Mini-Nuclear Reactors Are Coming, and They Could Reinvent the Energy Industry
Mini-Nuclear Reactors Are Coming, and They Could Reinvent the Energy Industry
Nuclear power may be making a comeback as researchers develop reactors that are smaller than ever before.
Watch more Focal Point! | https://bit.ly/2J9b9LC
Read More:
NUCLEAR 101: How Does a Nuclear Reactor Work?
https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/nu…
“The main job of a reactor is to house and control nuclear fission—a process where atoms split and release energy.”
Smaller, safer, cheaper: One company aims to reinvent the nuclear reactor and save a warming planet
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/…
“For now, NuScale’s reactors exist mostly as computer models. But in an industrial area north of town here, the company has built a full-size mock-up of the upper portion of a reactor.”
Nuclear Power in the World Today
http://www.world-nuclear.org/informat…
“There is a clear need for new generating capacity around the world, both to replace old fossil fuel units, especially coal-fired ones, which emit a lot of carbon dioxide, and to meet increased demand for electricity in many countries.”
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Content
2.31 -> Pat, we have a reactor trip on Unit 5. Containment
is isolated. Demon water is isolated. CVCS
9.96 -> is isolated. DHR is in service. And pressurizer
heater trips has occurred. All safety functions
17.18 -> are green. Understand. We've got a reactor
trip on Unit 5 and all safety functions are green.
22.56 -> That's correct.
24.48 -> Ryan, can you take
over the plant response to Unit 5?
27.82 -> You're in the middle of a simulated reactor trip. Something happened
31.56 -> that’s causing an emergency shutdown.
34.16 -> Ryan
I have acknowledged the alarms. Understand
37.3 -> that you've acknowledged the alarms. This
demonstration took place at NuScale, a next
43.57 -> generation nuclear power company that wants
to operate a string of up to 12 small reactors
49.15 -> from a single control room. And their new
model might just revive the nuclear power industry.
58.02 -> When you think nuclear, you might
imagine a plant like this: enormous cooling
62.94 -> towers, generators, steam billowing out the
top. They’ve been a part of our energy
67.689 -> mix for decades all working to harness the
power of splitting uranium atoms. Or in other
73.31 -> words: Nuclear power, to put it simply, is
the most complicated way to boil water. What
78.64 -> you’re trying to do is to take the energy
that’s produced by splitting uranium nuclei
85.45 -> and convert it into steam. That steam then
goes to a turbine which turns a shaft which
90.759 -> then turns a generator to produce electricity.When
the splitting happens, it produces radioactive
95.96 -> materials. Much of the nuclear plant is really
focused on trying to make sure that these
101.61 -> radioactive materials never escape out into
the biosphere.
107.74 -> There are hundreds of reactors
109.569 -> boiling water across the globe, and you might
actually be living near one. But the nuclear
114.94 -> industry today is experiencing some major
shifts. The 3 Mile Island and Fukushima disasters
121.63 -> prompted countries like Germany and Switzerland
to dismantle their nuclear power infrastructure.
127.619 -> Despite efforts from Russia and China to kick-start
new projects, global construction is currently
132.689 -> on a down-swing. Here in the U.S., aging
reactors are retiring, and Westinghouse, one
138.6 -> of the biggest names in nuclear, recently
filed for bankruptcy.
144.4 -> The argument the nuclear
145.74 -> industry used to make is that even though
nuclear power plants are expensive to build
151.12 -> they are cheap to operate and therefore profitable.
That equation has changed in the last seven
157.34 -> or eight years. There have been a combination
of two things that have been happening. One
160.54 -> is that as these plants’ age, the cost of
keeping them operational has been increasing
166.52 -> because simultaneously and more importantly,
the cost of alternative sources of energy
171.321 -> has declined dramatically. The second thing
I would say is that, the argument used to
175.319 -> be, oh, we’ve learned a lot from mistakes
in the past. We will be able to lower the
179.68 -> cost and how fast these reactors are built,
and that has not happened. The South Carolina
185.48 -> project was so expensive, the company pulled out of it after spending about $9 billion,
191 -> that's essentially been abandoned.
192.29 -> The Georgia plant is now running
at around $25 to $27 billion, compared to
196.42 -> a few billion dollars that was the initial
expectation. I think the result of that is
200.84 -> nobody in their right mind should be thinking about building another large nuclear plant in the country.
207.62 -> It’s a tough situation,
especially with reports of rising CO2 emissions
212.1 -> and calls for alternatives to meet climate
goals. And that’s where these next generation
216.9 -> reactors enter the conversation for
multiple countries.
220.79 -> Hoping to solve the problems of cost and scale,
this new nuclear fleet are called SMRs or
226.37 -> Small Modular Reactors. Small in
this context just means it’s producing less
232.31 -> than 300 megawatts of electricity. The plants
that were being built in South Carolina, the
237.92 -> ones being built in Georgia generate about
1,100 megawatts of electricity. Modular means
242.97 -> that you can make these things in a factory.
You're manufacturing all your high quality
247.53 -> components in parallel you're doing all your
civil construction on site. You’re making
251.95 -> the pool, you’re building the building. And
then when the buildings are done, you transport
256.48 -> the modules to the site and you install them.
Beyond these two there’s really nothing
260.46 -> that constrains you about the design of the
reactor. There are literally dozens and dozens
267.64 -> of SMR designs. Portable nuclear power has
a back to the future feel to it. Pursued since
273.36 -> the Cold War, several designs have found their
way inside nuclear submarines and university labs.
279.26 -> After decades of attempts,
280.9 -> SMRs haven't been the mainstream source of power for local communities just yet,
285.94 -> but that might change with NuScale.
290.36 -> This all started with a project
that was funded by the Department of Energy
293.57 -> back in 2000. We were working with the Idaho
National Laboratory at the time and we came
297.65 -> up with this concept for something small that
could be built in a factory. So inside our
302.64 -> modules, we start off with the containment
vessel. It's about 76 feet long and 15 feet
307.58 -> in diameter, it’s big cylinder. Inside
that containment vessel the reactor vessel
311.449 -> houses the fuel, the steam generator. It's
a helical coil steam generator. Everything
315.61 -> you need for power to produce steam is inside
that one little vessel. Now the containment
320.78 -> and the reactor vessel sit underwater below
ground. And you can add on, two, three up
325.52 -> to 12 modules in a single pool. So it's scalable
because you don't have to add them all at
329.5 -> once, you can do them in increments. Each
module will produce about 60 megawatts electric.
333.569 -> If you think about homes, it's somewhere around
fifty thousand homes would be powered by one
338.569 -> module. There aren't any additional cooling
pumps or generators that could fail in an
343.63 -> emergency, a lesson learned from previous
disasters. Because a key element NuScale
349.31 -> really emphasized with us, is safety. Passive
safety really describes the ability to perform
355.31 -> a safety function without power. For our
design, the reactors will safely shut themselves
360 -> down without any operator action or computer
action, without any AC or DC power, and they'll
365.319 -> remain cooled for an indefinite period of
time, without the need to add water. When
370.37 -> you lose power, the control rods actually
fall into the reactor vessel into the core
375.24 -> and they're held up normally by electromagnets.
So you lose power, they disengage and they
380.099 -> fall. So you go from two hundred megawatts
thermal to about 10 or 11 megawatts in a second
385.169 -> or so. If you look at the control room here,
you'll see that a lot of things that we do
391.18 -> really don't require operator action at all.
All the procedures come up on the screens
394.69 -> themselves and they help you execute the procedures,
and they’ll help correct you if you make
399.34 -> a mistake it's a smart control room. Which
all seems quite miraculous — to have a nuclear
404.949 -> control room run mostly on its own. NuScale’s
timeline has more tick marks ahead. Their
411.211 -> plant operations are still just on paper or
at prototype stage. They’re aiming to turn
416.651 -> on their first commercial plant near the Idaho
National Laboratory by 2026, which brings
422.259 -> the project full circle. We finished our
design certification application. It's a
427.13 -> pretty comprehensive checklist, so application
alone was 12,000 pages. We're on track to
432.3 -> get this design certified with the final safety
evaluation report coming out in September
437.83 -> of 2020. So, that’s the target. And within
their application, NuScale is asking the U.S.
