Small, Modular Nuclear Reactors — the Future of Energy?

cylonlover writes "This year is a historic one for nuclear power, with the first reactors winning U.S. government approval for construction since 1978. Some have seen the green lighting of two Westinghouse AP1000 reactors to be built in Georgia as the start of a revival of nuclear power in the West, but this may be a false dawn because of the problems besetting conventional reactors. It may be that when a new boom in nuclear power comes, it won't be led by giant gigawatt installations, but by batteries of small modular reactors (SMRs) with very different principles from those of previous generations. However, while it's a technology of great diversity and potential, many obstacles stand in its path. This article takes an in-depth look at the many forms of SMRs, their advantages, and the challenges they must overcome."

Comments

Distributed Grid

[sanosuke001]

Distributed power is how our grid should be set up. Also, being self-contained, these would allow us to put them closer to the actual users and cut transmission losses and costs. Why the hell aren't we doing it yet?

Re:Distributed Grid

[everett]

nimby

Re:Distributed Grid

[Anonymous Coward]

You can put them in my backyard! I totally don't mind if it means I can get cheap power in exchange!!!

Re:Distributed Grid

[nospam007]

"...put them closer to the actual users and cut transmission losses and costs. Why the hell aren't we doing it yet?"

Exactly! Here in Europe we had a cold spell of a few weeks and the French, with their dozens of nuclear reactors had to import electricity from Germany, who shut theirs down after the Japanese 'incident'.
French officials were grinding their teeth, they had predicted the Germans the opposite would happen in winter.
The Germans have tons of solar roofs and while it was cold as hell, the sun shone quite nicely as well as the wind was blowing.

Re:Distributed Grid

[jellomizer]

Because we as Americans do not understand what a trade off means.

We want clean energy but we don't want power facilities near our homes. Nuclear is clean however it needs to be done right and there are too many complaining about the scary Nuclear and are unfortunally happy when they see a problem with a facility because it shows they are right.
Except a more responsible approach would be to support nuclear energy understand that it will be a long term investment and make sure it is done right and any mistakes will need to be fixed the right way before damage comes along, can solve many of our big pressing problems and only create smaller manageable problems.

Re:Distributed Grid

[BlueParrot]

Because it is horribly economical.

With the exception of solar cells every major energy source used for electricity generation benefits greatly from economies of scale. As an example, the cost of building wind-turbines scale approximately linearly with their size (up to a point ), but the power generated increases as the square of the turbine radius, and with the third power of wind speed. As a consequence you want to build them big, you want to build them where wind conditions are the best, and you want to make them tall. The most economical wind turbines are quite large, and those little toys you see people put on their roof is a complete joke.

For nuclear power the maximum possible output of the reactor is largely dependent on the capacity of the cooling and safety systems. Since fuel costs are only a small part of the electricity cost, most of the cost is construction and operation of the plant. Since cooling capacity is related to volume ( how much coolant passes through the pipes ) it scales rapidly with reactor size, making larger reactors more economical ( the cooling capacity increases more rapidly with size than does material costs ). The limit in size is mostly determined by what can safely be built, transported and operated.

Now, there is one way distributed generation could become economical. If many small power generators could be mass produced, then one could take advantage of economies of volume. This works well for things where energy production scales at about the same rate as material costs. Solar cells would be a good example. The energy they produce is proportional to the surface area of the cells, and the cost of the cells is also proportional to the area. Thus if mass-production allows for reduced manufacturing costs per area of cell, it helps the economics.

I still think solar power would be more economical built to scale however, because the amount of electronics needed match the energy produced to the grid would then be much smaller per area of cells. Furthermore, roof-top solar cells are frequently poorly aligned and maintained. A larger facility could afford tracking devices and professional cleaning and maintenance, which increases the efficiency dramatically.

Re:Distributed Grid

[gadget junkie]

"...put them closer to the actual users and cut transmission losses and costs. Why the hell aren't we doing it yet?"

Exactly! Here in Europe we had a cold spell of a few weeks and the French, with their dozens of nuclear reactors had to import electricity from Germany, who shut theirs down after the Japanese 'incident'. French officials were grinding their teeth, they had predicted the Germans the opposite would happen in winter. The Germans have tons of solar roofs and while it was cold as hell, the sun shone quite nicely as well as the wind was blowing.

