By Kennedy Maize
Washington, March 11, 2010 — As reported in POWER NEWS, the Obama administration has formally pulled the plug on the Yucca Mountain, Nevada, project to store spent commercial reactor fuel, the latest in more than a 50-year record of failure on the part of the federal government to fashion a way to deal with reactor fuel at the end of its useful life. The announcement is also the formal obituary of the 1982 (and 1987-amended) Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
I say, “good riddance.” The nuke waste act was a legal and technical abomination. It was both coercive (eat this, Nevada) and feckless (science? don’t need no stinkin’ science). Yucca became dead dump walking when Harry Reid of Nevada became Senate Majority Leader. The election of Barack Obama nailed down the lid on the Yucca Mountain coffin.
So what’s next in the seemingly endless search for a way to make nuclear waste disappear? Some, including a Republican congressional candidate from New Mexico, are advocating use of the Carlsbad, N.M., salt beds, where the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Project is now storing defense wastes, as an easy answer.
But that doesn’t work. WIPP, which I have referred to in the past as the “wasteful, idiotic pilot project,” is designed to handle transuranic wastes — long-lived, man-made isotopes that are atomically hot, but not thermally alive. WIPP is not designed to handle spent fuel rods, which are not only pumping out radioactivity, but spewing a lot of thermal energy. WIPP isn’t configured to handle conventional heat, and salt has a problem. It melts, and it dissolves in water. Oops!
Others have revived the long-dead nuclear industry panacea of reprocessing. This involves chopping up spent fuel rods, chemically treating them to removed reactor-grade plutonium, and using that as nuclear fuel in sodium-cooled “breeder” reactors that produce more fuel than they use. Here’s the problem: Enriched uranium is cheap. Reprocessed plutonium would be far more expensive than the uranium fuel. On top of that, the remaining liquid chemical residue is nasty stuff of the Superfund variety.
What’s more, as a report from the International Panel on Fissile Materials recently concluded, hopes for breeder technology “are not merited by the dismal track record to date of such sodium-cooled reactors in France, India, Japan, the Soviet Union/Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.” The report notes that Adm. Hyman Rickover, the late father of the nuclear Navy, observed that breeders are “expensive to build, complex to operate, susceptible to prolonged shutdown as a result of even minor malfunctions, and difficult and time-consuming to repair.”
What to do? In my judgment, nothing. Let spent fuel remain at reactor sites, in storage judged safe by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Kick the spent fuel can down the road.
LOL Stimulus Money
The Department of Energy has announced that it is willing to offer $100 million in stimulus funds to bring “green” technologies, whatever that means, to the commercial market. DOE has invented what it claims is a clone of the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), calling it DARPA-E.
This, boys and girls, is a joke. DARPA has a multi-decade track record of success, including (eat your heart out, Al Gore) the Internet. DOE has a multi-decade track record of R&D wheel-spinning (recall the hype over geothermal heat pumps and water heaters). Mostly, that’s because DARPA’s research had a real focus on defense-related needs, with little focus on commercial viability. The commercial aspects came later, in the private sector.
DOE’s research objectives are mostly hopeful hand-waving. For example, here is what Energy Secretary Steven Chu allegedly said, reported in a DOE press release: “This is about unleashing the American innovation machine to solve the energy and climate challenge, while creating new jobs, new industries and new exports for America’s workers.”
Huh? Parse that carefully and you get what has been characteristic of the Obama administration, all fluff and no meat. The statement is entirely anodyne. All of the initiatives — health care, financial reform, climate change — the administration claims, achieve multiple goals, not susceptible of quantification. They are the Big Rock Candy Mountain, complete with cigarette trees and lemonade springs where bluebirds sing.
Also, anybody who believes that Chu actually wrote those news release words, please raise your hand. You are voted off the island. Energy secretaries say what their handlers allow them to say and write for them. Chu is a very smart and amusing guy (he was great on NRP’s “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me”) but he doesn’t say anything about administration policy that isn’t scripted by the White House.
And how does this stuff qualify as “stimulus?” Name the jobs created, the businesses revived, the new industries. Bogus. You can’t do it.
Gaseous Reactor Money
Along those lines, DOE has also announced $40 million in R&D money for a nuclear reactor technology that has been around for five decades, sucked up hundreds of millions of federal money, and failed to demonstrated anything approaching commercial viability. Failed nuclear reactor technologies never die at DOE. They just smell that way, and continue to rake in money, despite the odor.
The energy agency says it will split the $40 million between Westinghouse in Pittsburgh and San Diego-based General Atomics for work on what it calls, with no sense of shame, history, or irony, the “Next Generation Nuclear Plant” or NGNP. Please, this is a last generation technology: high temperature gas-cooled reactors. Looks good on paper, doesn’t work on the ground.
In making the award to keep alive a technology that has never proven commercial, Chu allegedly said: “This investment reflects President Obama’s commitment to building the next generation of nuclear reactors that will create thousands of jobs and supply the clean energy to power our economy. It’s time for America to recapture the lead in the nuclear energy industry and lay the foundation for a stronger, cleaner, and more competitive economic future.”
I doubt that Chu ever said these words, let alone even reviewed them before the press release hit cyberspace.
Helium-cooled, high-temperature reactors have been a pipe dream of the nuclear industry since the early 1950s. The promise has always been been dual-purpose: electricity and high-temperature steam for industrial purposes.
General Atomics developed a 40 MW pilot reactor at the Philadelphia Electric Company’s (now an Exelon unit) Peach Bottom site in eastern Pennsylvania in the early 1970s. The plant ran well, and that led to several orders for scaled-up commercial reactors (including one at the Tennessee Valley Authority, which, in those days, would buy anything nuclear, no matter how far-fetched). The only HTGR that actually got built was Public Service Co. of Colorado’s 300-MW Fort St. Vrain plant. For a number of reasons, the plant, which operated sporadically between 1977 and 1992, failed. The utility’s successor, Xcel Energy, converted it to a natural gas plant. Sic transit gloria HTGRs.
What are the odds the DOE money will revive this technology? Slim just left the room.
Kennedy – one of the reasons that Gulf General Atomics did not succeed in actually building the 10 or so HTGR’s that were ordered as follow-ons to Ft. St. Vrain is that its chosen capital partner got “cold feet.” At least that is the official story. As an energy historian and established energy industry skeptic, I believe that the real reason was that the chosen capital partner for the building projects recognized that the HTGR’s, like all of the other reactors that were being built at a total rate of 10 or so per year during the period between 1963 and 1973, were formidable competitors in its primary business of selling heat.
Time to end the mystery – the capital partner that Gulf General Atomics chose to help it build nuclear power plants was Royal Dutch Shell. That company bought into GGA in 1973 and changed the name to General Atomics. Within a year of that event, the order cancellations started rolling in.
I have it from pretty good sources that as soon as Shell came on board, they sent their sales teams out into the field in an attempt to get the orders cancelled at the lowest possible cost. Some have told me that Shell did that because their engineers determined that the design was too immature to build, but I have a nagging suspicion. Why wouldn’t they have figured that out BEFORE spending the money to buy into the company. Is DUE DILIGENCE a new concept in the business world?
Some of the above can be found on Wikipedia, but the interpretation of history is my own.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics
Rod,
Interesting post.
The GA history is convoluted. Gulf Oil (remember them, based in Pittsburgh, Pa.?) bought the company from General Dynamics in 1967. Shell’s nuclear group bought half of the company in 1973. Gulf bought out Shell’s interest in 1982, and Gulf vanished from the face of the earth in 1984, with a hostile takeover by Chevron. Chevron sold GA to the Blue (not Blues) brothers, Neal and Linden, in 1986.
As for the short selling of the technology, Ft. Saint Vrain was a disaster — mostly owing to the plumbing and construction quality. I’ve got no idea about the due diligence in all those transactions, although I suspect you are in the ballpark. My experience with parsing deals is that due diligence is mostly a joke. Executives seem to get enamored with the deal, and details (maybe this technology sucks?) get hand-waved away.
Thanks for the post,
Ken
Ken – Yes, I do remember Gulf. For some reason, Dad preferred to purchase gas at Gulf stations when we were driving around the country on vacation in the 1960s and early 1970s. We learned early in life to look for the orange ball when Dad said it was time to fill up the tank.
I guess I should have remembered that the Gulf name is not as familiar to other people; I used it several times in my first comment to emphasize the relationship between what was – at the time – a major OIL company and a nuclear energy company that had developed a promising technology that fizzled out without much commercial development AFTER being purchased by two large oil companies.
I remain very optimistic about the technical potential for high temperature gas reactors based on the TRISO fuel particles developed as an international effort for the German AVR program, the General Atomics proposed reactors, the Japanese HTR, the South African PBMR, and the Chinese HTR-10 and follow-on HTR-PM (there are two 250 MWe HTR-PM reactors under construction that should start operation by 2013).
I should disclose that I founded a company called Adams Atomic Engines, Inc. in 1993 to develop relatively small (1-50 MWe) closed cycle gas turbines using high temperature pebble type reactors with TRISO particle based fuel. Our technical difference (advantage?) compared to all others is that we have decided that nitrogen gas (N2) is a more logical working fluid than helium. It is nearly as inert, but it behaves like air in a compressor and turbine. That characteristic makes a lot of the development tasks easier and less costly.
The technology is something that most definitely does not suck, but there are some challenges that still need to be overcome – like the fact that it threatens the market dominance of some very powerful, established energy sources.
Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
Host and producer, The Atomic Show Podcast
Founder, Adams Atomic Engines, Inc.
There was 1 problem with Fort Saint Vrain that caused practically 100% of the other problems with the plant: the helium circulator water bearing design. The circulators were the first of their kind; the literature that I’ve been able to access does not indicate why the designers used steam-propelled primary helium circulators, with, of all things, water-propelled Pelton drive auxiliary helium circulators. All circulators in HTGRs (and other GCRs, to the best of my knowledge) up to that point, had been motor-driven designs, which worked adequately. Unfortunately, these helium circulators were first of a kind models, and they had problems. When the plant tripped, water was injected into bearings to maintain the seal. If the water pressure was too high, or the timing was incorrect, the water could infiltrate into the core. This occurred many, many times. The large quantities of water that got into the core went to work corroding everything within. Although the circulators were eventually debugged, it was not after the plant had developed a reputation for unreliability. Finally, the discovery of a critical corroded component killed the plant in 1989.
This problem – with water entering the core from the circulators – was the root cause of nearly all other problems with Fort Saint Vrain. If the water had not been allowed to infiltrate into the core, the reactor would have worked great, as nearly all HTGRs and GCRs built for civil purposes have done. In fact, it probably would be working today. If we want to look at this from a “General Motors streetcar conspiracy” angle, there are documents dating as far back as 1975 or 1976 that indicate that there was awareness of the circulator design was, at the least, high risk, and probably was riddled with bugs. For whatever reason, the circulators were allowed to be installed and allowed to mess up the plant.
But this was not the death of the HTGR design. The HTGR has other reasons for being useful aside from combined heat and power. First, it has a high degree of both passive and inherent safety due to the design of the fuel particles used in the reactor; indeed, it is entirely possible to build a HTGR with a small to no evacuation zone. Second, the HTGR can generate with gas turbines or on a supercritical steam cycle, allowing for high thermal efficiency. Third, plant personnel receive negligible exposure to flux in the course of operations. Fourth, it is simple and inexpensive compared to an LWR. (LWRs work great, of course, but they are complex and relatively expensive in first cost, though they generate power at a very low cost after construction.)
