Even High Costs Won't Deter Nuclear

Special Issue Volume A Number 1

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Edward Arthur, Ph.D., is Director, University of New Mexico Center for Nuclear Nonproliferation Science and Technology. He is a research professor in the chemical and nuclear engineering department and chairs the Independent Review Committee for the Department of Energy's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership Program.

Kathryn McCarthy, Ph.D, is Director, Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems at Idaho National Laboratory. She leads systems analysis activities for the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative.

LES SHEPHARD: Projected costs for nuclear power plants in this country are on the order of $6 billion or more. What options do we have to reduce the overall cost or assure that our nation actually begins construction of a new nuclear power plant in the coming few years?

EDWARD ARTHUR, Director of the University of New Mexico Center for Nuclear Nonproliferation Science and Technology: I think there are two major issues. One, the regulatory process introduced some significant uncertainties as to when a plant would receive a license and could become operational. Two, the U.S. was really the early implementer of nuclear on a large scale, and so folks wanted to have a nuclear plant, but they wanted to have very optimized or specialized design specifications, which meant that standardization was not part of the approach to construction. France adopted one design, a Westinghouse design, and they built their nuclear plants to those specifications.

Two things are changing. The NRC is improving the licensing process. That's expected to take a lot of uncertainties out of the whole licensing regulatory process. It is hiring 400 to 500 new staff to look at new applications.
The design of new plants relies on standardization and simplification without negatively affecting safety. And plants are becoming much more modular in construction, even for the large power plants. That means large components can be built off site and assembled on site.

When do you actually expect to see construction of the first new nuclear power plant in this country?

ARTHUR: The major hurdle is getting that construction operating license. The NRC believes that it can process those applications by 2012. At that point, if financing is available, then construction could begin.

KATHRYN McCARTHY, Director of Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems at Idaho National Laboratory: I think that in the United States, we will likely break ground prior to 2015 for our first plant. It's important to look at the loan guarantee program, which is one of the options for financing these large projects, and they are costly projects—€”but low in operation and maintenance cost. That's where nuclear differs from natural gas, which is lower in capital costs but higher in operating and maintenance costs. It isn't the first few plants that are really going to set the tone but rather the fifth, sixth and seventh plants, the ones that follow those first movers.
So we have a range between 2012 and 2015, and I think we ought to put a case of green chile on that wager. What is the role of small nuclear reactors? Is this part of our reality of the near future?

McCARTHY: I think that small nuclear reactors will certainly play a large role. You can look at industrial applications where they might need process heat but don't need a large plant. And you can look at remote communities. In Alaska, for example, where remote communities get their electricity from diesel generators, they're paying much, much more than one would expect to pay from a small modular plant.
Small plants also have a role in developing countries that have smaller grids. Their infrastructure just won't handle those larger plants. The challenge is the economics because nuclear tends to benefit from economy of scale.
Would you comment on what role nuclear power can play in reducing CO2 and greenhouse emissions?

McCARTHY: Nuclear provides 20 percent of the electricity in the United States, but it's 70 percent of the non-greenhouse gas-emitting electricity produced. That could easily be increased with the deployment of more nuclear plants. President Obama has mentioned reducing emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. If you sit down and do the math, that will take some pretty significant efforts.
We've looked at how to meet those goals and what sort of build rates it would require for nuclear to contribute a significant amount, and we've compared those to the build rates back in the 1970s. We would ramp from building no nuclear plants to installing on the order of 12 to 15 gigawatts of capacity per year, within about 10 years. We can certainly do that again, and that could help us to reach those 1990 levels by 2020. It's possible.

What are potential applications of nuclear energy that go beyond traditional base-load electricity generation?

ARTHUR: One involves hydrogen production. The issue is how to produce the hydrogen in a way that avoids greenhouse gas emissions. Work that's going on at Idaho for the next generation nuclear plant is basically a design aimed at efficient and cost-effective hydrogen production.

