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The Resurrection of US Nuclear Power
Harry Reid almost single-handedly crippled nuclear power in this country through his efforts to block the licensing of the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. In spite of a the safety evaluation report and the environmental impact statement published by the NRC that stated the repository would be sound for the 1-million-year period of waste isolation required in the regulations, licensing the repository has remained in limbo.
It wasn’t all Harry Reid’s fault. For a number of reasons, the public has been uneasy about nuclear power. To a great extent, this ambivalence has been due to the nuclear industry’s pitiful job of educating the public. Chernobyl and Three Mile Island dominate public perception; people don’t know the difference between nuclear weapons and nuclear power. In addition, the building of plants has become prohibitively expensive, particularly without government involvement.
But, perhaps the tide is turning. On June 28, the House Energy and Commerce Committee brought HR 3053, the Nuclear Waste Policy Amends Act of 2017, out of committee with a 49-4 vote. The Act now goes to the full House.
Among other priorities, this bill stops the collection of fees for the Nuclear Waste Fund by utilities until a decision has been made about Yucca Mountain. Subsequent to Yucca Mountain approval, these fees will become available. The Nuclear Waste fund fees will then be collected for an additional 25 years “to assist in construction and operating costs, to make payments to the State of Nevada, and for eventual decommissioning costs.”
Along with this progress in waste storage, the nuclear industry has made great strides in developing new reactors that are more efficient and cost effective. For those of you who are interested in this technology, there are several links provided here.
Finally, President Trump and Energy Secretary Rick Perry are very enthusiastic about seeking energy independence.
From President Trump: “The first of those initiatives, he said, would be to ‘revive and expand’ the country’s nuclear energy sector. ‘A complete review of US nuclear energy policy will help us find new ways to revitalize this crucial energy resource,’ Trump said.”
From Rick Perry: “I believe no clean energy portfolio is truly complete without nuclear power, and so does the President. If you want to see the environment and the climate that we live in affected in a positive way, you must include nuclear energy with zero emissions to your portfolio…. Do it safe, do it thoughtfully, do it economically. Under the leadership of the United States, the world can benefit from that. This administration believes that nuclear energy development can be a game-changer and an important player in the development of our clean-energy portfolio globally. I believe we can achieve this by focusing on the development of technology, for instance, advanced nuclear reactors, small modular reactors.”
As we continue to develop our options for energy in this country, the future of nuclear power looks bright.
Published in Domestic Policy
I agree, mostly. I’ll have to read up some more on the IFR, at first blush I prefer MSR. One point that gives me some vapors is the liquid sodium coolant. Sodium is so reactive that any coolant leak would lead to fire and untold secondary chemical reactions that could quickly turn a small problem into a big one. I think I prefer Lithium-Fluoride and Beryllium-Fluoride as primary coolant salts.
The one advantage a MSR design has, is that it has been demonstrated in a experimental reactor already. The ORNL MSRE which ran from 1968 to 1976, at a total cost of less than $40 Million.
Iam off to work the night shift, I’ll do some reading.
@randyweivoda – Thanks, I try.
@occupantcdn :
The Chinese have a working gas-cooled reactor, South Africa was known for research on the Pebble Bed Reactor, and the US ran the HTGR for several years. The main problem is that the working designs were based on heat exchangers, so you lost some efficiency.
The IFR (Integral Fast Reactor) was run out at the Argonne annex back in the late 1980s. I get the sodium concerns – sodium or sodium-potassium (NaK) alloy has good thermal conductivity and a low melting point – NaK is fluid at room temperature. However, they are extremely reactive. NaK will spontaneously ignite in air. It also has serious problems with neutron activation – it becomes highly (albeit briefly) radioactive after being in the reactor. Everything needs to use a sealed system and waldo remotes. The Russians (am I allowed to mention them?) had the idea of using molten lead, which seems to me like it has enough safety advantages to be worth the loss in performance.
Wikipedia is actually quite good on these topics.
