Energy Scecretary Steven Chu writes on the promise and potential of small nuclear reactors:
Small modular reactors would be less than one-third the size of current plants. They have compact designs and could be made in factories and transported to sites by truck or rail. SMRs would be ready to “plug and play” upon arrival.
If commercially successful, SMRs would significantly expand the options for nuclear power and its applications. Their small size makes them suitable to small electric grids so they are a good option for locations that cannot accommodate large-scale plants. The modular construction process would make them more affordable by reducing capital costs and construction times.
Their size would also increase flexibility for utilities since they could add units as demand changes, or use them for on-site replacement of aging fossil fuel plants. Some of the designs for SMRs use little or no water for cooling, which would reduce their environmental impact. Finally, some advanced concepts could potentially burn used fuel or nuclear waste, eliminating the plutonium that critics say could be used for nuclear weapons.
Soronel Haetir says:
I recall a piece a couple of years ago about these. A company was actually ready with a unit to try somewhere, a town in Alaska had signed up but as far as I know it never went anywhere.
March 23, 2010, 9:17 amDG says:
Soronel – you’re thinking of microreactors, which are something different, and probably not a great idea.
SMR’s are more similar to naval nuclear reactors, which have an outstanding safety and operational record over the last 50 years. This is a wonderful idea and one whose time have come. We know how to do this sort of thing and it will solve many issues with existing reactors. I could see SMR’s as either pressurized water or pebble bed.
Wait for assorted anti-nuclear groups to dredge up a reason why this is bad.
March 23, 2010, 9:59 ambartman says:
We were talking about this when I was an engineering undergrad, which is pushing two decades ago now. I suggest it will still be in the talking phase when my hypothetical, as yet unborn kids are undergrads.
Distributed NIMBYism will be just as effective as concentrated NIMBYism.
March 23, 2010, 10:12 amRedlands says:
Does Mr. Chu understand who controls Congress?
March 23, 2010, 10:20 amCarl Donath says:
Timely Drudge link: Bill Gates, Toshiba in early talks on nuclear reactor
March 23, 2010, 10:29 amgeokstr says:
I’ll believe this when I see permits for building one expedited by this administration and construction beginning. Otherwise it is just like Obama “considering” domestic drilling out of one side of his mouth, while his minions are voiding drilling leases already granted by the prior admin out of the other side. More phony posturing while Rome burns.
March 23, 2010, 10:36 amSara says:
As I understand it, apart from being ‘scary’ to the unthinking, what is really problematic with nuclear is the waste issue (eg where to put it). Is that addressed?
March 23, 2010, 10:50 amMindnumbedrobot says:
Naval type reactors. Sounds good to me. I always heard that such and such a “nucular” powered ship (e.g. aircraft carrier) has enough energy to power a city of X thousands. I wondered if we could, at a coastal or lake or river type of city just harbor a large barge with a nuclear reactor on board. Just get some cables out to the city and fire it up!
March 23, 2010, 11:02 amIn this article, mentioning the even smaller reactors (say, nuclear submarine size reactors) sounds like a great idea in any community that has rail service or even good roads. (like everywhere in U.S. )
While we are at it, answer this question: here we are in the midst of a job killing recession. Why are we still outsourcing our energy supplying jobs? Why are we not making a push for energy (e.g. oil and natural gas) with all the high paying jobs that would be created. As Henry J. Kaiser said: Problems are opportunities in work clothes— Here we have an opportunity to get independent of foreign supplies of energy. Why do we not go for it?
Dennis N says:
I agree, it’s such a good idea it will never be done. Too many Environmental Whackos and NIMBY Nazis to run interference. We’ll be burning whale oil before we’re burning much more Uranium for fuel.
Engineering wise, it’s a great idea. There is no reason to re-invent the wheel each time you buy a new car. There will still be plenty of site specific design required to fit this on a particular site, put up the buildings, fit in the power substation and all the sitework. But it will still be a great cost savings.
We’ll probably have to buy tem from China.
