(gentle music) - [Raeann] With fossil fuels on a steady decline.

- [Andrew] I think that the future of our energy is, it's gonna be all hands on deck.

- [Raeann] The Utah San Rafael State Energy Lab in Emery County might just be the lifeline to keeping the power flowing.

(uplifting music) - I think we absolutely need to proliferate technologies that help us to be more clean and environmentally responsible.

- Nuclear is actually safer than almost any other form of electricity generations.

- [Raeann] Innovative minds at the Energy Lab are trying to make coal operations cleaner.

- How can we make those technologies better?

How can we capture the carbon and put it in geologic formations in a more economic way?

- [Raeann] They're also diving into cutting edge nuclear energy technology.

- [Matthew] With these nuclear technologies, we can make the vast amounts of energy that we're talking about.

- [Raeann] So how far is this research from becoming reality and how could it fit into the overall energy landscape?

I'm PBS Utah's Raeann Christensen.

Find out how Utah is innovating energy production.

This is "Utah's Power Pivot".

Emery County in Utah both a long legacy of coal mining and energy production with roots stretching back to the late 19th century.

The world's energy landscape is changing fast, and Emery County is right there with it.

(bright music) - The humbly view Utah is becoming a national and global leader in energy, the energy dialogue and energy production.

- [Raeann] The Utah San Rafael State Energy Lab, previously known as the San Rafael Energy Research Center is set to secure jobs, open new opportunities, and lead the way in energy research.

- [Jeremy] We're trying to find solutions for sustainable energy for the world.

- DSUI take seven.

(bright music) - [Raeann] Dr. Andrew Fry is researching carbon capture from the burning of fossil fuels to reduce harmful pollutants.

- Every time you utilize a fossil fuel, you burn a fossil fuel, you will emit CO2.

That's a very difficult challenge and one that I've been working on for the last 20 years.

We know as humans and as researchers how to build power plants that are zero emission, that fire coal.

It's been done in Australia, it's been done in Germany, and it's been proven at large scale.

- [Raeann] Carbon capture is expensive, but Dr. Fry wants to make it more economically feasible for everyone.

- We've run experiments in this facility that are arguably longer and more representative of the way we would fire a electric generating unit than anybody in the country that's ever done.

It's exciting because it's useful for coal and it's useful for all fossil fuels because we can increase the efficiency to pay for carbon capture.

- Do they take the existing plants and put a carbon capture on them?

- That's an awesome question.

Yeah, we can do it.

We can do it both ways.

Obviously, it's probably better if you design the plant around that idea that it's gonna be a zero emission plant, and what I mean by zero emissions is we don't have a smoke stack.

We don't send things out into the atmosphere.

- So this is what we call our FLiBe box.

So a FLiBe stands for lithium fluoride, beryllium fluoride.

So that's the salt mixture that we're currently focused on.

- [Raeann] Over on the nuclear side, we've got research engineering manager, Jaron Wallace, looking into molten salts in their properties.

This is important because molten salts are used as a coolant and nuclear fuel.

- So we'll take our salt, dissolve it in acid.

This probe will suck up the acid and feed it into this instrument.

Turns everything into a plasma and then there's detectors down on the end here.

We've got all sorts of detectors, so it will measure what elements are in our samples.

- And what are you testing the salts for?

- Different thermo physical properties, things like density, viscosity, thermal conductivity, melting point, all so that we can understand the molt salt reactors, how they operate and be able to one day get one licensed.

- [Raeann] The energy lab is packed with some super cool state-of-the-art equipment just for studying molten salts.

- Imagine as you put more and more equipment in these, they can fill up very fast.

You have a lot of toxic chemicals that now you can't necessarily remove.

And so glove box space is very valuable among researchers.

- This facility is perfect because we have in place the procedures, the licenses, and the glove boxes and the equipment that we need to be able to analyze the salt and understand how it behaves in all circumstances so that we can then take that information to the regulator and show and demonstrate that this will be a safe reactor.

- [Raeann] Nuclear is, would you say fairly clean energy?

- Oh, it's the cleanest.

- [Raeann] With these nuclear reactors, we're talking about making huge amounts of energy similar to coal power plants, making it a base load energy source.

- [Matthew] It would be really difficult to do that with renewables, not because they don't work, but because of the sheer volume that's necessary, whereas nuclear can make that huge amount.

- [Raeann] Dr. Memmott tackles some fears about nuclear energy, including all those worries people have about it.

- [Matthew] Back in the early days of nuclear, they were looking at ways that they could turn nuclear waste into more energy and get rid of that waste to a degree, and they found out that they could use a reactor that's designed similarly, but instead of using water, they use liquid sodium, and that liquid sodium will change how the neutrons behave, so that instead of just splitting uranium, it will also split a lot of these long live waste atoms as well.

And so you'll get rid of that waste and you'll make it so the waste lasts 300 years instead of a hundred thousand years.

- [Raeann] Here's the kicker.

They're also looking at recycling nuclear waste into something incredibly useful.

- [Jaron] We hope to be able to take salts and spent nuclear fuel, be able to pull the valuable materials out of it, such as medical isotopes that are used to help cure cancer and be able to send those to the medical industry while getting rid of a lot of our nuclear waste.

- We would have a asset here that could be a tax base, but we'd also have a place for people to work and a major employer in the area.

So I think those nuclear plants are a good option.

- [Raeann] It's not just about the tech, it's about keeping the community thriving, providing jobs, and ensuring Emery County remains a vital energy producing hub, whether that's renewables, clean coal operations, nuclear, or all of the above.

- And so this is a primary location to continue to be an energy producing hub for the state and for the country.

We just need to leverage those assets we have.

- [Raeann] The Utah San Rafael State Energy Lab is proving that we don't need to stress over running out of energy or harming the planet, with some smart thinking and hard work, they're all about showing us how abundant energy and eco-friendly solutions can go hand in hand.

- [Jeremy] There's a way to take a human-centric approach to supporting life while still protecting the environment, and we are developing those energy solutions here at planet.

(tense music) (upbeat music)