I’m open to new ideas – but I just think renewables are moving so quickly that technologies like these will be hard pressed to catch up.
Also, for libertarian nuke lovers and haters of all things gubbmint, note US subsidies to this technology, and consider whether the average developing world village will be able to afford installing one without massive help.
Ready, aim, …discuss.
GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — The U.S. Department of Energy said Thursday that it has awarded an Oregon company a grant to help it design and obtain federal approval for a kind of nuclear power plant – small modular units that can be built in a factory and shipped to installation sites.
The department said the matching grant awarded to NuScale Power LLC of Portland is part of President Barack Obama’s plan to develop power sources that do not contribute to global warming.
“Small modular reactors represent a new generation of safe, reliable, low-carbon nuclear energy technology and provide a strong opportunity for America to lead this emerging global industry,” Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said in a statement.
The amount of the grant is not yet set, but it comes out of a $452 million fund for supporting small modular reactor development, the department said. It will cover up to half the cost of producing a design that gains federal approval.
NuScale Chief Commercial Officer Michael McGough said modular reactors are the future of nuclear power, because they are more affordable, safer and faster to build than conventional plants. Instead of pumps to move coolant, the design uses gravity, making it more reliable.
The company hopes to have the design certified by 2019 and the first commercially operational project working by 2023 at the Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls, Idaho, McGough said.
One of the modules would produce about 45 megawatts, compared with 1,000 megawatts from a conventional plant, McGough said. They would be small enough to be shipped on special trucks, railroad cars, or barges, and could be installed in groups of up to 12. A 540-megawatt installation would cost about $2 billion, compared with $10 billion or more for a conventional 1,000-megawatt plant.
LONDON, 7 January – The race is on to develop a new breed of small nuclear reactors that will be operated underground and need refuelling as seldom as once a decade.
Small modular reactors – or SMRs, as they are known – are seen by the nuclear power industry as the most promising technology of the future because they avoid many of the safety problems of much larger power plants and are also easier and quicker to construct.
Underground, they would be less vulnerable to terrorist attack and have cooling systems that could keep them safe for seven days without human intervention.
The industry already has 20 competing designs on offer. Some see the reactors working in tandem with renewables to provide electricity for remote communities that currently rely on polluting diesel generators. This would reduce local pollution and combat climate change.
The trend in the nuclear industry until now has been to build bigger and bigger reactors. Currently the largest of all, the European Pressurised Reactor (EPRS), is planned to produce 1,600 megawatts (the average daily electricity consumption of a US home is 1,200 watts), but it has run into trouble. The two under construction in Finland and France are years behind schedule and over budget.
Easy to build
The industry claims the new reactors would avoid the safety fears associated with the Fukushima accident in Japan because they are simpler and smaller. They will also be factory-built in kit form, ready to be erected on site, and so will avoid the construction delays and vast capital costs of large reactors.
To qualify as an SMR the new breed of reactors has to produce less than 300 megawatts, but some smaller designs will produce as little as 25 megawatts of power – about the same as five large wind turbines.
Critics of nuclear technology will be sceptical of yet another plan to revive the industry, which has become both unpopular following the Fukushima accident and uneconomic against most other fuels, particularly in the US, where gas is so cheap.
However, it is the US Government that is keenest on these reactors. It is providing 50% of development costs to compete with Russia and Korea in the field and believes there is a big market for small power plants that can be built in a factory and then transported to wherever they need to operate.
Small island power
The Russians are offering a version of the reactors they have used to power nuclear submarines, and will mount them on barges to be transported and plugged in wherever they are needed. They also offer at the end of their use to take them back to Russia without leaving a legacy of waste to the customer.
One of the American companies, Gen4 Energy, is developing a 25 megawatt reactor which it says would be perfect to provide power for 170 of the world’s small islands and over 100 remote US Government facilities that need power. The company says the electricity would be far cheaper than that produced by diesel generators – and climate-friendly as well.
Part of the appeal of the newer designs is that they can be shipped in kit form and installed in remote locations to power factories, mines, military bases or to help communities not attached to the grid.
