Per’s aim is to develop really compact nuclear units with very high power densities, based on mostly well-understood technology that is deployable on the time-scale of a decade or less. The driving aim is to get these units commercialised in the near term, and to bring down costs, thereby paving the way for later widespread commercial deployment of full Generation IV designs like the LFTR and IFR, which not only achieve high burnup, but also completely close the fuel cycle.

Barry Brook and Tom Blees were invited to visit Per Peterson’s laboratory at the Nuclear Engineering Department of UC Berkeley. I would love to have been there, sigh. Anyhow, read Barry’s account, almost as good as being there.

When I visited California earlier this month, Tom Blees and I paid a visit to Prof Per Peterson and Prof Jasmina Vujic at the Nuclear Engineering Department of UC Berkeley. After chatting over lunch, Per took us on a personal tour of his lab, which was quite an experience. Per’s research focuses on development of a high-temperature reactor with an incredibly high power density. Why? In short, it’s about the money. Per’s argument — and a quite persasive one — is that if the costs of advanced reactors can be brought way down, below that of pressurised and boiling water reactors (PWRs and BWRs), then their scaled-up deployment is highly likely. The following post owes a lot to Per’s insights on this critical issue.

(…)

You’ll be rewarded for reading Barry’s complete post. Also, Per Peterson’s homepage for the PB-AHTR research is here.

How does the UCB reactor design stack up relative to current and other advanced reactor concepts (e.g., LFTR, S-PRISM)? At the 2007 MIT-Stanford Workshop on Nuclear Fission: Opportunities for Fundamental Research and Breakthrough in Fission, one of the papers by UC Berkeley’s Ehud Greenspan compares four advanced reactor classes, one of which is the PB-AHTR (class 2). Download and archive this Ehud Greenspan presentation — it is almost an encyclopedia of nuclear fuel and reactor systems, including high-performance transportation fuel production:

1. Light-water cooled breeding reactors
2. Liquid-salt cooled high temperature thermal reactors
3. Nuclear battery type reactors
4. Deployment of fast reactors without separating TRU from LWR spent fuel

We obviously will not know for sure until we have built PB-AHTR’s at commercial scale, but at least one study by ORNL indicate the capital cost should be about 70% of current LWR reactors (e.g., the Westinghouse AP-1000). BTW, Greenspan lists just one “Con” for the AHTR class, “not sustainable”. I need to read more on this, as I thought the design was sustainable (i.e., does not require mining new fissionable feedstock).

Fortunately science-based observer Steve Packard is alert to idiot-based scare-mongering:

This is the kind of ignorance-based story that drives me nuts: 3 arrested in Moldova in uranium smuggling plot…

(…) I believe the uranium is most likely of the depleted variety. This photo was published in several news outlets and reports to show the uranium in question. It appears to be some kind of counter-weight or possibly a plug from a shielded cask – both of these being common uses of depleted uranium. The source of the uranium is unknown, but it may have been scavenged from a junked aircraft or from a scrap metal yard.

So is this dangerous? Absolutely, unequivocally and unquestionably NO. It’s not dangerous – at least no more so than a chunk of lead of equal size. You could possibly drop it on someone’s head, but that’s about the worst you could do with this uranium.

Read more »

There was a recent article in MIT Technology review called What’s Holding Biofuels Back? There is a relatively simple answer to the question that I will delve into below, but the short answer to “What’s holding biofuels back?” is that we placed unreasonable expectations on them to begin with, and they have simply failed to meet those unreasonable expectations. People would think it was unreasonable if Congress mandated a cure for the common cold within 5 years, but they don’t think twice when Congress mandates the creation of a cellulosic ethanol industry within 5 years. Yet either scenario requires technical breakthroughs that are not assured.

(…) That’s also why I maintain that cellulosic ethanol will never be produced at a lower cost than corn ethanol: It is much more challenging to unlock the sugars in biomass than in corn. People may project lower costs, but they do so on the basis of models that have not been validated in the real world.

Obtaining the cooperation of localities and states on siting spent nuclear fuel management facilities requires more than building trust with local communities. States having an appropriate site will view it as a valuable energy systems asset and will want financial compensation not at the level of a few percent, but measured in tenths of the cost of the entire project. If siting is really to be voluntary, it is important not to put a single state in a monopoly position of having the only licensed site. To do so will generate tension with the federal government over the level of financial benefit to the host state and within the host state over whether the final arrangement is equitable. There must be a sensible mechanism for compensating host states and a process that leads to more than one site being licensed and ready for use.

