POWER DOWNSIZE: Small reactors could breathe new life into the U.S. nuclear industry.
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"Small is beautiful" has for decades been a mantra for environmentalists committed to building ecologically sound communities, economies and agriculture.
But does the phrase apply to nuclear power plants?
Some experts think so. They say small reactors are the right fit in the global push for carbonless energy.
What is a small nuclear plant? Measured against plants that kick out 1,000 megawatts or more and power a million homes, "right sized" reactors might supply a small city or large industrial facility.
"Several technical and manufacturing innovations make this reactor a potential game-changer for the global clean energy market," said Christofer Mowry, president and CEO of Babcock & Wilcox Modular Nuclear Energy. He cites small reactors' baseload profile as a good match with intermittent renewable-energy generation.
Mowry's company is among several working on designs for such reactors. They see a market in servicing large electric utilities that want to incrementally expand their generation capacity, developing countries that cannot afford or make good use of traditional reactors, and off-grid and hard-to-power sites.
Here is what's happening:
- Babcock & Wilcox announced the development in June of a 125-megawatt reactor for which it plans to request Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approval in 2011.
- Hyperion Power Generation is advertising a 25-megawatt "power module" that it compares to a large battery and says would be the size of a hot tub. The company says its units will cost $25 million to $30 million, with "delivery dates starting in 2013."
- South Africa's Eskom utility and Westinghouse are working on a 200-megawatt "pebble bed" modular reactor design.
- NRC has also received small-reactor applications from NuScale Power Inc., Toshiba Corp., and GE Hitachi.
- And the Defense Department is also interested in small reactors -- thanks, in part, to mandates that its bases become more self-sufficient and to its head start with the nuclear technologies used to power naval vessels.
Why all this activity? The existing model of the nuclear plant -- featuring massive, concrete-domed reactors -- is at a crossroads in the United States.
Despite the nuclear industry's talk about a "nuclear renaissance" and the promise of generous federal loan guarantees, the industry faces constraints in breathtaking construction costs and risks. Proponents of the miniature reactors see their lower cost and potentially smaller risks -- some could even be buried underground, reducing the need for "guns, gates and guards" -- as a way forward.
"Small reactors are not there to replace the big reactors," said Deborah Blackwell, Hyperion's vice president of licensing and public policy. She cited applications like providing power for metal mining or oil sands development where "temporary baseload, heavy-duty power" is needed, as ideal for the technology.
"It's also good for remote communities that are so far off the grid that it doesn't make sense to try to run transmission wires to them," she added, "as well as military bases, so they can be independent of the grid ... and not be susceptible to a terrorist [attack] or something going on in the big grid. It's not a good idea for our military bases to be operating on the same grid that you and I live on."
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21 Comments
Add CommentMr. Sandia's Sanders is 1100% right, I think. Unites States already lost competative role in supplying thw world with safe Nuclear reators, big or small and smart. Why? Because we have been sleeping on this technology. Ironically, we have mad e tremedous progress in "killing" machine - armamnets and weapons etc!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWith aggressive Government help we can do some seroius research into to dispoing the spent fuel safely. Why not blast the spent fuel into outer space to the sun, for example!
Ram
Why not use decommissioned nuclear submarine reactors for small city power?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMakhijani's thoroughly discredited propaganda refers to Frances current fuel recycling efforts which attempt to separate out the 98% unused fuel from the depleted materials to be reused in Generation 3.5 reactor fuel rods.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFast neutron reactors like Sandia's and the extremely successful Shippingport reactor shutdown by corrupt politicians in the early 80's use the discarded fuel rods as fuel itself and the waste product from these is small in volume, much more benign and of no use to 3rd world bomb makers. They also can use thorium for fuel.
Costs of these 95% load factor small reactors with under mass manufacturing techniques will be much less than solar/wind tech and are ideal to replace the boiler part of fossil fuel generators on site.
A nuclear submarine reactor plant is not suitable for such use, and a decommissioned one is worn out.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEco's have stopped all nuclear construction in this country for over 20 years.
As to blasting nuclear waste into the sun, that is a dangerous and wasteful thing to do. At present space shots fail 1 out of 120 and cost over $10,000 per pound to launch. Deep sea trench subduction is the safest long term disposal that I know of, but the Eco's would foam at the mouth over that.
A nice idea but where will we get the Uranium from ? http://www.resourceinvestor.com/News/2009/4/Pages/Uranium-shortage-looming--PDF-.aspx. Using Plutonium would be a security nightmare
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo instead of fewer piles of radioactive spent fuel we will have many more smaller piles of spent fuel sitting around for hundreds or thousands of years ?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is a terrorists dream.
Me liek nuclear. Me liek glow in dark. Pretty!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHulk
I don't think putting negative labels on folks who disagree with your opinion will help.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFission reactors still have the inherent problem of storing their waste a very, very long time. While we may be able to place the waste in containment now, how do we guarantee that it will stay in containment that long? We're not solving any environmental problems with fission, we're merely deferring it. We need to put some of our creative energy into creating a permanent solution.
Alcohol, solar, geothermal, hydro all seem to be very viable solutions. Even if we can't fix it all now, blunting the demand is a huge step in the right direction. Ultimately, fusion is probably the right answer (since all of the above are derivatives of a nearby fusion reactor).
There is no need to store nuclear waste a long, long, long time. In reality we only need to store it a couple hundred years until we have a better solution. Storeing something 200 years is an engineering piece of cake. It may not be feasible to ship the waste to the sun now but do you really belive it would be hard to do 200 years from now.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh, what intellectual laziness. Blame the Eco's for all that went wrong in nuclear land. Do the terms 'spiraling costs' and 'project overrun' ring a bell?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh what intellectual laziness. Blame the Eco's. Without them, this world would be so fine. Disregard the fact that the US is a democracy and that, apparently, in the eyes of the democratically elected government(s), those Eco's were right.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf there is anyone to blame for the nuclear disappointment, it is the nuclear industry itself. Do the terms 'spiraling costs' and 'project overrun' ring a bell?
Oops, sorry for the double post.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDeep sea trench in subduction zones are a viable solution, so when someone talks about long term storage being a problem, I dismiss their opinion, since they are blocking facts. Ships sink pretty reliably, never to return. If you don't know what a subduction zone is, perhaps you need to study up before you opine on such a technical and important subject.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTest
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThese sealed fuel reactors are a great idea and worth serious consideration. Nuclear power is green, much more efficient than wind, solar, fossil and most importantly it's simply unavoidable. We need to spend a great deal of time, money and thought on Nuclear engineering ideas in the future.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow about NO fission reactors--large, medium, or small?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScientists are telling us that there is some chance we are as little as 10 years away from falling off a climate precipice with permafrost methane emissions and ocean acidification forming the leading edge of a very steep slope. We don't have time for wind. solar, geothermal, biomass partial solutions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe nuclear waste problem is solved with the consignment of waste to fuel for liquid metal fast reactors, like the one Sandia Labs has just designed and just needs political support to launch. To put the waste problem in perspective, we could just take all of it to the nearest coal plant and meter it slowly into the smoke stack. The nuclear waste would increase the coal plants already radioactive emissions by only a tiny percentage and wouldn't add any more lead, arsenic or mercury to the air. Or we could store the nuke waste under a half acre or so of the thousands of square miles of desert ,solar types were planning destroying forever by covering them with toxic solar cells.
DON"T EVEN TRY TO TELL ME ABOUT THE ECO"s!!!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am over 60 years old,and have paid attention. For nearly 50 years, every time someone ever tried to do any thing in this country there is a group of Eco's screaming bloody murder "no way, not ever". For every endevior there is an eco group with an army of lawyers against.
Fusion as is pursued at this time by the main stream is a very large dead end. has been for 50 years. Even GOD does not use plasma fusion to power the universe. 50 years ago practical plasma power generation was within 30 years. Now the number is within 50 years. The very last thing plasma wants to do is fuse. Even a hydrogen bomb is not a plasma fusion device.
Real atomic fusion uses an entirely different path.
No nuclear. You can make it the size of a pea and its radioactive waste would still be affecting life for millions of years. Its disgusting and way too long term.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWasn' this an idea that a San Diego company called General Atomics had years ago?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTchernobyl is supposed to have caused a mere 32 deaths. This is to forget the 900,000 workforce who shovelled highly radioactive material from the reactor and its immediate surroundings! Are a million Americans prepared to sacrifice their health if another 3-mile Island incident actually blows?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs reactors get older they get riskier as they get fragile. There are already too many to properly supervise. Scrap them before the already huge costs soar exponentially...