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Toshiba Pushes Safe, Small Nuclear Reactor Design
core plexus writes "This article describes a proposal from a Japanese corporation that wants to thrust the Interior Alaska community of Galena into international limelight by donating a new, unconventional electricity-generating plant that would light and heat the Yukon River village pollution-free for 30 years. There's a catch, of course. It's a nuclear reactor. Not a huge, Three Mile Island-type power plant but a new generation of small nuclear reactor about the size of a big spruce tree. Designers say the technology is safe, simple and cheap enough to replace diesel-fired generators as the primary energy source for villages across rural Alaska."
But my hometown lies 15 miles from Waste Control Services, and the plant sits right on top of the Ogalalla Aquifer from which the entire region pumps its water. The "corrosion proof containers" are metal barrels buried in a cement-lined pit. Along with the radioactive material are "non-corrosive" substances like old batteries and various forms of chemical, petroleum and medical waste. To top all this off, some "stabilized" napalm has been added to the mix as garnish.
Taken separately, these things are not harmful. Properly encased by well-trained robots in impervious material, these things are not harmful. But... packaged by overworked, underpaid, undereducated laborers in the cheapest material available with security checks run by firms hired out by the company to be yes-men, dumped together en masse in a cement pit, I'd say these things have the possibility for a big ka-boom.
So... to answer your question -- avoid West Texas at all costs.
IAALS.
Yeah, but SL-1 had control rods. With the control rods sticking all the time, the fault was found to be that the crew had to manually pull out a control rod to fix the control rod drive mechanism when it stuck. Well, some guy ended up pulling the control rod out too much, and the core went prompt critical (same thing that happened in the 1999 Japan accident when their mixture of uranium achieved critical mass). The coolant flashed to steam and shot the control rod out with the guy pinned to the ceiling. Because of SL-1, the navy changed all their reactor designs so that they could be shut down even with the most critical rod fully withdrawn, meaning that prompt criticality with one rod could never occur again. Obviously, Toshiba's reactor won't have the same problem since they're not even going to have control rods nor will they have any reactor coolant pumps. I'd be more worried about their new idea of using the reflector to control the power, not having any pumps, or using liquid sodium as the primary coolant.
I used to work at a US reactor in IT. At the time I was both amazed and stunned by the 1960's erz technology in use in the plant.
Because it had to be "certified" and documented, the cost was outrageous. Each section of pipe had to come from a certified company built by a certified company and using materials (ore, etc) from a certified place, all documented of course. Makes you feel better about the construction, but costs a lot and requires lots of maintenance.
At the time I saw some specs for a new, simple design to be used in Asia and submitted to the NRC. It used less people, more gravity fed pumps and flows, and should have lowered the cost of plants from billions to hundreds or even tens of millions.
Nothing came of it and it was a larger scale than this, but it was a good idea. Nuclear has a place when built well and conservatively, which it seems this design is.
The town is only about 700 odd people. One possibility is that if this gets near fielding, there will be a call by the anti-nuke groups for people to move there and basicly take over the town in order to stop it. There will also, of course, be lawsuit after lawsuit to delay it.
It's a must win for the antinuclear movement.
They'll view with alarm the small size, and especially the very low installation cost which makes it hard for long delays to bankrupt by increasing the cost of working capital.
That no plant has been ordered in the US for decades is a huge political point for them, and they'd see this as the camel getting a nose into the tent. I expect a bitter fight by them.