(…) Use of the Framework: Congress should set the maximum allowed Permanent Fund charges high enough to make hosting spent fuel management facilities something that several states desire rather than wish to avoid. A short list of geological repository sites in at least six states should lead to a competition to be amongst two or preferably three chosen for licensing. It is economically optimal to age spent fuel intact over a few of the c. 30 year half lives of its most intense fission product heat generators, before its final disposition. Thus, a similar number of spent fuel aging facilities should be licensed, some of which may be at repository sites. In this context spent fuel reprocessing will not be economically favorable for many decades, if ever. If a pilot scale reprocessing facility is nevertheless licensed, it should also be licensed as an indefinitely renewable aging facility, as no reprocessing facility anywhere has yet both operated as planned and removed all high-level radioactive materials from site.

(…) The IEEE Spectrum article is at least a start in the right direction. Unfortunately, it doesn’t go as far as I would have liked. And quite a few other people share that view, judging by the comments. A more serious flaw, in my view, is that the article does not provide a clear rationale for why they picked the designs they picked. Did they judge these to be the best of the crop? Were these the ones for which they had the most information? It makes a difference. The comments help in identifying some of the other potential options.

One could also argue that this article does not do an in-depth assessment of every one of the technologies. Clearly, it would not be sufficient to make a decision among the options, but that was not its purpose. It does help the reader understand in general terms some of the major issues associated with each technology, including the very important issue of its status of development.

Read more »
it’s worthwhile to read through the comments to the IEEE article. There are, of course, the usual anti-nuclear-nutjobs — but there are a number of very well-informed contributions (e.g., from Doug L. Hoffman).

(…)

SPECTRUM: How does the U.S. agreement to supply uranium and light-water reactors help India move to thorium and fast breeders?

ST: We have a very limited amount of uranium but plenty of thorium, so we have developed a three-stage program to exploit it. In the first stage, we load pressurized heavy-water reactors with natural uranium, which consists of 99.3 percent uranium 238 and 0.7 percent uranium 235. That 0.7 percent produces most of the power. Some of the uranium 238 does, however, get converted to plutonium, and when the spent fuel comes out, we can separate the plutonium out.

In the second stage, we load the right mix of plutonium and uranium 238 into fast breeder reactors, which produce energy and more plutonium. Later on, we put a blanket of thorium around the reactor, and some of it converts to uranium 233, which we extract. In the third stage, we use the uranium 233 as fuel.

We have enough thorium in the country to meet requirements for thousands of years, much more than our supplies of coal or other sources of fuel. So, this three-stage program has great potential, but the technologies needed for the final stage will take decades to fully develop.

SPECTRUM: What about India’s more immediate needs?

ST: We are consuming about 600 kilowatthours per capita annually, compared with 13 000 kWh per capita in the U.S., and we are importing most of our energy, in the form of oil, gas, and some coal. If we can import uranium, then we can set up these nuclear power stations based on international cooperation, in addition to our indigenous program.

We think that 20 000 to 40 000 MW of capacity can be added with this cooperative program with the U.S. in the next 30 years. It depends upon how fast—you know, sometimes these international developments go very fast and then sometimes they are very slow.

SPECTRUM: Japan and France both had fast breeder reactor programs, but neither one is operational now. Why will India’s fast breeder succeed where others have failed?

ST: The requirements of each country are different. For us, what’s important is energy self-sufficiency. Japan is interested because fast breeders use the waste left over from the first stage. And now people are realizing that at the rate we are using uranium, the world’s supply will be exhausted by the year 2050. So fuels are going to have to be reused.

(…) SPECTRUM: How much does electricity generated by your nuclear plants cost now, and will this agreement ultimately make it cheaper?

ST: Using indigenous supplies of uranium, we are competitive at distances of 800 to 1000 kilometers from the closest coal mine, because of the cost of transporting the coal. Now, suppose we had access to international fuel; then the same reactors would be competitive even much closer, and possibly they would be ”location neutral,” which means that wherever you are, you should be able to compete. With the availability of uranium at international prices, the nuclear power reactors set up with foreign cooperation will be competitive with thermal power plants located much closer to the coal mines. The tariff of our oldest power station at Tarapur (the Tarapur Atomic Power Station or TAPS-1/2) is about 2 cents per kilowatthour and the average tariff of nuclear power in the country is about 5 cents per kilowatthour.

Given its limited reserves of natural uranium and its abundant supply of thorium, India has chalked out a unique three-stage nuclear program. In the first stage, pressurized heavy water reactors (PHWRs)–similar to those used in advanced industrial countries–burn natural uranium. In the second stage, fast-breeder reactors, which other countries have tried to commercialize without success, will burn plutonium derived from standard power reactors to stretch fuel efficiency. In the key third stage, on which India’s long-term nuclear energy supply depends, power reactors will run on thorium and uranium-233 (an isotope that does not occur naturally).

Scientists and engineers at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, in Mumbai, have designed a novel advanced heavy water reactor to burn thorium. They say that because no reactor in the world today uses thorium on a large scale, they will be breaking new ground. The head of the Mumbai reactor design and development group, Ratan Kumar Sinha, spoke to IEEE Spectrum’s Seema Singh in July about the challenges of and prospects for this new thorium reactor technology.

IEEE Spectrum: Why do you call this advanced heavy water reactor one of a kind?

Ratan Kumar Sinha: No reactor in the world utilizes thorium on a large scale. We are the first ones to design such a system, which we are validating through an experimental program. In April, we started a test reactor, which has a flexible configuration and allows use of a range of fuel materials; we can even physically shift the distance between fuel rods. Here we are able to simulate the reactor almost 100 percent.

Spectrum: What are the unique features in this reactor?

Sinha: While we have used the well-proven pressure-tube technology, we’ve introduced many passive safety features, a distinguishing one being the reactor’s ability to remove core heat by natural circulation of coolant under normal operating and shutdown conditions. This eliminates the need for nuclear-grade circulating pumps, which, besides providing economic advantages, enhances reliability.

We have also introduced passive shutdown on the main heat transport system in case of a failure of the wired shutdown system. Using mechanical energy from the increased steam pressure, the system injects neutron poison into the moderator [that sustains the nuclear chain reaction]. There are several other safety features, which are important, because they allow the reactor to be built close to the population.

(…) Spectrum: Even though thorium has always looked attractive theoretically, why hasn’t the technology taken off yet? What are the impediments?

Sinha: There has been interest in thorium in some other countries because of its proliferation-resistant nature, but no other country had the problem of uranium supply like India. In other countries, the economics were not in favor of thorium, so uranium became the fuel of choice.

Spectrum: Why was thorium not economical?

Sinha: Thorium has a much lower neutron multiplication rate than plutonium, and hence you cannot achieve power levels in a reactor as high as with plutonium. When burned, thorium initially acts like a blotting paper for neutrons and keeps absorbing them. But this exercise also means it is getting enriched and converted into U-233, which will pay dividends later on. Once the energy generated has reached 40 000 megawatt-days per metric ton, U-233 starts contributing many more neutrons than what has been lost in absorption by thorium. So you tend to get economic benefits of thorium if you have a fuel that can run up to 40 000 MWd/t and beyond. But most early generation reactors had lower burn-up values of around 15 000 to 20 000 MWd/t. These have, of course, risen to about 40 000 MWd/t in recent time. So the world is now thinking of thorium.

Read more » BTW, Sinha obviously understands what the fuel supply/demand curve will look like in another couple of decades given the almost certain global growth rate of nuclear power:

(…) The supply of uranium is not perpetual. With the rate at which nuclear programs are growing worldwide, it is projected that by 2028 any new power plant will not have a guaranteed lifetime of uranium supply. So, one has to go for recycling as well as thorium. I don’t see any shortcut as such.

Toward the latter part of last century official- looking signs, like the one depicted on the front cover, sprouted on roadside poles in local government areas all around Australia. Their only real use was as a badge to identify the green political leanings of the governing body that erected them.

