nuclear-news

U.S. Department of Energy rushes to build advanced new nuclear reactors, Science By Adrian Cho. 20, 2020 In the latest effort to revive the United States’s flagging nuclear industry, the Department of Energy (DOE) aims to select and help build two new prototype nuclear reactors within 7 years, the agency announced last week. The reactors would be the centerpiece of DOE’s new Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, which will receive $230 million this fiscal year. Each would be built as a 50-50 collaboration with an industrial partner and ultimately could receive up to $4 billion in funding from DOE….But even some proponents of nuclear power doubt the program will spur construction of new commercial reactors as long as natural gas and renewable energy remain relatively cheap. “New builds can’t compete with renewables,” says Robert Rosner, a physicist at the University of Chicago. “Certainly not now.”

……the U.S. nuclear industry has struggled for decades. Its fleet now comprises 96 reactors, down from 113 in the early 1990s. More reactors are slated to close and the nuclear industry’s share of the electricity supply is expected to start to fall. In spite of that dreary picture, engineers have continued to develop designs for advance reactors they say would be safer and more efficient.

The Trump administration wants to breathe new life into the nuclear industry. In April, DOE announced plans to increase domestic uranium mining and establish a national uranium reserve. And it will put $160 million of the $230 million Congress provided for the reactor demonstration program toward selecting two designs to be built posthaste, most likely at DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory (INL).

The program aims to incubate ideas that aren’t already well along in development, says Ashley Finan, a nuclear engineer and director of the National Reactor Innovation Center at INL. For example, DOE is already working with NuScale Power to develop the company’s factory-built small modular reactors, which means it isn’t eligible for the new program. The money also won’t go to the development of a reactor called the Versatile Fast Neutron Source, which DOE has already begun to prepare to build at INL and which will serve as a facility for materials science research.

Some observers say the initiative is unrealistic. DOE officials may struggle to identify the most promising of the many disparate designs, predicts M. V. Ramana, a physicist at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. “You’re be comparing apples, oranges, grapes, plums, everything,” he says. The 7-year time frame also strains credulity, Ramana says, especially as DOE wants the reactors to pass licensing reviews at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which typically takes several years. “It’s absurd to think they can do it.”

… Ramana questions whether the U.S. nuclear industry can be saved. Although issues of dealing with waste and the public’s apprehension about radioactivity remain, the biggest issue confronting the nuclear industry is the high capital cost of new reactors, which can be $7 billion or more. In deregulated markets, utility companies cannot afford such capital expenses, which is why cheaper renewables may ultimately replace nuclear energy, he says. “This is a sunset industry,” he says, “and the sooner you recognize that the better.”

……. Ramana questions whether the U.S. nuclear industry can be saved. Although issues of dealing with waste and the public’s apprehension about radioactivity remain, the biggest issue confronting the nuclear industry is the high capital cost of new reactors, which can be $7 billion or more. In deregulated markets, utility companies cannot afford such capital expenses, which is why cheaper renewables may ultimately replace nuclear energy, he says. “This is a sunset industry,” he says, “and the sooner you recognize that the better.” https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/us-department-energy-rushes-build-advanced-new-nuclear-reactors#