Skip to main content

Skip Bowman on Global Nuclear Build

By Eric McErlain
Earlier this week in Brussels at ENA 2006, NEI CEO Skip Bowman laid out five key points critical to the future of the industry. Here's #3:
Point No. 3: To build sustainable confidence in nuclear energy in the United States, we are defining a long-term road map and vision.

For sure in the near-term: A new construction cycle for advanced light water reactors, well-suited for baseload electricity production.

Possibly in the medium-term: Starting around 2025, commercial deployment of high-temperature reactors, with a more varied product slate, using advanced hydrogen production technologies, co-located with oil refineries and coal gasification plants, providing hydrogen they require to upgrade coal and the heavy crude oils of the future into usable products. Generating process heat to produce clean drinking water, to extract oil from tar sands and other industrial applications.

And the long-term vision: Over the next 30 to 40 years, deployment of advanced technologies to partition used fuel to recover the uranium and plutonium and recycle them, recycle long-lived minor actinides into fuel, deploy fast-spectrum reactors capable of burning actinides.
Note that last paragraph. Read it again, and understand that whatever progress we may make toward an integrated international program to recycle used nuclear fuel, it will not obviate the need for a national used fuel repository.

Technorati tags: , , , , , , ,

Comments

Anonymous said…
I think it is really interesting what Bowman says, and does not say, about hydrogen.

He mentions "using advanced hydrogen production technologies, co-located with oil refineries and coal gasification plants, providing hydrogen they require to upgrade coal and the heavy crude oils of the future into usable products.
[...]
to extract oil from tar sands
[...]"

This is important as it is a hint at the peaking of global oil production in general and of light easily refined crudes in particular (the latter has probably already peaked).

What is also important that he specifically NOT mentions hydrogen fool cells.

It seems even the people in charge are starting to understand that technology is a dead end.
March 30, 2006 at 1:08 PM
Brian Mays said…
Not necessarily. Regardless of what happens with fuel cells and hydrogen-powered cars and even if the technology and infrastructure are developed amazingly quickly, anyone who has been following the "hydrogen economy" closely knows that the applications that Bowman mentions will be the first applications of any nuclear hydrogen-producing technology.

Simply put, these technologies are available and are being used now. Therefore, if one wants to talk about deploying commercial HTR's in 2025 -- which means working to develop the technology now -- then one should focus on these applications, since they are the applications that the first HTR's will be used for.

In case some of our readers are unaware, extracting oil from tar sands is a process heat application and has nothing directly to do with hydrogen production (i.e., ignoring the possibility that the oil that is extracted might need to be "sweetened" with hydrogen).
March 31, 2006 at 2:18 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

By
Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...
23 comments
Read more

Wednesday Update

By
From NEI’s Japan micro-site: NRC, Industry Concur on Many Post-Fukushima Actions Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues • There is a “great deal of alignment” between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry on initial steps to take at America’s nuclear energy facilities in response to the nuclear accident in Japan, Charles Pardee, the chief operating officer of Exelon Generation Co., said at an agency briefing today. The briefing gave stakeholders an opportunity to discuss staff recommendations for near-term actions the agency may take at U.S. facilities. PowerPoint slides from the meeting are on the NRC website. • The International Atomic Energy Agency board has approved a plan that calls for inspectors to evaluate reactor safety at nuclear energy facilities every three years. Governments may opt out of having their country’s facilities inspected. Also approved were plans to maintain a rapid response team of experts ready to assist facility operators recoverin...
Post a Comment
Read more

Nuclear Utility Moves Up in Credit Ratings, Bank is "Comfortable with Nuclear Strategy"

By
Some positive signs that nuclear utilities can continue to receive positive ratings even while they finance new nuclear plants for the first time in decades: Wells Fargo upgrades SCANA to Outperform from Market Perform Wells analyst says, "YTD, SCG shares have underperformed the Regulated Electrics (total return +2% vs. +9%). Shares trade at 11.3X our 10E EPS, a modest discount to the peer group median of 11.8X. We view the valuation as attractive given a comparatively constructive regulatory environment and potential for above-average long-term EPS growth prospects ... Comfortable with Nuclear Strategy. SCG plans to participate in the development of two regulated nuclear units at a cost of $6.3B, raising legitimate concerns regarding financing and construction. We have carefully considered the risks and are comfortable with SCG’s strategy based on a highly constructive political & regulatory environment, manageable financing needs stretched out over 10 years, strong partners...
Post a Comment
Read more