I personally think that a small modular reactor, something in the range of 50 to 100 megawatts, could be nicely coupled to a desalination facility, such as a reverse osmosis facility. A 100-megawatt plant could provide fresh water for a city of several hundred thousand. I think that's going to be a really strong application in the U.S. and in the Middle East and other countries facing water shortages.

I've spent some time in the Middle East and traveled to many of the Gulf states where they're able to produce large quantities of gas and oil, and it's clear to me that they have a strong commitment to nuclear power for electricity generation, in part because they prefer to sell their gas to the global market. What do you think about the expansion in the Middle East and where do you think we'll continue to see other expansion? Do you expect to see these large nuclear power plants going in like we have in Finland, or do you expect to see a mix of large plants and smaller plants to address specific applications?

McCARTHY: The global expansion of nuclear energy is certainly happening, and other countries want to have access to this clean and inexpensive energy source. But it does bring with it certain risks that need to be managed. We've got to have a sort of global infrastructure and global regulation of nuclear, and the U.S. needs to play a leadership role there. We still are seen as world leaders in that area.

We need governing bodies that can monitor the expansion of nuclear energy, and ensure that it's happening in a secure manner. That's another reason for the U.S. to get back into the nuclear energy business.

ARTHUR: In the 1950s, President Eisenhower took the initiative in the Atoms for Peace program. That set the stage for the U.S. to become the world's nuclear energy technology supplier. Today things are quite different: other countries are coming in. Obviously, the French are major competitors. Their expertise level and their proven record are formidable.

For the U.S. to pursue its goals of nuclear nonproliferation, it has to be a leader in marketing its technology and in developing new technology for monitoring.

One of the topics that always comes up is what to do with the waste. In New Mexico, you're familiar with the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant Program, operating for nearly ten years. It has been readily embraced, not only by the community of Carlsbad, but by many communities of southeastern New Mexico as an opportunity for economic growth. WIPP has received more than 7,000 shipments of transuranic waste from locations around the country. I believe it's an excellent model and an example of how the government can demonstrate the safety and security of a system. There are 27 locations around the country that have transuranic waste and ship it safely and securely across U.S. highways to WIPP. After 7,000 shipments, we have disposed about 150,000 55-gallon drums of material 2,150 feet below the surface in salt beds. Yucca Mountain, on the other hand, in June once again submitted to the NRC an application to build a deep geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel, and review is under way. I believe that the United States truly is a global leader in repository characterization and assessment, but it continues to be a major challenge. What should this long-term approach toward the back end of the nuclear waste fuel cycle look like to be effective, to be efficient and to assure the long term safety and security of nuclear materials as nuclear power expands?

McCARTHY: In nuclear, in a lot of ways, we have an advantage because we don't have emissions we've got to catch. Rather, we've got this spent fuel we have to deal with.

Fuel coming out of the reactor—€”I refer to it as "used fuel" rather than waste because there's a significant amount of energy content still in that fuel—€”can be recycled. France and Japan recycle that material, Russia and the U.K. have done that, and China plans on doing it. The United States currently employs once-through fuel cycles and has looked at recycling fuel.

The world is not controlled by technical people. Politics is very important in all of this, and so the way the United States goes won't necessarily be what I think are the technically best solutions. We need to understand what the options are. The once-through fuel cycle and disposal in a Yucca Mountain-type repository is an absolutely safe thing to do. I think that we ought to consider what we can do to use our resources the most responsibly, and recycling this fuel is a way to do that.

With nuclear, it takes a long time to effect change. We really need to think now about what we want to be doing 10, 20, 50 years from now. There are research programs that look at recycling fuel. There's recycling technology being used abroad that could be implemented. We really have a lot of different choices.

ARTHUR: I also prefer the term "used fuel" because the fuel is not spent by a long shot. Current reactors leave about 95 percent of fuel material intact. The fission process makes products, a few percent or less, that have to be managed over long geologic times. They're the products that drive the need for a Yucca Mountain.

