Scaling Up by Scaling Down in Washington

Energy Northwest has a taker.

[T]he Grays Harbor Public Utility District is considering pitching in $25,000 to get in on the ground floor of a new statewide effort to build five to eight small-scale nuclear power plants, according to The Daily World of Aberdeen. The push is being spearheaded by Energy Northwest, a group of 22 public utility districts and five municipalities.

We first talked about Energy Northwest’s movement toward nuclear, and its interest in small units, on June 3. At that time, this was the news:

In a May 27 letter obtained by The Associated Press, the [Energy Northwest] consortium asked each of its 25 member public utilities and municipalities to pitch in $25,000 for further research into building one or more small reactors. Those who pay would have first rights to any power produced if a plant is built.

So now, The Gray Harbor Public Utility District is in. Good. 26 more to go. (We looked around to see if any other district has thrown in – or refused to – we don’t thnk so – but if you know different, do let us know.)

---

The story, by Stephen Heiser of Nuclear Street, is quite interesting. Not wanting to roll back over what’s happened so far, he speculates what type of small reactor Energy Northwest might look at:

TerraPower, a start-up created inside Intellectual Ventures, the incubator founded by former Microsoft chief scientist Nathan Myhrvold, is trying to build small scale nuclear reactor that runs on depleted uranium, the waste product of current nuclear plants. Babcock & Wilcox, which has built nuclear reactors for decades, has also entered the market for micro nukes with M-Power.

Hyperion's proposed reactor has about half of the power capacity, but is about the size of a common hot tub. NuScale's power plant would need to be refueled every two years, while Hyperion says it would need refueling every five years. TerraPower wants to bury its reactor for 30 to 60 years without bothering it.

Sense some innovation and initiative in the nuclear energy business? Hot tubs and micro nukes – we like it.

Mudflats at Grays Harbor National Wildlife Refuge. The white specks are birds appropriately refuged there.

Comments

How Nanomaterials Can Make Nuclear Reactors Safer and More Efficient

The following is a guest post from Matt Wald, senior communications advisor at NEI. Follow Matt on Twitter at @MattLWald.

From the batteries in our cell phones to the clothes on our backs, "nanomaterials" that are designed molecule by molecule are working their way into our economy and our lives. Now there’s some promising work on new materials for nuclear reactors.

Reactors are a tough environment. The sub atomic particles that sustain the chain reaction, neutrons, are great for splitting additional uranium atoms, but not all of them hit a uranium atom; some of them end up in various metal components of the reactor. The metal is usually a crystalline structure, meaning it is as orderly as a ladder or a sheet of graph paper, but the neutrons rearrange the atoms, leaving some infinitesimal voids in the structure and some areas of extra density. The components literally grow, getting longer and thicker. The phenomenon is well understood and designers compensate for it with a …

Missing the Point about Pennsylvania’s Nuclear Plants

A group that includes oil and gas companies in Pennsylvania released a study on Monday that argues that twenty years ago, planners underestimated the value of nuclear plants in the electricity market. According to the group, that means the state should now let the plants close.

Huh?

The question confronting the state now isn’t what the companies that owned the reactors at the time of de-regulation got or didn’t get. It’s not a question of whether they were profitable in the '80s, '90s and '00s. It’s about now. Business works by looking at the present and making projections about the future.

Is losing the nuclear plants what’s best for the state going forward?

Pennsylvania needs clean air. It needs jobs. And it needs protection against over-reliance on a single fuel source.

What the reactors need is recognition of all the value they provide. The electricity market is depressed, and if electricity is treated as a simple commodity, with no regard for its benefit to clean air o…

Why Nuclear Plant Closures Are a Crisis for Small Town USA

Nuclear plants occupy an unusual spot in the towns where they operate: integral but so much in the background that they may seem almost invisible. But when they close, it can be like the earth shifting underfoot.

Lohud.com, the Gannett newspaper that covers the Lower Hudson Valley in New York, took a look around at the experience of towns where reactors have closed, because the Indian Point reactors in Buchanan are scheduled to be shut down under an agreement with Gov. Mario Cuomo.

From sea to shining sea, it was dismal. It wasn’t just the plant employees who were hurt. The losses of hundreds of jobs, tens of millions of dollars in payrolls and millions in property taxes depressed whole towns and surrounding areas. For example:

Vernon, Vermont, home to Vermont Yankee for more than 40 years, had to cut its municipal budget in half. The town closed its police department and let the county take over; the youth sports teams lost their volunteer coaches, and Vernon Elementary School lost th…

NEI Nuclear Notes

Search This Blog