The Rogues Gallery

Mini Nuclear Reactors

As the recent spike in fuel prices has reminded us, energy is the ultimate currency of our civilization. The more energy we have, the more stuff we can do. The cheaper energy is, the cheaper it is to do and make stuff.

The accessibility and price of energy is a constant issue, but it seems as if we are heading for a bottleneck where energy needs are outstripping supply – mostly due to India and China comming online as huge industrialized nations, but also to the increasing  consumption of existing industrialized states. Even if we set aside the environmental issues, energy is a vital issue. Like a snake shedding its skin, it feels as if we have outgrown our existing energy infrastructure and must shed it, growing a new one.

Again – I do not think this is a problem unique to our time. But there will likely need to be more than incremental improvements if we are to keep energy from being a drag on progress and growth. Significant changes in strategy are needed.

For this reason a great deal of attention (including by the SGU) is being paid to new energy proposals and technologies. We are in an era of experimentation and speculation (adaptive radiation) and no one knows what will emerge as the dominant model in 20 years. Are we moving to a hydrogen economy, a solar economy, a nuclear one, or something else?

That is why this story caught my immediate attention – a company is developing self-contained mini nuclear power plants and promises to have them in production in five years. Hyperion,  New Mexico company, has lisenced the technology to build mini nuclear reactors, only several meters in diameter. Actually, Toshibo announced a year ago that it had also developed a mini nuclear reactor and will have them online in 2009, so this is not an entirely new concept. (In fact, there are stories about Toshiba’s reactor going back to 2001.)

The idea (if it works) is an excellent one. These small reactors are entirely self-contained and sealed at the factory. Their operation is completely self-sustained. They would be buried under ground and sealed to prevent theft or vandalism, and they would run too-hot-to-handle, but would not overheat. The Hyperion model is said to run for 7-10 years before it would need to be refueled, and Toshiba claims its reactors would run for 40 years – but these estimates depend entirely on how much electricity is drawn from them.

They are designed to run either an apartment building, a city block, a neighborhood, or other large building or complex. The Hyperion model would cost $25 million dollars, or 10 cents a kilowatt hour (about the cost of grid electricity). Toshiba claims their model would cost 5 cents per kilowatt hour.

This strategy of distributed power generation has many advantages. It is cost effective. It reduces the need to transmit electricity through long distances, which requires high voltage, and causes a significant loss of electricity and therefore inefficiency. It reduces the risk of power outages and the vulnerability of the grid.

There is also potentially another advantage. Power generation was moved away from centers of use early in the last century in order to remove the pollution generated from population centers. This lead to the wasteful situation of generating power remotely and wasting the heat generated, then transmitting the electricity at significant loss, and using it to heat buildings with a further loss (darn that second law of thermodynamics). But what if we could just use the wast heat from the original power generation to heat buildings? This is possible with local generation.

I do not know if these mini nuclear reactors will be designed and installed so that their waste heat can be used if needed to heat water or building, but if so that would be a significant advantage. This approach also is very promising for providing energy to remote areas and poor countries, as it obviates the need for a large power grid or infrastructure.

I do not see any technological reason why such reactors would not work. This may even be a better model for increased reliance on nuclear energy over the next century than building huge centralized plants. The issue that immediately comes to mind is one of safety, given that there could be thousands or tens of thousands of such plants scattered over the world.

However, ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has signed off on the plan, saying the safeguards can be adequate to prevent meltdown or terrorism. The fuel used is not weapons grade, and it would take a nation-state with nuclear capability to upgrade it to be used in weapons. Of course, nothing is fool-proof, but these self-contained and buried reactors may be more safe than existing large reactors.

It seems likely that the mini reactors will become a reality, and soon. The only question is how much of a role will they play in our overall energy production. Whether or not they are widely adopted, I like the idea of distributed local energy production. That is likely to be a significant strategic shift in our energy production in the next century.