443.83 -> Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a different
kind of zoning boundary. In the United States,
449.919 -> there's a requirement that you have an emergency
planning zone around your plant and that zone
453.93 -> is a 10 mile radius. The reason we can request
a smaller emergency planning zone is because
459.27 -> of the very high level of safety that we offer.
If we go back to their animation, the reactor’s
464.169 -> sitting in a pool that’s below ground with
a biological shield on top of that and in
468.57 -> a seismic category which is earthquake proof, hurricane proof type building.
472.84 -> In our analysis, we show that we don't exceed regulatory doses under
476.44 -> the worst case accident conditions at the site boundary so that changes the game significantly in
480.889 -> that we can be in closer proximity to population
centers. If you have an SMR and it has an
486.4 -> accident, it would have less amount of radioactive
material to disperse it would have less energy
491.229 -> to disperse. These are laws of physics in
certain complicated circumstances that are
496.06 -> hard to predict in advance. If you think about
the kind of accidents we’ve seen in the
500.509 -> past it is almost always been a bunch of circumstances
which nobody had envisioned. If you’re
506.34 -> thinking about the community and you go and
say, “Look, we want to build this nuclear
511.83 -> plant near you but there is a small chance
that something might go wrong it’s quite
516.011 -> possible you might have to leave your house
and never come back because it’s going to
520.11 -> be contaminated with radioactivity. How do
you feel about it?” Quite a few people would
525.66 -> say, “No, I don’t think I would want that. Despite
this risk potential, the hundreds of reactors
531.97 -> operating worldwide have had a pretty safe
track record, and overall have caused less
536.92 -> loss of life than coal or natural gas. The
design & safety of future reactors in the
542.04 -> US are assessed by the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission. But there’s some context to
547.11 -> this agency that bears keeping in mind: The
NRC’s fortunes, in a sense, depend on the
554.45 -> industry that it is regulating. If the nuclear
industry were to essentially shrink and vanish,
561.08 -> the NRC would essentially have to vanish too.
The NRC and NuScale have been talking to each
565.81 -> other for years now and trying to say, “Okay,
here's our rules. Here's how you interpret
570.45 -> these rules. Here's how we can modify our
design. All of which does not seem to me to
575.44 -> be a thoroughly independent process. There’s
been a reported history of regulatory capture
580.68 -> in the nuclear industry, but it shouldn’t
come as any surprise. What entity other
585.68 -> than a state government can take on the capital
and risk associated with investing in nuclear?
590.79 -> Government funding does play an important
part. The question, of course, to ask is whether
594.63 -> the government should be spending its money
on this pursuit. Of course, that’s a different
598.1 -> question. The new nuclear power movement
is appealing to governments who see the potential: One
603.12 -> module could produce 60 million gallons of
clean desalinated water per day. So a 12 pack
608.7 -> would be enough to provide all the water needs
for a city the size of Cape Town South Africa.
613.64 -> On the flip side, SMRs could exacerbate
pre-existing geopolitical tensions.
619.08 -> China has said they are also developing SMRs. The
first place that they want to deploy are on
625.92 -> these deserted islands, in the South China
Sea that are in disputes. If you’re concerned
631.41 -> about proliferation, then SMRs are not small
in any meaningful sense. With these forces
637.08 -> ahead, eyes will be on NuScale as they work
to reshape the industry and roll out what
642.05 -> they are betting on to be a smart, scalable
model of nuclear power.
647.66 -> Their hope is that a safer design, an automated control room, and other key features will overcome the hurdles
653.93 -> that caused previous ventures to fail. However,
there are still open questions over nuclear
659.529 -> waste, protecting against proliferation, and how a truly passive nuclear plant operates
664.6 -> in real time. But until this
666.76 -> model is put to the test, the ultimate question
for nuclear - of whether smaller really is
671.8 -> better - remains an open one.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nh5Tx1QLKBI