Thanks to Barry for the recommendations for Dr. Colin Keay’s work (these downloads now require a Scribd archive subscription):

Finally, I’d like to recommend a series of four pamphlets on nuclear energy, written a few years ago by Australian physicist Dr. Colin Keay. They’re all available now for free download, on the Scribd website, and range from 44 to 48 pages in length. The titles, in chronological order, are Nuclear Energy Gigawatts (2002; a compare-and-contrast of all major energy sources — nuclear, fossil and renewable), Nuclear Common Sense (2003; an clear and straightforward overview of nuclear energy and the nuclear fuel cycle), Nuclear Radiation Exposed (2004; a superb discussion of the fears and realities over radiation, with perhaps the best general discussion on hormesis I’ve yet seen), and Nuclear Energy Fallacies (2005). I’ll quote the blurb from that final one:

The author is a retired physicist and astronomer who, as an associate professor at the University of Newcastle for 24 years, taught nuclear and reactor physics to senior classes. These duties induced a deep suspicion of unsubstantiated claims on nuclear matters by persons and organisations promoting anti-nuclear agendas. In the interests of his students he began to identify and correct the disinformation, truth-twisting, false claims and plain lies that flood the media. As a scientist who has investigated phenomena governed by the inviolable laws of nature he finds it very difficult to understand why anti-nuclear activists refuse to believe the hard facts about energy, even when drawn to their attention on many occasions. In the interests of a better future for Australia it is imperative that disinformation and fallacies are dealt with accurately by presenting, as answers to them, the authentic verifiable facts surrounding nuclear electricity generation. He has no past or present connection with the nuclear industry.

Be sure to read these four pamphlets, and distribute the links to your friends and associates. This key information MUST be more widely appreciated by the public and policy makers, alike.

Australian scientist Luke Weston’s essay for Young Australian Sceptics is a must-read. At 6,000 words, this is a classic skeptics work: very careful critical thinking, well-referenced. Australian senator Ludlam’s anti-nuclear propaganda piece is left smoldering and twitching in the rubbish heap:

In this opinion piece, published in The Age on March 9, 2010, Australian Greens Senator Scott Ludlam asserts that “Nuclear (energy) does not have the answers we need”. There’s quite a bit in this piece that I don’t consider to be well informed, accurate and unbiased — so I thought I would take a bit of a look at it. When it comes to, for example, standing up to Conroy’s “You’re either with us, or you’re with pedophiles” rhetoric on Internet censorship, I’ll be the first to admit that Senator Ludlam does a fantastic job — however, when it comes to a discussion of nuclear technology, Ludlam gets it wrong.

In the comments Prof. Barry Brook endorsed Luke’s essay as follows:

Really excellent work Luke — this should be read widely. Indeed, I’d be happy to mirror this post on my blog if you so wish. The Greens really need to get rational and be willing to base their policies on scientific and engineering evidence. They are happy to do this for climate change, yet are no better than ‘deniers’ when it comes to the real-​​world practicalities of sustainable energy. I find that very sad, and it speaks volumes about the classic environmental movement, a few souls notwithstanding. (and remember, this is a view from a passionate conservation biologist, not some pro-​​industrialisation-​​at-​​all-​​costs wingnut)

I’ve taken note of Luke Weston’s comments around the web over the past couple of years. Oddly, this is the first time I have blundered into Luke’s extended original writing, which you can also find at the very least here: on his Nulllius in Verba blog. I do not yet know Luke’s credentials, but I already know that I wish I was as competent as he. Skeptics and serious energy-policy advocates will find his blogroll useful. Luke’s essays are published at an alternate blog Physical Insights. I’ve not yet figured out what he puts where, nor whether the two sites are mirrors of each other.

BTW, I must mention one of Luke’s shorty-posts that will certainly be in our “hall of fame”"

The argument from appeal to hatred of Howard:

Here’s a comment I received recently, in the context of talking about nuclear power.

“remember John Howard sold his soul to GW Bush, why would yoy [sic] trust anything he supports ?”
We see this occasionally in discussions about nuclear power. It’s the appeal to hatred of Howard, an argumentative technique, similar to a kind of contemporary derivative of the good old fashioned argumentum ad hominem, that goes something like this:

i) John Howard was actively interested in investigating the use of nuclear power in Australia, and was open to the idea.

ii) Of course, everybody obviously knows that Howard is literally pure immoral evil, and he feasts on babies, or something.

iii) Ergo, nuclear power is bad.

You sometimes have the persuasive appeal to hatred of the GOP or hatred of Bush, or something similar, it works in exactly the same way.

One comment I treasured re: Counter by ridicule:

John Howard was (and is) in favour of breathing. Is breathing evil?

(…) There are a number of ground rules. First, be patient and persistent — you’re unlikely to get instant pay-off, especially if someone has entrenched views. Second, don’t be confronting, aggressive or agitated – people almost inevitably go on the defensive if you act in this way. Third, don’t be smug or condescending — that’s another sure fire way to put people offside. Nobody likes a smart arse.

Okay, with those underpinning principles in place, let’s look at the method itself.

In short, it involves questioning, not arguing. The key is definitely NOT to feed people a whole lot of information — technical data, peer-reviewed scientific studies, charts, reference to expert consensus, etc. Been there, done that, does’t work. That’s only useful later, when people are genuinely open to finding out more about a topic (be it climate change, nuclear energy, whatever). Nope, instead you have to get out a little metaphorical chisel, and start chipping away slowly at their belief edifice, with ever deepening interrogation.

Among the comments to Barry’s essay you will find some very astute political analysis. I especially appreciated this note from the consistently wise and informed DV82XL:

The Socratic method is of course effective and it is of great value in those circumstances when it can be employed. But as others have pointed out, we often do not control the battleground to the extent we can chose the dialectic rules.I have become convinced that the only possible way we are going to swing majority opinion our way, is to hold our noses, and apply the methods of the opposition. This is not easy I know. Most of us came to hold the positions we do, because we we smart enough to look beyond the propaganda, and evaluate these subjects rationally. However we simply can’t expect the number of people we need to make this a populist issue to take the same path.

This is not to say the majority are stupid or dull. The problem is that many just do not have the time, or the inclination to background themselves to the depth we did, before we were able to start evaluating these subjects in detail.To reach them we have to be willing to get our hands dirty, because that is part of the political process. we need to bring the fight down on the street. we need a simple message, and we need simple, attainable objectives.

But most importantly we need to take control of the agenda. We cannot keep fighting defensively. Until we come to grips with the fact that all of the ‘problems’ with nuclear power are just bait that the other side is using to get us to fight on ground of their choosing and that they have framed these issues in such a manner that they can claim they cannot be solved to their satisfaction, we are going find ourselves working against our own cause. I know it’s not easy, the shear stupidity of these argument grates the nerves but we will never make any real progress if we keep trying to fight these by debate. What we need instead, and what has been sorely lacking in the nuclear debate is sales pitches that accentuate the positive aspects of nuclear power without restating the artificial problems that the antinuclear movement has thrown in our path.

From what I can see, the same holds true with the AGW deniers: they have armed themselves with some talking-points they know will make supporters see red, and will just keep repeating them no matter how often those point are shot down. That’s their key strategy – to create the illusion of a debate, where one doesn’t exist.

We really must stop and re-evaluate our overall strategy, if we want to get a significant amount of public opinion on our side.A new poll in the U.S. shows almost 70% of the population there is at least softening their attitudes to nuclear energy, by in large because of worries about AGW. This is not because of what pronuclear advocates have been doing, rather it is happening in spite of it, in my opinion. We must focus the message now on the benefits of nuclear energy, and let the antis expose themselves as the short-sighted Luddites that they are.

We must stop engaging with them, and start to talk to everyone else, and in terms that gets the message across with as little complexity, and as much fanfare as possible.

Another comment worth noting is the consistently wise source, John D Morgan:

Interrogation, or Socratic questioning, is a particularly useful approach in these sorts of contentious areas, for two reasons.

First, it enables communication by actually asking the other person what they think and why. Even if you disagree with someone, this can be a genuine and interesting enquiry, without being threatening or overbearing. It offers the possibility of a genuine engagement.

(…)

Tom Blees, author of the must read Prescription for the Planet, wrote a concise rebutta to this silly David Noonan op-ed, explaining the causes for the excess costs for financial risk (in the US):

As for the costs of the two AP-1000 reactors proposed to be built in Georgia, those costs of $6.5 billion per reactor can be compared to the first-of-a-kind AP-1000s being built now in China. The FOAK construction of any such major project is normally considerably higher than follow-on units, and indeed the Chinese expect that this modular reactor cost will soon be lowered to nearly half of what these first reactors are costing them, yet even the first ones are estimated to cost $1.9 billion each.

So why should they cost more than three times that much in the USA? No, it’s not because of low Chinese labor costs. Japan was able to build US-designed ABWR reactors for about $1.4 billion per gigawatt, and they import virtually all the materials and pay their workers very well, higher than the USA in general.

