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The demise of the pebble bed modular nuclear reactor

The demise of the pebble bed modular reactor Bulletin od the Atomic Scientists By Steve Thomas | 22 June 2009Article Highlights * After years of investment, South Africa has abandoned its plan to develop a fleet of electricity-generating pebble bed modular reactors (PBMR), once hyped as the future of nuclear power. * Problems with the PBMR aren’t new; a 2008 German report chronicles Germany’s own problems developing the reactor since 1967. * China, still developing PBMR-based power reactor designs, has taken a slow approach and it is unclear if they have run into problems as well. In February 2009, Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) Ltd., an eponymously named South African company announced a major change of strategy. After 10 years of development it said it was abandoning plans to build a full-size 165-megawatt-electric demonstration plant. Furthermore, PBMR Ltd. said it will try to redirect its future plans for the reactor from electricity generation toward thermal applications, such as coal gasification and water desalination. With government funding set to run out next year, the company will have to close if new funding is not found…………………The company’s actions instead point to potentially deeper problems with the reactor design itself. If this is the case, there are bound to be implications for the only other major pebble bed reactor research program left, which is in China and based on the same technology……………………..South Africa took a particularly aggressive approach, believing that it could develop a commercial-size PBMR design without even operating a prototype. If the PBMR is proved to be fundamentally flawed, as indicated in the Jülich report, South Africa’s $980 million investment in the project will be seen in hindsight as wasteful, one that the country, plagued with many more pressing and basic problems, could ill afford………………….Chinese nuclear decision-making is rather opaque to the West and if the problems identified in the Jülich report do cause the Chinese to think again about their plans for the pebble bed modular reactor, it is unlikely that there will be a public announcement comparable to that by PBMR Ltd. The project will just quietly slip out of Chinese plans.

The demise of the pebble bed modular reactor | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

July 1, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized