nuclear-news

Small Modular Nuclear Reactors – with a small chance of actually happening

Critics cite the lack of any track record on cost or safety for small modular reactors, plus concerns over the nation’s lack of a permanent place to store used nuclear fuel. No one has built a commercial small modular reactor yet.

Tri-Cities interests hope to attract mass production of small modular reactors to the never-finished Energy Northwest reactor site at the Hanford nuclear reservation.

Small nukes: a long-term prospect for Tri-Cities?, by John Stang, Crosscut, 18 Aug 15   “……..economics and proximity to buyers will probably be the deciding factors on where NuScale will build both individual small modular reactors and its manufacturing plant, said McGough and John Dobken, spokesman for Energy Northwest (a consortium of Washington public utilities, including Seattle City Light).

The initial cost estimate to take the project from design to the first Idaho Falls reactor is roughly $1 billion. In recent years, the deep-pocketed global giant Fluor Corp. bought NuScale.

NuScale, Energy Northwest, the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (a Utah version of Energy Northwest) and the U.S. Department of Energy facility at Idaho Falls have agreed to build the first such reactor in Idaho by 2023. NuScale plans to submit its design to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by late this year, hoping for a green light about 40 months later.

Critics cite the lack of any track record on cost or safety for small modular reactors, plus concerns over the nation’s lack of a permanent place to store used nuclear fuel. No one has built a commercial small modular reactor yet, although supporters contend they are similar to the small reactors that operate on U.S. Navy ships.

Energy Northwest’s interest in getting its own small modular reactor will depend on if and when Energy Northwest’s member utilities will need extra power. At this time, the consortium does not expect that need to grow for the next few years, Dobken said.

Another wrinkle is that a 1981 state law requires that a public utilities group conduct a public ballot on any significant energy generation project that is likely to increase utility rates. Consequently, a public vote stretching from Seattle to Kennewick could lurk in the future of a small modular reactor project if Energy Northwest’s rates might be affected.

Chuck Johnson of the nuclear watchdog organization Physicians for Social Responsibility voiced concern about a scenario in which a single 50-megawatt reactor module would fall beneath the ballot threshold of the 1981 Washington law, and the addition of 50-megawatt modules one at a time could keep a state project below that public-vote benchmark.

“We’re big on the technology and believe the technology should be made available,” Dobken said.

Such a manufacturing plant would need about 1.9 million square feet of space, employ about 1,000 people and would aim to produce 36 to 52 modules a year, McGough said. NuScale is looking at Hanford, the Southwest, Utah and several Midwest, Southern and Eastern seaboard states as potential manufacturing sites.

“The site is still up in the air. … It depends on who shows up with the orders first,” McGough said……http://crosscut.com/2015/08/small-nukes-a-long-term-prospect-for-tri-cities/

August 24, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | technology