The Love of 1000 Razors: UCS on Small Reactors

Our friends over at the Union of Concerned Scientists have always had an interesting approach to nuclear energy. It claims to support it - if reactors could be, you  know, safer, less expensive and more secure. You could call it the love of 1000 razors, each cut inflicting another wound, but all for the benefit of nuclear energy.

So knowing that UCS has a new report on small reactors leads one to suspect that the conclusion will be that that these sub-350 megawatt reactors will not be safer, less expensive than their full size counterparts or more secure. And so it is.

Now, let’s allow that no small reactor has been deployed or even licensed, though interest runs high. The Department of Energy is working with Babcock & Wilcox on prototyping and licensing the B&W design, with other vendors to follow. The Tennessee Valley Authority has expressed interesting in using them at its Clinch River site. Still, early days. A lot could happen.

It also means that anything I could say about them beyond the basics would be conjecture. That’s equally true of UCS, but it certainly proceeds as though small reactors have already pulled loose from their moorings and run amuck through the countryside.

Well, alright, let’s be fair. UCS knows it is engaging in preemptive scaremongering (SMRs are small modular reactors):

certain safety regulations of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission could be relaxed for SMRs.

whatever intrinsic safety advantages are unique to SMRs could be lost if the NRC allows safety margins to be reduced in other respects.

mistakes on a production line can lead to generic defects that could propagate through an entire fleet of reactors and be costly to fix.

I did not count rigorously, but UCS must have used “could” at least 40 times in this short report. A small reactor could open a portal to the fifth dimension and bring forth a murderous glop monster. Anything goes in the world of “could.”

This one struck me as particularly funny:

For example, efficiencies associated with the economics of mass production could lower costs if SMRs are eventually built and sold in large numbers. Such factors are speculative at this point…

Pot, kettle, shake hands.

Now, here’s the thing beyond the thing: A lot of UCS’s worries are just extensions of their 1000 razors – because full size reactors are so problematic, surely small reactors will be more of the same, only, um, smaller.

But consider: the NRC’s most recent annual report to Congress on “abnormal occurrences” at full-scale reactors—unscheduled incidents or events that the agency determines to be significant from the standpoint of public health or safety – showed only one such occurrence at a U.S. facility (in 2011) during the past decade. (I should add that abnormal events do not actually endanger safety – they hold the potential to do so if unchecked.) Similarly, the latest report from the NRC’s Industry Trend Program identified no significant adverse trends in industry safety performance.

Let’s be clear: there’s nothing wrong with criticizing small reactors, their makers, government regulators or, heck, NEI. But UCS does not offer criticism. It extends a pile of bad assumptions about full-size reactors to small reactors with no proof offered at all to justify them.

Small reactors are not precisely new technology – submarines have used a variation for years without incident – and the earlier generation of full-size nuclear plants generated less electricity than they do – the first commercial reactor at Shippingport ran at 60 megawatts. None of that means criticism wouldn’t be useful. But this is useless criticism, a sop to the anti-nuclear gullible.  Even if I hated nuclear energy, I’d be insulted by it.

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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.

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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.

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A Man, A Plan, A Canal–Panama! – Oh, and A Floating Reactor, Too

Floating nuclear energy stations, highlighted by the Russian effort noted below, are not a new phenomenon and represent a further development with small nuclear reactors. The Akademik Lomonotov is the latest, but it has a longer legacy than one might think – a legacy well worth considering.

Consider the U.S.S. Sturgis, a repurposed World War II-era ship which contributed its hull to house the MH-1A (M=Mobile, H=High-Powered, 1A=First of its kind). Work began on installing the 10,000 kilowatt reactor in 1963, it was tested in Virginia in 1967 and then deployed to the Panama Canal (then under U.S. control) from 1968 to 1975 to supply electricity to the grid there.

This paper from the WM (waste management) Symposium describes the origin and purpose of the Sturgis:

In March, 1963, the World War II Liberty Ship Charles H. Cugle was selected from the Mobil Reserve Fleet for conversion to a mobile power source containing a high power (>10,000 kW) pressurized water nuclear reactor designated MH-1A. The propulsion plant was removed from the vessel and the midsection was replaced with a new midsection containing the power plant, a 350-ton steel containment “spheroid,” and a concrete collision barrier. This new midsection was approximately eight feet wider than the original vessel, and contained not only the nuclear reactor, but also the main components of the primary and secondary cooling systems, as well as the electrical equipment. The vessel, which essentially became a barge, was renamed Sturgis. It began operation in 1967 at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia and after one year was towed to Gatun Lake in the Panama Canal Zone where it was used to generate electricity for military and civilian use.