Sources? I freely admit that I do not speak german, but a friend of mine who does told me that Der Spiegel had this article stating that net net, solar production was negligible this winter."[..]The only thing that's missing at the moment is sunshine. For weeks now, the 1.1 million solar power systems in Germany have generated almost no electricity. The days are short, the weather is bad and the sky is overcast.[...]"

Re:Distributed Grid

[tp1024]

That's the story that's being told in the newspapers. The truth is rather different.

Peak demand for electricity is in the evening hours - about 6pm. But sunset is before that in winter and Germany certainly didn't export any electricity to France during that time of peak demand. Rather, the exports were at noon, when solar power has its peak production. And since the decentralized eletricity grid in Germany is incapable of transmitting solar power to other parts of Germany beyond narrow margins (power plants are built within 50-100km of demand, with limited transmission capacity beyond that), the only place for solar power in south-west Germany to go is France. (And southern Germany is the place where the rich house owners live who can afford to put solar cells on their roofs - paid for by all private customers, regardless of how poor they are.)

In the evening, none of this was there. France did make do with its own reserves and all German reserves had to be used for Germany. Had the environmentalists of the BUND had their way, there would have been no reserve capacity at all - all of which was in fact needed during peak demand, even reserves in Austria had to be used to meet the needs in Germany when temperatures dropped. All that without any major technical problems, no powerlines cut, not major faults in power stations.

But hey, physics is just a corporate conspiracy.

Re:Distributed Grid

[dj245]

I think you are ignoring the distribution costs, which are not trivial. The distribution fee is a significant part of my utility bill. It means that Solar or a small wind turbine doesn't have to be compeditive with the efficiency and cost of retail electricity at all. It could be miserably inefficient actually. But if the generation cost is cheaper than the utility's generation+distribution fees, then it may be financially viable.

Re:Distributed Grid

[sycodon]

Actually, I don't think NIMBY is a factor simply because no one has yet to produce such a device, propose to install it somewhere, and then generate the hypothetical NIBY reaction.

These devices face an intrenched anti-nuclear lobby that trades off of ignorance and fear. In other words, the nuke Haters. If ever such a device was ready to be deployed, the nuke Haters would be at every hearing, file endless lawsuits and finally, pull some kind of OWS garbage to delay the actual deployment.

In my opinion, any person who has been adequately informed of the device's safety measures and economic benefits would not be bothered by having one installed at their local power plant.

Re:Distributed Grid

[lightknight]

Fear, justified or not, was the hold-up. The original light-water reactors have some...issues. To run one, you need qualified staff (supposedly Three-Mile was hiring high-school students (or someone equally unqualified) to run their plant, at the time of the incident, I imagine as a cost-cutting measure), and you need to use quality building materials (do not scrimp, and I'd favor capital punishment for any contractor who is caught using lower-grade materials while pocketing the difference; you probably want some more than low-grade cement / concrete for the outer shell, and a substitution here by less scrupulous people is a serious concern). As for the components here, Chernobyl suffered from, among other things, an untested emergency cooling system component (I believe it was a turbine or pump) which failed at a critical moment (it was shipped, apparently without adequate testing, so quickly, so that the staff at the manufacturing plant could declare a 'Worker's Victory' and claim their Christmas bonuses).

As for these micro-reactors, they are potentially a good idea. Uranium is relatively inexpensive these days, and the primary target for an environmentally sound operation is the careful disposal of the waste. However, before they are put into use, I'd advocate bringing up the general population to some level of actual understanding regarding nuclear fission reactions -> there is a lot if disinformation out there regarding nuclear fission, and it's treated as magic by the populace. The only cure for ignorance, which breeds fear, is information. Show them how hard it is for something to undergo an uncontrolled nuclear fission reaction, show them how the danger of fallout and radioactivity is inversely related to time. Explain to them what a rem is, and how the sun gives you more radiation in a day than most people will experience, with the exception of medical imaging devices and flying on high-altitude airplanes, throughout their lives. And above all, no lies. No propaganda. Just the truth, detailing what we do know, what we do not know, and where any potential problems may be.

   

Re:Distributed Grid

[Ol Olsoc]

Everyone wants to live next to a nuclear reactor, right? I assume that's the reason the government hasn't approved construction of one in 34 years.

I've had the huge reactor/small reactor argument with nuc-e's for years. A long time ago, it was apparent to me that the huge plants make for huge problems. Part of enhancing safety is getting smaller plants that don't stress materials as much. The old paradigm was an economy of scale thing, one huge reactor in one location. Unfortunately, it was like building a dragster. Dragsters don't get 100 thousand miles on them. Little Toyota pickup trucks get 300 thousand.