March 23, 2010, 11:40 amDon Miller says:
I was a nuclear technician in the Navy. I have long been in favor of this type of approach
Having factory built reactors that are identical would not only lower their cost, but would improve the operations.
There are additional efficiency gains by putting small reactors closer to the point of use and not being so dependent on long distance transmission lines. Transmission lines have more loss that most people realize.
NIMBY’s in my region fight against new transmission lines as much as the building of new power plants.
March 23, 2010, 11:52 amTatil says:
What makes you think we are not making a push for natural gas? Apparently, shale formations and other “unconventional” sources in the US brought so much gas to the table in the last couple of years that gas prices have come down considerably. They are trying to find uses for LNG import terminals that were built when we thought we were running short. For some reason, I only see it covered in The Economist, but they have been covering it for a while and they had a long article at just this week’s issue.
March 23, 2010, 12:04 pmTatil says:
I doubt it. Therefore, it will provide a convenient excuse for people who oppose them in close proximity to their houses, just in case something goes wrong. There are enough such people that house prices would really go down in such areas, so opposition is not entirely irrational, either.
March 23, 2010, 12:09 pmPintler says:
How much of the Navy’s stellar safety record is due to the design of the reactor, vs. the operators and maintainers being more or less locked inside the containment with the reactor? If the latter has much of an effect then the past safety record isn’t predictive of future results for land based versions.
March 23, 2010, 12:37 pmHey Skipper says:
As I understand it, apart from being ‘scary’ to the unthinking, what is really problematic with nuclear is the waste issue (eg where to put it).
Vitrify the stuff, then drop it into deep ocean subduction zones.
March 23, 2010, 12:45 pmSteve says:
What makes you think we are not making a push for natural gas?
Because 35 years after it was conceptualized, the Alaska natural gas pipeline remains unbuilt?
March 23, 2010, 12:45 pmAnthony says:
Not by this technology. However, people have always been scared of nuclear waste far out of proportion to its actual deadliness, vastly more people have been killed by smog than by nuclear waste.
March 23, 2010, 1:02 pmSara says:
I don’t think its deadliness is the issue — it’s that there is no long term storage.
March 23, 2010, 1:17 pmBE says:
Waste that remains dangerous for 125K years is too problematic to be down-scalable. And it’s still going to be far too expensive.
March 23, 2010, 1:22 pmnoahp says:
Yep. Vitrify into cylinders. They’ll be going fairly fast by the time they reach the bottom in the subduction zone and will bury themselves in the sediment awaiting recycling thru the mantle. Neato!
March 23, 2010, 1:26 pmnoahp says:
I doubt these modular reactors contain the steam turbines for actual power production. (Please someone correct me I’m wrong). So basically they boil water and as such could replace coal-fired boilers at conventional plants.
BTW I believe the Alaska ‘reactor’ referred to upthread was actually more like a battery utilizing heat from isotopes (nuclear waste?) Not fission.
March 23, 2010, 1:36 pmIcePilot says:
The answer to nuclear waste is simple, yet politically difficult:
1. Breeder reactors that transform “spent” fuel (after reprocessing) to create more fuel. Saves lots of $$.
2. Reprocessing and storing in the facility that taxpayers have already spent billions for in Nevada.
Part of the problem is that the wrong question is asked – Can you provide 99.999% certainty that the stored nuclear waste will be safe for 100,000 years? A more realistic time frame, say 100 years, being the proper approach, certainties spanning millennia being non-existent.
March 23, 2010, 1:50 pmcboldt says:
– Waste that remains dangerous for 125K years is too problematic to be down-scalable. –
March 23, 2010, 1:53 pmIf it’s the radiation you’re talking about, isotopes with a half life of thousands of years aren’t a powerful emitter of radiation. The emit a little bit of particles and energy each day, for thousands of years. The “hot/energetic” stuff has a short half-life.
If you are concerned about the chemical hazard (that is, this stuff is poison), note that non-radioactive isotopes have the same chemical properties as the radioactive ones.
cboldt says:
– heat from isotopes (nuclear waste?) Not fission. –
March 23, 2010, 2:00 pmIt’s a Toshiba 4S reactor, the heat (and neutron flux) come from fission.