The truth is that much of the cost built into nuclear power plants in the USA is the cost of uncertainty because of past experience. No company can be sure that a bunch of protestors with signs might not shut down their project when it’s half-built, as happened too often in the past. That and other weaknesses in the US nuclear power arena inflate prices to these ridiculous levels (compared to Japan, China, Taiwan and South Korea).

It’s not a weakness in the economics of nuclear power per se. Otherwise we would see it everywhere. Are Australians doomed to create the same sort of dysfunctional climate for nuclear power in their own country? If so, then maybe they should stick to coal. But don’t pretend it’s because nuclear power plants can’t be built economically.

We can hope that Australia will not make the same mistakes.

Good news in the WSJ: there is serious electric utility backing for the B&W mPower reactor:

A new type of nuclear reactor—smaller than a rail car and one tenth the cost of a big plant—is emerging as a contender to reshape the nation’s resurgent nuclear power industry.

Three big utilities, Tennessee Valley Authority, First Energy Corp. and Oglethorpe Power Corp., on Wednesday signed an agreement with McDermott International Inc.’s Babcock & Wilcox subsidiary, committing to get the new reactor approved for commercial use in the U.S.

Three big utilities, Tennessee Valley Authority, First Energy Corp. and Oglethorpe Power Corp., on Wednesday signed an agreement with McDermott International Inc.’s Babcock & Wilcox subsidiary, committing to get the new reactor approved for commercial use in the U.S.

(…) For utilities, a small reactor has several advantages, starting with cost. Small reactors are expected to cost about $5,000 per kilowatt of capacity, or $750 million or so for one of Babcock & Wilcox’s units. Large reactors cost $5 billion to $10 billion for reactors that would range from 1,100 to 1,700 megawatts of generating capacity.

While large reactors are built on site, a process that can take five years, the mPower reactors would be manufactured in Babcock & Wilcox’s factories in Indiana, Ohio or Virginia and transported by rail or barge. That could cut construction times in half, experts believe.

Because they could be water-cooled or air-cooled, mPower reactors wouldn’t have to be located near large sources of water, another problem for big reactors that require millions of gallons of water each day. That could open up parts of the arid West for nuclear development.

The first units likely would be built adjacent to existing nuclear plants, many of which were originally permitted to have two to four units but usually have only one or two.

Down the road, utilities could replace existing coal-fired power plants with small reactors in order to take advantage of sites already served by transmission lines and, in some cases, needed for grid support. Like any other power plants, these small reactors could be easily hooked up to the power grid.

One of the biggest attractions, however, is that utilities could start with a few reactors and add more as needed. By contrast, with big reactors, utilities have what is called “single-shaft risk,” where billions of dollars are tied up in a single plant.

Another advantage: mPower reactors will store all of their waste on each site for the estimated 60-year life of each reactor.

New topic: the NuScale reactor gets a mention near the end

(…) Today, Energy Northwest is talking to NuScale Power Inc. in Corvallis, Ore., about a reactor design which measures 15 feet by 60 feet. Each unit would be capable of turning out 45 megawatts of electricity.

Jack Baker, Energy Northwest’s head of business development, says he was initially skeptical about small reactors because of the “lack of economies of scale.” But he says he now thinks small reactors “could have a cost advantage” because their simpler design means faster construction and “you don’t need as much concrete, steel, pumps and valves.”

“They have made a convert of me,” he says.

A November 15, 2007 Heritage backgrounder “Competitive Nuclear Energy Investment: Avoiding Past Policy Mistakes” provides a brief history of anti-nuclear activists and regulatory turbulence, counseling that, this time around, we must act to avoid those enormous costs.

Amory Lovins loves to say “there are no private investors interested in nuclear power”. That is manifestly untrue. But the fact that utilities and venture capitalists are investing in nuclear today is a miracle considering the massacre experienced by investors in the period 1970 through 1994 (when Clinton killed the Integral Fast Reactor). Lovins conveniently forgets to mention the true history:

(…) Investors hesitate to embrace nuclear power fully, despite significant regulatory relief and economic incentives.

This reluctance is not due to any inherent flaw in the economics of nuclear power or some unavoidable risk. Instead, investors are reacting to the historic role that federal, state, and local governments have played both in encouraging growth in the industry and in bringing on its demise. Investors doubt that federal, state, and local governments will allow nuclear energy to flourish in the long term. They have already lost billions of dollars because of bad public policy.

