Naval Reactors Should Be Empowered to Show the Way Again

[Marlin]

Naval Reactors Should Be Empowered to Show the Way Again


http://theenergycollective.com/rodadams/303516/naval-reactors-should-be-empowered-show-way-again

[Fermi2]

If Naval Reactors shows the way every commercial plant in the country will go Fukushima. WHAT an idiot.

[Gamecock]

If Naval Reactors shows the way every commercial plant in the country will go Fukushima. WHAT an idiot.

I know the author....

He is not an idiot, but he is wrong in this case.  Rod never worked at NR so he has a view of "the program" that is not reality. 

[Fermi2]

Anyone who would write something like that is an idiot in my mind.

[Marlin]

   I have to disagree with both of you. The industry is locked into light water reactors to redirect the technology may take an entity that is not locked into that mindset. Thorium, small modular reactors and breeders are not on the front burner for the commercial industry and the DOE is not independent enough to steer to new nuclear options with its mandates to find new green alternative power sources. I won't argue the fine points but the general concept of giving the Navy (military/NASA) the mission to innovate and turn over technology (of mutual benefit) to the private sector is sound and has been in practice for a very long time (i.e. GPS, materials sciences, internet). Last I heard the Navy is funding Robert Bussard's Polywell fusion reactor.

[HydroDave63]

If Naval Reactors shows the way every commercial plant in the country will go Fukushima. WHAT an idiot.

Just the BWRs 

[Fermi2]

   I have to disagree with both of you. The industry is locked into light water reactors to redirect the technology may take an entity that is not locked into that mindset. Thorium, small modular reactors and breeders are not on the front burner for the commercial industry and the DOE is not independent enough to steer to new nuclear options with its mandates to find new green alternative power sources. I won't argue the fine points but the general concept of giving the Navy (military/NASA) the mission to innovate and turn over technology (of mutual benefit) to the private sector is sound and has been in practice for a very long time (i.e. GPS, materials sciences, internet). Last I heard the Navy is funding Robert Bussard's Polywell fusion reactor.

Small MOdular Reactor. Non Economical. Thorium. No viable design exists.
Fact: The only reason Rickover built the first Commercial reactor was he would not give up control of the Uranium. Other better designs existed. As with many things Rickover it was a retrograde step.

[GLW]

As long as corporations have the liability of spent fuel, radwaste, etc. and their associated half lives there is no business model which supports nuclear generation,...

Without reprocessing or repositories it's just stupid or bullheaded,....financially,...

At the end of the day if you cannot find a garbageman or cannot find the regulatory framework to be your own garbageman then any multi-generational commitment to commercial nuclear electricity investment is fraught with financial unknowns,...



(sic)

[Marlin]

Small MOdular Reactor. Non Economical. Thorium. No viable design exists.
Fact: The only reason Rickover built the first Commercial reactor was he would not give up control of the Uranium. Other better designs existed. As with many things Rickover it was a retrograde step.

   Rickover was at the top of Maslow's hierarchy he did things for ego he wanted to be the father of nuclear power not just the father of Navy nuclear, he stood in front of congress many times testifying on the safety of commercial and Navy reactors. As for economy you may be right for traditional thinking but that is what the authors point is, remove the entanglements of the current commercial industry and hand development to an outside entity. SMRs would put nuclear in the realm of an individual facility such as Paducah for Silex or Oak Ridge  for ORNL and Y-12 as the paper below outlines.  As for thorium that is the point of the recommendation as well, to design and put a new technology on the table.


http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/Economic%20Aspects%20of%20SMRs.pdf

[hamsamich]

Anybody with enough power to do what needs to get done would be an improvement.  GLW is right.  The reason this business in failing in my opinion is self imposed by all levels of politics in this country.  Sure it is being exacerbated by natural gas prices and single unit-low MW inefficiencies but not being allowed to take your billion dollar garbage to the dump then catching the blame for that by media hogging ultra environmentalist panty wastes makes it an impossible game to win.

