A new dawn for nuclear power?
I grew up in Oak Ridge TN, the “atomic city.” It was where the uranium was enriched for the Hiroshima bomb. After the war, uranium enrichment found peaceful application in nuclear power plants. Many of the kids I knew growing up had dads who worked at one of the plants–X-10, Y-12, K-25–that researched and developed uranium enrichment and power plant design.
After initial enthusiasm for power that would be “too cheap to meter,” nuclear power plants eventually fell on hard times. The plants were expensive and perceived as terrorist magnets. In the wake of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, they fell out of fashion.
With growing concerns about global warming and decarbonization, nuclear power is again finding favor. Bill Gates is crowing about a next-gen nuclear power plant being built in Wyoming. I’m not a nuclear engineer, but apparently one modification to the Natrium reactor design is the use of molten salt instead of water as a reactor coolant. Molten sodium does have some advantages over water, but as research in the thorium reactors has shown, it is also challenging; it is highly corrosive, and reacts violently when exposed to water or air. As the father of the nuclear navy, Hyman Rickover, once observed, a sodium-cooled reactor might work if you were designing a submarine to operate in a sodium ocean.
Nuclear power solves the intermittency problem that dogs solar and wind. And once the plant is built, no CO2 is emitted during normal operation. One criticism is that the Natrium reactor still has the problem of nuclear waste storage. Coal-fired plants don’t have this problem, since their wastes are either emitted into the atmosphere or accumulate in ash ponds that leach into the water table. Once you factor in the environmental costs on both ends, there is no such thing as “clean energy” that is environmentally cost-free.
Is Gen IV nuclear power the revival of the nuclear power dream? If sodium-cooled uranium reactors can be made safely, will thorium reactors also be revived? One thing is for sure: world-wide demand for power isn’t going to slacken any time soon, so the only realistic hope for change is to move to less carbon-intensive power.
Bill Gates hawks Gen IV nuclear power
After initial enthusiasm for power that would be “too cheap to meter,” nuclear power plants eventually fell on hard times. The plants were expensive and perceived as terrorist magnets. In the wake of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, they fell out of fashion.
With growing concerns about global warming and decarbonization, nuclear power is again finding favor. Bill Gates is crowing about a next-gen nuclear power plant being built in Wyoming. I’m not a nuclear engineer, but apparently one modification to the Natrium reactor design is the use of molten salt instead of water as a reactor coolant. Molten sodium does have some advantages over water, but as research in the thorium reactors has shown, it is also challenging; it is highly corrosive, and reacts violently when exposed to water or air. As the father of the nuclear navy, Hyman Rickover, once observed, a sodium-cooled reactor might work if you were designing a submarine to operate in a sodium ocean.
Nuclear power solves the intermittency problem that dogs solar and wind. And once the plant is built, no CO2 is emitted during normal operation. One criticism is that the Natrium reactor still has the problem of nuclear waste storage. Coal-fired plants don’t have this problem, since their wastes are either emitted into the atmosphere or accumulate in ash ponds that leach into the water table. Once you factor in the environmental costs on both ends, there is no such thing as “clean energy” that is environmentally cost-free.
Is Gen IV nuclear power the revival of the nuclear power dream? If sodium-cooled uranium reactors can be made safely, will thorium reactors also be revived? One thing is for sure: world-wide demand for power isn’t going to slacken any time soon, so the only realistic hope for change is to move to less carbon-intensive power.
Bill Gates hawks Gen IV nuclear power
I remember the French giving up on sodium moderated reactors decades ago, and thinking that if anyone could get them to work it would be French. Hot sodium really nasty stuff. If nuclear power is going to make a comeback, I expect it to involve small modular reactors that can be mass produced. That’s the approach the Navy takes for its submarines and aircraft carriers.
Maybe Gates and his team have figured out how to work with liquid sodium. If nothing else, there are lots of energy storage systems that would benefit from more reliable molten salt technology. Maybe materials have been catching up, and the time is ripe. Still, I think a more conventional, slightly better proven approach would work better.
@Kaleberg,
Thanks for your comment. The technology is way above my pay grade. I’ve read a bit about thorium MSRs, so was surprised to see molten sodium being used in the Natrium design. As you say, maybe there has been transformative progress in materials. Looks like the citizens of Wyoming are about to find out.
Navy uses what they call micro nuclear reactors for decades now.
@dw,
Yes, but they are all water-cooled reactors. See my Rickover quote in the post.
maybe, but how many accidents have been reported? even when nuclear aircraft carriers or submarines run into things on floor of the ocean the reactors have not been an issue
The largest nuclear accident in the history of the nuclear fleet. Reconstruction of events and analysis of the accident consequences to assess the risks and hazards of small nuclear power facilities
The K-19 came close for the USSR in 1961. Several crewmembers sacrificed their lives to stop a coolant leak and prevent a meltdown. Also, an old Echo II in 1985 in Chazhma Bay blew off the lid during a post-refueling repair. Local radiation levels skyrocketed, and contamination was spread all over the bay.
Never going to happen. There is zero chance of it (including new SMR tech) making money.
Prominent VC backing new SMR Co.
“~25,000 SMR deployments around America makes US energy independent forever”
Calculus
25k*100 (security personnel per SMR facility)
=2.5MM security personnel
2.5MM*$100k annual salary
=$250,000,000,000 in annual security costs alone. These are not mall cops. They’re well trained and well paid to guard nuclear facilities — as they should be.
Not to include cost overruns, NIMBY, eminent domain etc etc.
Never happening.
then i guess we will never get rid of natural gas or coal plants as we cant support the consumer of electricity today (never mind the on rushing AI and Crypto data centers that run 7/24 all year long). and at some point lots of people will be moving (see Florida today, with other coastal states coming next.
Carol:
And you are not suited to write at AB? Your comments are good . . .
while increasing efficiency is a great goal, but who will pay for that? short of actually charging those who use more on top of their standard rates, i dont see that happening anyway as that will kill jobs where its done and no politician will do that . well how will renewable sources deal with the fact that most are intermittent? and sometimes they can drop to 0 over several days or even weeks, batteries tend to be short term bandages to cover that loss, and humans today depend on that to live.
What’s the half-life of the waste? How long does it take until it’s safe?
Who’s going to guard the waste for ten or twenty-five thousand years?
@Ten,
The half-life of U235 is 700 million years.
At our current rate of injecting carbon into the atmosphere, the only ones alive to guard that waste in 100 years will be cockroaches.
Sometimes, I feel like I am that old