The United States once led the world in commercial nuclear technology. Indeed, the world’s leading nuclear companies continue to rely on American technologies. However, in the 1970s and 1980s, federal, state, and local governments nearly regulated the U.S. commercial nuclear industry out of existence. U.S. companies responded by reallocating their assets, consolidating or selling their commercial nuclear capabilities to foreign companies in pro-nuclear countries.

This paper reviews how overregulation largely destroyed the nuclear industry and why it remains an obstacle to investment in the industry. This dynamic must be understood and mitigated before the true economics of nuclear power can be harnessed for the benefit of the American people.

(…) Investors are right to be wary. Anti-nuclear activists have already exploited the authority of public institutions to strangle the industry. Now these same public institutions must be trusted to craft good public policy that reestablishes the confidence necessary to invite investment back into America’s nuclear industry. To be successful, the new policies must create an industry that does not depend on the government. They must mitigate the risks of overregulation but allow for adequate over sight while preventing activists from hijacking the regulatory process.

(…) Activists Gone Wild

Anti-nuclear groups used both legal intervention and civil disobedience to impede construction of new nuclear power plants and hamper the operations of existing units. They legally challenged 73 percent of the nuclear license applications filed between 1970 and 1972 and formed a group called Consolidated National Interveners for the specific purpose of disrupting hearings of the Atomic Energy Commission.

Much of the anti-nuclear litigation of the 1970s was encouraged by factions within the government.[4] Today, activist organizations determined to force the closure of nuclear power plants, such as Mothers for Peace, continue to use the legal process to harass the nuclear energy industry.

Activists went well beyond simply challenging nuclear power in the courts. On numerous occasions, demonstrators occupied construction sites, causing delays. For instance, in May 1977, the Clamshell Alliance led a protest that resulted in the arrest of more than 1,400 people for trespassing at the Seabrook plant site in New Hampshire.[5] In California, the Abalone Alliance adopted similar tactics and frequently blocked the gates of the Diablo Canyon power plant.[6]

A watershed victory for the anti-nuclear movement occurred in 1971 when a federal appeals court ruled that the construction and operating permits for a nuclear power plant violated the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969. As a result, util ities were required to hold public hearings before obtaining a permit to start a project.[7] This decision created a major opening in the process that anti-nuclear activists could exploit.

Changing the Economics of Nuclear Power

(…) In addition, the role of the judiciary cannot be overemphasized. Congress’s loss of enthusiasm for nuclear energy led to more aggressive regulation, and because jurisdiction over nuclear issues was divided among multiple committees, there was no unified congressional direction. The result was an expansion of costly and often unnecessary rules.

In June 2006, the NRC listed over 80 sources of regulation,[8] including over 1,300 pages of laws, treaties, statutes, authorizations, executive orders, and other documents.(…) Because the interpretation of NRC regulations was left to the discretion of individual NRC technical reviewers, each license application would often result in its own unique requirements.[9]

(…) This inconsistency increased costs, further sour ing Congress on nuclear power and leading to an endless spiral of legislation, regulation, and still more added costs. Between 1975 and 1983, 430 suits were brought against the NRC, leading to 2,349 proposed rules and regulations–each of which required an industry response.[10] The addi tional and unexpected controls created industry wide uncertainty and raised questions about the long-term economics of nuclear power. They also drove up capital costs.[11]

This was all done by the NRC without adequate information. The NRC recognized as early as 1974 that it was issuing regulations without sufficient risk assessment training or cost considerations. It did not even have a program to train employees in how to conduct a review using NRC guidance.[12] Yet the commission continued to issue regulation after regulation.

(…) The shifting regulatory environment gave rise to additional reviews from numerous public institutions.(…) between 1956 and 1979, the average construction permit review time increased fourfold. The average time required to bring a plant on line from the order date increased from three years to 13 years during a similar time period.[15]

(…) As more inspections and inspectors were required, delays often resulted from inadequate regulatory manpower. Workers had to spend inordinate amounts of time waiting for inspections rather than building the project. The oft-changing construction specifications also led to mistakes, which created further delays.Even after construction was complete, delays often continued. Delaying plant completion could cost up to $1 million per day.[17] Stories of costly and unnecessary delays litter the history of U.S. nuclear power. Plants such as the Shoreham nuclear plant on Long Island were completely built but never used because extremists succeeded in scaring the public and political leaders.

