Small Reactor Shocker!? Well, Maybe Not

You have to love Fox News. Even in a fairly straightforward story about small reactors, it  amps up the controversy, even when there is none:

A boon to the economy? Or a boondoggle? That's the debate raging over a new nuclear technology that -- depending on your perspective -- is either a game-changer in electrical generation, or a failure-in-the-making that will fleece taxpayers for a half-billion dollars.

If there is any kind of debate, these really are not the terms of it – small reactors are neither a game changer nor a potential fleecing. They are a promising application of a technology – and they interest the federal government – and that’s it. Some of the players are new, some are veterans, but none have been shown as potential swindlers – I suppose investors can always be swindled, but the government has no reason to believe it. Nor does Fox.

This bit gets to the nub of the story in an interesting way, although I don’t think the interviewee is answering the question the reporter assumes.

For supporters, the goal of replacing coal-fired plants is key. In his June speech on climate change, President Obama talked about shutting down dozens of older coal plants, which left open the question of how that electricity would be produced.

Charlotte, N.C.-based Babcock and Wilcox is betting millions of dollars that the answer to that question -- at least in part -- is small modular reactors.

"Small modular reactors are all about taking the risk out of the equation for nuclear," said Christofer Mowry, president of B&W's mPower division. "And that's what the industry wants -- they want to de-risk nuclear. They like nuclear because nuclear offers what no other source of energy does, which is basic, reliable, clean energy."

I think Mowry means financial risk – I doubt Babcock & Wilcox believes that nuclear energy is unsafe – and really, nothing here suggests B&W has its eye on coal. Or that the supporters of small reactors have that in mind, either. Coal and nuclear have co-existed for a long time without getting in each other’s way, whatever you may think of either, and most electricity production combines have both in their portfolios. The government is offering billions of dollars in loan guarantees for fossil fuel projects.

But Mowry is dead on about the appeal of small reactors. Although the financial risk is still rather nebulous, logic dictates that a small reactor that can built in a factory and co-located at a pre-existing facility will have lower costs withal. How much remains to be seen.

---

Here’s the controversy:

Ryan Alexander, president of the group [Taxpayers for Common Sense], sees the potential for a nuclear version of Solyndra, the solar power company that went belly up after taxpayers poured a half-billion dollars into the company.

"There are a lot of cost questions that we don't know anything about, and it just seems like this is not going to happen without it being just incredibly expensive. So we don't want to keep putting taxpayer dollars into this idea that may or may not happen," she told Fox News.

TCS is a valuable organization for its work tracking Congressional earmarks and the donors who buy them, but frankly, if something involves government money, TCS will be very critical of it. That’s fine – that’s what it does – but it’s also predictable and not very controversial. But if you want to gin up conflict, you can always find a way.

Despite all the quibbling, this is really a pretty good story though one has to cut through the ideological fog to get to it.

Read More

The Traction of Small Reactors

The New York Times’ Matt Wald provides a nicely reported history and the state-of-play in the small reactor world. Just as the first domestic nuclear reactors were scaled up versions of small reactors, current versions of the tiny titans are scaled down versions of full-scale reactors (actually, some of them are – some are based on new ideas entirely).

“They offer the potential for a new paradigm in how we think about construction of nuclear power plants,” Peter B. Lyons, the Energy Department’s assistant secretary for nuclear energy, said of the so-called small modular reactors, also known as S.M.R.’s. He is supervising a program under which the government will pay up to half of the development cost of two different models. One manufacturer already has a contract to develop a plan for two small reactors in Tennessee.

That manufacturer would be Babcock&Wilcox, teamed with Bechtel and the Tennessee Valley Authority (interesting B&W video on this page).

Wald also provides some interesting details about the B&W mPower reactor, which makes clear that small doesn’t mean pee-wee.

Babcock’s reactor, 13 feet in diameter and 83 feet high, can produce 180 megawatts of power, about 15 percent of the power of a large new reactor, but can run far longer before refueling is required: four years, the manufacturer says, versus one to two years for a standard reactor. When a utility company needs more power, it can order another. Babcock refers to the basic design as a “two-pack,” as if the reactors were twin boxes of laundry soap.

The reactor’s emergency cooling system consists of the natural circulation of air. Conventional reactors require operators to start up pumps and align valves, something that was impossible in the Fukushima accident, when a tsunami wiped out electric power.

There’s a fact sheet about the mPower reactor here. And the Generation mPower site that it comes from is a treasure trove of information.

Some aspects of the article are speculative in nature:

And the regulatory structure is not so great for small reactors. Regulatory commission rules for control-room staff levels, emergency planning zones and security are all predicated on large, aboveground reactors. A small one built mostly underground might logically have smaller requirements, but a potential buyer would be reluctant to build one under the current regulatory regime, experts say.

Wald’s right – these are logical assumptions – but still largely unknown until the NRC finalizes its process for small reactors.

Amusing sentence:

But new approaches to nuclear power have been forecast far more often than they have been realized, and some worry that small modular reactors could fall into that category.

First, because what large industry doesn’t forecast more than it realizes – I want my hover car and now! – and second, small reactors seem to have really moved out of that category. Yes, they’re still at an early stage, but they have gained a good deal of traction and traction can carry a process a long way.

Very interesting and highly readable article. Well worth a look.

Read More