Same is true of the heat in nuclear waste, it’s a product of fission.
Cynical says:
You can thank Harry Reid in particular for that.
You may literally be able to thank him, if Chu’s vision comes to pass. The “spent” fuel from today’s light-water reactors is about 96% uranium, plutonium, Americium, etc. These are only “waste” to reactors which can’t use high-energy neutrons to split them (“thermal” reactors, which slow neutrons down in a moderator, can’t do a very good job of that). The casks full of used fuel rods at today’s nuclear plants can be the fuel supply for tomorrow’s plants, and the fission products which are the only true waste has typical half-lives of years to a handful of decades. You barely need long-term storage if you barely have long-term radioactivity.
March 23, 2010, 2:35 pmDan Weber says:
Many communities don’t want nuclear power, but many communities do. They already have it and haven’t seen any reason to run away from it.
Burying waste is burying money, at least in America’s fuel cycle. Just store it in a warehouse designed to last for a hundred years, such that we can get it back out when we decide that we are willing to do reprocessing or burn it in something like an Integral Fast Reactor.
March 23, 2010, 2:43 pmShawn-non-Anonymous says:
Much of those billions were spent on research looking at many options, including #1 and #2. I was employed as a database analyst at Yucca Mnt for a number of years.
There are two problems I can see with your approach:
1) Thinking of the byproducts from fission as “waste” may be self-limiting. Dropping it into a subduction zone, even if safe, might be wasteful.
2) The cost of recycling spent nuclear fuel is high. Several countries do this and we can measure the effectiveness of it. If you calculate the cost of producing energy as including the cost of handling/recycling spent fuel, this could make nuclear power too expensive when compared to other technologies. Storing the spent fuel is probably cheaper.
Finally, the last I saw, the Yucca mountain project had built a concrete pad and a 5-mile tunnel through solid rock but no actual “facilities” to do anything with. The project didn’t get too far beyond the study phase.
March 23, 2010, 2:45 pmspudbeach says:
The town was Galena, Alaska, and the company was Tosihiba. The reactor was the 4S reactor — small, simple, and super safe. While referred to as a “nuclear battery”, it is actually a nuclear reactor. The idea is that it can be treated as a battery — plug it in and forget about it, rather than having a humongous control room that needs constant expensive staffing. See
The biggest reason the project hasn’t gone anywhere is the NRC. They just don’t have the budget to evaluate and license the reactor. The story is here and here.
And so, while Dr. Chu’s notice of small, factory built reactors is nice, I won’t be holding my breath. Until the regulators actually get a budget to approve these things, it’s just pie in the sky.
March 23, 2010, 3:19 pmHow can a government run health insurance entity “compete” with private companies? Will it pay taxes? | Competitive health insurance policies | Get free online health insurance quotes says:
[...] The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » A New Nuclear Option [...]
March 23, 2010, 6:36 pmohwilleke says:
Notably, the most plausible place to put these reactors are precisely the places that use petroleum to generate electricity now.
March 23, 2010, 7:23 pmStephen Lathrop says:
My only comment on the new reactors themselves is that building to a single plan under controlled conditions is bound to improve economy and fabrication quality. I suspect the gains in those respects could be quite large.
Problem is, they are still going to make nuclear waste. Storing the stuff creates problems, and disposing of it creates problems. Others can address all that.
Terrorism will always be a problem. Naval reactors have been mentioned as a model. Don’t know if that means these small modulars would be running on highly enriched uranium like naval reactors do. If so, that’s basically bomb grade stuff—a major security problem.
Even if that isn’t so, you could be creating numerous dispersed sources of highly radioactive waste products which could be hijacked and turned into dirty bombs.
There may be a fundamental scaling problem. A small reactor might not generate enough economic benefit to support the security staff necessary to protect it reliably. Does anyone suppose a small nuke would require any less security protection than a large one?