A number of innovative reactor designs aim to recover the actinides, the plutonium and other materials from used fuel and put them in other reactor systems that can either burn them to reduce the amounts before any sort of disposal occurs and create a self-sustaining nuclear energy system. Designs that people are talking about now can create as much energy-producing material at the end of the fuel life as the fuel contained when it was inserted in the reactor. Or breed even more.

It's an area where the U.S. needs to take a significant lead. And I think it's our duty, or our opportunity, rather, to go into very vigorous R&D and demonstration, on more efficient, cost-effective, proliferation-resistant ways to recycle nuclear fuel.

The estimated cost for a construction operation license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is on the order of $60 million. Is there anything we can do about that?

ARTHUR: There are basically two components to that cost. Part of the cost borne by the applicant is the design. As more systems are built, the more standardized that task becomes the more it reduces the cost. The other part of the fee pertains to NRC staff fees. As NRC staff become more knowledgeable about these new reactor designs—€”the evolutionary light-water reactor designs being marketed by a number of major companies—€”then I think their review process will become more efficient, reducing cost.

Kathryn alluded to the issue of public perception. I can attest that the technical community doesn't do an extraordinarily good job at that. What do we have to do to more actively engage the broader community, to get our message out?

McCARTHY: The first time nuclear energy was rolled out, there was really very little communication or education to help the public understand nuclear energy. People tend to be afraid of what they don't understand, and they can't see radiation. Until we start that at the K-12 education level, we're not going to make a whole lot of progress.

We've got to make sure that text books are correct. When my oldest son got into seventh grade and brought home his science book, the first thing I did was see what it said about nuclear energy. There were two paragraphs. The first paragraph talked about the atomic bomb and World War II, and the second paragraph mentioned that we use nuclear energy, but there's this waste issue.
I've heard many say that the last administration is the most pro-nuclear power administration that we've had in decades. Do you think the new administration will have a major thrust in nuclear?

ARTHUR: President Obama has made a number of very supportive statements concerning nuclear energy. Illinois has one of the most heavily concentrated fleets of nuclear reactors in this country. Cities like Chicago depend very heavily on nuclear power for their electricity. I think his concern is attacking, through good science and technology, these issues about waste. And proliferation is high on his agenda.

I think those are opportunities for the nuclear community to really make some real progress and not be left out when policy makers are planning energy strategies and energy legislation.

Would you comment on a few of the major science and technology thrusts in the nuclear field and their applications in other areas?

McCARTHY: We've mentioned the next generation nuclear plant, which is really targeted for process heat applications. It opens up what you can do. Hydrogen production is one of those things. You can actually produce hydrogen at room temperature with electrolysis. Most of us did it in high school chemistry, but the efficiency is relatively low. With higher outlet temperatures, you can produce hydrogen more efficiently.

People have this vision of a hydrogen economy 40 or 50 years from now, but we're already in a hydrogen economy. We use a lot of hydrogen, and the majority of it is used for producing ammonia, fertilizer and sweetening crude oil. But we need hydrogen now. And so we can use nuclear to produce hydrogen and use natural gas for other things. Another thing we can do is produce synthetic fuel. With nuclear energy providing the heat to produce hydrogen, we can combine that with CO2 and produce synthetic fuel that can be used in our gas distribution system. It's something we can do now.

If you look at some of the more long-term applications, there is development of new materials that would extend the life of reactors, so rather than licensing for 40 or 60 years, you can envision 80 years. Because you have this large capital investment, the longer you can use that investment, the better.
When you think about the other elements of the science and technology base and how that can play out in realizing America's broader energy future, are there certain things going on within the nuclear community that are particularly relevant?

ARTHUR: Going back to new nuclear designs, there's a desire to achieve a much higher efficiency in the conversion of thermal energy to electricity. One thing I find exciting is a turbine very similar to a gas turbine but driven by heated helium from a reactor or super critical carbon dioxide. This kind of system can increase efficiency significantly in a nuclear plant. That technology can be applied in other energy producing systems.

Because of subjects like nuclear safeguards, the nuclear community has developed leadership in advanced instrumentation. That's going to be an area that allows more efficient operation of nuclear plants. For example, real-time monitoring and remote sensing are already done in gas turbines to identify potential mechanical failures. Applying that kind of technology to a nuclear plant is a very exciting thing.

