POWER July 2011 - 66

ELECTRIC POWER 2011: WHERE THE GENCOS MEET
Nuclear Power in the Shadow of
Fukushima
Risk, risk management, and the specter of Fukushima ran through the nuclear
track at May's ELECTRIC POWER Conference in Chicago. The reality of risk,
driven home by the horrendous events in Japan, was a recurring theme
in many presentations, in questions to speakers, and in the conversations
among delegates during informal moments.
By Kennedy Maize
S
argent & Lundy's William Peebles kicked
off the two-day nuclear energy track with
a description of what occurred in Japan
on March 11 and the current assessment of the
scope of the damage. As he spoke, the toll of
the earthquake and tsunami was again rising.
Peebles noted that the four damaged reactors at
the Fukushima site took a one-two punch, leading
to the dreaded condition known in the nuclear
world as " station blackout, " a loss of electric
power that totally disables safety systems.
First, a massive earthquake hit the Japanese
coast, calculated as a 9.0 event, far beyond what
Japan had seen in recorded history. That took
out offsite power to the site. Then, administering
the knockout blow, a tsunami with waves
topping 10 meters-another unprecedented
event-smashed into the site, killing on-site
backup diesel generators and preventing rescue
crews from reaching the plant.
The resulting explosions, melting fuel, spread
of radiation, and enormous population evacuation
established Fukushima as the second-worst
disaster in the history of civilian nuclear power,
after the Chernobyl explosion in the Ukraine almost
exactly 25 years earlier. It also provided
a chilling backdrop to the discussions in Chicago.
Throughout the meeting, those who follow
nuclear power were discussing just what
might befall the nuclear industry in Japan as a
result. Some thought that Tokyo Electric Power
Co. (TEPCO), the reactor operator and owner,
would survive with government backing. Others
were convinced that TEPCO was not " too big to
fail " and would not outlast the reactor disaster.
For the developers and operators of nuclear
power plants, risk is not just a matter of the
odds that a plant could fail catastrophically,
as in Japan, at Chernobyl, or at Three Mile
Island in 1979. Risk arises at the very beginning
of planning a nuclear venture. Economic
and engineering risks prevail in planning and
building these incredibly complex, wonderfully
useful machines for making electricity.
These are risks in slow motion, but they are
real and significant nonetheless.
66
Small-Scale Developments
The nuclear track included a popular section
on the " big new thing " in nuclear: little
reactors. The atomic acronym is " SMR, " for
" small, modular reactor. " Reduced risk to public
health and safety has long been a selling
point for the SMRs. Incorporating a full range
of passive features to slow down an accident
scenario and make response and recovery easier,
the SMRs look very good on paper. (See
" Are Small Reactors Better? " in the November
2010 issue of POWER, available in our
archives at www.powermag.com.)
Imagine a fission reaction in a large, steel
thermos bottle (we're not talking cold fusion
here, but hot fission). That's NuScale Power, the
product of a U.S. Department of Energy research
team involving Oregon State University, the Idaho
National Laboratory, and a former Bechtel
subsidiary. The 45-MWe pressurized water reactor
encloses all the conventional innards of a
large reactor in a 65-foot-tall, 14-foot-diameter
tube, with the air evacuated to leave a vacuum.
In a commercial plant, several of these vacuum
bottles would sit in a below-ground pool containing
4 million gallons of water-an additional
safety barrier and a shock absorber in the case of
an earthquake (not unknown in Oregon, where
NuScale makes its home). A concrete shield
covers the pool and contains any contaminants.
" The thermos bottle concept is completely
novel, " NuScale Power's Ed Wallace told the
power expo
(Figure 1). Wallace, senior vice
president for regulatory affairs, joined NuScale
a year ago, after several years working on the
unsuccessful pebble bed modular reactor project
at Chicago's Exelon and South Africa's PBMR
Pty. His job at NuScale is to serve as shepherd
and sherpa, guiding NuScale's design through
the risky waters of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission's (NRC's) licensing process.
Wallace described the concepts underlying the
licensing of new, unique reactor technologies,
the challenges these new technologies present,
and the need to get designers, developers, and
regulators speaking the same language and unwww.powermag.com
POWER
| July 2011
1. Small is beautiful. NuScale Power is
developing a small, modular nuclear reactor.
Ed Wallace is senior vice president, regulatory
affairs for the company. Source: POWER
2. Nuclear building blocks. The NuScale
Power module uses pressurized water reactor
technology with passive safety systems to produce
45 MWe. The small, modular reactor would
be refueled every 30 months using 4.95% enriched
UO2. To give a sense of scale, the reactor
vessel is only 65 feet tall. Multiple units can be
built and aggregated to meet any power requirement.
Courtesy: NuScale Power
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POWER July 2011

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