If I were living in California as you are, Susan, I would also be concerned about earthquakes and nuclear power plants. One of my best friends from grad school works at the National Lab in Idaho addressing this.
@omegapaladin –apparently Randy W knows who you are, but the mystery is killing me. If you don’t want to reveal your identity in this post, and where you worked, could you PM me? My husband was in the industry a long time and knows a lot of people; often people have crossed paths, sometimes as far back as navy nuke school.
Thanks for your concern, @hangon. We’ve lived in FL for ten years, although my husband felt confident that the plant could handle it. Of course, they shut down Unit 1 a while back. Can’t remember if Unit 2 is still up.
Living in Las Vegas, I regularly get treated to the displays of leftist hysteria about Yucca Mountain. I wonder how all those people would feel if they actually understood that America’s nuclear waste is currently being stored in a series of slapdash temporary facilities around the country that are only about a thousand times more dangerous than Yucca Mountain would be. I guess they must believe that if nuclear waste is not stored in Yucca Mountain, it just disappears. By magic or something. But then, they are only the “party of science” when it is convenient. The rest of the time, the “party of magic” seems to suit them just fine.
Cool! Has he any good stories? We live an hour from two nuclear power plants. Only issue was a small release of Xenon several years back.
I’ve discussed this podcast before, but here is The Eastern Border podcast’s discussion on the Chernobyl disaster. Notable is that the disaster itself and the aftermath where less problems of nuclear power, and far more problems of the corrupt Soviet system that created such a terrible atmosphere.
The Fukushima Daiichi disaster looms heavily on people’s minds mostly because of the silence there.
Three Mile Island is more a story of disaster averted, but the fear of what could have been always remains strong.
For decades, the PR for Nuclear power has been such an uphill battle that why sink money into that pit when it’s so expensive to get a reactor going? We’re in a small window where that could change, and the best things to advance this are transparency and liberty.
@omegapaladin:
Alrighty, a quiet night at work, got to do some reading. I agree that IFR is a big improvement on the standard LWR reactor, I still think the MSR or LFTR (particularly dual fluid reactor) designs have an advantage. The 2 main drawbacks I see, are the solid fuels make reprocessing an unnecessarily expensive and intrusive process. (whereas Molten Salt reactors can just redirect the fuel flow through a chemical reprocessing stage once every 27.5 days without disrupting the reactor’s power levels) The second problem I see is the NaK – it just seems to be a massive step backwards from active safety systems to passive systems, then to go juggling NaK grenades. Has Mercury been considered as a replacement? Mercury was used a working fluid in some coal fired power plants in the 1920s and 30s, they where able to get thermal conversion efficiency up over 60%.
I found some documentaries on YouTube: (IFR)
Here is Kirk Sorensen (formly of NASA) giving a 5 minute pitch on LFTR:
One thing I noticed while reading about the IFR is that it was cancelled in the mid 90’s at roughly the same time as NASA’s SP-100 program, which was meant to be a replacement for SNAP. This is how I can tell NASA is not really seriously planning a manned Mars program. They dont have a power source ready to power a manned excursion on the surface of mars for an extended 18 month stay. (as required by the orbital relationship of earth-mars)
Nah. Back then especially, Trink, the guys were very well-trained. Of course, there were little things that happened that the media and the public blew into major problems, but as I recollect, it was pretty well-run. The biggest crisis Jerry ran into was trying to stay awake during graveyard. And trying to date while he was on rotating shifts was a pain. That’s about as juicy as it got!
My biggest reservation is that utilities and nuke plant builders are almost as slow and bureaucratic as the regulators. The slower the process, the more modifications, revision, resubmissions etc. I am directly familiar with some horrifically expensive legal disputes as costs rise and fingers point in all directions when these delays occur. In addition, we (taxpayers) usually reimburse legal fees for environmental activist groups for filing delay tactics during the rulemaking approval process thus subsidizing further obstruction.
With increasing rates of scientific ignorance and dumbed-down politics, I don’t see the overall political climate for nuke-building improving any time soon.