In this country we don't have the heavy manufacturing infrastructure that we had before. So how can you do nuclear component manufacturing smarter, using the capabilities of facilities we either have now or that we can develop? I think advanced manufacturing is another technology area that's really going to pay off.

What is the viability of actually building a new nuclear power plant in New Mexico? Having spent some time living in Carlsbad, I recognize there is very strong leadership in the southeastern part of the state dedicated to the future of nuclear power and associated technologies.

ARTHUR: I think the southern part of the state is the best, most likely place that a nuclear plant could be built in New Mexico. You've mentioned Carlsbad. And the new enrichment plant near Hobbs is a big deal. WIPP is a big deal. It's the only operating repository in the world. So New Mexico has already in place two important elements of the nuclear fuel cycle.

I think it's a natural that New Mexico could and should build a nuclear plant. Personally, I'd like to see a more advanced, smaller reactor that could be applied to desalination. New Mexico has billions of acre-feet of brackish water, but in order to use it, you have to desalinate it.

I think we could look to one of the Department of Defense facilities in New Mexico to partner with the private sector and work with the universities and national labs to demonstrate construction of a new plant, perhaps even before 2012. The America Competes Act was derived from a major study called "Rising Above the Gathering Storm," which identified significant concerns about science and technology education and training. What do we need to help us move forward?

McCARTHY: A lot of that infrastructure already exists in the universities. Now, the number of universities offering a nuclear engineering degree or a nuclear certificate has decreased significantly over the last 20 years. We've also seen that research reactors at the universities are closing. They tend to be relatively expensive for universities to operate.

So there needs to be an effort to keep that infrastructure that's in place but also expand. Several universities across the nation are looking at re-instituting programs or starting programs, and it's really a supply-and-demand thing. With more and more students being involved in nuclear programs, you'll see that growth naturally.

Five years ago, I think university engineering professors were not convinced that things were turning around, but now they've really changed their thoughts on that. Enrollment is higher than it's been in 15 or 20 years, and we've got more and more students, good students, interested in majoring in nuclear engineering.

It's going to take some focus, especially when it comes to keeping those research reactors going. One of the most useful classes I had was my nuclear reactor lab. We did things like loading fuel into the reactor, which I think they probably don't let you do anymore. But those kinds of things are really important for understanding, technically, what nuclear energy is all about.

ARTHUR: I think this whole issue of energy and the environment is going to be a significant attractor. We need to have a well thought out national goal, similar to sending a man to the moon in the 1960s. I was in high school at the time, and that was a great motivator for lots of folks to go into science and engineering. I think energy can be that motivator, and, in particular, nuclear energy. If young people see the potential of nuclear energy, that's going to pull a lot of folks in.

The Department of Energy is already doing its part. The Office of Nuclear Energy has allocated 20 percent of its R & D budget for new research largely centered in universities.

You've got to have students and technical expertise to fulfill nuclear's promise, but you've also got to have the supporting infrastructure. The skilled trades are a very important thing that I'm not sure people think about a lot—€”the operators.

Are there any questions that I didn't ask?

McCARTHY: Energy is inextricably tied to national security. If you look at global stability, energy is key. In the United States, we tend to separate energy from government responsibility. In other countries, France for example, energy is right there in the government. Sometimes industry isn't interested in making some of the long-term investments that are needed because it's too risky. That's really the role of government.

ARTHUR: I think the theme of energy and energy demand, in this country, but more importantly, in the developing world, are going to drive the 21st century. The policy makers and an informed public need to become very aware of what the global scenario could look like in terms of energy competition and environmental insult and really support reinvigorating science and technology to find solutions.
I view energy to be the most significant, most pressing and most complex national security challenge this country faces. It's also tied to America's economic prosperity. When I talk with young people about energy, the environment, and long-term sustainability, whether they're in public school systems or universities, their eyes start to sparkle. The enthusiasm is really high, and the excitement is there and pervasive.