The Sturgis was the most powerful of the Army’s (small) nuclear fleet and the last to be decommissioned. Why?

Budget cutbacks in the US Army, the high price of maintaining the vessel and an upcoming nuclear refueling led the US Army to remove the Sturgis from the Panama Canal and shut down the MH-1A reactor in 1976. The ship was brought to the Reserve Fleet at Fort Eustis where she was stripped of her Nuclear Fuel and sealed off to prevent any potential contamination to the surrounding areas. She is presently maintained by the US Army Corps of Engineers and is slated for disposal, most likely through the US Navy's Nuclear Ship & Submarine Recycling Program (NSSRP) at Bremerton, WA.

Rod Adams over at Atomic Insights offers further information, which enumerates the pitfalls of being the first-of-a-kind:

Eventually, even the MH-1A became too expensive to maintain. Like all of the Army’s nuclear power plants, it was a one-of-a-kind machine, with a unique set of spare parts, operating procedures and machinery quirks.

It also required a group of highly trained specialists, all of whom required a regular rotation away from the plant in order to continue their Army careers. The burden of maintaining several unique specialties, ensuring adequate training, and keeping a suitable management structure was difficult for one small generating plant to handle on its own merits.

Maybe, too, when it became clear the U.S. would cede the canal to Panama (the U.S.-Panama treaty mandating the handover was signed in 1977), it made sense to transition away from the nuclear barge.

(The canal was started by the French in 1888 and finished in 1914 by the Americans, who operated it for the rest of the century; Panama seceded from Colombia in 1903 in part to facilitate the building of the canal.)

The WM Symposium paper only says:

The Panama Canal Company acquired additional land based electrical capacity and in 1976 it was determined that the Sturgis was no longer needed.

Make of it what you will. But one can see that the Sturgis in the 70s and the Akademik Lomonotov today answer the same issues as small reactors do  – the latter in particular basically is a modern small reactor, albeit built on Russian naval technology:

They have many useful applications, including generating emission-free electricity in remote locations where there is little to no access to the main power grid or providing process heat to industrial applications. They are “modular” in design, which means they can be manufactured completely in a factory and delivered and installed at the site in modules, giving them the name “small modular reactors,” or SMRs.

I’d probably add water desalination as an especially worthy application, but you get the idea.

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Consider this post a corrective to the one below. While the Akademik Lomonotov represents a genuinely interesting development in the deployment of nuclear energy in itself, small reactors are its cousins and Sturgis is its parent. Recognizing that it is building upon a legacy – and an American one at that - only makes the case for its utility stronger.

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I’m going to hazard that the Sturgis was named after Brigadier General Samuel Sturgis (1822-1889), who served during both the Mexican-American War and the Civil War. More on him here.

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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.

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NuScale Back in Action with Unexpected Support

The other day, we mentioned Babcock & Wilcox’s small reactor project and its indirect use in the Gubernatorial race in Indiana. Now, another vendor of small reactors, NuScale, has attracted some press attention from Reuters. It’s especially nice to see that NuScale has overcome its financial difficulties.

NuScale staff half-jokingly refer to the first half of 2011 as the "Great Pause," when NuScale could not pay its bills and dozens among its 100 employees at the time had to be let go. It now employs 260 people, and hopes to add another 70 by year-end.

And how did it do this, at least in part?

But NuScale is trumpeting the safety aspects of its new technology, and has found helpful supporters including U.S. engineering giant Fluor Corp, which bought a majority stake in the 5-year-old company last October.

Fluor is no stranger to the nuclear energy business. Start here for more on its activities. Fluor has been around for much of the nuclear age.

Like Indiana, Oregon, where NuScale is located, has no nuclear energy facilities. It closed its one plant, called Trojan, in 1992. But, as with Pence in the Hoosier state, NuScale has found some support from the Beavers.

Yet the NuScale design has managed to win over Oregon's national representatives, who tend to be against nuclear power. Senator Jeff Merkley, a self-described "proud progressive," surprised [NuScale Chief Executive Paul] Lorenzini by throwing his support behind SMRs.

