By Kennedy Maize
Energy Secretary Steven Chu can’t serve two masters, only one: the White House. Chu is going learn that truth, in an ongoing battle between DOE and the Office of Management and Budget. Predictably, the showdown between the entrenched bureaucracy and industrial interests that Chu serves daily and the political administration he serves ultimately has come over nuclear energy research. Chu will lose, unless the White House wants him to win.
The Energy Daily has reported that, in the traditional federal budget kabuki that characterizes this time of the year, Chu has objected to the “pass back” budget document from the White House’s OMB. The pass back, which came last December, was the OMB’s final version of the DOE budget that the administration will present to Congress sometime in February.
Chu’s lament is that OMB doesn’t look kindly on DOE’c spending desires for non-traditional nuclear technologies. In particular, according to The Energy Daily account, based on DOE documents almost certainly leaked to the newsletter by the agency, Chu is irritated that OMB doesn’t support the agency’s requests for “fast reactor” research (we’re talking liquid sodium cooled, fast neutron breeder reactors), and for small, modular light-water technology.
The “fast reactor” funding is the crux of the dispute, according to my sources with close ties to OMB. The nuclear power industry, led by GE-Hitachi, is pushing a revitalization of sodium-cooled fast neutron breeder reactors, touting their ability to process nuclear waste into plutonium fuel. GE-Hitachi have long been touting their machine, dubbed PRISM, aiming for substantial DOE R&D support. That orchestrated campaign has included an entirely credulous article in a recent issue of Esquire magazine, touting liquid metal fast breeder reactors as the next great thing in nuclear power. That, of course, is bogus.
The Energy Daily story noted, “Chu’s letter did not explain the rationale for OMB’s proposed nuclear R&D restrictions, which are surprising on several fronts and which appear likely to harden perceptions among industry officials and others that the administration is fundamentally anti-nuclear.”
Let’s deconstruct that run-on sentence. Surprising? On what fronts? Sodium-cooled reactors using fast neutrons to breed plutonium have been a dream of the world nuclear industry for over 50 years. They have never worked at a commercial scale. Just reference Detroit Edison’s Fermi 1 plant, Japan’s Monju, France’s Superphenix. All failures. There’s no surprise in the OMB decision that it has better things upon which to lavish federal dollars.
Liquid sodium coolant has great thermal properties, but it’s nasty as a snake to deal with in terms of chemistry. It’s corrosive, and it catches on fire and explodes if it leaks from reactor coolant systems. That’s what happened at Monju. Leaks also shut down Superphenix, touted as the exemplar for future breeder reactor plants.
The U.S. Congress more than 25 years ago pulled the plug on the Clinch River (Tennessee) Breeder Reactor. It was a wise decision to kill an outrageously expensive project with little hope of success. Ironically, the Democratic Carter administration proposed to kill the project in 1977, but a Democratic Congress refused. When Republican Ronald Reagan became president, he pushed the project in a big way. Congress, despite a Republican Senate led by Tennessee’s Howard Baker, terminated Clinch River in late 1983. I covered the whole fight on a daily basis, writing for Congressional Quarterly and The Energy Daily.
Despite the breeder’s failures, the nuclear industry hasn’t given up. Steven Chu has fallen into a trap that has ensnared many of his predecessors. He’s apparently concluded that his job is to represent the views of his industry constituents. His decision, says The Energy Daily, could “harden perceptions among industry officials and others.” So what? That’s not who Chu works for. His boss lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Obama was elected by a majority of the American voters. Obama hired Chu.
Is the Obama administration “fundamentally anti-nuclear?” I doubt it, although there are elements of the administration for whom that shoe fits. But ask Exelon’s John Rowe if Obama is “fundamentally anti-nuclear.” And how does opposition to spending on low-priority, low potential payoff R&D constitute fundamental opposition to nuclear power? Simply put, that analysis by folks in the industry is brainless, or self-serving, or both.
When he picked Chu for DOE secretary, Obama was buying a reputation to burnish his new administration – Nobel laureate in physics – and an unknown quantity. The guy had never played in big-time energy politics, which may have been a good thing. But now he’s exposed to the real world, not the Alice in Wonderland environment of the DOE national labs.
So far, Chu has chosen to make the fight for DOE’s traditional constituents, going up against OMD Director Peter Orszag, who’s every bit as smart as Chu and has a lot more heft in terms of administration politics. Chu’s move is no surprise, but unwise.
My bet is on Orszag. In these disputes between DOE secretaries and OMB directors over budget submissions and spending priorities, OMB has won every time.
Steven Chu is right, and Kennedy Maize has been badly misinformed about fast-reactor technology. Sodium is non-corrosive. It does not explode if there is a leak. There was no explosion when sodium leaked at Monju, nor was anybody hurt, nor was any radioactivity released, nor was the reactor damaged. Because sodium is not used at high pressure, leaks are slow and easily detected.
I can find no record of a disastrous sodium fire, although there was a bad sodium release at a solar (not nuclear) plant in Spain where several workers were injured.
With metal-fueled, sodium-cooled fast reactors (Integral Fast Reactor — IFR), uranium becomes a truly inexhaustible energy resource. And it consumes the long-lived waste from today’s thermal reactors.
SuperPhenix (oxide fueled) was finally working very well when it was shut down for political reasons. No commercial-scale IFRs have yet been built, so the next order of business should be to do a commercial-scale demo to settle a few residual technical questions bearing on economic feasibility.
Whenever someone calls a nuke “brainless” it deserves a response. I remember a time in the United States when nuclear engineers were mentioned in the same kind of geek awe as “rocket scientists”.
It is certainly not brainless to recognize that atomic fission has the answers to many of the challenges that face both the US and the rest of the world. It is a proven source of emission free power that is clean enough and reliable enough to power submarines in the most remote portions of the globe – up to and including under the ice at the North Pole.
That particular technological feat was accomplished with a compact, light water reactor plant, exactly the kind of reactor plant that the renowned ECONOMIST, Peter Orszag has told Steven Chu that he should not support by providing technical licensing assistance to the overworked NRC. How short sighted and brainless is that when there are at least two highly qualified vendors that are within months of turning their design license applications in? (The two companies are NuScale, a venture capital funded start up that has a former PG&E president as its CEO and a former NRC regulator as its chief technical officer, and B&W, a company that has been building light water nuclear power plants for about 50 years, starting with the NS Savannah and including the USS George Bush.)
It seems to me that the “brainless” participant here is not the Nobel Prize winning physicist. Unless, of course, his sin is failing to recognize that nuclear energy has a real political problem in Washington – it threatens the power and profitability of coal, oil and natural gas. With enemies like that, who can succeed, even with a roster of natural allies that includes every energy consumer in the country?
The article says “Sodium-cooled reactors using fast neutrons to breed plutonium have been a dream of the world nuclear industry for over 50 years. They have never worked at a commercial scale.”
Wow. Talk about re-writing history! You totally ignore the BN-600 because it proves your statement is completely false. This reactor has been operating COMMERCIALLY for 30 years now and at 560 MWe, it is definitely at SCALE. It is one of Russia’s best performing reactors. The Chinese have ordered fast reactors from the Russians.
Similarly, the IFR operated flawlessly for almost 30 years before being shut down for political reasons. The only reason it wasn’t scaled to commercial size was political, not scientific.
The US is so far behind the curve on fast reactors it isn’t funny.
And if our technology is such a “waste of money” then why is it that the Russians want it so badly?
Without fast reactors, we run out of fuel for our existing nuclear reactors within decades. So by avoiding fast reactors, we just create yet another catastrophe.
So shall we root for Chu and try to regain energy leadership? Or shall we root for Orszag so we (along with the rest of the world) can buy our new nuclear power plants from the Russians?
FELLOW NUCLEAR ENERGY SUPPORTERS—
Please do not get strangled in details. The fundamental issue is U.S. National policy. OMB, apparently reflecting the President’s wishes, is stalling the renaissance of nuclear power and research–and small reactors–and GNEP–and basic research and nuclear education.
Lots of evidence supports this perception; and it all leads to the question WHY????
Conjecturing on this leads one deep into personal philosophy and the major elements of an international power struggle and a national political struggle. Whatever options may be selected, it appears obvious that the administration is only giving lip-service [if that] to the USA taking a leading position within the nuclear world; and against Chu’s apparent desires. The answer appears to be in the ballot box—not in espousing the assorted technical and common sense virtues that have been expressed countless times over the past few decades.
A 4 power conference [USA, Russia, China, & India] focusing on the multitude of benefits deriving from oil freeing, job making nuclear power would certainly help.
rej 1-16-10
That four-power conference idea should also include Japan and South Korea, at a minimum, for these countries have all expressed a wish that the USA would share metal-fueled fast reactor technology with them, and several of them are pursuing it on their own. Our own scientists figured this stuff out back in the eighties and nineties, but then shut down the IFR project just when it was going to make the transition to commercial scale. Why? Politics. Sharing this technology and using that leverage to strike an agreement on global design standardization would be an accomplishment we should be striving for.
The condescending tone of this article is frankly insulting to anyone who understands the technology being discussed therein, ironic since the author betrays his ignorance of it (and/or his mendacity) at several points, a couple of which were mentioned in George Stanford’s comment. (If you’d like to read an explanation of IFR technology suitable for the general public, you can find it here: tinyurl.com/cwvn8n) Maize’s sarcasm is hardly of any use in shedding light on the subject. And talk about baseless assertions, which litter this piece like a hillbilly highway, here’s a choice one: Orzag is “every bit as smart as Chu.” Oh really? And you know this how? Not knowing Orzag, I’d put my money on Chu, thank you very much.
Maize’s eagerness to burnish his credibility by mentioning his previous reporting on these topics in the past says nothing for his credibility at all. If one were to dig back into those old articles (an endeavor I’m certainly not willing to waste time on) I would bet we’d see as little seriousness and as much inaccuracy as he so proudly displays here.
Fail.
Here is another interesting excerpt from the article that I may have missed on the first pass:
“The guy had never played in big-time energy politics, which may have been a good thing. But now he’s exposed to the real world, not the Alice in Wonderland environment of the DOE national labs.”
I have been working in Washington, DC for the past 8 years. It is, by no stretch of the imagination, a “real world” where decisions get made based on facts and genuine analysis. On the other hand, the field where Dr. Chu earned his PhD is based on measurements, reality, and reproducibility. That is not the case for Dr. Orszag, who earned a PhD in the dismal “science” of Economics where right and wrong are anyone’s guess.
Washington is a great place for politics and perceptions, but perceptions do not keep people warm, do not keep the computer networks running, do not keep goods flowing, and do not keep us from importing vast quantities of energy fuels from countries that spend the money on weapons to kill our people.
There is no disagreement from me that the national labs have lost their way over the years, especially since 1974. That was the year when the Atomic Energy Commission was torn apart, left adrift for several years and finally combined with a lot of competing energy sources in 1977. Ever since, the labs have been drifting with mission statements that changed with the political winds. Their real mission should be to enable the deployment of improvements to the only energy source that has proven that it can take market share from coal, oil and gas without continuing subsidies.
The world moves on with fast reactor technology as the US government sits dormant on yet another front. China, Japan, Russia, and India are all forging ahead with fast reactor research, construction, and operation — well understanding that fast reactors multiply uranium reserves by between 5 and 20 while reducing waste toxicity by orders of magnitude. Additionally, thanks to the excellent thermal properties of sodium, fast reactors can use what’s called passive safety better than any other reactor, relying on physics rather than humans. They address three major shortcomings of standard nuclear power.
This is another example of the US losing the lead in an important technology. Can’t stay on top forever, I guess!
I don’t regard any technology developed by the Soviet Union, including its liquid metal fast reactors, as commercial. There is simply no economic data to verify that claim. Still, there are no breeders in commercial operation today. I don’t care about the explanations about Monju or Superphenix. The fact is, they are not in operation, have not operated for years, and have no prospects for future operations.
Face reality, folks. There is no pending shortage of uranium fuel that justifies breeders, nor any economic imperative. It’s an economic and technological dead end.
Maize is annoying, but on the uranium-shortage issue he is right, and Kirsch wrong. Slip a uranium prospector a thousand dollars and he’ll find a tonne — a high-grade tonne — of the stuff for you*. That’s like giving petroleum seekers a penny to find a barrel, and having them come through.
That is why known high-grade reserves have recently been increasing so much faster than consumption. In fact they have been increasing faster, in thermal terms, than oil has been being burned.
* Averaging all prospecting results in recent years over money spent.
Hi..I was not aware of this!! Thanks for posting!! good informative blog!! Keep updating!
The true tragedy of this whole melodrama at the DOE is that Dr. Chu is charging in alone and unafraid, and very few are there to aid him because NOBODY in main stream America realizes what’s at stake! Only the horde he’s fighting against.- the fossil fuel “mafia” as I call them- knows why this funding line is so damn important- it represents the only true threat to their kingdom . The S-PRISM represents the final step in unleashing the full potential of the nuclear renaissance– by answering the “Waste problem”. Uranium shortage is not the issue in Americans minds, SUSTAINABILITY is, period. That’s the buzz all about the countryside, and rightfully so. Gen III+ rollout coupled with S-PRISMs (which have none of the BS problems extolled in this article) represents a complete picture… a picture that scares the hell out of coal & nat gas companies (and oil to a lesser extent).
Three decades of entrenched propaganda slinging from the “mafia” and their unwitting puppets “the anti nuke peanut gallery” is very tough to reverse.
What really concerns me is the apparent disconnect between the President’s statement of needing to answer the nuclear waste question, and people directly below him seeking to destroy just such an answer. The DC lobby money runs way too deep for my taste.
Ken Maize said- “I don’t care about the explanations about Monju or Superphenix. The fact is, they are not in operation, have not operated for years, and have no prospects for future operations.”
WOW, in all seriousness, were you jumping up and down in true tantrum fashion as you typed this eloquent rebuttal???
That doesn’t even resemble a mature response. I’m glad NASA didn’t hire you as their PR spokesman:
“I don’t care about the explanations about Challenger or Columbia. The fact is, they are not in operation, have not operated for years, and have no prospects for future operations.”
If that hurt your feelings so be it, blindly ignoring the warnings of engineers and scientists who know what the hell they’re talking about is what led to those disasters as well. And before you even think about going there, they were ignored at Chernobyl too.
Coal kills tens of thousands Americans every year because misinformative articles such as these sway folks to withdraw support from solutions such as the S-PRISM. These polluting coal mafias create slums out of entire swaths of Appalachian states, destroy any chance at a diversified economy in these regions, then claim to be the saving grace by swooping in at the last second as the only job in town. Nice- cancer all around to the economically forlorn.
Just wanted to make sure you were aware of the consequences of your actions.
Times have recently changed. Intentions appear to be scrap significant vestiges of GNEP; avoid use of Hanford multi-billion capital facilities; keep nuclear power from being the #1 alternative energy source. Let us move nuclear energy [including medical needs] to a much higher position on the national priority table. rej 3-2-10
Laying waste to vast knowledge bases and incredibly valuable nuclear R&D infrastructure is shortsighted – at best. China, India, S Korea, Japan, France & Russia are moving forward with commercial fast reactor development. GNEP’s recycle and burner reactor were looking to close the nuclear fuel cycle and provide options for the nation’s geologic repository debacle.
Uranium 235 is a scarce resource. The USA relies on Russia’s downblended U for 50% of our N power fuel. Other U comes from Canada & Australia, etc. Some U.S. states have banned U mining. Use of scarce resources demand recycle and beneficial use of DU.
I found this article contrived possibly to disparage a very valuable high-technology competitor.