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The Energy Spectator
America’s Last Nuclear Hope
Small reactors may save us yet.
(Page 2 of 2)
So why isn’t there more coordination between the civilian and military efforts? In fact there is some. The first commercial reactor built at Shippingport, Pennsylvania, in 1957 was actually a submarine reactor “beached” by Admiral Rickover’s Navy. Since then hundreds of nuclear technicians trained in the Navy have gone on to find jobs in the nuclear industry. One reason most new reactors are now being planned in the South is the large presence of Navy veterans. But beyond that, the Navy’s long experience with nuclear does not seem to build anyone’s confidence that the technology can be handled in the civilian field.
Instead, the great impediment to all this is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the gargantuan Washington bureaucracy that regularly wins awards as the “best place to work in the federal government” yet seems unable to deliver on its main purpose, which is to issue licenses for nuclear reactors. The NRC last issued a license for a nuclear reactor in 1976. No one knows if it will ever issue one again. One utility, Southern Electric, has received permission to begin site clearance at the Vogtle plants 3 and 4 in Georgia. But the Vogtle plants will be Westinghouse AP1000s, a model for which the NRC has not yet issued design approval, let alone permission to build particular projects. Four AP1000s are already well under construction in China, with the first scheduled to begin operation in 2013. Yet here the NRC is still trying to figure out how to protect the reactor from airplanes. Even though the containment structure is strong enough to withstand a direct hit from a commercial jet, the NRC asked Westinghouse to put up a concrete shield to protect adjacent buildings. Then after Westinghouse had completed the revision, the NRC decided the shield might fall down in an earthquake. Further revisions are still pending.
When Hyperion first approached the NRC about design approval for its small modular reactor in 2006, the NRC essentially told it to go away — it didn’t have time for such small potatoes. Since then the NRC has relented and sat down for discussions with Hyperion last fall. Whether the approval process can be accelerated is still up for grabs, but at least there has been a response from the bureaucracy.
OR COURSE, the NRC is only responding to the lamentations and lawsuits from environmentalists and nuclear opponents who have never reconciled themselves to the technology, even though nuclear’s carbon-free electricity is the only reliable source of power that promises to reduce carbon emissions. If a new reactor project does ever make it out of the NRC, it will be contested in court for years, with environmental groups challenging the dotting of every i and crossing of every t in the decision-making. It will be a miracle if any proposal ever makes it through the process.
However, we should not imagine the rest of the world is standing still waiting for America to come up with the latest innovation. Japan, Korea, and Russia already have small reactors and France is preparing to enter the field. Toshiba has a 75-MW reactor it has been offering to the Alaskan village of Galena, which now generates its electricity by importing vast quantities of diesel fuel. The Russians have already built a 125-MW reactor and mounted it on a barge to float to an isolated Siberian village. Last year Rosatom started offering its small reactor to India. Korea is working on an SMR and France recently decided it was relying too heavily on its giant EPR1700 and will try to design a small reactor as well. If China ever enters the game — which is likely by mid-decade — it may be over for the competition. Areva’s CEO Anne Lauvergeon recently expressed alarm at how quickly and efficiently China is constructing Areva’s own reactors — much faster and cheaper than the French are able to do it themselves.
So even though American ingenuity and inventiveness are still operating, there is no certainty that it will bring us any benefit. We have developed a bureaucracy that would make the Byzantine Empire envious. Most helpful, though, would be widespread public recognition that nuclear energy is not the devil’s work but simply the practical fruition of the great scientific discoveries of the 20th century. Just as we led the world into the Computer Revolution — and just about every other technological revolution since the 18th century — America could still lead the world into the Nuclear Age. But it is going to be a much closer call this time.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (53) | Leave a comment
More Articles by William Tucker
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Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 3.21.11 @ 6:26AM
What you should take away from this article is that the NRC is a relic and should be closed for repairs.
David W| 3.21.11 @ 8:44AM
not so much a relic. Instead, it appears to be populated by 60's hippies or hippy wannabees (or eco-libtards) who are against all things nuclear and are doing all they can to stop nuclear power from replacing nasty/dirty fossil fuel. Maybe if (or when) the Republicans take over the senate and the presidency they can kick out the current occupants of that department and put in people who are able to balance safety with the need to actually do something.
ew-3| 3.21.11 @ 5:18PM
I find this particularly worrisome -
Immediately prior to assuming the post of Commissioner, Dr. Jaczko served as appropriations director for U.S. Sen. Harry Reid and also served as the Senator's science policy advisor. He began his Washington, D.C., career as a congressional science fellow in the office of U.S. Rep. Edward Markey. In addition, he has been an adjunct professor at Georgetown University teaching science and policy.
simon templar| 3.21.11 @ 10:55AM
I think that this is a GREAT example of the free market, innovation, and capitalism at its best. We have the capability of solving many issues and problems; do we have the WILL? The last thing we we should ever do is leave this up to the hippies, eco-fascist, the progressives, and the government. It's time to ignore and shut these people up once and for all.
joedoc| 3.21.11 @ 11:54AM
Agreed. The NRC should just go away. Build a stronger containment shield. Wait a minute, it has to be earthquake proof. What if there is a tornado. Or a tsunami. Or a meteor strike. Or aliens attack. Lawsuit after lawsuit. This country is driving me nuts. Life isn't guaranteed, although liberals think it should be. Small nuclear reactors are a no brainer. I just wish the no brainers in Washington could see that.
JohnK144| 3.21.11 @ 1:02PM
You are ABSOLUTELY right, joe. The problem is, this country is STARVED for real leadership. I enjoyed reading this article, but I already knew all of this. Why don't our "leaders" attempt to educate American citizens about any of this? It's mind-boggling.
Sam Levi| 3.21.11 @ 1:34PM
NRC brought to you by the Department of Energy, the letters, N and O, and the number 0
Quartermaster| 3.21.11 @ 8:23PM
Aliens are attacking? Quick, call all the Lawyers together and beg the Aliens to take them.
Spoonman| 3.22.11 @ 1:19AM
BOS, almost all government agencies are relics and should be closed.
Merlin| 3.21.11 @ 6:56AM
The NRC, EPA etc. are brought to you by our best and our brightest who still have not quite figured out that you cannot spend money you do not have year after year after . . . . .
John Navratil| 3.21.11 @ 7:17AM
We won't have to worry about putting Grandma on the ice floe. The government will do it for us.
JimH| 3.21.11 @ 8:13AM
That is of course, if you can find an ice floe, thanks to global warming. ;->
Patrick| 3.21.11 @ 10:23PM
Should be easy enough. Just call the Goracle for a visit and snow and ice should follow in next to no time.
In the meantime, "hide the decline".
JP| 3.21.11 @ 7:32AM
We shall see. Nuclear power, at least in the US, relies on subsidies to remain competitive. Perhaps, it is all of the regulatory and legal costs (usually incurred well before one is built) that drives up the cost of nuclear powe. But, I think there are resonable doubts about nuclear power. Just because China and France do it better is no reason to jump on the band wagon.
Probably in the long run the US will have to make a choice. But again, demographics may end driving nuclear power to an early grave. An aging society uses less power. And the US is aging. Beginning late this decade, the US will begin its demographic decline. We will consume and produce less, not because we are more ignorant or virtureous, but because we will be older as a nation. Fossils fuels in that sense, will be more cost effective. And the US has fossil fuels aplenty.
If need be, we could supply our own energy. It's all a matter of will and of costs.
Nuclear power could still be viable if its less expensive than fossil fuels. But, seriously most of the hype concerning greenhouse gases and global warming are just that - hype.
Brian Mc| 3.21.11 @ 7:45AM
Good point, JP. I was going along, just fine until mention of carbon emissions.
Do we dare consider the day when every home, instead of a furnace, would have a nuclear power plant? Hey, computers once filled large rooms that are now held in the palm of your hand.
The portable, floating units in Russia are intriguing. Might be that in my lifetime the Cordoba Nuclear Power Station up the river from where I live will become a dinosaur...first things first: put a stake through the heart of the NRC.
Buster| 3.21.11 @ 7:56AM
I have to disagree with you on the NRC, Brian. I have always said about drug testing (required of nuclear workers), it bothers me greatly that we need to do it, but we do. So it is with the NRC, they do get the job done. Yes, much could be streamlined, but they do provide a necessary oversight. At least in nuclear we are getting the benefit from the expensive regulation. I would say some other industries could take some lessons, gulf oil spill anyone?
No disrespect intended. I do agree strongly that we need to work to improve the efficiency, but the job needs to be done.
Tom| 3.21.11 @ 9:46AM
Buster,
What benefits have we seen? There has not been a new nuclear plant license in over 30 years. What is the point of a Nuclear Regulatory Agency that does not allow new nuclear plants? Surely, there are a few safe designs that can be built. And if all plants are inherently dangerous why allow the existing plants to operate at all?
No, there are few benefits from the NRC. They are busy regulating out of existence their reason for being: nuke plants.
Buster| 3.21.11 @ 10:05AM
Benefits, how about no further accidents since 3 mile Island (1979), and continually better performing plants by any measure, absolutely including safety. I don't believe it is the NRC holding up the licensing, that dubious honor belongs to the environmental folks.
The do provide an effective and thorough oversight function, which contributes to the continually improving performance at our nuclear plants.
joedoc| 3.21.11 @ 5:51PM
The last time the NRC issued a license for a nuclear power station was 1976. 35 years. I'd say they need streamlining.
Quartermaster| 3.21.11 @ 8:27PM
NRC needs qualified people in charge, not the political it has now. We can build safe nuke plants as we have from the beginning. It's the NRC and ecoidjits that have made nuke power so expensive.
captnjoe| 3.21.11 @ 9:26AM
An aging demographic does not mean a declining population, nor does it insure the lower use of power. Look at power use per capita, it is going up.
Regarding cost effectiveness, we have no data on the SMRs. My guess is as good as yours, and I see SMR reactors being far cheaper than fossil fuel power. No need to deliver fuel to a coal, oil, or gas plant is a huge savings in itself.
SMRs are the future.There is no need for water cooling, the small units are far more damage resistant, and there is no concentration of fuel in any one spot. Look at the Japan disaster, SMR's would have made that situation non-existent.
Buster| 3.21.11 @ 7:50AM
I spent my career in nuclear power, from the mid 70's through 2006 when I retired. I saw nuclear get continually better and better. Safer, more well maintained, more cost competitive. All of the nuclear people I have met share a common trait: they all take nuclear issues very seriously.
They're good. When something breaks at the plant, they find out what caused it to fail, and take appropriate steps to prevent it from happening again.
They may whine and moan at regulatory requirements, but they sure support the principle, safe operation of the plant.
These small reactors make a whole lot of sense to me. It saddens me to conclude that the author is correct, it is unlikely we will be able to benefit much from a very likely world wide boom.
oldfart| 3.21.11 @ 7:50AM
Distributed power generation, just like distributed computing, makes a whole lot of sense. Not the least of which is less risk to wide spread power shutdown to natural or human caused events.
axbucxdu| 3.22.11 @ 1:24PM
It's just another example of the tension between system design reliability versus fault tolerance. I leave it to the reader to ponder which he or she prefers when boarding an airplane...
JimH| 3.21.11 @ 8:18AM
Mr. Tucker, your thoughts on maybe with these small plants if we should return to Edison’s vision of locally produced DC and reduce our dependency on the grid.
John Navratil| 3.21.11 @ 2:51PM
JimH,
I'm afraid AC is here to stay. About the only thing we have than could run on DC is the lightbulb we've just outlawed.
Seriously, we have so many things requiring so many different voltages that the first thing we would have to do with DC power is convert it to AC to transform it.
TennesseeVolunteer| 3.21.11 @ 8:27AM
IN my business of manufacturing steel components for construction, when we were at our peak production, we considered buying a new machine that made five times as much as our existing machine at five times the cost.
A very wise business strategist educated me that adding one similar machine like mine at the time was the more prudent move since a business downturn with a note that big, could take me down. With multiple, similar machines, I coulsd sell one off, have a smaller workforce etc.
Obviously, with the recession that won't go away, that advice has at least given me a chance to survive when people who owned the big machines have mostly gone under.
As soon as I read this article, this smaller reactors make the same kind of sense. the ability to place one in an area that is isolated, smaller investments-quicker turnarounds, possible mobility of units etc.
The second part I find extremely sad is that our technology in nuclear has been wasted and shrunken by the Environmentalists which is a further reason our economy suffers in the past and in the future.
joedoc| 3.21.11 @ 6:14PM
I agree that it is sad that the environmentalists have so much power in this country. Until we find a leader who is willing to tell them to pound sand, nothing will change. PC is this country is killing us.
Fairbanks99| 3.21.11 @ 10:43AM
Regarding submarine reactors. They initially had a five to eight year life before refueling. That has increased to more than twenty. My last boat before retiring from the Navy was the USS Florida. She was launched in November of 1981, and entered Norfolk Naval Shipyard in early 2003 for refueling. The ship steamed hundreds of thousands of miles during this time.
Small reactors are exactly what we need. I lived in Fairbanks, AK for five years, and while I was there Toshiba was negotiating with a small remote village (Fort Yukon) to put in a 10mw plant. Currently diesel oil is barged in during the summer to fuel generators.
Universities, military bases, and small towns could be safely powered by these baby nukes a whole lot more effectively than the so-called renewables.
Hillel| 3.21.11 @ 10:43AM
When all is said and done,NOTHING HAPPENED AT THREE MILE ISLAND. Nevertheless it has been invoked eversince Japan's nuclear disaster.
Atomic energy is dead. The Greenies constitute a new religion whose believers are impervious to logic and reason. Natural gas turbines and more oil drilling is the way to go. Possibly the Coal States will overcome the political opposition. If agrarians and Arthur Daniels Midlands can push worthless ethanol we should be able to push coal and gas.
Mark G| 3.21.11 @ 12:27PM
"The Greenies constitute a new religion whose believers are impervious to logic and reason."
Don't you know that the Earth is flat? No need to send ships out to look for a new world. They will fall off the edge and die!! Its to dangerous!!
And about those horseless carraiges and aero planes. STOP playing around with them!! Someone might get hurt.
DeesBull| 3.21.11 @ 11:39AM
Years ago when they started building behemoth sized nuclear plants I wondered why they had to build them so large. The military used submarine reactor plants for power at their polar bases many years before and I thought that many smaller reactors would be a better idea for America. Hopefully it will be the wave of the future.
What would be cool to see in all homes would be something like the "Mr Fusion" power plants that powered Doc Brown's DeLorean on the "Back to the Future" movie. But knowing how government works I'm sure they would fight tooth and nail to keep the control and power they now have over our lives by keeping us 'in the dark' as long as possible. God forbid that we wouldn't have to depend on them anymore.
chris haynes| 3.21.11 @ 12:00PM
"All of the nuclear people I have met share a common trait: they all take nuclear issues very seriously." If that's true, then they lack the competency needed.
Fukushima was designed for an 18 foot Tsunami. They had over 30 feet. Three buildings blown up. Three cores partially melted. No power for 10 days counting.
Dagny Taggert| 3.21.11 @ 1:37PM
Nuclear safety competancy or marine disaster prediction compentancy? That's the part of this PR nightmare that sets my SMR-loving heart back. The media have lumped these together, and thus given the no-nukes ostriches all sorts of support.
Bill in Houston| 3.21.11 @ 5:42PM
Chris,
Fukashima was designed for a seven meter wave (23 feet). They received an 8 meter wave (26 feet). You do realize that a seven meter wave is nearly as rare as hen's teeth, right? The 8 meter wave is more of a once a century type. You simply can NOT design for every possible event and get something built. The law of dimishing returns adds up and you wind up with nothing.
Fukushima supplied power to northern Honshu for 40 years. It was due to go offline next year.
JohnK144| 3.21.11 @ 1:12PM
None of this is actually news to me. I've been talking about the use of modular reactors forever. But it's still good to see articles like this popping up.
The only thought I would add to the idea of utilizing mini-reactors, is that we should consider using them APART from the "national power grid." The problem with the centralized grid system is that it opens us up to attacks, whether physical or cyber, that could affect millions upon millions of people instantaneously. By systematically dismantling the need for the grid system, which we can do, we would go a long way towards increasing our national security.
JimP| 3.21.11 @ 1:56PM
I wonder if the Greens will demand we go to war to stop all the nuclear power proliferation in all those other countries? The threat level to Mother Gaia will be through the roof with all those reactors in all those untrustworthy other countries where there are no Greens to protect Gaia and the people from plutonius exploiters.
Bill in Houston| 3.21.11 @ 5:44PM
The Greenies won't be happy until we're all freezing in the dark, and dying off. Why? Because a large plurality of them see humanity as a blight on Mother Gaia. Of course they except themselves from said blight due to their self-believed enlightenment.
Quartermaster| 3.21.11 @ 8:31PM
I would agree the Greenies are a blight on the earth.
chris haynes| 3.21.11 @ 3:01PM
Nuclear safety competancy or marine disaster prediction compentancy?
Same thing.
The top gurus license a nuclear power plant on the ocean. Other guru's design it for "the most severe credible occurance", an 18 foot tsunami.
But they get a 30 foot tsunami.
The result: 3 damaged cores, 3 blown up buildings and 10 days without power. That should be enough incompetence to go around. Of course, I'm assuming no malfeasance.
Bill in Houston| 3.21.11 @ 5:45PM
Son, there's just no pleasing you. I'm sorry you can't look at this through logic (i.e., critical thinking).
Quartermaster| 3.21.11 @ 8:46PM
Bill, critical thinking is not taught in school anymore. I'm preparing some teaching materials and Mortimer Adler's book "How To Read A Book" was cited in some of teh materials I've been reading in my research. It applies so well to this situation I'll quote one passage from Chapter 1.
Speaking of punditry and how they package intellectual positions and how it makes it easy "to make up your own mind, "But the packaging is often done so effectively that the viewer, listener, or reader does not make up his own mind at all. Instead, he inserts a packaged opinion into his mind, somewhat like inserting a cassette into a cassette player. he then pushed a button and "plays back" the opinion whenever it seems appropriate to do so. He has performed acceptably without having had to think." Mortimer J. Adler in "How To Read A Book" Page 4, 1970 edition.
While that is done with conservative people as well, most conservatives would be ashamed to be caught in such a situation. Liberals, and other chicken little types, do it all the bloody time. It's like listening to an endless quote machine with the same talking points ad nauseum.
There are concerns about nuke power, and a good many of them are caused by the very people that say they want to avoid problems. The inability to reprocess nuke waste and reduce the storage requirements to something reasonable is just one example of the chicken little leftist hacks babbling. Jimmy Carter, who supposedly knew better, was a massive source of problems during his period of showing his utter incompetence in most ever matter.
Like so many government agencies, the left has taken over the NTC and has reduced it to just another source of hackery and incompetence. It's mission is impeding nuclear development. It is succeeding in its actual mission only if you consider stoping Nuclear power from being developed instead of being developed safely.
Parkyakarkus| 3.21.11 @ 3:02PM
No, nuclear is not dead. This is just an opportunity for the U.S to consider thorium reactors. For those who have not heard of this alternative, peruse youtube and google. You will be amazed!
Jack| 3.21.11 @ 4:38PM
We have been downsizing everything since I was a kid. I kept waiting for the day that they would make a nuclear reactor small enough to power a neighborhood or even small enough to power remote ranches. I am almost in the grave and nothing approaching common sense seems to have infected the bureacrats or eco-idiots. In my capacity as a Land Surveyor I could see a large subdivision of homes with its own water and sewer facilities and now its own power source. This makes so much sense that it doesn't have a chance. The Electric Co-ops are going to fight it because it will make them insecure. Once again money and unions will grind things to a halt.
Bill in Houston| 3.21.11 @ 5:52PM
Mr. Tucker, you mentioned that the US Navy has been operating aircraft carriers on nuclear power since the 1990s. I'm afraid you're off by three decades.
CVN-65, USS Enterprise was commissioned in 1961. It was ordered in 1957 and christened in 1960.
Since then we have commissioned ten more, and there are two under construction (CVN-78 Ford, and CVN-79).
John Q. Thorium| 3.21.11 @ 6:32PM
Modular construction the size of military plants, good ideas, and yet for installation in civilian territory I want them much, much safer. Let's *learn* from this Japanese experience. New Westinghouse designs brag about a failsafe that blasts open water feeds. Well, not optimal but OK. But then only has water for 72 hours. That should be 72 days, minimum. As it cools, that is not so much more.
Better yet, the thorium designs are all talk so far, but have a dozen reasons to prefer over current uranium models - including MUCH lower cost and MUCH greater inherent safety. Let's *do* it!!!
John| 3.21.11 @ 8:40PM
Nuclear power is heavily subsidised and is not generally commercially viable. The waste problem has not been resolved . Where will they put all this waste. Global warming may yet save nuclear.
Quartermaster| 3.21.11 @ 8:52PM
The entire amount of nuke waste from France's nuke program would fit in small residential garage. They process their waste and separate fissile materials from non-fissile. Chicken Little leftists have prevented proper disposal of nuke waste. IT's not hard, and saves a lot of space.
Of course, combine the leftist dipsticks with the NIMBY types, and you have a recipe for disaster. The ecoidjits will not allow anyone to solve a problem of any importance. See the quote above from Mortimer Adler's, "How To Read A Book." It's quite relevant to the large number of problems the left will not allow anyone to solve.
tom B| 3.22.11 @ 4:20PM
To bad that cold fusion didn't pan out, we wouldn't be sitting here talking about this. Fusion will be the real answer but is a long way off. The greens think like this: Can't use Nuke people will get killed....more people get killed in auto accidents...ban cars. Can't use wind turbines cause birds will get hurt. No to hamster running in cages, you will get shut down by PETA. Can't use burn wood cause we would be cutting down trees and the garden clubs wouldn't
stand for that.We would have to cover the whole state of Texas with solar cells..can't do that. So what is left?????
axbucxdu| 3.22.11 @ 8:59PM
So what is left?
The future looks something like the ultimate socialist dream: The Really Free Lunch
tom B| 3.22.11 @ 4:32PM
I have always been interested in geothermal energy. Of course not every place in the world has ready, practical excess to that form of energy. Iceland gets a large percentage of its energy from geothermal for obvious. I think it is something like 90%...but Iceland has a small population. Of course we could always build power plants in Yellowstone Park, ouch!!!!
George Kimball| 3.24.11 @ 4:57AM
What happened in Japan was amazing. A six reactor facility with five in service was hit by an earthquake that shook it approximately ten times harder than it was designed for. (Compare - a car with bumpers for a 10 mph crash survives a 100 mph crash).
Then it is hit by a tsunami that all but obliterates the city around it. The reactor is still basically intact but has operational issues. When all the hoopla dies, the reactors will survive with a small amount of radiation released. A few people may die as a result of radiation exposure - maybe not. But compare that to the existing tragedy of over 20,000 killed by the same quake and tsunami.
In short, were it not for the fanatical anti-nuke mindset of the greens, this would be seen as what it is - an astonishing testament to the safety of nukes.
New nukes, not the ones in this article, but thorium breeder systems represent a huge step forward. They are intrinsically much safer than light water reactors, burn the waste of LWR's and don't use a fuel cycle that is useful for weapons. That is: safety, proliferation and waste are all solved problems. Current nuke waste alone is good for about 750 yrs. of electricity at current usage rates.
So will the US, where most of this was developed, benefit? I'm afraid the real answer is probably not. The greens are so far out of control and have so much power it is unreal. Even the global warming hoax, largely constructed by the same collection of fanatics, will not motivate them to join reality. When we're all shivering in the dark, have long been surpassed by other countries' economies, have thrown away a chance for US technology to be the driver of a new industry, screwed the workers who could have real jobs building and maintaining the plants... we will be bound up in litigation, choked by a comatose NRC...
Are we going to wake up? Or are we going to continue to let the power-lusting left destroy the country?
Creative Recreation | 8.10.11 @ 11:42PM
is good