The story talks a bit about other subjects – and is interesting in general – but the key point is that NuScale has found a path forward. There are a lot of hurdles yet to clear in the small reactor arena and some of the numerous competitors will probably fail as the marketplace develops. But let’s at least have the marketplace develop some more before/if the winnowing starts.

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If friends knew that I don’t like mushrooms, they might tease me by telling me they love them.

Then I would say, “Mushrooms wouldn’t exist without government help. No one would eat them.”

“But did you see the study that mushrooms are a great source of potassium?”

“More propaganda from the mushroom brigade,” says I. “Mushrooms are just dolled-up toadstools.”

And on and on.

So, in the middle of his story on NuScale, writer Braden Reddall felt the need to get the other side.

"SMRs are just the next chapter in a nuclear industry that can't stand up on its own," said Don Hancock, director for nuclear waste safety at the Southwest Research and Information Center. "So it always has to be funded by the government."

It can’t be fun having reporters calling on you to play the tarantula on the valentine all the time. I wonder if his friends tell him how much they’d like more nuclear energy facilities in the area.

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Mo. Governor, State Leaders Signal Continued Support For Potential Small Reactor Project

Vying for federal funds to support a potential small reactor demonstration project in the state, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon (D) joined more than 20 business leaders, utility executives and state politicians Monday to reinforce his support for the project. Speaking from the University of Missouri campus, Gov. Nixon said that the potential project by Westinghouse Electric Co. and Ameren Missouri could “spark a new global industry” and be “transformational” for the Show-Me State.

PoliticMo has the highlights from the press conference:

“The returns of this industry are potentially tremendous,” Nixon said, noting impact on the construction, restaurant, and transportation infrastructure in the state. “When it comes to creating jobs, transforming our economy and building our future, projects just don’t get any bigger than this.”

Nixon said public sector funds — including over $450 million available from the federal government — will help get the emerging industry off the ground, and he said the stakeholders involved want that to happen in Missouri.

“This energy industry is going to emerge,” Nixon said. “The question is who is going to lead.”

To solidify his support, Gov. Nixon has created a new task force that will be charged with aligning the involved communities and ensuring that the infrastructure and other needs are in place if the time comes that they are required. The task force will be headed by Dan Atwill, Boone County’s presiding commissioner, and comprised of five other commissioners who represent the impacted counties.

Many state lawmakers, business leaders, labor unions and chambers of commerce have already expressed an interest in the project coming to the state. The Columbia Daily Tribune reports:

More than 500 letters supporting Missouri’s proposal have been submitted to the DOE [Department of Energy], not only from those directly affected but also from Missouri business and development leaders who see the potential, Nixon said. All of Missouri’s other electric power providers have expressed support as well.

Developing the project will stimulate the state’s economy by creating a large number of jobs, said Ameren Missouri’s President and Chief Executive Warner Baxter. He said that just one small reactor could provide more than 9,500 direct jobs and more than 9,000 indirect jobs, having a $3 million economic impact for the state.

“We’re bringing together national economic leaders, industry leaders, certainly business leaders are here, statewide legislators, as well as labor to come together to discuss a transformational opportunity to secure our state’s and our country’s energy and economic future,” he [Baxter] told the summit.

The state, which would add up to five small reactors at Ameren’s Callaway nuclear energy facility as part of its proposal, is among four finalists that are looking to receive a share of DOE’s $452 million for the public-private program to design, build and operate the next generation nuclear reactor. Other states where companies have expressed an interest in developing a small reactor as part of the cost-share program include South Carolina, Washington and Tennessee.

DOE is expected to announce the grant recipients by September.

For more information on small reactors, see NEI’s website.

Photo caption: Gov. Jay Nixon discusses efforts to develop next-generation small modular nuclear reactors in Missouri on Monday at the Bond Life Sciences Center on the University of Missouri campus. Credits: Don Shrubshell/Columbia Daily Tribune.

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Local, State and International Leaders Turn Their Attention to New Reactors, Both Big and Small

South Carolinian and Missourian leaders came forward this week to tout the economic benefits of new nuclear reactors, a sign of their growing support for further developing new plants in their states. The positive statements come at a time when the bidding continues to heat up for investment funds from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to participate in the first public-private partnership to develop and deploy small nuclear reactors (SMRs).

