The assertion that the U.S. will need 900 nuclear power reactors by 2035 to meet its power demand and environmental obligations could only be made by a proponent of nuclear technology. That’s no surprise. What is noteworthy: The person who made that statement, Dr. Samim Anghaie, is fully aware of the myriad challenges that would have to be overcome to make that vision a reality.
Is this simply a case of asking for the moon and the stars so you can be sure of getting the moon? Time will tell.
Anghaie is professor of nuclear and radiological engineering and director of the Innovative Nuclear Space Power & Propulsion Institute at the University of Florida. But he’s not just an academic. He has been an advisor and consultant to companies and government agencies, national labs and policy makers, and his involvement in nuclear technology is global in scope. (Watch for his comments on the status of Generation IV reactor development in the June issue of
POWER.)
I recently had the opportunity to hear Anghaie at a colloquium hosted by Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). His audience consisted almost exclusively of LANL staff, several of whom Anghaie has consulted with over the years. His topic was the challenges and opportunities—especially for national labs—presented by the resurgence of interest in nuclear power.
Preaching to the Choir
Nuclear technology is in LANL’s DNA, so the audience needed no introduction to the topic. Instead, Anghaie provided a comprehensive overview of the case for more commercial nuclear power and the factors that could make building additional nuclear capacity difficult to achieve.
He began by putting the focus on global energy security, which he characterized as being a matter of national security, environmental security, and economic security. Nuclear power, he argued, can help the U.S. and the world achieve security on all those fronts.
Global demand for economic development that’s compatible with a small carbon footprint has led to new nuclear power projects around the world. For many nations without fossil fuel resources that wish to avoid dependency on other nations for continuous fuel supplies, nuclear seems like the right technology choice.
The irony that the U.S. was an early leader in developing commercial nuclear power but now lags well behind many other nations in deploying it was obvious when Anghaie displayed a slide identifying all the nations with recently completed and current construction projects. (See Global Monitor in the February issue of
POWER for stories on ambitious nuclear plans in
China and
Eastern Europe.)
His overview of nuclear safety and waste issues argued that those factors aren’t showstoppers. Even in the U.S., opposition to nuclear power is far softer than it has been in many decades—in large part because many former opponents, including environmental groups, are coming to grips with the need to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
Then Anghaie addressed a different sort of footprint: the land use required by various low-carbon power-generating technologies per 1,000 MW. His chart showed nuclear power needing the least space—less than 1 square kilometer, compared with 100 square kilometers for photovoltaics at 10% efficiency, and far more space for biomass.
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Comments (3)
1) that the current fleet of 104 reactors won't be relicensed. The NRC has already relicensed every plant that has sought to extend its initial 40-year license and there's no evidence that nuclear plant life ends at 60. Maybe 80? Maybe 100? Who knows. It turns out that these are pretty robust plants, and replacing and repairing is a heck of a lot cheaper than building new units.
2) that old coal will die. Coal plants, like old soldiers, never seem to die. But unlike old soldiers, they don't fade away. They just get rebuilt, a piece at a time. One of the assumptions of the original Clean Air Act, and all subsequent amendments, was that new coal technology would render the older plants uneconomic. That led to the "grandfather" clause in the act. But Grandpa is still alive and ticking, and retrofits and re-engineering keep the old guy spry.
Notable that FERC Commissioner Wellinghoff today asked whether need to (or can affored to) build any more new coal of nuclear plants ever again in this country in his remarks at a U.S. Energy Association forum.
Reality will probably end up somewhere between the two prognostications, but most people who care about the environment would tend to hope that Commissioner Wellinghoff is closely to what actually happens than what Dr. Anghaie envisions.
Jeff Anthony, American Wind Energy Association