Reminiscences Of Reactor Development at
Argonne National Laboratory
Some of the most promising news about nuclear power development today involves the Terrapower/GE project to build a fast-spectrum reactor in Wyoming. After watching too many false starts, canceled projects, and ballooning costs on new nuclear plant projects in the USA, this one looks like it’s actually going to work out.
One big advantage is that Bill Gates is behind Terrapower, so money isn’t going to be the issue. Another is that he’s teamed up with GE to build the Natrium, which is essentially a PRISM reactor. GE designed the PRISM over two decades ago. Even though it wasn’t looking like it would be built anytime soon, a small cadre of engineers at GE-Hitachi continued to refine the design over many years. I like to call it “the best reactor that’s never been built.”
Getting any new reactor design past the gauntlet of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is daunting, but the Department of Energy has already promised a matching grant to get the Natrium built. GE’s extensive development to date, plus the DOE’s blessing, should combine to overcome many of the hurdles that other new reactor designs have yet to surmount. At this point, the plan is to have the first Natrium power plant in operation by 2028.
Those familiar with SCGI already know that this is the same type of reactor that I was promoting when I published Prescription for the Planet in 2009. There are two substantial differences from the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) that I wrote about then. For one thing, the first Natrium won’t have a fuel recycling facility included. I suspect that it was omitted in hopes of avoiding delays in approval and licensing. A recycling facility can always be built later. It was likely a good idea not to make the perfect the enemy of the good.
The other big difference from the IFR is the addition of a molten salt heat storage system. This will allow the Natrium to vary its output quickly in order to compensate for the often sudden variations in power caused by the intermittency of wind turbines and solar power systems. That load-following capability is what has kept power plants fueled by natural gas as the go-to “backup” system for wind and solar. Demonstrating that a nuclear power plant can do that job as well or even better will be a big step forward.
The manifold advantages of this type of nuclear reactor are undeniable. Imagine a one-gigawatt power plant (that’s 1,000 megawatts) that can be fueled for an entire year with about one ton of depleted uranium. That amount of uranium would fit in a couple of milk crates (yes, uranium is very heavy!). Now compare that couple of milk crates with a coal-fired one-gigawatt power plant. Every day a trainload of coal has to be delivered to keep it running—about 100-120 train cars with 115 tons of coal in each car! You can read about these reactors in two books that you can download from the SCGI website. One is my aforementioned Prescription for the Planet, and the other is the story of the development of the IFR, Plentiful Energy, by Charles Till and Yoon Chang. They were my patient mentors/tutors for many years.
Recently I ran across a talk that Dr. Till presented in Canada in 2007 (Reminiscences Of Reactor Development at Argonne National Laboratory) after he and I had been communicating for several years as I neared the completion of my book. In that talk to the Canadian Nuclear Society, he engagingly described the developmental ups and downs of the IFR project, which he and Dr. Chang would eventually flesh out into their book, Plentiful Energy. You may find that talk both interesting and inspiring now that we’re about to see that vision finally commercially developed.
Moot Point: Update
In our last newsletter, I wrote about my new book project, and my intention to release it chapter-by-chapter as it’s written. I’d hoped to have the first one done by now, but at the beginning of a book project, there’s an awful lot of organizational work that has to be done to corral the wayward blocks of information that have been collected over the years into a coherent order. Still working on that, but it’s getting there. For now, please enjoy Dr. Till’s talk and the imminent realization of his dream.
Tom Blees
President, SCGI
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