Small reactors operating conservatively will not only have less problems, but will actually strengthen our power grid, as they add redundancy.

Of course, we could just go back to the 1300's.

Re:Distributed Grid

[Eponymous Coward]

You're describing previous generations of reactors. The new ones are more like a giant battery. They are sealed, self contained, and walk-away safe. The big reactors you are describing produce less expensive electricity, but I'm not sure we will ever defeat the cheap / safe tradeoff.

Re:Distributed Grid

[treeves]

BANANA - build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything

What about Thorium

[dpilot]

Out of curiosity, what would be the regulatory hurdles if someone wanted to set up a thorium reactor for power generation? Since thorium can't make bombs, I can see how it would be easier. Since it hasn't been done in the US before I can see how it would be harder. Come to think of it, has anyone actually demonstrated thorium-based electrical power generation?

Re:What about Thorium

[olsmeister]

No sure if anyone has, but India is aggressively pursuing it.

Re:What about Thorium

[gewalker]

The best demonstration of Liquid Fuel Thorium Reactor (LFTR) was by ORNL in the 60's. They had a prototype molten salt reactor using U-233. This is the fissile component of the Th-232/U-233 fuel cycle. The breeding of TH-232 into U-233 was simply omitted as unneeded complication for this prototype. This was intended to prove / debug the molten salt reactor, it was very successful in key ways.

India has been working on solid fuel thorium reactors, this is an attempt to re-use our experience with U-235 reactors technologies. It is doubtful that this would ever be competitive with a clean LFTR design.

In the US, the regulatory hurdles for LFTR are very high, unless you bypass them by selling your design to the military, which has the option to bypass these regs. This is why Flibe Energy is planning to sell their LFTR to the military first. It is a lot easier to change the regulatory environment if there is clearly functional and safe product being used by the military.

Re:What about Thorium

[Anonymous Coward]

Th-232/U-233 was investigated as a nuclear fuel back in the 60s because there was widespread fear that uranium would prove to be scarce and prohibitively costly. That didn't turn out to be the case -- uranium is cheap (relative to the costs of the plant) and abundant. Light-water reactors fueled by low-enriched uranium oxide fuel pellets are well understood by utilities and regulators. Utilities are notoriously conservative and risk averse, so "amazing new technology" makes them nervous.

Molten salt reactors are essentially unproven in large scale testing. Yes, I am very much aware of the Air Force's experiments at Oak Ridge. But the fact remains that nobody has built a large one, and nobody has run one for long periods of time. On-line reprocessing is a clever idea that has never been demonstrated in a reactor. And U-233 most certainly can be used to make a weapon... so the proliferation resistance argument is a bit overblown.

Solid thorium oxide fuels were used at the Ft. Saint Vrain reactor in Colorado in a gas-cooled reactor. That's another promising technology that isn't going anywhere because the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has basically said "we know how to license and regulate LWRs. We don't have the manpower or resources necessary to do the same for a host of advanced concepts." And the utilities have basically said "we know how to run LWRs with better than 90% capacity factors. We're skeptical that you can do the same with an advanced non-LWR."

So yeah, we're gonna build Voglte-3 and 4 (AP1000 PWRs). We're gonna build Summer-3 and 4 (AP1000s again). Beyond that, the financing is the bottleneck. Until the economy picks back up, no utility is going to try to finance the overnight cost of a large-scale reactor. The SMRs that will be licensed in the next decade are all small PWRs: NuScale, mPower, Westinghouse SMR. GE isn't pushing PRISM (a sodium cooled fast reactor) in the US. Hyperion Power Generation is a joke with no realistic licensing strategy. The Traveling Wave Reactor is a pipe dream due to fuel cladding limits. It'll be advanced LWRs for the next two to three decades.

oh dear

[lampsie]

From the summary: "...It may be that when a new boom in nuclear power comes..."

...that's unfortunate phrasing.

My future of energy is different

[aglider]

Use less energy and use it more efficiently.
Which unluckily is not what energy producers want.

Re:Don't think so

[dietdew7]

The good old days when we used to plow our fields with pointy sticks.

Re:Nuclear power is corporate welfare

[JBMcB]

http://reason.com/archives/2011/03/25/the-truth-about-nuclear-power/singlepage

Bad idea

[PPH]

Too many little nukes around to regulate.