Maybe a solution would be to build bunches of modular reactors, but operate them together at large sites functionally similar to present day reactor sites. Maybe even bigger.
I doubt this will turn out to be a panacea, though.
March 23, 2010, 8:47 pmStephen Lathrop says:
This is something I hadn’t heard of. Do you know anywhere I could read up on that short half-life stuff?
March 23, 2010, 8:53 pmNobody At All says:
I’m excited about this technology.
But I have to ask: is concern for costs ($4-$6k/kW, when it is built in 2018) only applicable for renewables?
March 23, 2010, 10:01 pmNobody At All says:
My other question – re: security.
In the United States, I am fairly confident that we could find ways to securely operate and maintain small plants and their waste.
My concern is about (a) the ability of the rest of the world to do the same; and (b) our ability to verify that the rest of the world is doing the same.
If countries like S. Africa must its best to abstain from coal – or any other number of developing countries who will likely use coal to develop – then we must ask what technologies they will use. It is unclear to me, at least, that all of these countries have the capacity available to us in the United States to safely operate nuclear plants. To the extent that these plants are distributed, moreover, outside verification may require greater impingement upon sovereignty – we don’t need to verify at just a plant or two, but 10 or 20, in every area of the country, and – to the extent the refueling schedules are not aligned – more frequently. It is a question of political will, as well.
March 23, 2010, 10:28 pmSunTzu's Nephew says:
Toshiba has them http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_4S
March 23, 2010, 11:11 pmSunTzu's Nephew says:
Reprocess the fuel like France and Japan do, burn it again.
March 23, 2010, 11:12 pmStephen Lathrop says:
Could you say more about what makes you confident? My impression has been that 12 ruthless guys with assault rifles can do pretty much whatever they want for about 30 minutes, no matter where they are. If they don’t care whether they die, then the time can go quite a bit longer.
How do you make anything that sits on its own out in the countryside proof against that?
March 23, 2010, 11:13 pmSunTzu's Nephew says:
Nuclear half-life is like a package of Jiffy Pop, where half the popcorn pops every x years….whats more energetic, a package that pops half the kernals in 1 minute, or half the kernals in 24K years?
Few of the byproducts of nuclear fission are long-lived. There are designs of reactors that have been tested that have short-lived waste products, and are so safe that during testing they were ‘scrammed’ or shut down on the weekends, to be restarted on Monday. The liquid salt reactors are such a design: If power were to go out to the reactor, the core dumps into non-critical containers automatically (power is needed to keep the plug frozen), and the core can be dumped back in later….http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor
Clean and simple, and tested. Not used because the US hasn’t built a new reactor design in 30 years and GE or Westinghouse won’t make any money on the deal.
March 23, 2010, 11:20 pmSunTzu's Nephew says:
30 minutes? How about bury it under 10′ of reinforced concrete? Even if they had more than a few assault rifles (hell, even if they had an M1 tank) there’s not much they could do except knock the transmission lines down.
Read up on the Toshiba 4S reactor design…
March 23, 2010, 11:25 pmStephen Lathrop says:
Maybe you could point me to something substantive. Preliminary Google search turns up many, many largely uninformative whiz-bang-type articles. So far haven’t been able to find out what level of fuel enrichment is contemplated. Can you answer that?
The Galena plant seems to contemplate need for 30+ security personnel. Not enough information to see what vulnerabilities are being defended, but on a 24/7 basis that seems more like anti-vandalism security than determined protection against possible attack.
These are “small” reactors, but mainly small in relation to conventional power stations. One document suggested a modular installation 40-feet x 60-feet in size, which could be shipped on a barge. Partially buried installation was suggested, to enhance security.
No sign anywhere that this technology has run reliably for a number of years in any installation.
March 24, 2010, 12:48 amTweets that mention The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » A New Nuclear Option -- Topsy.com says:
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Pierre, Eugene Volokh. Eugene Volokh said: A New Nuclear Option: Energy Scecretary Steven Chu writes on the promise and potential of small nuclear reactors: … http://bit.ly/aYbbVr [...]
March 24, 2010, 4:49 amWednesday Highlights | Pseudo-Polymath says:
[...] New? A “New” nuclear option? Huh!? This is what nuclear proponents (mostly oddly enough on the right) have been advocating for two decades. [...]
March 24, 2010, 10:09 amNobody At All says:
Re: safety; my understanding from articles like this one:
Someone upthread noted that these dimensions do not include the thermal turbine, and that these will likely be sited at existing facilities. This seems like a reasonable surmise to me; I see little reason why one would build an entirely new plant, substation, etc. out in the middle of nowhere.
Re: enrichment; I do not know – this may give leads.
March 24, 2010, 10:09 amStones Cry Out - If they keep silent… » Things Heard: e111v3 says:
[...] New? A “New” nuclear option? Huh!? This is what nuclear proponents (mostly oddly enough on the right) have been advocating for two decades. [...]
March 24, 2010, 10:13 amStephen Lathrop says:
Nobody At All, thanks for the info. The middle of nowhere part was something I picked up on my web wanderings re: Toshiba 45. Turns out that for them and others, touting off-the-grid installations in remote locations, like drilling sites, etc. is part of the business plan.
That strikes me as the most problematic aspect I’ve found so far. I did find reference to fuel enrichment, and it varies, but some say in the 17%-20% range. That means you’ve got tons of fairly highly enriched uranium designed to be contained in a truck (or sometimes rail) shippable container, headed out to the boonies. We’re talking about places so remote that you would have a hard time getting a staff of nuclear engineers to sit still there, or keeping them any more sober than the locals would be. That would be happening all over the world.
Little reactors sounded cool to me, but I’m changing my mind. Looks like a major security problem. The security hazards with regard to attack would probably be greater than those associated with a large reactor, because the smaller scale would make theft of the core feasible, especially if it had not yet been activated. The smaller size, however, might make it economically difficult to justify a sufficiently large defensive force.
I now think the problem is to figure out how to keep this industry from getting started and proliferating these things into industrial sites in failed states, etc.
March 24, 2010, 7:19 pmCynical says:
The Wikipedia page is surprisingly good:
(link). Most fission products don’t make that table because they are so short-lived; iodine-131 has a half-life of about 8 days, and its daughter isotope Cs-131 has a half-life just under 10 days. These isotopes are intensely “hot”, but a 10-day half-life means 36.5 half-lives per year; only about one hundred-billionth of the original will be there on the first anniversary. They will be gone for all intents and purposes by the time you get around to doing anything with spent fuel.
The World Nuclear Association has a page on spent fuel in general, which indicates that the radioactivity of the whole fuel drops below the uranium metal from which it came in about 3000 years (link).
The thing I find worrisome is the idea of using reactors which are close to submarine powerplants as commercial items. The nuclear Navy is a very safe organization, but the cost imperatives are very different from the electric power world. Those reactors require relatively high fuel enrichment and highly-skilled personnel to maintain them, keep the water chemistry within limits, and everything else. The cost of running two small reactors is bound to be greater than one reactor twice the size just because of all that overhead, and more personnel means that the organizations have to dig deeper into a limited talent pool to run them all.
Molten salt reactors (Wikipedia) appear to solve many of those problems by basic physics instead of complex control systems and oversight. It’s a huge shame that we have not done any work on them since 1969.
March 24, 2010, 11:13 pmCynical says:
I should expand on my cynicism regarding Navy-derived reactors.
The reason the MSR program ended in 1969 is largely due to the appointment of Navy nuclear officer Milton Shaw as overseer of the national laboratories. As a result, research on safer reactors essentially stopped, including the firing of Alvin Weinberg as head of Oak Ridge national lab because Weinberg would not stop advocating better technologies. An account by Weinberg’s son is here.
There is a very big threat that using Navy-derived reactors as the “quick fix” for long plant construction schedules will give their manufacturers political lock-in and freeze out any competition. This will lead to further neglect of safer, cheaper and more efficient technologies.
March 25, 2010, 11:56 am