[thenuttyneutron]

Small MOdular Reactor. Non Economical. Thorium. No viable design exists.
Fact: The only reason Rickover built the first Commercial reactor was he would not give up control of the Uranium. Other better designs existed. As with many things Rickover it was a retrograde step.

http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/advanced/prism.html

http://cybercemetery.unt.edu/archive/brc/20120621235818/http://brc.gov/sites/default/files/comments/attachments/acrs_14_without_backups_copy_c_boardman.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_II

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-PRISM

We did have a viable design.  Some of the biggest challenges/problems with nuclear technology are political problems.  The IFR was killed just a few years before the project's completion.

[HydroDave63]

   Rickover was at the top of Maslow's hierarchy he did things for ego he wanted to be the father of nuclear power not just the father of Navy nuclear, he stood in front of congress many times testifying on the safety of commercial and Navy reactors. As for economy you may be right for traditional thinking but that is what the authors point is, remove the entanglements of the current commercial industry and hand development to an outside entity. SMRs would put nuclear in the realm of an individual facility such as Paducah for Silex or Oak Ridge  for ORNL and Y-12 as the paper below outlines.  As for thorium that is the point of the recommendation as well, to design and put a new technology on the table.

http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/Economic%20Aspects%20of%20SMRs.pdf

What entanglements? If anything, the industry probably needs MORE endoscopy from the NRC, when we consider the recent events of non-excellence ala Davis-Besse vessel head, Millstone's safety concerns/retaliation problem of 90's, non-conservative design assumptions in S/G replacements etc.  Handing off oversight to an outside organization would require years of learning curve to understand what they were looking at, plus the hiccups of change to regulatory environment.

Handle the waste issue AND end the $22/MWh tax credit for wind, and you would have had at least one or two more nuclear plants east of the Mississippi staying open today.

[Marlin]

What entanglements? If anything, the industry probably needs MORE endoscopy from the NRC, when we consider the recent events of non-excellence ala Davis-Besse vessel head, Millstone's safety concerns/retaliation problem of 90's, non-conservative design assumptions in S/G replacements etc.  Handing off oversight to an outside organization would require years of learning curve to understand what they were looking at, plus the hiccups of change to regulatory environment.

Hmmm... I don't think I was talking about the regulatory environment, the commercial nuclear industry in general resists change. Remember the seven worst words in business, "We have always done it that way". Light water reactors or some variant have been the innovations of the of the commercial nuclear juggernauts and they still seem resistant to change. Liquid metal and breeder reactors have shown promise in the past but they do not fit in a PWR/BWR construction/service industry. Reprocessing and waste are an issue but that is the advantage of newer technologies including the traveling wave reactor that would essentially burn high level waste. The champion of the traveling wave reactor is not from the nuclear industry.


“Nuclear innovation stopped in the 1970s.”  Bill Gates

Nuclear discussion starts about 2:55 discussion on limitations of solar and wind before that.

http://www.the-weinberg-foundation.org/2013/03/11/bill-gates-excellent-case-for-new-types-of-nuclear-power/

[Fermi2]

Nothing smaller than 1000 MW will ever be economical. That isn't political. that is financial fact. Having individual reactors at Paducah et al would increase their operating costs. They already had one of the lowest rates in the nation. Setting up their own infrastructure increases cost.

A Liquid Metal Reactor is STILL in the same boat if it can't put out 1000 MW.

[GLW]

Nothing smaller than 1000 MW will ever be economical.....

A lucid point although I would have thought it was an obvious one considering today's necessity for economy of scale to offset indigenous cost obligations for security, training, insurance, long term liability and emergency planning fiducials,....

maybe not,....(obvious that is),....

[Marlin]

Nothing smaller than 1000 MW will ever be economical. That isn't political. that is financial fact. Having individual reactors at Paducah et al would increase their operating costs. They already had one of the lowest rates in the nation. Setting up their own infrastructure increases cost.

A Liquid Metal Reactor is STILL in the same boat if it can't put out 1000 MW.

That would be CW and that is part of problem and one of the points of the article. I might add that the magic 1000 level could be reached with 4 or 5 modular reactors that would put a facility in the range and capability of smaller companies as much of the cost of a plant comes from original capital cost that must be recouped. A quickly built, easier to license, lower maintenance cost, and longer life span of a SMR would put that magic 1000 MW site in the reach of more utilities. The first could be up and running providing revenue quickly while the next is being trucked in as factory built components and so on until the appropriate size is reached.