Overregulation Leads to a Declining Industry

Overall, regulation increased the cost of constructing a nuclear power plant fourfold. [19] Such cost escalation would have been justified if it had been rooted in scientific and technical analysis. Regrettably, it was largely a function of anti-nuclear activism, agenda-driven politicians, activist regulators, and unsubstantiated public fear. A total of $70 billion was added to the cost of nuclear reactors constructed by 1988, and this cost was passed on to the ratepayers. After 1981, the cost of constructing a nuclear power plan rose from two to six times, [20] which means that either consumers paid significantly more or utilities incurred losses if they did not charge market prices. Neither circumstance was sustainable.

(…) In total, $30 billion was spent on nuclear plants that were never completed,[26] which is more than the value of most of the companies that are considering new plant orders.

Small modular reactors will expand the ways we use atomic power.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu in the March 23, 2010 Wall Street Journal making a reasonably good argument for the importance of mass-manufactured small modular reactors:

(…) one of the most promising areas is small modular reactors (SMRs). If we can develop this technology in the U.S. and build these reactors with American workers, we will have a key competitive edge.

Small modular reactors would be less than one-third the size of current plants. They have compact designs and could be made in factories and transported to sites by truck or rail. SMRs would be ready to “plug and play” upon arrival.

If commercially successful, SMRs would significantly expand the options for nuclear power and its applications. Their small size makes them suitable to small electric grids so they are a good option for locations that cannot accommodate large-scale plants. The modular construction process would make them more affordable by reducing capital costs and construction times.

Their size would also increase flexibility for utilities since they could add units as demand changes, or use them for on-site replacement of aging fossil fuel plants. Some of the designs for SMRs use little or no water for cooling, which would reduce their environmental impact. Finally, some advanced concepts could potentially burn used fuel or nuclear waste, eliminating the plutonium that critics say could be used for nuclear weapons.

In his 2011 budget request, President Obama requested $39 million for a new program specifically for small modular reactors. Although the Department of Energy has supported advanced reactor technologies for years, this is the first time funding has been requested to help get SMR designs licensed for widespread commercial use.

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The image at left is the Cray XT Jaguar at ORNL (Oak Ridge National Laboratory). The Jaguar is just a wee bit more powerful than the supercomputers I worked on in the 1960s: the Jaguar is rated at 2.3 petaflops/s theoretical peak performance and 1.75 petaflops on the Linpac benchmark (that’s as of the latest 2009 upgrade to 6-core AMD Opteron processors — the system is regularly updated to keep up with Moore’s Law).

Lastly, the Nuclear Energy Modeling and Simulation Hub is likely to be a Very Big Deal – by leveraging Moore’s Law for reactor design and development. Surely the NRC regulators will exploit the hub to dramatically improve the efficiency of licensing.

Just as advanced computer modeling has revolutionized aircraft design—predicting how any slight adjustment to a wing design will affect the overall performance of the airplane, for example—we are working to apply modeling and simulation technologies to accelerate nuclear R&D. Scientists and engineers will be able to stand in the center of a virtual reactor, observing coolant flow, nuclear fuel performance, and even the reactor’s response to changes in operating conditions. To achieve this potential, we are bringing together some of our nation’s brightest minds to work under one roof in a new research center called the Nuclear Energy Modeling and Simulation Hub.

Similar computational modeling capabilities have enabled the design of Terrapower’s Traveling Wave Reactor.

Stewart Brand linked this IAEA 2000 study (PDF) in his new book Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto. Extensive online footnotes for the book are available (free).

The IAEA study is one of the more credible analyses comparing coal, nuclear, solar and wind.

Click the thumbnail at left for the summary comparision figure, which shows nuclear is by far the lowest source of emissions per kWh of electricity produced. Hydropower can be similar, but viable sites have pretty much all been exploited.

The article summarizes the sources of GHG for each electrical option, and the key factors that influence the life cycle valuation — such as capacity factor, which is very low for solar and wind power.

BIG CAVEAT: as the article explains, the GHG/carbon impact of the backup power required for intermittent power sources like solar/wind are NOT included in these FENCH calculations (Full Energy Chain). So the real-world solar/wind carbon footprints are closer to a blend of 50% natural gas + 50% solar/wind. Because in practice each unit of intermittent power must be backed up by an equal amount of firming power, for which utilities usually pick natural gas (hydro if it is available, but that is a very limited geography).