Today, S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley held a joint press conference with representatives from Holtec International, SCE&G and AREVA on how small reactor technology could bring additional jobs and manufacturing to the Southern state. The Aiken Standard reports:

Deployment of SMRs at SRS [Savannah River Site] would "offer South Carolina a unique opportunity to become a leader in the next generation of nuclear reactor manufacturing," according to a press release from the governor's office.

Savannah River Nuclear Solutions’ spokesperson Barbara Smoak applauded the governor’s response.

“We are really excited because we really do think South Carolina is where they [small reactors] should be deployed,” Smoak said. “We’re excited that the state and the governor are supporting us, too.”

The governor indicated that South Carolina “will fight for federal grants that could make the state a hub for the next-generation nuclear technology,” WRDW reports following the press conference.

In the Midwest on Sunday, Columbia (Mo.) Daily Tribune columnist Bob Roper also voiced his support for the Ameren Missouri and Westinghouse Electric partnership to develop small reactor technology at the Callaway nuclear plant site. Calling small reactors a “game changer” for the nuclear industry, Roper writes:

I have always believed one of the great attributes of nuclear energy is the simple concept of scale: the tremendous amount of energy that can be produced by small amounts of uranium as compared to what is required of other sources of energy. In the past, the problem was nuclear power had to be generated via huge, and hugely expensive, power plants. The SMRs change that, which is why this looks like that "game changer" to me. After all, someday cities might be able to get their power from SMRs, at least in part. And surely other potential uses abound.

Citing the economic benefits that would come from participating in the demonstration project in Missouri, including creating jobs and solidifying the manufacturing base, Roper states that developing the new technology:

Will be hugely beneficial to our nation, our state, our region and the University of Missouri if it all comes to fruition.

Elsewhere in new nuclear energy news, The State (S.C.) had a great article this week on the long-term benefits already being felt in the Palmetto State from the construction of two new Westinghouse Electric Co. AP1000 nuclear reactors at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station:

Ramping up education and tapping into specialized job training are the surest ways for Fairfield County and its 24,000 residents to reap the economic, social and civic benefits of having one of the largest construction projects in the country in its backyard, area leaders say.

Not only will the projects help to build careers for local workers, it will also enhance the communities. The article continues:

In addition to job creation, the project will increase the tax base and could lead to more economic development, broadband availability, tourism promotion and added attention to existing businesses, Vickers [the Fairfield County Chamber of Commerce president] said.

Meanwhile, further south in Georgia this week, DOE officials and the chairman of France’s Atomic Energy and Alternative Energy Commission toured the Plant Vogtle site, where two other AP1000 reactors are under construction. The French Commissioner Bernard Bigot hailed that the construction project is “a symbol of America’s reawakened nuclear program.” The Augusta Chronicle reports:

“If something is going well here, all nations benefit,” said Bernard Bigot, who toured the Burke County site Monday with U.S. Energy Department officials. “And if something is wrong, everyone shares.”

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“The U.S. has been the first nation to move on with nuclear, and it has the largest fleet,” he said. “It is a time when you need to show to the public that we can move on.”

More information from Bigot’s visit, including video, is available on WRDW’s website.

Visit NEI’s website to learn more about new nuclear energy facilities.

Image: Bernard Bigot, chairman of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, led a delegation of French energy officials on a tour of Southern Company subsidiary Georgia Power’s Plant Vogtle on Monday.

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Support Grows for Small Reactor Partnership in Missouri

Ameren Missouri and Westinghouse Electric Co. last week revealed a new partnership to compete for federal funds to develop and license a small reactor at the Callaway nuclear plant site in Missouri. The joint collaboration has the potential to open the doors for nuclear energy to play a more prominent role in the Midwestern state’s energy portfolio—a move that is being met with increasing enthusiasm by local leaders.

Given the previous challenges to new nuclear plant development in the state, it is exciting to see several notable people and institutions come forward to voice their support. Below is a sampling of some of the positive coverage we have come across so far.

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon on the day of the announcement:

Designing, developing and commercializing next-generation nuclear technology will create good jobs for Missourians, expand our global exports, and ensure that Missouri has affordable, abundant, safe and reliable power for generations to come.  Missouri offers Westinghouse an outstanding nuclear operator and workforce, world-class research universities, a strong foothold in the nuclear industry, and a central location to develop a worldwide manufacturing base. As Governor, I'm fully committed to working with Westinghouse, Ameren Missouri and all our electric energy providers to take advantage of this unprecedented opportunity.

