NBs are a world away from that tech­nol­o­gy.

Un­like large wind or so­lar farms, NBs can pro­vide any de­sired amount of elec­tric­i­ty and heat on site, elim­i­nat­ing the need for long-dis­tance trans­mis­sion and large cen­tralised in­fra­struc­ture. A sin­gle 10 MW NB can pow­er some 7,000–8,000 homes, a shop­ping cen­tre like Trinci­ty or Gulf City malls, air­port cam­pus­es larg­er than Pi­ar­co or a mid­size da­ta cen­tre.

It could pow­er a stan­dard oil plat­form and pro­duce enough de­sali­nat­ed fresh wa­ter for over 150,000 peo­ple. And all from a sys­tem small enough to fit with­in stan­dard ship­ping con­tain­ers.

To build a wind­farm of 100 MW re­quires about 20,000 tonnes of steel, 50,000 tonnes of con­crete as well as 900 tonnes of plas­tics used in the blades. So­lar pho­to­volta­ic farms pro­duc­ing sim­i­lar out­puts re­quire 50% more ma­te­ri­als, though less steel than wind. In con­trast, NBs gen­er­at­ing 100 MW would re­quire around 20 tonnes of low-en­riched ura­ni­um, 1,600 tonnes of steel and 4,600 tonnes of con­crete.

NBs use a ful­ly stan­dard­ised, mass-pro­duced, fac­to­ry-fu­elled, sim­ple de­sign with few mov­ing parts, com­bin­ing a small nu­clear re­ac­tor and a tur­bine to sup­ply sig­nif­i­cant amounts of heat and/or pow­er (on the or­der of 15–30 MWt or 5–10 MWe) from a very small foot­print.

Be­cause they are com­pact enough to fit in stan­dard ship­ping con­tain­ers, trans­port to the site of use and in­stal­la­tion is quick and easy, with the bat­tery made op­er­a­tional in a mat­ter of weeks.

Em­bed­ded in­tel­li­gence and es­tab­lished ad­vanced mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems en­able se­mi-au­tonomous and re­mote­ly mon­i­tored op­er­a­tion, with in­her­ent dig­i­tal se­cu­ri­ty. NBs use low-en­riched ura­ni­um fu­el, and can be safe­ly shipped back to a cen­tralised fa­cil­i­ty for re­fu­elling and re­fur­bish­ment at the end of the op­er­a­tion pe­ri­od. There is no need for the user to han­dle the re­fu­elling.

We are at a junc­ture in his­to­ry re­quir­ing us to make a fun­da­men­tal shift, away from an elec­tri­cal grid mod­el that is the prod­uct of a cen­tu­ry-long co-evo­lu­tion of mar­kets, fos­sil fu­els, and cen­tralised pow­er pro­duc­tion.

Com­bined with ur­ban­i­sa­tion, the re­sult has been a high­ly in­ter­con­nect­ed sys­tem, re­quir­ing tight con­trols over elec­tric­i­ty pro­duc­tion fu­els (coal, oil, nat­ur­al gas, ura­ni­um) and their trans­port (pipeline, truck, rail) to large cen­tralised pow­er plants, lengthy pow­er lines for dis­tri­b­u­tion, and sup­ply and volt­age syn­chro­ni­sa­tion to de­liv­er en­er­gy to de­mand. At every step, harm­ful CO2 emis­sions are be­ing added to the at­mos­phere. This must not be per­pet­u­at­ed as we move for­ward.

The re­cent ad­di­tion of vari­able re­new­ables has sim­ply added fur­ther com­pli­ca­tions. While re­new­ables play a role in de­car­bon­is­ing the grid, they con­tribute to vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties in sys­tems that are al­ready frag­ile and sus­cep­ti­ble to ex­ter­nal con­cerns, whether nat­ur­al (eg, trop­i­cal storms, tor­na­does, earth­quakes) or caused by hu­mans (eg, ma­li­cious cy­ber-at­tacks, an­ti-satel­lite, or ki­net­ic at­tacks). By con­trast, NBs are un­ob­struc­tive and can be built in­to the land­scape or even hid­den with­in build­ings and struc­tures.

NB tech­nol­o­gy is at ad­vanced de­vel­op­ment stage and can be ready for mar­ket by 2026-2027. With­in the first few years of mass pro­duc­tion, the cost of each NB would come down to US$20-US$50mil­lion.

T&T could be a glob­al leader by adopt­ing NB tech­nol­o­gy as a cen­tral part of its strat­e­gy to un­lock the po­ten­tial for a new and re­silient en­er­gy-in­dus­tri­al mod­el, tran­si­tion­ing out of its cur­rent oil and gas com­mod­i­ty de­pen­den­cy.

Rather than re­main hostage to glob­al oil price volatil­i­ty, NBs could en­able T&T greater con­trol of its eco­nom­ic des­tiny, build­ing a more sus­tain­able and pros­per­ous fu­ture.

As we look ahead, we ask Busi­ness Guardian read­ers to imag­ine a fu­ture with­out pol­lut­ing pow­er sta­tions burn­ing fos­sil fu­els.

A fu­ture with­out py­lons and grids, where acres of coun­try­side and es­sen­tial farm­land are not sur­ren­dered to metal­lic rows of so­lar pan­els. Imag­ine a fu­ture where we can “plug and play” clean en­er­gy, any­where, what­ev­er the busi­ness. Imag­ine a fu­ture of re­silience to floods and ex­treme weath­er, where talk of “net ze­ro” tar­gets is a thing of the past.

Well, imag­ine no more, be­cause we don’t have time to waste. We must ush­er in the fu­ture, start­ing to­day. So that Moru­ga may con­tin­ue to pro­vide us with pump­kins and pep­pers.

Nick O’Hara is the founder and di­rec­tor of Ren­o­va­ta, a UK and Caribbean-based so­cial pur­pose con­sul­tan­cy. Ja­copo Buon­giorno is a pro­fes­sor of nu­clear sci­ence and en­gi­neer­ing at the Mass­a­chu­setts In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy.