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Two other features of the design could also cut down on operating costs. First, each reactor will be housed in a containment structure big enough to store all of the waste generated by the plant during its 60 year life span, eliminating the need for a separate storage facility. That could be especially important, as nuclear plant operators may have to store their own waste while they wait for the government to provide a permanent storage facility, which it is obliged to do by law. Second, the reactors are also designed so that fuel has to be replaced only once every five years, instead of the usual two years. That will increase the amount of time that the plant can operate.
Kadak says that small reactors make the most sense for poor countries that can't afford to finance $10 billion plants and do not have the necessary electricity grid infrastructure to distribute power from 1,000-megawatt facilities. However, at this point, it's not yet clear that the cost savings from manufacturing the reactors will be enough to convince large utilities in the United States--which can finance conventional plants--to adopt the design. "In the United States, it's a harder sell," Kadak says.
Although the new reactors are smaller than conventional ones, they use the same underlying technology--they're light water reactors--so Mowry says that it will be possible to get them certified under existing regulations. At least two other companies in the United States are developing small, modular light water reactors. One design, from Westinghouse, provided the template for combining the steam generator and the reactor, although it isn't designed to be built in a factory. A startup called NuScale also has a design for a small modular system that can be built in factories and shipped to power plants. Those reactors would generate only about 40 megawatts each. Other companies and researchers, including Kadak, are developing designs for future modular reactors using more advanced technology that will require a new regulatory process.
Mowry says that Babcock and Wilcox plans to file the official certification application in 2011. The company is already working with the Tennessee Valley Authority to start the process of evaluating a site for a plant that would use the reactor technology. Mowry says that the first plants using the technology could be up and running by 2018. But Mujid Kazimi, another professor of nuclear engineering at MIT, says that goal sounds "very ambitious" given what's known about the regulatory process.
Merkel's plan to exchange nuclear reactors for offshore wind farms and a stronger grid could cost more than expected.
Italian-Russian reactor could be the first to reach a major milestone.
Long-lived nuclear batteries powered by hydrogen isotopes are in testing for military applications.
I certainly believe that reducing the cost and lead time like this will help. But I'm having trouble understanding how much the impact will be.
I was under the impression that the major impediments to deploying nuclear generation are safety (including NIMBY concerns) and waste disposal. I don't see this proposal addressing either of them.
Can someone enlighten me how important the cost and lead time considerations are in getting nuclear generating plants budgeted, sited & approved, built, and operational?
Thanks.
There are I believe over 100 nuclear plants operating in the US today. When was the last time you heard of an accident? Three Mile Island was actually an example of the safety measures working at the time (30 years ago). Newer designs are even safer and more efficient, but a now very powerful environmental lobby has until recently driven up the cost of nuclear to the point that coal and oil are far more profitable.
In addition to the typical 5 year construction time of a nuclear plant mentioned in the article, it takes another 7 years on average to push a nuclear plant proposal through the regulatory process. Of course, if our government cared about lowering the cost of energy, they would increase its supply by streamlining and better managing this process. It makes you wonder where their priorities are.
The 10- to 12-year lead time is the show stopper for nukes. By 2020, the cost of solar and already competitive wind generation will be less than half of today's costs and reasonably priced (several cents per kWh) energy storage (molten salts, compressed air, batteries, ...) capability should be available.
Wind is competitive if you can get it to market. That's a significant issue. Further, wind is not dependable at this time for base load power. Solar suffers from these issues as well, and if it's PV, it's going to cost considerably more and is arguably as dirty as any energy technology when you consider the chemicals required to make PV cells.
I live in Texas, which now produces more energy from wind than any other state. It's ironic to fly over west Texas and see the turbines towering over old oil pumps, but there they are. They are probably providing power to Midland-Odessa and El Paso, but transporting that power to the larger metro areas like Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin will require hundreds of miles of high-power transmission lines. That's a multi-billion dollar set of infrastructure that has to be built and maintained. These costs must be considered when proposing such alternative energy sources.
Meanwhile, the Commanche Peak nuclear plant about 60 miles south of DFW has been pushing out clean power for about 20 years now. They send the power only one tenth the distance with fewer losses and much lower maintenance.
That said, I'm for a diversity of sources. If wind or solar is convenient to your region, it makes great sense to deploy it. If not, then any of the other sources, including wise use of domestic fossil fuels, is a sound choice.
Guest (Jim Hopf)
"The 10- to 12-year lead time is the show stopper for nukes"
It's not necessarily a good assumption that the planning/inquiry process will be much shorter for renewables like solar in wind, especially in light of the fact that the affected/required land area is orders of magnitude larger. This is illsutrated in the article below:
http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/06/16/papers-please-renewable-energys-gridlock-problem/
It's not necessarily a good assumption that the planning/inquiry process will be much shorter for renewables like solar in wind, especially in light of the fact that the affected/required land area is orders of magnitude larger.
Compared to 10-12 years of NRC fee laden approval? How many renewable plants require a populace evacuation plan? The comparison is absurd. Finance and business case is the issue with solar and wind programs. Solve those and a plant/farm can be approved in 18 months, built in six. The article refers to the particular issue of the usage of federally owned land for renewable projects.
And don't be to quick to assess solar vs nuclear land usage. Land usage for nuclear is often overlooked, while solar rooftop or parking lot solar need not take up any new land. North Anna, the nuclear plant closest to me, had a 53 km^2 lake built just to supply its cooling needs. Covering the same area with solar panels yields a 10GW(peak) solar facility.
kstauff writes:
There are I believe over 100 nuclear plants operating in the US today. When was the last time you heard of an accident?
Exactly! That is why I emphasized NIMBY as a safety issue -- perceived safety can be as important as actual safety in the proceedings to get approval.
Of course, if our government cared about lowering the cost of energy, they would increase its supply by streamlining and better managing this process. It makes you wonder where their priorities are.
Their priorities are, probably rightly, with keeping their constituents happy. Especially in the short term, where "short" means the same order of magnitude as their term of office.
We live in a democracy, so this is philosophically a good thing, even if populist nucleophobe sentiment is wrong in this case. What we need is better education and better dissemination of the facts to the [understandably skeptical] public. Trying to get the government to act against the public will is not a winning strategy.
"We live in a democracy, so this is philosophically a good thing, even if populist nucleophobe sentiment is wrong in this case. What we need is better education and better dissemination of the facts to the [understandably skeptical] public."
Agreed on education. I'll agree that the public is skeptical; what I find so reprehensible is why they are so skeptical. I believe it's largely because the environmentalist movement successfully demonized the nuclear industry into submission, lobbying for the lengthy process that has essentially stopped it in its tracks. Complicit in this is a media that hyped the dangers of nuclear to scare the public away. This same scare tactic is now being applied with AGW theory, even though the observable facts no longer appear to support it.
Ironically, for their efforts, they got instead coal, oil and gas companies providing the vast majority of energy. I don't specifically have a problem with any of them, but I'd like to see all sources compete on a level playing field; and as it seems you agree, nuclear does not.
From http://www.lutins.org/nukes.html#power
1981
The Critical Mass Energy Project of Public Citizen, Inc. reported that there were 4,060 mishaps and 140 serious events at nuclear power plants in 1981, up from 3,804 mishaps and 104 serious events the previous year.
11 February 1981
An Auxiliary Unit Operator, working his first day on the new job without proper training, inadvertently opened a valve which led to the contamination of eight men by 110,000 gallons of radioactive coolant sprayed into the containment building of the Tennessee Valley Authority's Sequoyah I plant in Tennessee.
July 1981
A flood of low-level radioactive wastewater in the sub-basement at Nine Mile Point's Unit 1 (in New York state) caused approximately 150 55-gallon drums of high-level waste to overturn, some of which released their highly radioactive contents. Some 50,000 gallons of low-level radioactive water were subsequently dumped into Lake Ontario to make room for the cleanup. The discharge was reported to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but the sub-basement contamination was not. A report leaked to the press 8 years later resulted in a study which found that high levels of radiation persisted in the still flooded facility.
1982
The Critical Mass Energy Project of Public Citizen, Inc. reported that 84,322 power plant workers were exposed to radiation in 1982, up from 82,183 the previous year.
25 January 1982
A steam generator pipe broke at the Rochester Gas & Electric Company's Ginna plant near Rochester, New York. Fifteen thousand gallons of radioactive coolant spilled onto the plant floor, and small amounts of radioactive steam escaped into the air.
15-16 January 1983
Nearly 208,000 gallons of water with low-level radioactive contamination was accidentally dumped into the Tennesee River at the Browns Ferry power plant.
25 February 1983
A catastrophe at the Salem 1 reactor in New Jersey was averted by just 90 seconds when the plant was shut down manually, following the failure of automatic shutdown systems to act properly. The same automatic systems had failed to respond in an incident three days before, and other problems plagued this plant as well, such as a 3,000 gallon leak of radioactive water in June 1981 at the Salem 2 reactor, a 23,000 gallon leak of "mildly" radioactive water (which splashed onto 16 workers) in February 1982, and radioactive gas leaks in March 1981 and September 1982 from Salem 1.
9 December 1986
A feedwater pipe ruptured at the Surry Unit 2 facility in Virginia, causing 8 workers to be scalded by a release of hot water and steam. Four of the workers later died from their injuries. In addition, water from the sprinkler systems caused a malfunction of the security system, preventing personnel from entering the facility. This was the second time that an incident at the Surry 2 unit resulted in fatal injuries due to scalding [see also 27 July 1972].
1988
It was reported that there were 2,810 accidents in U.S. commercial nuclear power plants in 1987, down slightly from the 2,836 accidents reported in 1986, according to a report issued by the Critical Mass Energy Project of Public Citizen, Inc.
28 May 1993
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission released a warning to the operators of 34 nuclear reactors around the country that the instruments used to measure levels of water in the reactor could give false readings during routine shutdowns and fail to detect important leaks. The problem was first bought to light by an engineer at Northeast Utilities in Connecticut who had been harassed for raising safety questions. The flawed instruments at boiling-water reactors designed by General Electric utilize pipes which were prone to being blocked by gas bubbles; a failure to detect falling water levels could have resulted, potentially leading to a meltdown.
15 February 2000
New York's Indian Point II power plant vented a small amount of radioactive steam when a an aging steam generator ruptured. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission initially reported that no radioactive material was released, but later changed their report to say that there was a leak, but not of a sufficient amount to threaten public safety.
6 March 2002
Workers discovered a foot-long cavity eaten into the reactor vessel head at the Davis-Besse nuclear plant in Ohio. Borated water had corroded the metal to a 3/16 inch stainless steel liner which held back over 80,000 gallons of highly pressurized radioactive water. In April 2005 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission proposed fining plant owner First Energy 5.4 million dollars for their failure to uncover the problem sooner (similar problems plaguing other plants were already known within the industry), and also proposed banning System Engineer Andrew Siemaszko from working in the industry for five years due to his falsifying reactor vessel logs. As of this writing the fine and suspension were under appeal.
I'd wager more people have been killed in the US from commercial wind power generation than have been killed in the US by commercial nuclear power generation. In fact, on a deaths/watt basis I'm quite positive there is no comparison.
"The preponderance of those killed worldwide were Americans; 12 U.S. citizens, and one Canadian. Germany, despite the phenomenal growth of it wind industry since 1990, has one of the lowest mortality rates of the four nations where deaths have occurred, 0.07 deaths per TWh.
The German rate includes the parachutist who, in her first unassisted jump, hit a wind turbine on the island of Fehmarn. In doing so she became the first women killed by wind energy and the first member of the public killed. However, it's important to note that though she was a member of the public, she was not a passerby, such as a person who walks or drives by a wind turbine. Her death is more akin to that of a suicide from a jump off a bridge or tall building. (This is a critical distinction. In the two decades I've tracked this data, no passerby has been injured by wind energy.)
The mortality rate in the USA, where all 13 deaths in North America occurred, is twice that of the international average. As is the mortality rate in the Netherlands.
Data from the USA distorts the mortality rates relative to deaths in construction and deaths in operation & maintenance. The great majority of deaths in the USA can be attributed to construction activities, when installing, moving, or removing wind turbines. Six were killed during operation and maintenance.
At least two of those killed in the USA, all in California, were killed during operations connected with moving wind turbines from one site to another. One of the deaths in Denmark was also related to removing a 55 kW wind turbine in Jutland that was to be replaced with a 500 kW machine.
The high number of deaths in the USA may be connected to the typically frantic nature of year-end, tax-subsidy driven installation booms."
-Vol. 14 No. 4 – Autumn 2001 edition of WindStats Newsletter by Paul Gipe
The article does not elaborate on this, but the subject of waste is addressed:
"Two other features of the design could also cut down on operating costs. First, each reactor will be housed in a containment structure big enough to store all of the waste generated by the plant during its 60 year life span, eliminating the need for a separate storage facility."
Guest (Jim Hopf)
High (up front) capital costs are, by far, the biggest impediment to the growth of nuclear power. It is for this reason that nuclear needs either subsidies (mainly loan guarantees) or a significant price on CO2 emissions (and/or hard, declining emissions caps) to compete and grow.
NIMBY is not really an issue. In fact, the communities around existing plants, where almost all new plants are slated to be built, are begging for new reactors, and even engaging in bidding wars to attract them. Public support in these communities for new plants is ~80%. It's also true that overall, ~60% of Americans support new plants.
Safety? There hasn't been a single public death, or measurable public health impact, over the entire ~40 year history of US nuclear plants. NRC has accepted all of the new designs as more than safe enough.
Waste? It is generated in tiny volumes and has always been completely contained (w/o any public deaths or health impacts, ever). Due to the negligible volume, nuclear waste is very easy to store and contain. Storing all the waste generated over a plants lifetime, on site, will add less than 0.1 cents/kW-hr to the cost of electricity, and it can easily be so stored for a century or more; plenty of time to find a respository or develop a method for processing and eliminating the fuel. This really is not a problem (which is why politicians are dragging their feet so much with respect to "solving" it).
One of the commenters missed the fact of under reactor storage of 60 years of spent fuel. Of course this is only if Yucca mnt. is not opened, which relies on the current leader to meet the government commitments of the past and get the job done. We need to get the USA off of oil from unfriendly areas of the world and away from coal damaging or environment and health. Both China and Japan are doing that. Why aren't we?
Since this design is cheaper, it leaves the Utilities with more money to bribe/intimidate their way around the NIMBY problem.
Does the factory take responsibility for storing the spent waste and contaminated components?
As Kevin linked in the article, the federal government has taken on the obligation to provide a safe disposal site or sites for nuclear waste. New reactor designs can reuse spent fuel to further reduce the amount of waste that needs to be stored.
Unfortunately, after years of hand wringing, the Obama administration killed the Yucca Mountain disposal site, effectively starting over the search and study of a new site or sites. They'll likely spend another 10-15 years trying to find an alternative.
So, it would appear that our government is failing to keep its word, at least from a practical standpoint. They're playing politics with nuclear and other forms of energy, and the consumer/tax payer will be the one paying for it.
check out this website. http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/
They offer a much smaller nuclear reactor solution that is far cheaper and has very little waste. Very interesting technology.
Guest (paulreedsmith)
Two issues with nuke waste that are generally misunderstood: Since Yucca, that the the utility industry has so far funded with $30+ billion from a surcharge of (as recollected) a tenth of a cent per Kwh, is dead, on-site storage is going to be around for a long time. After a year or two in pond storage, the waste is thermally cool enough to go into cask storage, certified for a few hundred years, but they may be good for about a thousand years. If one took all the potential waste from the 104 plants now operating over a 60 year life cycle and put the casks on ten foot centers, all nuke waste in the country would fit in a square 810 feet on a side - that's it. Second: Is this "waste" - or an "asset"? Since, in the late 1970s, the Feds stopped the reprocessing option we use the "once through" cycle that only uses about 5% of the potential energy of the initial fuel load. Practically all that's left over is depleted uranium (U-238)that is a potential fuel source for fast neutron reactors, like the Russian BN-600 lead cooled reactor that's been working pretty flawlessly since the early 1980s. Energy Secretary Chu (sp?) noted this "asset-liability" issue about nuke waste: A very small percentage of what is in the waste stream is composed of long-lived actinides that would need perpetual entombment. Does it therefore make sense to bury all the waste when over 90% of it could be used as a new fuel source? Another possible point re capital costs: Yes, nukes represent a big-dollar investment, but one gets big power. One wind turbine is cheap by comparison, but when one figures in power availability, maintenance - and the fact a turbine is going to last a fraction of the time of a nuclear power plant - some calculations show that looking at actual delivered power (what really counts!) nukes are the cheapest source. One possible date point: Denmark has the highest wind percentage in the EU, France the highest nuke percentage. Denmark has the most expensive electricity, France the cheapest.
and not only that, if we immediately implemented Integral Fast Reactors, as pointed our in Tom Blees excellent book 'Prescription for the Planet', we could live off of nuclear waste and depleted uranium, enough to power the entire planet for hundreds or years, without having to mine an ounce of new uranium.
And if that's not enough, Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors could run the planet for a lot longer, as thorium is 4x as abundant as uranium.
Hyperion's reactor is a relatively novel design with a smallish company behind it. The mPower reactor, in contrast, is a very conservative design with a big, established company backing it. I think that mPower will help pave the way for technically superior reactors like the Hyperion power module, but mPower is definitely a safer bet in the short term.
Just a thought, won't it be easy for the terrorist to steal these small containment nuclear reactors and disassemble them to extract materials required for their WMD?
The version of reactor that I refer to is buried 100 ft underground, requires no matience such as loading fuel rods or dealing with spent fuel rods. Check it out. It makes a lot of sense.
Guest (paulreedsmith)
No one has ever made a bomb from the waste stream of a LWR - or ever will. Bomb-grade plutonium has to be at around 95% PU-239. I'll spare you how plutonium is produced in a reactor from a uranium fuel load, but after one year in a reactor the PU-239 has been transmuted and about 20% of the PU has become PU-240, not only a bomb makers nightmare as it randomly emits neutrons, but also prohibits critical mass from being achieved. Weapons grade PU is produced in special "bomb factory" reactors where it is a quick in-and-out process to brew up a fairly pure batch of PU-239. (This is what the Soviet RMBK reactors, viz Chernobyl, were designed for. This design had a positive void coefficient of reactivity - all US nukes are negative - and this design was prohibited for civilian use here in the early 1950s; any nuclear engineer knew this design was inherently unstable and subject to ...)
Guest (Jim Hopf)
No, it would be incredibly difficult.
We're talking about a sealed, underground facility with heavy security. You have to get down into the reactor building, then inside the sealed, thick-steel containment, then inside the reactor (thicker steel), etc.... Then you have to move intensely readioactive spent fuel, which kills you unless it's inside a ~100 tone shielded cask, which requires heavy cranes to lift, etc..
And after all that, you don't even wind up with anything all that useful. Power plant spent fuel is even harder to convert into a weapon than raw uranium ore that you can just dig up anywhere (and then enrich). That's what Iran is doing, BTW. Reactors have nothing to do with it.
As for dirty bombs, spent fuel is less effective, and harder to employ, than the concentrated radioisotope sources that are located at hospitals all over the country. These small, concenrtated sources are much easier to handle, and steal (a man could lift the container), and they are under minimal security. Once stolen, they make a much more effective dirty bomb (not that a dirty bomb would result in many deaths, anyway).
i agree. the hyperion reactor is very small, designed to power a relatively small community, is fueled at the factory, then transported to the point of use and buried underground. it's hard to imagine how this could be a serious target of terrorists, or how it could be used to make a weapon. decentralizing the generation of power makes any type of power plant a relatively low impact target for terrorists. knocking out a chunk of the grid in sheboygan or kalamazoo just doesn't have the same impact as targeting NYC or LA.
Guest (jacklig)
If reactors like this could be adapted to use thorium liquid fuel then we would be talking!
Re: can it be adapted for thorium
No, this is not even a little bit similar to liquid fluoride thorium reactors. However, LFTRs do have excellent potential for making small but very powerful reactors.
thanks Jim hopf & dmbodeem. I see it now, hyperion design really sounds promising but I still think that it is way too expensive for the developing nations to start off their industries as Kadak from the article claims. We should understand that poor countries or developing countries for that matter doesn't even have technological capacity to build or maintain wind farms. Employing and maintaining such nuclear containment reactors would, as far as I can think would be a very tedious task. But as always I could be wrong and you are free to correct me!
We give billions to feed the hungry all over the world. Why? Some of these Hyperion power plants could desalinate or clean water so the hungry people could grow food and build an "abundant society." When you have energy on hand, Ideas and economy will follow. If it is a viable option today, what is stopping Hyperian from offering public stock and getting a trillion dollars for immediate mass deployment? Do it big! Do it now I say!
Social-political agendas from many sides of the issue seek power not energy and not solution. If I owned a coal mine, oil shipping company, wind generator factory or solar research firm, I would downplay this idea. Hyperian needs to be more aggressive with their marketing, unless it's just a bunch of hype.
"Keep them small, antitrust them all" Governments, groups, corporations, unions and mobs. Corruption is inevitable, massive corruption can be avoided.
So conceivably you could drive your reactor into a coal or gas fired power station, connect the plumbing, et voila - a nuclear power station without all that nasty CO2? I suspect I simplify somewhat, but a serious question.
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StupidPeasant
98 Comments
small is very good
I envision many small power plants powering a lot of desalination and pumping stations bringing and cleaning fresh water from the oceans, growing more food and trees, freeing rivers to the wild that build sandy beaches; and there I sit on that beach. Very nice. With abundant clean power We could save the world and live a very good lives too.
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