Economic Comparison of Different Size Nuclear Reactors

Fast forward to end (I recommend reading the whole thing)

5. CONCLUSIONS
Smaller and larger reactors address different markets and there are many market related factors
favoring one versus the other, independently from their capital cost.
When, however, they are competing on the same market the capital cost is not a discriminator
and the two types of nuclear plants can be practically equivalent under this respect. The so-called
economy of scale is not applicable “as is” and it is just one of many factors.
This paper presents only the beginning of the evaluation of the competitiveness of SMRs and
expanded, more detailed investigations will follow.   

http://www.uxc.com/smr/Library/Economics/2007%20-%20Economic%20Comparison%20of%20Different%20Size%20Nuclear%20Reactors.pdf

[GLW]

.....The so-called economy of scale is not applicable “as is” and it is just one of many factors.
This paper presents only the beginning of the evaluation of the competitiveness of SMRs and
expanded, more detailed investigations will follow....

I'm not so sure your example or the author's premise focus on some deeply fundamental aspects,...

Your example seems to envision a 1000Mw site versus a 1000Mw unit,....

IIRC, units are licensed, not sites,...

There are economies of scale when licensing a single> 1000Mw unit at one site versus four to five smaller units at one site,...

Your example would have to change the regulatory framework and would have to convince the general public that the regulatory oversight and stakeholder SME's could safely ride herd on four to five reactors with the same level of resources currently required to run herd on one reactor,...

That seems to be unlikely to me but,......good luck with that!!!!!

[Marlin]

IIRC, units are licensed, not sites,...

There are economies of scale when licensing a single> 1000Mw unit at one site versus four to five smaller units at one site,...

The new design is suppose to make the license for each much easier and quicker.

There are economies of scale when licensing a single> 1000Mw unit at one site versus four to five smaller units at one site,...

The paper on economies of scale did not address the multiple sites that was incite I got from other articles I read in the past.

Your example would have to change the regulatory framework and would have to convince the general public that the regulatory oversight and stakeholder SME's could safely ride herd on four to five reactors with the same level of resources currently required to run herd on one reactor,...

That seems to be unlikely to me but,......good luck with that!!!!!

New designs would allow for new regulatory framework as much of the work would be done in a "factory" not on the site that is also part of thinking outside the box.

[Marlin]

   So far most responses seem to be from conventional wisdom gained in the current nuclear industry and I believe that is the authors point. The next big evolution in nuclear (or power generation in general but now I am off topic) may even come from a teenagers garage causing a new direction that will cause the death of the current domination of the  T-Rex in this nuclear Jurassic period.

"But that is just my opinion, I could be wrong." D.M. 

 

 

[GLW]

I understand what you have presented for previous posts, yet, you keep iterating the same points for differing perspectives, it's like a one mantra wallops all exercise,...

The new design is suppose to make the license for each much easier and quicker....

Licenses are not a one time deal, there are always licensing departments for the life of the license, these departments can be small or large, but the rigor of the technical oversight and maintenance of a license requires resources, resources for every single license over the lifetime of the license, supporting four or five smaller unit licenses on a single site just seems to me to naturally need more people than a single license for a single large unit site, perhaps I'm wrong, perhaps licensing for these new reactors will not have the fiducial obligation for rigorous technical safety and compliance reviews that the current reactors have and everybody will be good with that,...

I just find that to be a hard sell with Joe Q public,...

The paper on economies of scale did not address the multiple sites that was incite I got from other articles I read in the past.

You are bringing that aspect in as a supporting part of the overall perception you are boosting, regardless of it's source it is being used to buttress the validity of your perspective as a mutually supportive position in evidence,...

You are using it as part of the deck you are dealing, so it's weakness in regards to the specific detail regarding economy of scale with large single unit sites versus smalller multi-unit sites is a valid weakness,...

Economy of scale is true, it's not necessary to be financially viable, but it is true, and it does increase margins, and the current trend of the MBA's is much more about huge margin in your short term pocket than it is about smaller but steady margins over a lifetime of work or a career,...

I'm just saying,...

....New designs would allow for new regulatory framework as much of the work would be done in a "factory" not on the site that is also part of thinking outside the box.