The Joplin (Mo.) Globe in an editorial today:

We believe that spurring safe, economical, close to load power generation, while at the same time creating tens of thousands of good paying, stable jobs is a far better use of taxpayer funds than throwing hundreds of millions at politically connected Solyndras.
We applaud Nixon, Westinghouse, Ameren and the remaining utilities — including Joplin’s own Empire District — for joining forces on a practical energy plan for all Missourians.

The Columbia (Mo.) Daily Tribune in an editorial posted yesterday:

Westinghouse and Ameren seem to be the best applicants in the United States for this new smaller unit approach, which has political as well as scientific advantages. Chances are good the grants will come through and the demonstration project at Callaway will be built, but it will take time — as long as 10 years before power will be generated. As long as progress is made, all hands should stay hitched to the wagon. Callaway II can provide a host of good jobs during construction and forever after as clean power is generated.

The Jefferson City (Mo.) News in a positive editorial yesterday:

If all goes right, it still might take until 2022 before any possible new reactors would come online in Missouri. But the potential for energy, jobs and development is impossible to ignore.

There's no such thing as a sure thing. But this proposal is a great prospect given the two businesses' community history, a solid base of technology education, and a stable, willing work force.

The same newspaper also featured an article on how the partnership will benefit the University of Missouri’s Nuclear Science and Engineering Institute, which almost dismantled earlier this year due to a decision by the graduate school’s dean.

Sudarshan Loyalka, a curators' professor of nuclear engineering, said Ameren and Westinghouse's partnership should emphasize the need to strengthen NSEI rather than trying to start a completely new program.

"We do have a strong nuclear engineering program, and the program should be strengthened further with this opportunity," he said.

MU Chancellor Brady Deaton said after the announcement that he was still learning about the university's role. "We will be involved in the very beginning in the research and educational aspects of this," he said.

Local lawmakers, including State Sen. Kurt Schaefer (R-Columbia) and State Rep. Mary Still (D-Columbia), agreed that the university will play a major support role in the project and has the potential to expand its research capabilities and boost its national profile in the area of nuclear science. To this point, Sen. Schaefer said:

This could make them the No. 1 research entity in the world based on their role in designing and training on these units.

While many state lawmakers, labor unions, local chambers of commerce, and others have come forward to show their support, there are still others that are skeptical of the project, demonstrating the need for continued dialogue and education on project’s benefits. However, given that members of both sides of the political aisle and groups who traditionally oppose each other were able to stand united during last' week’s announcement, it shows promise that Missourians are not ready to close the door on nuclear energy.

Photo: Image of the Westinghouse Small Modular Reactor design. To learn more about the reactor, see Westinghouse’s website.

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Out of Zion; Into Small Reactors

Nuclear Energy Insider has an interesting article up on the decommissioning of Illinois’ Zion facility outside Chicago. There are some details that suggest how this kind of work might be done relatively quickly:

The Zion decommissioning project will take considerably less time than originally planned because the cleanup will bypass one of the most laborious and time-consuming steps of taking down a nuclear plant. According to the New York Times, the project will bypass separating radioactive materials --  which must go to a licensed dump -- from nonradioactive materials, which can be deposited onto ordinary industrial landfills.
The NYT report says that the new strategy eliminates separating the two. Instead, anything that could include radioactive contamination will be treated as radioactive waste.

The article describes it as a 10-year project, which I assume includes moves like this one. There are 12 other shuttered plants in the United States that have not yet set decommissioning dates. It sounds like Zion may provide a model for developing ideas on how to decommission a facility more quickly and at less expense. The whole article is worth a read.
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Although comparing small reactors to iPads is a little silly, Margaret Ryan tries it out for a couple of paragraphs, then drops it in favor of a pretty good summary of the state of play for the, hmmm, tiny titans?

The Department of Energy has two cost-sharing programs, one that helps developed technology get licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and one to help newer technologies prove their concepts by building prototypes at DOE's Savannah River site. DOE just announced three partnerships for the latter program, with Hyperion Power Generation, Holtec International's SMR subsidiary, and NuScale Power.

The interesting thing about those prototypes is that they can be built without NRC licensing as demonstration projects. Small reactors, by the way, are those that produce 300 or fewer megawatts capacity.
Why have them?