Finally, others think the HTGR design is quite viable. The Japanese began building a HTGR right after Fort Saint Vrain closed, called HTTR, which has worked extremely well. The Chinese seem to be similar to the TVA (as you describe them); apparently they like to “knee-jerkedly” build anything “nuclear” in a thoroughly reflexive fashion (and so far, it’s worked very, very well.) They built a HTGR of the pebble bed type back in the 1990s, called HTR-10. Apparently, it’s worked very well and the Chinese really like it. And they’re building follow-ons – large, 195 MWe follow-ons.
It’s the first time the Chinese have shown major interest in non-heavy/light water moderated reactors, so this might signal something worth watching. Something worth competing with, too.
Ken,
Having worked in a “due diligence” group, I I have to agree that the exercise is mostly a joke. Proponents use due diligence to justify backing their pet projects, and these pets usually become pets not through due diligence but through some other mechanism.
And, like real pets (e.g., dogs, cats, pythons in Florida, etc.), they often fall by the wayside when their supporters’ attention skips to another object of affection.
In the case you and Rod are discussing, I wonder if Shell and Gulf decided to drop the HTGRs because they realized:
(1) they could continue making money from petroleum even though they had lost control over the world price to OPEC in 1973;
(2) integrating nuclear into their operations would involve significant organizational interruption, and therefore cost, with no financial benefit foreseeable by a quarter-to-quarter mindset; and
(3) once integrated, nuclear would distract them from their main business, which was selling petroleum products.
This might explain why, in contrast to the petroleum industry, nuclear integrated relatively easily, and with spectacular success, into another fossil-dominated industry—power generation.
By the time Big Oil dumped the HTGRs, the water-cooled reactors had come to dominate power generation. And no sooner had the 124 water reactors been built in North America than the “clampdown” ensued. The HTGRs (along with other reactor types) were the odd men out when it came to development and deployment.
That, not technological deficiency, might explain why the HTGR is where it is.
But today, with the convergence of concerns over energy security and CO2, maybe the game has changed in the HTGR’s favour.
Thanks to all who have posted. A very interesting and useful discussion. I would hope that the gas reactor would make a comeback, as it offers lots of advantages over LWR and breeder reactor technologies. In that regard, it would be a good thing if the South African pebble bed project could get real traction. But the momentum behind the LWR is formidable.
Also, the World Bank is considering financing a 480-MW supercritical coal plant for South Africa. Not a bad choice, by any means, as the country is critically short of baseload, and basically supplies most of its surrounding countries with power. It’s got lots of coal, so the project would get my vote.
But I would hope that the World Bank project would not derail a much smaller ( 110-MW) pebble bed reactor that Eskom has been working on for a decade.
Ken
Gas cooled reactor designs have always shown great promise, i can’t imagine why they could be branded as a waste of money. All but one of the UKs reactors are of the gas cooled types. Granted there are only five of them on-line but this is due mostly to political reasons not due to any (major) technical deficiencies!
PWRs for now, but GCRs are the future!!
Better yet, cool the reactor by molten salts, decrease maximum credible temperature by 500K, and reduce the reactor size ~tenfold.
http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/pb-ahtr/
I don’t buy the argument that the UK’s Magnox gas cooled reactors are guidance for the future. My understanding is that they have performed poorly, both in the original design and in the advanced Magnox reactors. That’s why, as I understand, Maggie Thatcher scrapped the technology in favor of a PWR for Sizewell B.
Any comments here?
Magnox reactors used a gas to steam cycle. That made them highly inefficient. They also use graphite moderator, which no modern reactor system uses or would contemplate using.
Britain’s reactor fleet was produced using at least three separate nuclear engineering companies, meaning that all of their reactors, both GCR and AGR had significant differences in configuration among them. The AGRs are not Magnox. They operate at considerably higher temperature than Magnox, hence they have a stainless steel fuel cladding. This means they have to use enriched fuel rather than natural uranium fuel that Magnox used.
To cgh,
Very useful information. Thanks. Are you aware of anywhere else where graphite moderates are in use? I’m not, but I don’t follow these issues all the closely.
Ken