Lots of folks are thinking outside the box, it's getting Joe Q public and his elected representatives to think outside the box,,...

This all happened once before and it was called "Atoms for Peace",...

There is a laundry list of interesting little design exercises which were put on the grid to ascertain the best commercial reactor business models;

Dresden 1, Elk River, Fermi 1, Fort St. Vrain, Hallam, Humboldt, Indian Point 1, Parr, Pathfinder, Piqua, Saxton, Shippingport, SRE and VNC were all operated and shuttered with varying degrees of viability and success.

And then, concurrent with a nascent movement which began mushrooming around March of 1979, the public began to cool it's enthusiasm for the notion of "a reactor in everybodies garage" and I'm not convinced that they are convinced that paradigm should be revisited,...

As I typed earlier,.... good luck with that,....

[Marlin]

I understand what you have presented for previous posts, yet, you keep iterating the same points for differing perspectives, it's like a one mantra wallops all exercise,...



Licenses are not a one time deal, there are always licensing departments for the life of the license, these departments can be small or large, but the rigor of the technical oversight and maintenance of a license requires resources, resources for every single license over the lifetime of the license, supporting four or five smaller unit licenses on a single site just seems to me to naturally need more people than a single license for a single large unit site, perhaps I'm wrong, perhaps licensing for these new reactors will not have the fiducial obligation for rigorous technical safety and compliance reviews that the current reactors have and everybody will be good with that,...

I just find that to be a hard sell with Joe Q public,...

You are bringing that perspective in as a supporting part of the overall perception you are boosting, regardless of it's source it is being used to buttress the validity of your perspective as a mutually supportive position in evidence,...

You are using it as part of the deck you are dealing, so it's weakness in regards to the specific detail regarding economy of scale with large single unit sites versus smalller multi-unit sites is a valid weakness,...

Economy of scale is true, it's not necessary to be financially viable, but it is true, and it does increase margins, and the current trend of the MBA's is much more about huge margin in your short term pocket than it is about smaller but steady margins over a lifetime of work or a career,...

I'm just saying,...

Lots of folks are thinking outside the box, it's getting Joe Q public and his elected representatives to think outside the box,,...

This all happened once before and it was called "Atoms for Peace",...

There is a laundry list of interesting little design exercises which were put on the grid to ascertain the best commercial reactor business model;

Dresden 1, Elk River, Fermi 1, Fort St. Vrain, Hallam, Humboldt, Indian Point 1, Parr, Pathfinder, Piqua, Saxton, Shippingport, SRE and VNC were all operated and shuttered with varying degrees of viability and success.

And then, concurrent with a nascent movement which began mushrooming around March of 1979, the public began to cool it's enthusiasm for the notion of "a reactor in everybodies garage" and I'm not convinced that they are convinced that paradigm should be revisited,...

As I typed earlier,.... good luck with that,....

We will have to agree to disagree though in your long somewhat eloquent dissertation you have reinforced my point on CW and lack of movement. There are plenty of forward looking people not stuck in the past.

   So far most responses seem to be from conventional wisdom gained in the current nuclear industry and I believe that is the authors point. The next big evolution in nuclear (or power generation in general but now I am off topic) may even come from a teenagers garage causing a new direction that will cause the death of the current domination of the  T-Rex in this nuclear Jurassic period.

"But that is just my opinion, I could be wrong." D.M. 

 

 

Full circle 

[jams723]

We will have to agree to disagree though in your long somewhat eloquent dissertation you have reinforced my point on CW and lack of movement. There are plenty of forward looking people not stuck in the past.

Full circle 

The reporting and inspection requirement are the same for a smaller plant as a larger plant.  A SMR will be subject to the same inspections as a 1200 megawatt unit.

[HydroDave63]

The reporting and inspection requirement are the same for a smaller plant as a larger plant.  A SMR will be subject to the same inspections as a 1200 megawatt unit.

Definitely agree!

NRC-type regulatory requirements push the optimal spot away from micro sites to large MW single site.

The current NERC NUC-001 standard, along with coming enhancements to CIP that will make people's heads spin (but truly necessary IMHO) are going to make owning high importance/high capacity transmission and switchyards expensive to construct and maintain, so you will want smaller numbers but larger capacity facilities.

