This Company Says The Future Of Nuclear Energy Is Smaller, Cheaper And Safer

[Eugene]

Source: NPR

This Company Says The Future Of Nuclear Energy Is Smaller, Cheaper And Safer

May 8, 2019 6:02 AM ET
JEFF BRADY

Nuclear power plants are so big, complicated and expensive to build that more are shutting down than opening up. An Oregon company, NuScale Power, wants to change that trend by building nuclear plants that are the opposite of existing ones: smaller, simpler and cheaper.

The company says its plant design using small modular reactors also could work well with renewable energy, such as wind and solar, by providing backup electricity when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining.

The 98 nuclear reactors operating in the country now are large because they were designed to take advantage of economies of scale. Many are at risk of closing in the next decade, largely because they can't compete with less expensive natural gas and renewable energy.

To respond to this dilemma, "we've developed economies of small," says Jose Reyes, chief technology officer and co-founder of NuScale.

Instead of one big nuclear reactor, Reyes says his company will string together a series of up to 12 much smaller reactors. They would be built in a factory and transported by truck to a site that would be prepared at the same time.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.npr.org/2019/05/08/720728055/this-company-says-the-future-of-nuclear-energy-is-smaller-cheaper-and-safer

[yonder]

1. Without knowing more about details especially waste management, I'd offer this:

What's easier to clean up, that picture frame that fell and cracked into 2 or 3 different pieces or the one that fell and shattered into shards scattered everywhere?

[hunter]

3. The carbon dioxide molecules from natural gas power plants are some really tiny shards...

... and they will end life on this earth as we know it.

[defacto7]

4. Which is easier to clean up....

A million tons of usless toxic solar panel waist in 25 years with nothing to replace it or a few still viable nuclear plants putting out exponentially more and cleaner power than those solar panels ever could?

Which is easier to clean up...

Thousands of poisoned men, women and children of third world countries mining the mineral components necessary to make the batteries and electrical generators for wind turbines and electric automobiles for pennies, or a few thousand useful well paid employees of highly productive nuclear plants?

The argument of safety and disposal of nuclear waste compared to the mass of toxic waste, environmental disaster and the human toll of producing solar and wind energy and power storage is statistically not in favor of renewables. The facts are disturbing but the science is clear.

And fossil fuel usage from all sources must be eliminated. The choices are limited.

[Finishline42]

7. Solar panel 'waist' in 25 years?

Haha

Typical warranty for a solar panel >>> 80% of rated output after 25 years. It's a straight line degradation of less than 1/2% per year due to exposure to elements. Remember there are no moving parts. So that's more than 50% after 50 years. I think most would accept that there will still be value in a solar panel after 50 years.

I seriously doubt that they are more toxic than the billions of cell phones that are replaced every year.

There's not much tech involved to keep them producing electricity either, not like any type of reactor.

[yonder]

9. I agree, our choices are limited and will get only worse because of us humans

pushing economic models of unrestrained and non-sustainable growth.

[OKIsItJustMe]

17. Breakthrough in PV module recycling

http://www.pvcycle.org/press/breakthrough-in-pv-module-recycling/

Breakthrough in PV module recycling
Posted on February 18, 2016

PV CYCLE achieves 96% recycling rate for silicon based PV modules

Brussels, February 18th, 2016 – PV CYCLE, the world’s first waste management program for all types of PV technologies, has today announced a new record in silicon based PV module recycling, achieving a 96% recycling rate.

The new process allows the recycling of silicon flakes, a combination of EVA laminate, silicon-based semiconductors and metals, in an economic and environmentally sound manner. The advanced process is currently being applied at one of PV CYCLE’s Europe-based recycling partners for silicon-PV modules.

“Our recent breakthrough in silicon-PV recycling is the result of both continuous improvement and intensive research and development along the value chain”, said Olmina Della Monica, Head of Treatment & Operations at PV CYCLE Association.

With today recycling rates of up to 90% for silicon based and up to 97% for non-silicon based PV modules, PV CYCLE’s Europe business has already been exceeding both industry and WEEE standards.

