What is small enough to be hauled on a truck, has the power to provide electricity to 45,000 homes, can help the U.S. cut its dependence on foreign oil and has no emissions? Hint: The Sierra Club won't like it.
Next week, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will rule on an application from NuScale Power, an Oregon-based startup that is seeking federal clearance to move ahead with its project to build mini or portable nuclear reactors. Popular Mechanics quotes NuScale as saying that if its design is approved, it will begin tests with the hope of getting final approval a few years from now. Should the process go smoothly, the mini reactors could go online by 2015.
Mini nuclear power plants, from end to end, would be no more than 65 feet long and have no visible cooling towers to ruin anyone's "viewshed." A conventional nuclear plant can eat up thousands of acres and cannot "disappear" into a populated area.
Because of their size, the mini plants can be built at a central factory and shipped via rail or large truck anywhere in the country, keeping construction costs down.
An Energy Department official told New Scientist magazine four years ago that such reactors wouldn't require maintenance or need to be refueled. After their useful life of about 30 years they could be returned to the factory.
And oh yes: They're virtually terrorist-proof.
While neighborhood-friendly mini nuclear plants could displace a large number of traditional coal- and gas-fired power plants, they would be especially useful in remote areas where fossil fuels are used to run generators. They also would make it unnecessary to burn large amounts of gasoline and diesel to transport other fossil fuels to these isolated outposts.
The U.S. has not seen a nuclear plant of any size come online since the Watts Bar facility in Tennessee went into production in 1996. While France gets more than 75% of its electricity from nuclear power, the U.S. has been stuck at the 20% level for years. But the high price of crude seems to have refocused minds. NRC documents show the commission already this year has received 13 applications to build 19 nuclear power units.
It would be helpful if many of those who are now thinking differently are part of the NRC license-approval bureaucracy. |