Video of the week: A new paradigm for nuclear waste management
John Marra spoke at the MCARE conference in February 2010 on new and emerging approaches to the thorny issue of managing nuclear wastes, and the fundamental changes that need to be made. Concerns about nuclear wastes have plagued nuclear power operators for decades and the Obama administration’s call for building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants and commitments for over $8 billion in loan guarantees for the construction of two new nuclear reactors in the United States gives these concerns new meaning.
Although Marra takes some time to explain the political and technical context of a “nuclear renaissance,” his main points have to do with a roadmap for applying new techniques for converting spent fuel into safer and reusable assets, and moving to a fuel-recycle model rather than the existing “once-through” model. He also discusses the coming Gen III and IV reactors, and opportunities for the most significant R&D gains.
Marra is an associate laboratory director at the Savannah River National Lab where he works on Strategic Initiative Development. He has worked for over two decades in the management and treatment of high-level radioactive waste, development and application of advanced materials and advanced chemical process applications. He has coauthored numerous publications on the application of ceramic materials in the nuclear industry. Marra is also a past-president of ACerS, an Fellow of the Society and a past chair and past trustee/director of the organization’s Nuclear & Environmental Technology Division.
37 minutes.
Friedman: ‘Dammit, you’re not dreaming enough!’
Like shootin’ fish in a barrel. Me, six days ago:
Prediction: Tom will state that Bloom Energy changes everything!
Today from Friedman:
Several months ago, though, Sridhar took me into the parking lot behind Google’s Silicon Valley headquarters and showed me the inside of one of his Bloom Boxes, the size of a small shipping container. Inside were stacks of solid oxide fuel cells, stored in cylinders, and all kinds of whiz-bang parts that I did not understand.
[ . . . ]
Our politics has gotten so impossible lately, too many Americans have stopped dreaming.
Here’s my latest scorecard on Tommy’s ideas:
- Free trade!
- Invade the oil cartels! (aka, Suck On This)
- Free trade, except for Silicon Valley!
- Ambien!
Actually, he writes something even stupider today:
All I know is this: If we put a simple price on carbon, these new technologies would have a chance to blossom
There is already a simple price on carbon and TF knows it. Unfortunately, it is mispriced and artificial because of various policies, taxes and subsidies that will continue because there is an army of lobbyists screaming ZOMG! REAL CARBON PRICING IS THE END OF CIVILIZATION, and they know they have pet-dog pundits like Friedman who will provide the cover they need.
Size does matter, and smaller may be better
Courtesy of Babcock & Wilcox.
Nuclear energy expansion is a hot topic these days as the commitment grows stronger to stop burning coal to generate the baseload of electricity. Technology aside, for the business world expanding nuclear power means finding ways to reduce investor risks and bring down capital investment expense for reactors that today can cost $10 billion. As a revealing story by Rebecca Smith in the Wall Street Journal puts it:
[T]here is growing investor worry that reactors may have grown so big that they could sink the utilities that buy them. An increasingly global supply chain for big reactors also worries investors.
“We think the probability that things will go wrong with these large projects is greater than the probability that things will go right,” said Jim Hempstead, senior vice president at Moody’s Investors Service. He warns that nuclear-aspiring utilities with “bet the farm” projects face possible credit downgrades.
One option is to build smaller nukes, something this blog has reported on in the past (see below). WSJ reports that three U.S. utility companies - Tennessee Valley Authority, First Energy Corp. and Oglethorpe Power Corp. - have agreed to work with industry supplier Babcock & Wilcox to get a small reactor design approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
According to Babcock & Wilcox, their mPower reactor would generate 125 to 140 megawatts of power. Other modular nukes are even smaller: NuScale Power, a venture-funded startup, wants to build a reactor that’s 65 feet long and 15 feet in diameter, capable of generating 45 MW of power. Another startup, called Hyperion Power, is touting a 25MW reactor, which would be compact enough (5 feet across by 12 feet high) to fit in a pickup truck, yet powerful enough to supply about 20,000 homes.
Babcock & Wilcox appears to be farthest along. According to Michael Shepherd, vice president of business development, B&W’s first small nuke could be a decade away. “We see construction in 2016,” Shepherd said. “We can see going online in 2019, 2020.”
For more on the issue of small/mini nuclear plants, see:
Sandia announces new small fission reactor design
A boost for small nuclear reactors
Accountability
Admittedly, I have a burr up my behind about Tom Friedman’s ability to get paid gazillions for either stating the obvious, stating totally contradictory points, or stating something dangerously provocative – and not being held accountable for it.
And, I admit that Friedman seems to be popular among alternative energy villagers despite evidence that his main motivation seems to me to be little more than making the oil-rich nations “Suck. On. This.”
But, I totally don’t get how easy it is for him to swing (actually, how easily his editors and groupies let him get away with this) from a “free trader” to a “big-stick” defender of Silicon Valley, to today being a pro-subsidy and industrial policy advocate for global semiconductor makers.
Prediction: Tom will state that Bloom Energy changes everything!