…

[OKIsItJustMe]

18. Solar PV Recycling Identified as Untapped Business Opportunity

(Please note: The National Renewable Energy Laboratory is a national laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy, — copyright concerns are nil.)

https://www.nrel.gov/news/program/2016/33703.html

Solar PV Recycling Identified as Untapped Business Opportunity

June 27, 2016

A new report, End-of-Life Management: Solar Photovoltaic Panels, highlights that recycling or repurposing solar PV panels at the end of their roughly 30-year lifetime can unlock a large stock of raw materials and other valuable components.

The report, co-authored by NREL, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and the International Energy Agency's Photovoltaic Power Systems Programme (IEA-PVPS), is the first time projections of PV panel waste volumes have been made to 2050.

"The technical potential of materials recovered from end-of-life solar PV panels could exceed $15 billion by 2050," said NREL Analyst Garvin Heath and co-author of the report. "Enabling policy frameworks and technology R&D are needed to address the challenge and will entail long lead times. Lessons learned that are summarized in this report can help guide the future effort. Supporting data collection and analysis are critical to providing information and insights necessary for strategic investments and effective, efficient and affordable end of life management strategies."

The global solar photovoltaic (PV) boom currently underway could represent a significant untapped business opportunity as decommissioned solar panels enter the waste stream in the years ahead.

The report estimates that PV panel waste, comprised mostly of glass, could total 78 million tons globally by 2050. If fully injected back into the economy, the value of the recovered material could exceed $15 billion by 2050. This potential material influx could produce 2 billion new panels or be sold into global commodity markets, thus increasing the security of future PV supply or other raw material-dependent products.

The report suggests that addressing growing solar PV waste, and spurring the establishment of an industry to handle it, would require: the adoption of effective, PV-specific waste regulation; the expansion of existing waste management infrastructure to include end-of-life treatment of PV panels; and the promotion of ongoing innovation in panel waste management.

Heath, who leads the IEA-PVPS group, says the group is preparing an additional publication that reviews global public- and private-sector trends in the technology development of PV module recycling.

If there's money to be made, someone will step forward to take advantage of it.

[Ghost Dog]

2. Small, distributed thorium reactors

would make sense... Safer, cleaner waste.

Uranium was chosen in the 1950s because a waste product is plutonium, wanted then for bombs & warheads.

[defacto7]

5. This !

[NNadir]

6. The uranium/plutonium cycle is infinitely sustainable. The thorium cycle is not.

Plutonium is not a "waste" product. It is the key to saving the world.

The U/Pu cycles is infinitely sustainable, because uranium has a high enough solubility in oxygenated seawater to be recovered economically.

I covered the marine uranium cycle here in considerable detail, with references: Sustaining the Wind Part 3 – Is Uranium Exhaustible?

Thorium, while a potentially valuable fuel, has much lower solubility in sewater and must be obtained from terrestrial ores. The main reason for using thorium is to assure long term availability of neptunium as a precursor for Pu-238, Pu-238 being the key to making plutonium unusable in nuclear weapons because of it's heat load.

Thorium is also useful for the short term in eliminating the need for enrichment for light water reactors, which dominate the nuclear industry now, but need not do so in the long term future. However when large quantities of Pu-238 are available, the decay product, U-234 can accomplish this as well.

I note that it is also possible to obtain Pu-238 from Am-242, via a Cm-242 intermediate. Since my generation was too stupid to reprocess used nuclear fuels, there is plenty of Am-241 in these used nuclear fuels, probably enough to denature all of the weapons grade plutonium now in existence.

I like thorium. It's a decent nuclear fuel. It's readily available from lanthanide mining tailings. But it is not superior to uranium as a fuel.

[Ghost Dog]

8. Thanks for that, NNadir. I have been doing some (light) reading in this area

Last edited Thu May 9, 2019, 10:44 AM - Edit history (1)

(eg. some of Asimov's dissertations[*]).

In general terms, what processes/reprocesses would we need to generate energy efficiently and as safely as possible while leaving little or preferably no waste requiring long-term secure storage?


[*] http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49819


Edit: For those interested, this is an extract from NNadir's site referenced above:

... According to Bardi, we face “peak uranium” just as we face “peak oil,” the latter being Bardi’s main focus, although my cursory impression is that, many, if not most “peak oilers” are also “peak uranium” types. As a practical matter, I am really neither of these. I acknowledge that the world might run out of oil, but unlike most “peak oilers” as I understand them, I’m unconcerned about its consequences. As far as I’m concerned, the sooner we run out of oil, the better. In my opinion, the replacement of oil is straight forward, which is neither to say “easy” nor to say “cheap” but nonetheless, in the golden age of chemistry, clearly technically feasible, and clearly desirable. My problem with petroleum has to do with the status of the main dump for its waste, this being the planetary atmosphere. A secondary concern has to do with the diversion of oil to make weapons of mass destruction, a routine practice on this planet, as well as the hysteria about oil as a cause of wars of mass destruction, followed by a concern about oil terrorism, which among other things, lead to the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City.