The downside of large reactors is that someone somewhere has to carry operating reserve equal to the MSSC. In other words, if you really could build a single 5000 MW reactor, you'd have to back a LOT of other generators down, such that on a loss of the 5000MW reactor, you could ramp all the others committed to reserves up within 10 minutes. IMHO, this is why the AP600 design was floated first, since you could carry full operating reserves for it on a single 2x1 combined cycle natgas station of the size most commonly being built ( 2 GE Frame 7 types to a HRSG, or 2 Siemens 501s ). Reserve issues bring the needle back to the Goldilocks zone of no single unit too large, but multiple units.

If SMR's ever do happen, which I doubt, then by the time all the investment is made in containment, security and new first-of-kind components, they should build one more thing: on-site reprocessing. Otherwise, this technology will be killed by ISFSI constipation.

[GLW]

.....on-site reprocessing. Otherwise, this technology will be killed by ISFSI constipation.

how to get around the NNPA?!?

[HydroDave63]

how to get around the NNPA?!?

Bring in the same inspectors that need to go to Fordow, Esfahan, Arak and Parchin, and let them do their monitoring thing.

[Marlin]

The reporting and inspection requirement are the same for a smaller plant as a larger plant.  A SMR will be subject to the same inspections as a 1200 megawatt unit.

Much of the work would be done off site changing the initial licensing and shortening the process thus lowering the cost. A lot of cost comes from the initial front end for nukes. New designs would incorporate easier to operate and maintain plants lowering regulatory interface even if they are the same.

[Marlin]

   Do any of you remember EBR II it had passive safety systems and had onsite reprocessing. Chernobyl and non proliferation killed it. They turned off the coolant pumps and it shut itself down with no other safety systems or operator action to prove it worked. Noone has said anything to convince me that entrenched industry thought does not have to be bypassed to progress nuclear power as most of the responses are entrenched industry thought reinforcing my agreement with the author of the article that started this thread.

[HydroDave63]

The choir is convinced. It is the rest of the country that we need to evangelize.

[Marlin]

The choir is convinced. It is the rest of the country that we need to evangelize.

 

[GLW]

.... entrenched industry thought....

how about regulatory compliant experience?!?!?!

you can pine for a simpler, kinder paradigm for the next twenty posts on this thread but it's not like the posters and users here just love all the layers of paper and regulation they deal with everyday,...

it's just what it is, some high thinking design team is not going to be able to roll back 10,000 pages of regulation because if those pages are not rolled back their latest gen nuclear baby reactor will be stillborn,...

the resistance is not with the industry professionals,...

we're just cautioning you with reality,...

the fight is in the bureaucracy of the regulators and the anterooms of the special interests, the no nukes is gud nukes crowd,...

I've been waiting for the nuclear renaissance since I EAOS'd in 1988,...

that's 25 years, just about the same time frame between the Nautilus and TMI Unit 2,....

know how many commercial nukes we had on the grid in '55?!?!?!

none,...

'79?!?!?!

67, and that was after an additional 14 had come up on the grid , done their thing and then been shuttered down back off the grid, that would be 81 commercial nukes brought onto the grid in those 25 years,...

how 'bout since '88?

5 or so brought on, 15 or so taken off,...

ain't happening, been a whole lot more taken off line than brought on line since '88,... a whole lot more,....

you thinking that's because of "entrenched industry thought"?!?!?

please, how about more like "unfriendly for business expansion regulatory paradigm",...

but, believe it as you will, it's our own monolithic, stuck in the box attitudes preventing the renaissance which will keep us employed,...

next thing you'll be telling me is that laser focused fusion will be here next year,...  

OBTW - there are lots of ex-NR persons in our business,.... they populate INPO in force,....

oh yeah,..almost forgot,...(sic) for beercourt

[Marlin]

how about regulatory compliant experience?!?!?!

you can pine for a simpler, kinder paradigm for the next twenty posts on this thread but it's not like the posters and users here just love all the layers of paper and regulation they deal with everyday,...

   I think you missed my point, simplified construction, operation, and maintenance make the regulatory interface smaller even with the existing rules. I don't see a way around reprocessing without new rules but the traveling wave reactor would not be reprocessing  as much as a nuclear incineration. New designs create new paradigms that do not fit old ideas. Simple test reactors and small university reactors also come under the same rules and regulations but clearly they do not suffer the same scrutiny as the commercial behemoths as there is not as much to scrutinize. Fewer systems lower consequences of each small reactor make a difference when compared to the overly complex 1000MW juggernauts that have handled the evolution of regulation by adding systems and complexity to old designs.

   "That's just my opinion, feel free to make it yours"  Phil Williams  

 

[GLW]

We will have to agree to disagree though in your long somewhat eloquent dissertation you have reinforced my point on CW and lack of movement. There are plenty of forward looking people not stuck in the past....

unfortunately those people do not include Westinghouse or Ameren Missouri,...

Westinghouse backs off small nuclear plants

http://www.post-gazette.com/business/2014/02/02/Westinghouse-backs-off-small-nuclear-plants/stories/201402020074

[Marlin]

unfortunately those people do not include Westinghouse or Ameren Missouri,...

Westinghouse backs off small nuclear plants

http://www.post-gazette.com/business/2014/02/02/Westinghouse-backs-off-small-nuclear-plants/stories/201402020074

From farther down in the article:

   "Westinghouse still is interested in the development of SMRs, he said, and the company will eventually file an application with the NRC as the market dictates. But for now it is spending its energy in parts of the company with greater economic potential."



    Apparently we will still have to agree to disagree.   

[GLW]

From farther down in the article:

   "Westinghouse still is interested in the development of SMRs, he said, and the company will eventually file an application with the NRC as the market dictates. But for now it is spending its energy in parts of the company with greater economic potential."



    Apparently we will still have to agree to disagree.   

Yeah, but my hand is already showing deuce aces,...

from 1989:

...Some say it will take 10 to 20 years to get from an electrode in a beaker to a commercial power plant. ''It's not just a matter of putting wires into test tubes and putting them into boxes,'' said R. D. Haun Jr., chief scientist at the Westinghouse Research and Development Center in Pittsburgh, who said he was nevertheless ''skeptically optimistic.'' He noted that while the first atomic pile was built in 1941 to demonstrate nuclear fission, a different atomic process, it was not until 1957 that the first nuclear power plant was built....

...And American companies have shown a reluctance to work on long-term developments with uncertain payoffs, such as in solar energy and superconductors....

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/04/28/business/beating-a-path-to-fusion-s-door.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

[Marlin]

Yeah, but my hand is already showing deuce aces,...

from 1989:

...Some say it will take 10 to 20 years to get from an electrode in a beaker to a commercial power plant. ''It's not just a matter of putting wires into test tubes and putting them into boxes,'' said R. D. Haun Jr., chief scientist at the Westinghouse Research and Development Center in Pittsburgh, who said he was nevertheless ''skeptically optimistic.'' He noted that while the first atomic pile was built in 1941 to demonstrate nuclear fission, a different atomic process, it was not until 1957 that the first nuclear power plant was built....

...And American companies have shown a reluctance to work on long-term developments with uncertain payoffs, such as in solar energy and superconductors....

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/04/28/business/beating-a-path-to-fusion-s-door.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

   Doesn't this simply reinforce my original contentions that government intervention is necessary to move nuclear forward in non traditional designs?

 

[Fermi2]

Yeah, but my hand is already showing deuce aces,...

from 1989:

...Some say it will take 10 to 20 years to get from an electrode in a beaker to a commercial power plant. ''It's not just a matter of putting wires into test tubes and putting them into boxes,'' said R. D. Haun Jr., chief scientist at the Westinghouse Research and Development Center in Pittsburgh, who said he was nevertheless ''skeptically optimistic.'' He noted that while the first atomic pile was built in 1941 to demonstrate nuclear fission, a different atomic process, it was not until 1957 that the first nuclear power plant was built....

...And American companies have shown a reluctance to work on long-term developments with uncertain payoffs, such as in solar energy and superconductors....

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/04/28/business/beating-a-path-to-fusion-s-door.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

It appears they could have used a history lesson. The Atomic Energy Act was not amended until late 1954 to allow civilian reactors then it took nearly 2 years to have the legislation and design Criteria in place. Given it wasn't legally feasible until 1956 I think the civilians did pretty good.