OSPE - The Voice - Winter 2021 - 30

NEWS & EVENTS
Nuclear Technology Challenges
Nuclear energy is very dense and can power the entire world for
centuries using available sources of Uranium and Thorium. A
single truck load of nuclear fuel can power a large commercial
reactor for a year. However, over the past 40 years the general
public has become concerned about building new large watercooled
reactors for the following reasons:
* High and rising capital and labour costs
* Long construction schedules - 5 to 10 years
* Radioactive releases following worst case accidents
* Long-lived radioactive fuel wastes ~ 400,000 years
* Nuclear weapons proliferation concerns
* Remote siting makes use of clean thermal energy impractical
* Water cooled reactors cannot fission U238 and Th232, the
two most abundant naturally available isotopes of Uranium
and Thorium
The nuclear power industry will need to address the concerns
above if it wants to achieve wide acceptance by the public. The
public tends to exaggerate the risk of technologies that it fears.
A good example is the current resistance to vaccinations. Even
though statistically the risk from vaccinations is much lower than
the diseases they are designed to manage, people still believe the
risk is too high for them personally and refuse to be vaccinated.
Similarly, nuclear power has one of the best safety records of
any large-scale energy production technology. But a significant
percentage of the public stills views nuclear power as high risk.
The new small modular reactor technology that is now being
developed for commercial deployment will provide the nuclear
power industry the opportunity to convince the public that SMRs
are a low-risk option they can rely on for their energy needs.
Small Modular Reactors -
Their Capabilities
The nuclear industry is now pivoting to a new nuclear energy
technology called small modular reactors (SMRs). SMRs are
much smaller in size, typically 1 MW to 300 MW compared to
large water-cooled reactors that are typically 1000 MW to 1700
MW. The nuclear industry is focusing on SMRs to address the
public concerns listed above that are preventing nuclear energy
from becoming a more effective partner in the effort to achieve a
zero-emission energy system.
Large water-cooled reactors employ the economies of scale to
reduce costs. China and South Korea have been very successful
at reducing the cost of large reactors to about $3,000/kW. They
have achieved this by deploying a large number of reactors and
maintaining an efficient supply chain and technically experienced
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THE VOICE December 2021
people. Unfortunately, western countries avoidance of nuclear
energy for the past 30 years has disrupted their supply chains and
resulted in a loss of technically experienced people. The result has
been a very high cost to deploy new large water-cooled reactors
like the AP-1000 in the USA (now forecasted to cost in excess of
$12,000/kWh). At such a high cost, nuclear energy would not be
competitive with other forms of zero-emission energy supplies.
SMRs use economies of mass production to reduce costs.
Factory fabrication of smaller reactors, with truck or rail shipment
of assembled modules to the plant site, is expected to result in
higher productivity and lower levelized cost of energy compared to
constructing a few large reactors at the site. Cost projections using
mass production are expected to lower western constructed SMRs
to the $3,000 to $4,000/kW electric and $1,000 to $2,000/kW
thermal. That price range would make SMRs more competitive
that other forms of zero-emission energy production for base-load
electrical and thermal energy production.
SMRs come in several designs. Some are small versions of large
reactors. For example, NuScale's 70 MW SMR is a small version of
a large water-cooled reactor. Other SMRs use more exotic cooling
systems such as liquid metals and molten salts. These cooling
systems operate at low pressure and eliminate large radiation
releases after a worst-case accident. The resulting smaller
exclusion radius around the reactor allows these reactors to be
located in industrial and commercial parks. With these reactors
closer to the heat loads, the zero-emission reactor heat can be used
for high temperature heating requirements instead of fossil fuels.
The waste heat from the electrical production cycle can be used for
hot water and space heating via a district heating system in high
population density urban areas.
Consumers' electricity demand is low during the evening all
year and all day during the spring and fall. Excess electricity
production from SMRs can be used to make electrolytic hydrogen
during those low electricity demand periods. Hydrogen is a zeroemission
energy carrier and can be mixed with renewable natural
gas to provide heat energy via our natural gas distribution system
in our lower population density suburban areas where district
heating systems are not economic.
Some SMR designs use fast neutrons instead of slow
(moderated) neutrons to fission the nucleus of heavy atoms. These
fast neutron SMRs have a number of additional benefits. They can
breed more fissile isotopes than they consume so they can expand
the fissile supply for slow neutron reactors. They create up to 140x
less radioactive fuel waste that requires a much shorter storage
period of about 400 yrs. Instead of 400,000 yrs. Because fast
neutron SMRs can be fueled with transuranic and U238 isotopes
from our existing nuclear spent fuel waste stockpiles, they have a
proliferation resistant, sustainable, closed fuel cycle.

OSPE - The Voice - Winter 2021

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OSPE - The Voice - Winter 2021 - Cover2
OSPE - The Voice - Winter 2021 - Table of Contents
OSPE - The Voice - Winter 2021 - 4
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