Part 2 of this series was all about “peak indium,” inasmuch as it is involved in so called “renewable energy,” which in some cases, indium in “CIGS” (copper indium gallium selenide) thin film solar being one, is running out of key materials before it has become a significant form of energy. And let’s be clear: After half a century of jawboning about the subject, and after the expenditure of trillions of dollars to try to make it work, so called “renewable energy,” excepting hydropower, is not a significant form of energy...

https://bravenewclimate.com/2015/10/19/sustaining-the-wind-part-3-is-uranium-exhaustible/

[hunter]

12. My own "peak oil" proclivities were optimistic, not pessimistic.

Peak oil was a good thing!

Alas, we know now there's plenty enough economically extractable oil and natural gas to destroy what's left of the earth's natural environment as we know it.

What really upsets me is that even when gas is used as "backup power" for solar and wind systems (which would not be economically feasible without gas) we still end up on the path to ruin. Practically speaking, gas rarely "backs up" wind and solar power systems, it is in fact the primary energy source.

The only way to quit fossil fuels is to quit fossil fuels and deal with the economic fallout as it comes.

I think many people, if they had to live in a 100% solar and wind powered economy, might suddenly overcome their objections to nuclear power, especially modern designs that have a much better safety profile than plants built in the twentieth century. Twentieth century nuclear plants were still better than coal, yes, including accidents and nuclear waste.

[Eko]

19. What?

"What really upsets me is that even when gas is used as "backup power" for solar and wind systems (which would not be economically feasible without gas)"
Why is it not feasible with Nuclear Energy?

[Ghost Dog]

20. It _is_ feasible with smaller-scale, safer, cleaner distributed

nuclear energy... built out quickly..

[Eko]

21. Why

is it not feasible with large scale existing nuclear plants?

[Ghost Dog]

22. They are very expensive and take a long time to build and eventually decomission.

Then there is the waste storage and/or recycling problem.

This, imo, is a good moment in time to rethink from first principles Nuclear Energy; then design and build out fast.

This doesn't mean we shouldn't also be building out renewables, especially imo hydro and tidal power. And consuming less and generating fewer waste products generally. And above all we should be nurturing environmentally-, nature-sensitive mindsets.

For resilience reasons it also makes sense to decentralize, but interconnect, national grids, and make them more 'intelligent' ie. responsive to varying demand and other events.

[NickB79]

24. They don't adjust quickly to fluctuating energy demand

It takes a long time to ramp output up and down in big thermal plants like nuclear and coal when wind and solar vary based on the weather.

A small reactor could probably respond much faster.

[progree]

25. We load-followed with large coal (700+ MW) units just fine

Last edited Sun May 12, 2019, 08:45 PM - Edit history (1)

No reason that I heard of that we couldn't with our nukes either, just that we didn't need to or want to, because the minimum total system demand exceeded the total output of our nukes, and they were the cheapest fuel cost resources, so they always ran at full load other than when they were down for refueling or other maintenance.

speaking of the NSP system of Minnesota (now part of Xcel) in 1970s - 1980s. The nukes were Prairie Island and Monticello. I was in system operations for many years providing operational engineering support that included determining what units to run and how much (unit commitment, economic dispatch ... )

EDITED TO ADD 841p ET:

France does a lot of load following with their nuclear -- at one time (in 2004) 88% of their electricity was produced by nuclear.

[NNadir]

14. Reprocessing technology...

Last edited Fri May 10, 2019, 04:55 AM - Edit history (1)

...is a vast technology that one might have difficulty covering in a multi-volume text without significant compromise on completeness.

I have been studying it for 30 years whenever I have time to fit it in.

I can say this: The current commercial and government approaches are all based on solvent extraction, the chief process being the Purex Process which is actually 1950's technology. It generates a lot of chemical waste, which is reflected by the Hanford Tanks in Washington State.