Thorium seems to be promising. And I read more than a decade ago that Toshiba had designed rather small nuke power generators that could be buried and operate for 20-30 years until exhausted then replaced whole. So technological opportunities appear to be there. The obstacles appear to be mostly cognitive and political.
Exactly right. Nuclear is not economically viable because of the number of lawyers that need to be paid, not the number of engineers that need to be paid.
@zinmt and @oldbathos, I wouldn’t give up just yet. We have a new administration. Trump and Perry make a powerful team. There’s no doubt that a lot has to change, but I’m willing to take a “wait and see” attitude. I guess I don’t have much choice anyway. ;-)
Sorry, I thought you were Californian.
Florida is site of Crystal River 3. When nukes fail they are spectacularly expensive. It doesn’t have to be an environmental catastrophe, but a financial one will do. Crystal River 3 failed about the time Duke and Progress Energy merged. And it is a very interesting tale. Duke paid a lot more for Progress than it was worth because Progress kept the costs of its Florida disaster quiet. Duke’s chairman was to retire and Progress chairman was to take over. Once the size and scale of the disaster became clear to the board, the new chairman was there for less than a day.
I am skeptical about nukes exactly because of size – gigantism, centralization, who knows how long to construct, cost overruns and all the other problems.
Actually we came here from CA ten years ago. I wasn’t clear. The reason I have a bit of optimism about nuclear is that some of the roadblocks may be mitigated: the storage of waste, for one. Cost and construction time should go down with the smaller models. Some of them are possibly going to be pre-fabs.
Part of the problem is that we haven’t needed to build nuclear plants for a while, and we need to get a bunch of designs approved. A more friendly regulatory environment will help.
Now one thing I was thinking about with regards to natural gas and nuclear – nuclear is insurance against price shocks in natural gas. I love fracking, but I’d rather have the security of extensive non-gaspower generation.
@ larry3435 ,
… America’s nuclear waste is currently being stored in a series of slapdash temporary facilities around the country that are only about a thousand times more dangerous than Yucca Mountain….
A thousand times nothing is still nothing. And the storage is not “slapdash.”
Webster: “Slapdash” is “haphazard.” You’re wrong, @larry3435 . Mildly used fuel can sit in dry casks for, well, a long time until we realize the right thing to do with it. And by the time it is in dry casks, it is radiologically benign sans major effort to make it dangerous.
@ Ms. @susanquinn , Hi to your husband from an ELT. Nuke School class 8304, D2G qualified, prototype at NRF Idaho, S5G.
Here is a talk on the IMSR development program:
By Dr David LeBlanc
Hey Reese, my hubby says he was 6601; he was doing management consulting by the time you were there–you young whippersnapper! Who did you work for in commercial power plants?
I was briefly a lab tech and meter swinger for Eberline, maker of “RADIACs” he may remember. Then in ’92 got a tech job in RP/HP at Sandia National Labs, now a “nuclear analysis engineer” (hey, that’s what they call me, though my eventual degree was in physics) for them and eligible to retire. So don’t “young whippersnapper” ME, young lady!
Thank your hubby for me for his service, like my father, a Cold War hero. And you too for supporting him!
I’ll share this with my husband! BTW, I taught a course on writing to a group of scientists, many, many years ago. It was an awful experience. Of course, I couldn’t teach them a thing! Thank you for making me smile, too, Reese.
The NS Savannah. America’s first (only) nuclear powered merchant ship:
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/07/aboard-the-ns-savannah-americas-first-and-last-nuclear-merchant-ship/
The reactor is still waiting decommissioning, its been sitting idle for years – how difficult would it be to recommission the reactor and put to sea? Would it cost 10s of millions?
Would it make a wonderful demonstrator platform for nuclear technologies?
CDN, this is way over my head. Maybe @omegapaladin might know how to answer.
Its more of a thought experiment than anything real – I was thinking that building an experimental reactor – or a real reactor because of NIMBY – but I thought if the reactor where on a ship or barge it would be easier to get approvals from regulators.