Lyons said SMRs, generally under 300 MW, are the right size to replace coal plants being shut because of age and inability to meet modern pollution standards. However, under the Environmental Protection Agency's deadlines, most of those plants will be shut by 2017, and the SMRs that DOE will assist won't be ready to deploy before the early 2020s.

These timelines may or may not line up, but it isn’t only the older or dirtier coal plants these, um, mighty mites (?) can replace. Or the only niche for them.

TVA is already looking to move into the SMR niche. The company has an agreement with Generation mPower - a joint venture of Babcock & Wilcox and Bechtel. Together they plan to install up to six of GmP's 125- to 180-MW modules at TVA's Clinch River site, said TVA Vice President of Nuclear Generation Jack Bailey at an NRC conference March 14.

Maybe the best way to see the potential here is to say that they have a good many plausible potential uses, as TVA shows – the marketplace for them just isn’t developed yet, though there seems a decided hunger for them in a number of potential areas. It’s way too early to even class them as niche items.
This NEI page offers that they would be good fits to provide “free electricity in remote locations where there is little to no access to the main power grid or … process heat to industrial applications.” The page has lots more good information on these, uh, diminutive dervishes? All right, maybe the iPad idea isn’t so bad.
The Zion facility.

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The Small Reactors at Savannah River

The Department of Energy proposed a couple of years ago spurring the development of small nuclear reactors by entering public-private partnerships with several vendors to foster the building of prototypes and, eventually, generate NRC license applications for the designs.
Now, the first fruit of this program has budded:

Hyperion Power Generation Inc., the Department of Energy – Savannah River, and Savannah River National Laboratory have announced their commitment to deploy a privately-funded first-of-a-kind Hyperion reactor at the DOE Savannah River Site.

Hyperion doesn’t need a license to pursue its work, as it could sell its reactor technology overseas if it chose and go through whatever processes are established in other countries. But it recognizes the value of the NRC’s license procedure as a kind of gold standard:

“It is important that we achieve NRC licensing to provide worldwide confidence in the technology and design of our advanced Generation 4 reactor,” said Dave Carlson, COO and Chief Nuclear Officer with HPG.

Let’s back up over the news a little bit.
Hyperion joins NuScale and Holtec International among the companies included in the DOE program. The work by all three companies will be done at South Carolina’s Savannah River Site. NuScale and Hyperion have small reactor designs.
So does Holtec, which I’ve generally regarded as a parts fabrication company. Holtec’s HI-SMUR 140 is a 140-megawatt reactor with an underground core. The design requires no reactor coolant pump or off-site power to cool the reactor core.
A little more about what the announcements mean:

The agreements will allow these private companies to gain information on SMR reactor deployment at SRS and offer a framework to develop land use and site services contracts to promote these initiatives. The MOUs help to leverage Savannah River’s nuclear expertise, energy facilities and land assets that support private sectors to develop, test and license prototype SMR technologies.

That’s a chunk of acronyms – MOU is memorandum of understanding, the agreements between Savannah River Site and the companies, presumably to be followed by contracts.
World Nuclear News expands on this a bit:

However, the DoE stressed that the new agreements "do not constitute a federal funding commitment." It said that it envisages private sector funding to be used to develop these technologies and support deployment plans. The DoE added that the agreements are unrelated to its funding opportunity announcement for SMR cost-share projects announced in January.

This forward-looking projects will be interesting to follow, something I’m sure the three companies and DOE will be eager to help us do.
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A speech given about the Canadian response to the accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi site is an interesting echo of the American response, with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission in the role of the NRC and the World Association of Nuclear Operators playing INPO (and INPO playing INPO, too.)
The speaker is Tom Mitchell, the President and CEO of Ontario Power Generation. The following excerpts are adapted from notes he put together for the speech. You can read the whole thing here. (I like that the Canadians use the term learnings for lessons learned,too.)

