Energy Biz - March/April 2008 - (Page 66) » TEChNOlOGy FRONTIER Small is Beautiful a new nUcLear vISIon aT The Idaho naTIonaL Lab by rIchard korman the PeoPle PlAnning the future The infusion “isn’t enough to put us back on track for the end dates,” Hildebrandt cautions, but “Congress came through to help. It’s substantial and very important. We’re better than we thought we were, but we’re still behind.” An electrical engineer and consultant with deep experience in nuclear power and chemical waste, Hildebrandt shares a vision with atomic engineers in Japan and South Africa of nuclear energy as an industrial heat source. If NextGen is successful, between 15 and 20 years from now North Americans will build dozens – maybe hundreds – of comparatively small, high-temperature gas-cooled reactors to breathe heat into refineries and chemical plants, especially plants to make hydrogen, a priority of the Bush Administration. Right now on-site industrial heating plants are fueled with gas, coal or oil and most nuclear power today is generated from big lightwater reactors to meet baseload electrical demand. At the core of this plan are heat and hope. Light-water reactors that operate today drive turbines by attaining temperatures of 300 degrees C or so but high-temperof nuclear energy measure time in decades and time is already running short for Philip C. Hildebrandt. As director of the Next Generation Nuclear Project for the Idaho National Laboratory in eastern Idaho, Hildebrandt’s job is to build a big prototype nuclear reactor that is safe enough to site near gas and chemical plants all across North America’s industrial backyard. And he’s only got until Sept. 30, 2021. Although Congress in 2005 authorized the Department of Energy, which is funding the work at the lab, to spend $1.25 billion on the prototype over the next eight years, the allocations by the department had languished at around $30 million each year. Hildebrandt’s team said it hoped to get three times as much, and the National Academy of Sciences, in a report released in October, expressed concern that among the several federally funded nuclear development programs, NextGen was underfinanced and couldn’t finish on time. In December, Congress handed NextGen $100 million. Philip C. Hildebrandt, middle, of the Idaho National Laboratory consults with colleagues as they work on next generation nuclear technology. PhOTO cOurTEsy OF ThE iDahO naTiOnaL LaBOraTOry 66 E n E rgyB i z March/April 2008
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