One of the selling point of electric cars is that they concentrate their pollution at a few large point sources. Sure, today they belch out coal byproducts. But as technology advances, we can monitor and retrofit a few large plants more quickly than having to hunt down the owner of every old beater car. These modular nukes are the logical equivalent of a fleet of cars. Eventually, they'll descend into beaterhood.

Nickel-Iron batteries are available again

[Medievalist]

Local battery storage is cost-ineffective for most small solar producers/ homeowners. If you don't aggressively manage your batteries they don't last worth a damn, and even if you do daily hygrometer checks etc. and get every last minute of life out of them, battery banks are unfortunately quite costly. I have an antique lead-acid electric tractor so I speak from experience!

But nickel iron batteries are back on the market - and despite their poor energy density, high mass & volume, and high cost they are still a great alternative for homeowners because they are so extremely robust. Market capitalism to the rescue? It's certainly a different approach than nuclear socialism, which is the model France and Scandinavia are on (and which the USA is attempting to emulate, only with our own special sauce of corporate profiteering liberally slathered over the top).

True distributed Grid

[WindBourne]

In a way, America currently has a distributed grid. We have LOADS of small 200 MW coal systems and a number of 400-600 MW nuke system all over the USA. In fact, most cities have at least one small coal type system somewhere close to its core (originally on the edge, but then built up around it).
A number of these will closed over the next 10-20 years and larger centralized coal, natural gas, and occasionally nuke power plants will replace these. The reason is because these old powerplants are from the 40s(coal) or from the 60s (nukes). Now, note that each and every single one of these locations are IDEAL. All of them have massive connections to the LOCAL grid. Likewise, they have cooling in place. Some have decent generators (though most do not). ALL of them have a lot of land around them esp. the nukes. So, what are these ideal for?

The nukes sites have stored 'waste' fuel. Instead of shutting these down, tearing down everything and then moving the waste to WIPP, it would actually be better to build a number of GE PRISM reactors on-site while JUST the old reactors are dismantled and shipped out. GE PRISM are the IFR reactors that use 'waste fuel'. Basically, other than part of their initial load of fuel, there would be no more shipping of fuel to the site for the next 100 years. Instead, you would add to these reactors with the local 'waste' fuel. Once done, that 'waste fuel' would be a fraction of the size and it would be dangerous for less than 200 years.

As to the coal facilities, these would also be useful. Either put in a thorium reactor, similar to Ft. St. Vrain's old generator, OR, consider putting in thermal storage. Now I have seen a number of comments against thermal storage backed up by natural gas boiler. It is correctly pointed out that you lose 50% of the efficiency. HOWEVER, this is a cheap cheap way to take older equipment, keep it running for another 30 years, while using it to provide a buffer for AE AND regular power. In addition, the energy that would be stored would be from AE that would normally be discard. For wind generators, they simply feather the blades rather than run them 100%. For Solar, they lose a large part just in resistance in the lines as it takes a bit of time for electric loads to come and go. IOW, such a thermal system would allow a company to build larger base-load plants while dumping all of the on-demand systems (read expensive to run). How to do the thermal system? Simple approach is just use silos of salts and heat it up via direct heating or even microwave. There are other more efficient systems being developed, but this would be inexpensive to install. In addition, other than waste heat, most of the pollution would be gone (save when you need to run natural gas to add electricity due to high loads for say AC or other site outages). As electric cars or other energy storage systems become available, these can be phased out.

Regardless, it would be criminal to lose this cheap opportunity to re-develop our energy matrix.

Shoreham Syndrome

[JSBiff]

Something which doesn't often get discussed, but which I learned about a couple years ago - a number of knowledgeable people have said that what really killed nuclear power in the United States was the Shoreham Power Plant.

This was a nuclear power plant built in Long Island, New York, for about $6 Bn. The plant passed certifications and inspections and was all ready to go into commercial operation. However, because of politics, the plant was never able to get the go ahead from the State of New York to operate. The governor, Mario Kuomo, basically vetoed an *already built* power plant.

As long as the laws are such that investors can't get reasonable assurance *before* they spend all the money to build the plant, that they will be definitely allowed to operate as long as the plant meets relevant technical standards, the *politics* of the situation make the plants not viable.

Without such political uncertainty, nuclear plants are, generally, good investements, economically. A nuclear plant (depending on how much power it produces), should produce more than enough power to pay for itself in the course of 60 years, if it's allowed to operate.