Much has been written about Fukushima – some of it critical of our industry. Yet as I look back at events over the past year, I believe our reaction to Fukushima was timely, appropriate and effective.
Right from the start, here in Canada we moved quickly to give people as many facts as possible about the event – and assure them of the safety of our nuclear units. The CNA was very active during this period. So was OPG as well as our nuclear colleagues.
At OPG, we communicated quickly and across a number of fronts --- with local communities and on regional, national and international level. We dedicated a portion of our website to the event – providing fact-based information about the event and our stations. We made our executives available for speeches and interviews. We did extensive outreach in our nuclear site communities. We published information pieces in local and regional newspapers. And we established regular and ongoing communications with nuclear organizations from around the world – including WANO (World Association of Nuclear Operators), INPO (Institute of Nuclear Power Operations) and the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency).
Our message was clear.
The geology at our sites was stable and our nuclear safety systems were robust – with redundant back-up power so that we were not vulnerable to Fukushima-type acts of nature.
The CNSC (Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission) was also active.
Shortly after the event, it asked Canadian nuclear operators to provide verification their reactors were safe. The CNSC also provided information on its website that was useful to both the industry and the general public. In response to the CNSC’s request, OPG and other operators launched a thorough assessment of their operations to confirm their safety.
We also committed to a number of specific actions based on lessons learned from Fukushima. By April, we had reconfirmed that our stations were indeed safe and the systems in place at OPG’s nuclear facilities were robust enough to withstand significant emergencies. In July we issued another report in which we outlined the steps we were taking to address the key learnings coming out of Fukushima. These learnings included the absolute necessity to guard against external events – specifically those that threaten to overwhelm the design basis of the plant’s systems and equipment.

I’m not sure of the CNSC’s role – it may not carry the same regulatory heft of the NRC or perhaps Sullivan just wanted to stress his company’s activities. 
There’s a section of the speech about the CANDU (which stands for Canada Deuterium Uranium) reactor, the country’s home-grown variation on a pressurized heavy water reactor. Canada has 18 operating reactors, 16 in Ontario, one in Quebec and one in New Brunswick. All are CANDUs. Canada has also sold about 32 CANDUs to other countries. None are in the United States. You can read more about the CANDU reactor here.
Nuclear energy provides about 15 per cent of the country’s electricity and 50 percent of Ontario’s electricity.
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Well:

Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) cadres hurled stones on anti-nuclear energy protesters here on Saturday. A police constable, Murugesan (45), suffered head injuries in the incident.

The story in The Hindu offers more details but not enough context to understand why government pelting occurred here. Apparently, the protest involves the building of the Kudankulum facility in Tamil Nadu, which has indeed become contentious, but that’s all I can figure out. Let’s file this one away until more information surfaces. In the meantime: no pelting.
The Hyperion Power Module is actually the little pellet-like element indicated by the arrow in this conceptual drawing.

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DOE Moves Forward on Small Reactors

Writer Reese Palley has quite a little rant going on at the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Unfortunately, all the arguments for developing and licensing small, modular nuclear reactors fell on deaf ears at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The commission has no immediate plans even to begin assessing traveling wave or any other small nuclear technology.

It is not as if mini-nuclear technologies are experimental and unproven. [etc.]

Palley is the author of The Answer: Why Only Inherently Safe Mini Nuclear Power Plants Can Save Our World, which I haven’t read. He certainly wants you to know he’s all over those small reactors.

Unfortunately, though, his piece was published today. So was this, at the Department of Energy’s site:

The U.S. Department of Energy today announced the first step toward manufacturing small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) in the United States, demonstrating the Administration’s commitment to advancing U.S. manufacturing leadership in low-carbon, next generation energy technologies and restarting the nation’s nuclear industry. Through the draft Funding Opportunity Announcement announced today, the Department will establish cost-shared agreements with private industry to support the design and licensing of SMRs.

Palley was talking about the NRC, but if DOE is helping with the licensing process, then the NRC will be prepared to review those licenses. The seriousness of this effort was underscored by a quick-to-follow press release from Westinghouse:

"Westinghouse will apply for DOE's small modular reactor investment funds with a consortium of utilities. Access to this investment fund helps lower the barrier to market entry for American companies. Virtually all energy sources that feed the national grid have been developed through public investments in public-private research and development partnerships.

So the die is cast. I took a look over at Terrapower, which Palley touts in his article, but it doesn’t have a press release about this. NuScale hasn’t weighed in either. Babcock and Wilcox had this interesting bit of news – from last week:

Babcock & Wilcox is to restructure its commercial nuclear business, separating its small modular reactor operations from its other nuclear energy related businesses.

The company said that the move was in response to "changing market conditions, growth opportunities and the continuing progress of its small modular reactor (SMR) business."

So there’s that.

Palley’s article confused me because the DOE plan had been in the works for awhile. It’s just a coincidence that the details of the plan sprang forth the same day, but in any event, it’s pleasing to see work moving forward on small reactors. It ought to even please Palley.

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