They can also be used in groups of three or four, being refueled in turn so there is no loss of supply. They could also be hooked up to local grids to be used in conjunction with renewables like wind and solar.
Unlike their giant cousins that are designed to run all the time to provide base load electricity for large power grids in industrialised countries, the makers claim, these new reactors can reduce power output to fit in with demand fluctuations and inputs from intermittent renewables.
The World Nuclear Association’s most optimistic estimate is that there could be as many as 96 SMRs up and running by 2030, although according to the Association’s assessment none of them would be in the United States.
The US has other ideas, however, and in the last two years has put up $452 million to fund 50% of the development costs of two competing designs by two of the companies promoting the technology, NuScaleand Gen4 Energy.
Both these designs and many other competing ideas for SMRs will be on show at the Small Modular Reactor Conference, at Charlotte, North Carolina in the United States at the end of March. – Climate News Network
The numbers for the projected capitol costs for SMRs appear to show them as much more expensive than wind power. From the post:
“A 540-megawatt installation would cost about $2 billion, compared with $10 billion or more for a conventional 1,000-megawatt plant.”
That works out to around $3.70M/Mw of capacity. Today’s cost for wind power, according to the AWEA.org website:
“The Department of Energy finds that “Among a large sample of wind projects installed in 2012, the capacity-weighted average installed cost stood at nearly $1,940/kW, down almost $200/kW from the reported average cost in 2011 and down almost $300/kW from the reported average cost in both 2009 and 2010.””
$1,940/kW is $1.94M/MW, so the hypothetical 540-megawatt instalation would cost about $1.05 billion if implemented with wind turbines. Little more than half the cost of SMRs – IF they meet the projected costs. Given the nuclear industry’s track record of cost overruns it is hard to put much confidence in an undemonstrated, unproven technology.
That’s just the upfront costs – there will be on-going costs during the operational period of the installation lifecycle. Wind farms typically have one or two operators in a remote control room monitoring the turbines’ status and performance and dispatching maintenance crews when necessary. Nuclear plants, and I’m sure this will include SMRs, require 24/7 personnel for operation, maintenance, and security. Larger staff means larger costs, any way you figure it.
And, eventually, the hypothetical 540 megawatt installation will need to be decommissioned. A large wind turbine can be dismantled and removed by a crew of six or so in two days, or two weeks if the pad has to be demolished and removed, too. For this discussion I’ll use the ROM figure of three man-months per turbine for decommissioning, which is around $30K per turbine. The 540 megawatt installation would have around 170 turbines and would cost around $5M to decommission. Of course, it is likely that the pads would be left intact and new turbines would be erected this saving most of that $5M figure, but I’ll keep it as the worst case value for comparison.
Does anyone have any firm idea of how time and man-power will be needed to decommission an SMR? According to the NRC.gov website:
“Although there are many factors that affect reactor decommissioning costs, generally they range from $300 million to $400 million.”
Even if SMRs are only a fifth as expensive as today’s nuclear plants (as the article above suggested) that would still mean a decommissioning cost of $75M to $80M. Much costlier than wind power.
If my rough analysis is way off please show me where my reasoning went astray.
What do we do with the spent fuel and other leftovers? Bury it on Mars or maybe the moon? Nuclear power is the dirtiest of all the power sources including coal Think waist an leftovers first not last…. Thanks 4 reading Bill
This sort of thing is going to happen whether we want it or not. But the big issue with nuclear tech has always been human fallibility (like building a reactor in an earthquake and tsunami zone). I’m not sure making a bunch of smaller nuclear reactors reduces that issue but increases the odds of it.
As for subsidies, Congress would cease to function without them. My experience with the free market ideologues is that they downplay or excuse the subsidies they like and scream endlessly about the ones they don’t like.
Smaller reactors mean less folks dead in a given radius from it and the kill zones for cancer are smaller unless the wind is blowing right to get the particials into the jet stream.. Think Japan
A number of designs specifically remove such points of vulnerability. For instance, NuScale’s reactor uses natural circulation to move the core coolant. There are no circulating pumps to fail, or be turned off by mistake.
