If it sounds too good to be true, then it usually is false.
Right-sizing of nuclear units is an update of 1960s plan for small reactors on barges to serve cities and coastal areas. Standard designs using existing technologies, no siting issues, construction and operating costs below large units and coal or gas units. The added promise of unlimited self-generating fuel is a new promise, but would seem to violate the rules of physics and commerce.
Sam Herndon
Do you think any developer could afford the rigors of licensing a small nuke? How much difference do you think would ultimately be involved in licensing a 100 MW plant as opposed to licensing say a 2500 or 3000 MW plant? Does anyone in the industry have any idea of the costs involved in just getting a nuke facility licensed even within a factor of 10? This was difficult 40 years ago. Does anyone think it would be less difficult or less costly today?
Joseph Langenberg
The other advantage of small nuclear reactors is that they are well suited to smaller economies.
For example when nuclear power has been suggested for New Zealand the response has always been that you need two reactors to keep one running while the other has down time and two standard reactors provide more power than we currently use -- in total.
These smaller modular reactors solve that problem by being smaller and modular.
This is a great advance for small nations such as the Pacific Islands, and remote areas within places like Australia.
Owen McShane
Director
Centre for Resource Management Studies
New Zealand
We have heard this before "power so cheap we will not have to meter it". Come on guys, every time the nuclear industry says it can build something for a given price the final price is one order of magnitude higher. Just look at the cost of the base-load plants estimated to cost $1 to $2 billion in the early Bush administration are now in the $8 to $10 billion range now and construction has not even started. The 100 to 300 MW plants will cost $3 to $5 billion each not $300 to $500 Million each.
If these right-sized plants are so cheap, why are the U.S. applications for bigger ones? I would think they would build ten on one site if the total cost was lower than one big. They understand economics I hope.
Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me. This is voodoo. Let's not waste our time and research dollars on it and spend the money wisely on energy conservation and renewable energy.
Scott Greenbaum
In the 1980s, considerable R&D was funded by the DOE on a small modular high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (MHTGR), and done by General Atomics, GE, Bechtel, Combustion Engineering, Oak Ridge National Lab, MIT, and many U.S. utilities. Germany had a similar R&D effort.
Because of the use of helium coolant, silicon carbide clad fuel pellets and graphite moderator, the MHTGR could be operated at very high temperatures, e.g., 1000 C, much above the maximum operating temperature of a water cooled reactor, thus enabling high thermodynamic conversion efficiencies to electricity using steam or Brayton gas turbine cycles alone or combined, and many process heat applications, e.g., hydrogen production. It also exhibited inherent passive cooling for emergencies.
A construction design objective was to be able to make it in a factory, hence the term "modular." A regulatory design objective was to enable factory safety certification before the reactor was shipped to its site.
As someone who once took people on tours of an operating HTGR, I was particularly impressed by its radioactive cleanliness, a result largely because of the fuel pellet design and the use of the helium coolant. We could walk in street clothes anywhere in the reactor building even while it was operating, something that can't be casually done in other reactor concepts.
Merwin Brown, PhD
Director, Electric Transmission Research
California Institute for Energy and Environment
University of California
Copyright © 1996-2006 by CyberTech, Inc. All rights reserved.