Hanford was a weapons grade plutonium plant. One thing about weapons grade plutonium is that the fuel must be irradiated a short time to prevent the build up of Pu-240 in particular, and other problematic plutonium isotopes. This means that the plutonium is very dilute in solid solution and one has to use vastly more chemicals to extract and purify it. This is not a good thing.

I think the Purex, and for that matter related solvent extraction procedures in general, such as Truex, Urex, etc, -which depend on access to solvents, some of which are obtained from dangerous petroleum (although in theory they could be made from carbon dioxide and hydrogen) - need(s) to be retired.

Although the French have done better with it in commercial settings, it's still too messy.

I believe that it is possible to use hybrid systems involving in line processing of liquid nuclear fuels - potentially including but not necessarily including molten salts - involving things like distillation (converting the problem at Fukushima and Chernobyl into a useful tool), electrochemical separation and various types of liquid ion selective membranes for which an infinite set of possibilities exist. This kind of work has been pioneered by Jim Weichart at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

The use of high temperature techniques for metal fuels is called pyroprocessing and was developed mainly for use with the IFR in the 1990's. It was a better process overall, but was defunded because, um, stupid people of that time considered dangerous natural gas to be a "clean" fuel. It's no such thing, but there's no accounting for people's willingness to slip into ignorance through clever marketing. It seems to me that there are many variants to the pyroprocessing approach that modern chemistry and materials science can further improve.

I believe in fast neutron spectra and fast separations to allow for the recovery of non-radioactive fission products of great value, radioactive fission products (also of great value, particularly for the remediation of very problematic environmental problems such as organohalide pollution of the soil, water and atmosphere) as well as important actinides.

These technologies have all been explored if one looks. One has to look, though, and I have done so, again for 30 years. Tens of thousands, more likely hundreds of thousands of papers have been written on the topic, and I certainly have thousands of them in my files although I cannot claim to have read all of them in detail.

All of this is feasible.

Basically though, I favor "breed and burn" reactors which are not refueled for significant fractions of a century, for many decades. Depending on the fission product of interest, under these conditions, many will, for better or for worse, be transmuted into other elements.

[StevieM]

11. Maybe the best thing to do is to build support for both.

In other words, work to bring about a positive attitude towards nuclear power in general. That might involve promoting both uranium and thorium as viable options.

What do you think of this idea to build small modular reactors instead of larger nuclear plants?

[NNadir]

15. I agree. I'm not against thorium's use.

There is enough to last for many thousands of years.

However there is not enough to last hundreds of thousands or millions of years in a recoverable form, which is not true of uranium. The world functionally cannot run out of uranium, even if we wanted to do so.

For many years I resisted small modular reactor ideas. I changed my mind and concede that I was wrong on that score.

My most recent reactor designs have considered very small almost portable reactors. Some of these were run in the 1950's and 1960's, albeit with primitive technology, as part of pilot test programs in the golden age of nuclear reactor development.

Many of the scores of modern views of these technologies which people are attempting to commercialize build on this kind of work, with the "breed and burn" modular reactors of the Terrapower and NuScale designs being exceptions and somewhat more novel. For various reasons I'm not necessarily entirely fond of these types from what I understand, but they're OK.

The worst nuclear reactors, and I include the RBMK, are superior to the best dangerous fossil fuel energy, because dangerous fossil fuels kill millions of people every year with air pollution in normal operations, and nuclear power technologies have not killed ten thousand people over close to 70 years of operations.

The worst problem with dangerous fossil fuels, which dwarfs even the fact that they kill more people than died in World War II every decade or so, is climate change.

[delisen]

27. There is no way to guarantee the long term safety of nuclear

[NeoGreen]

10. There is only one answer to our future energy supply conundrum...

...we will use less.

Much, much less, whether we want to or not.

Nothing we do will save our current level of energy use life styles and expectations.

[Ghost Dog]

13. Yes. Using less energy; producing less junk; consuming fewer resources; polluting little.

This is number one.

[NickB79]

23. Once the global population starts to die off by the billions

Due to food and water shortages in 50 years, that should cut down on energy use as well.

[Crazyleftie]

26. Nuclear power is dangerous

and not cost effective without huge government subsidies, has the potential to destroy the planet.

[hunter]

28. Fossil fuels ARE destroying the planet.

Including natural gas, which makes the current wind and solar industry possible.