Smaller size allows things like natural cooling to remove decay heat; there’s more surface area per unit of core volume.
If you have specific questions about things like this, there’s a really great on-line source for info. It’s Rod Adams, whose Atomic Insights blog I have directed people to before. Rod worked on the 180 MW(e) B&W mPower project until he decided that the world needed a pro-nuclear writer more than another nuclear engineer. Got a question, go ask… but be warned, if you come in with a combative attitude the commentariat will pin your ears back.
“[..] he decided that the world needed a pro-nuclear writer more than another nuclear engineer.”
Or maybe, this should read:
“[..] he learned that the nuclear industry needed a pro-nuclear writer more than another nuclear engineer.”
😉
Human fallibilities also include laziness and greed. The disposal of nuclear waste is a serious matter. If it is more expedient and cheap, dumping it into the ocean or elsewhere when no one is looking will be a route often taken
Phillip – your analysis is good based on your data. Wind may not necessarily do full decommission. If the tower is good, the blades and running gear may be replaced. Even with tower replacement, the foundation can be re used. Wind is starting to get mature enough to consider that. It’s early to tell if the SMR costs are reliable. Since existing reactors have had cost over runs, there is room for doubt. I expect the actual SMR costs could be higher. They must undergo site inspection, because there will be site assembly. Thing is, SMRs are under development. Small reactors exist today. Existing small reactors were not favored economically. Why the change? I thought Gen IV and AP 1000 were the next wave? There is a spate of new (or rehashed old) designs touted to unseat the PWRs and BWRs. Licensing and development is a lengthy procedure. New materials must be tested. It remains to be seen which ones if any will emerge. Right now, the market for base load power is poor, except for China. China does not seem to be going for SMRs. Nuclear does large baseload without load following most economically. Muniz says it’s a decade away and only a promise. Nuscale says it’s easier to cool passively in the event of power failure, because the energy is less dense. From the comments, it is definitely a response to Fukushima. There seems to be some consciousness in the industry that older reactor designs will not sell.
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/small-modular-reactors-angling-to-fill-nuclear-niche
http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Will-New-Chinese-Nuclear-Reactor-Design-Crush-Western-Competition.html
Christopher – Thank you for your comments. I agree that it is unlikely for today’s wind farms to be completely removed unless they are poorly sited, or are older, smaller turbines such as those in Altamont Pass in California. I should have mentioned that much of the materials in wind turbines (such as the steel, copper, and aluminum) can be readily recycled.
The same is not true of SMRs. Some (much?) of the material used to build an SMR will have to be treated as radioactive waste at decommissioning due to decades of irradiation. As I’m sure you know, the intensity of the radiation flux varies with the square of the distance, i.e. at half the distance from the core the intensity is four times greater. Given the requirements that SMRs be factory made and be transportable the engineers have to pack a great deal of equipment into a relatively small volume without room or weight allowance for lots of shielding. The best existing analogs to SMRs are the reactor sections of nuclear submarines. The current ‘best practice’ for decommissioning a nuclear sub (at least for the US Navy) is to cut out the reactor section at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and truck the reactor compartment to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation for burial in a trench – with the hope that radioactive leakage won’t occur for several centuries. This is only a babystep better than the former practice of scuttling old nuclear subs in the ocean – ‘out of sight, out of mind’, right?
As an aside, I find it appalling that our best approach to dealing with radioactive waste is on a par with a cat using a litter box – bury the crap and hope that’s good enough. Since extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence, the nuclear industry and its proponents need to show a lot more credible information on the safety and lifecycle costs of SMRs before we head down that road. There are alternatives we can consider.
Agreed. This is a response to reactor safety, but the entire life cycle needs to be looked at. I also read about how they cut sub reactors out. The Russians just parked some. Your last comments RE litter box concern me the most. It’s like smoking for 60 years and keeping the ash in your houses only the ash is deadly.
That is an interesting development and will be of interest to the larger (and wealthier) developed countries. In the smaller country I reside in I see absolutely no need for nuclear generation at all. 90% of electricity was historically generated by hydro and geothermal in the 1930’s, today renewable energy usage has slipped to 77% of electric power generation, but the gap can be fairly painlessly be restored and lessened by utilizing wind power and ocean energy power (currently being tested in our twin Island nation). 85% of domestic and imported oil products are used by local transportation, and this is the area that can drastically cut CO2 emissions. I believe this is the area that our government and industry needs to concentrate on, i.e. freight, trucks lorries, and smaller vehicles we need to invest heavily in hydrogen and other renewables for shifting our freight and people around. Nuclear energy is not really necessary to accomplish common transportation tasks. At least I’m please to see that this is being worked on together with more modest clean fuelled cars. Can’t wait to see our highways crawling with clean energy vehicles.
http://www.earthtechling.com/2011/08/hydrogen-fuel-cells-drive-big-hauling-truck/
We have generation covered for now, although wind, wave, geothermal need to grow. We really need to concentrate on converting our use to electricity and non fossil liquid fuels. EVs, ground based heat pumps… Air transport is one area that needs work. All that transport and space heating is a big change in infrastructure that takes time. V2G and V2H need to grow. We poised are on the cusp of major changes in the near future. Every year introduces more.
I’m pleased to see my government has exempted electric and hybrid vehicles from the hefty road users charges as an incentive to motivate people, and believe that hydrogen has a big part to play for larger vehicles and aircraft. I see that recent strides in producing hydrogen have been made and am very hopeful in rapid technological advances.
The cost of capturing RE could fall to zero, but to eliminate other fuels you still have to pay for storing it for times when it’s not available. Those costs are not falling nearly as quickly.
From my reading about SMRs and exchanges with Rod Adams and other people “in the biz”, the attractions of SMRs are several-fold:
1. Smaller unit sizes allow entry into markets where GW-scale machines simply won’t fit.
2. Standard units allow far more flexibility in meeting market requirements; you add smaller increments to order.
3. Shorter construction schedules reduce market risk.
4. Factory-built modules can be made more repeatably, quickly and cheaply than on-site construction. More repeatable means higher quality.
5. Smaller, simpler units require less maintenance and lower plant staffing.
6. Large numbers of identical units allows greater specialization of work crews for certain tasks, getting jobs done faster and cheaper.
That’s my collected impressions from hanging around, asking questions and hearing war stories. The greybeards would certainly have things to add to that, so if you just cut-and-paste that in a question over at Atomic Insights you could probably get several ears-full for a minimum investment of time.
No disrespect to you or your handle intended hope you enjoy the attachment:
http://www.climatebites.org/climate-communication-metaphors-and-soundbites/basic-climate-science/earth-is-warming/only-poets-can-approach-explaining-this-present-danger
They demand registration before adding comments, otherwise I would have given them some limericks.
I think there are safety advantages for cooling smaller reactors. The costs are less certain. To use shippable modular designs, they have to be the small 80 ft by 15 ft units, only 45 MWe. Nuscale, a US proponent, has a checkered past.
In March 2011, the company announced most employees would be laid off as it sought funds to continue operations after their biggest investor, Michael Kenwood Group, went bankrupt.[3] The investment group had been sued by the Federal government, while the fund manager had been indicted by the Federal government on fraud charges for allegedly running a Ponzi scheme.[4]
In the end, I fail to see how SMRs make much difference in a market hostile to baseload power. Muniz says they are only a possibility, not a certainty, 10 years out. That’s the biggest problem. There are long lead times on any of these. And 96 SMRs don’t amount to much energy at 25 to 45 MWe. There is no reason to expect electrical installed capacity to jump greatly from the trends. Looks just the opposite. Even in China. It’s starting to slow down. Growth there is pollution limited. They are beginning to realize that coal does not work.
Ten years out is a enormously long time in materials science advances years
Why did this change? (Answer: legislation.)
This begs the question: why should the market be hostile to baseload power, rather than combustion-based power? (Answer: picking winners, designating losers.) It’s no accident that the four reactors being built in the USA are located where wind isn’t a major factor in the electricity markets.
The market is hostile to baseload because demand has flattened or dropped. Baseload plants ( nuclear and coal)are being dropped. There is a capacity glut. It’s not about nuclear, it’s about money. All electric generation is capital intensive. If demand is flat or dropping its a bad market for baseload. No, it’s not about picking anything. Its not about legislation.( except legislation helps with more subsidies for nuclear). It’s about market forces. The four reactors are built where there is political pressure to add more subsidies for nuclear and the subsidies are the most lucrative. Those subsidies are on the backs of ratepayers and the benefits to utilities and investors. Few other places could get ratepayers to pay for electricity before the plant was built. So Georgia ratepayers will eat some cost over runs. That sucks. No wonder Georgia tea party is upset. So once again, nuclear cannot survive without massive subsidies.
http://www.masterresource.org/2013/03/vogtle-nuclear-more-overruns/
Baseload is THE supplier for flat demand, as in “little daily variation”.
That contradicts your previous claim. What we have is a legally-forced addition of highly variable and unpredictable generation to the grid, which has characteristics of negative demand. The remaining demand has, not a flat curve, but a highly variable one which forces other generators to operate inefficiently to follow it. It’s even the excuse for forcing other carbon-free generation out of business, driving up minimum carbon emissions.
There’s a simple solution for this problem: get rid of the legislation which forces the variable generation to the top of the dispatch order. This will make it less profitable, but the excuse is that its energy supply is free so it doesn’t actually cost any money to spill it.
Nonsense, and you know it.
They’re being built where power demand is expected to increase, and electric markets are regulated. Nuclear plants are one of the cheapest options over the long term (which even you admit in the case of France). Paying for construction now means not paying bond interest later, like a down payment on a mortgage. You can play word games all you want, but you’re still wrong.
You have flat demand over years mixed up with daily and annual demand variation. The demand drop or flattening is long term, not short.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323689604578217831371436110
Nuclear has subsidies. Wind ptc is gone this year. What do you want, legislation outlawing RE, and forcing consumers to have more expensive energy? What evidence do you need to understand that electric demand is down and business is trying to dump capacity – all capacity? Baseload is expensive and needs healthy demand growth to pay its mortgage. Without growth, large baseload thermal is an albatross. Apparently, it’s a word game that utilities understand. You should argue with them. They are the ones dropping baseload, not me.
This point merits much more discussion than can be squeezed into this column, as it signals the emerging obsolescence of the traditional utility business model. Suffice it to say that we can now appreciate baseload generation as a luxury made affordable by rapid load growth rates that allow the investment in capacity expansion to be spread over a larger population of ratepayers. Sustained load growth encouraged utilities to capture economies of scale by building centralized power plants and running them flat-out over many decades. This growth was essential for driving power prices lower through much of the previous century.
But when loads stop growing, the operational inflexibility of a large coal or nuclear plant becomes a liability. Unlike a gas-fired turbine, a baseload coal plant cannot be ramped up and down without incurring wear and tear. And, unlike a solar electric array, a baseload generator cannot turn itself off at night, when wholesale energy prices fall through the floor.
http://www.midwestenergynews.com/2013/05/10/commentary-time-to-reconsider-baseload-power/
Reply to Arcus is here.
Hey, is it just me? That picture of the Babcock and Wilcox design is definitely not rail shippable. It requires on site construction, inspection, etc. that’s a non starter economically. The containment is too big and too heavy. This where the trouble lies. How big, how heavy, what cost? A lot of these designs will not get off the drawing board. Heres what we have now, only 5 main designs, dominated by PWRs.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Nuclear-Fuel-Cycle/Power-Reactors/Nuclear-Power-Reactors/
Not rail-shippable? The reported dimensions are 13 feet diameter by 83 feet high (with a joint in the middle which is a natural parting line for separate shipment of the pieces).
I dunno what stopped you from typing “mpower reactor dimensions” into a search engine, but that did it for me.