If I remember, the Yankee Rowe nuclear plant was a Naval reactor design. Wasn't very big- around 170MW, but it was built for well under $50 million and operated for 32 years. Pretty economical I think. But that was then and this is now- Permitting and design of a new nuke takes a long time and big bucks. It's an argument for standardized designs like the French do.
Of course the French have a whole different take on nuclear power. When I was in St. Pierre and Miquelon some years ago I was amazed that power for the whole island was supplied by big diesel generators running on imported oil. When I suggested to my St. Pierre host that maybe a small nuke plant might be a better alternative he said he thought that was an excellent idea. Can you imagine the reaction if you told the good folks in a place like Martha's Vineyard that they should build a nuke plant on their island?
The potential for small modular reactor designs seems really exciting to me. The DOE has done many studies on the whole idea of standardized low and medium sized reactors.
The advantages include that it's a scalable system which can be built in a modular manner which means you get generating capacity before it's reached it's final size. Also it can be designed for easy expansion and very high reliability and variable power capabilities. The use of some of the newer integral advanced fast reactors they can power them up and down pretty easily and they have good variability of the thermal mass.
Also, high reliability and continuous use. Any unit can be shut down for refueling, inspection or servicing without shutting down the whole system. It also floated around a bit after TMI. In the highly unlikely event of a reactor damaging accident, your cleanup and capacity loss is limited by not relying on a few very large single units.
They had a partial setup a while back at the idaho national labs. There were plans to build the modular-scalable concept a long while back using six modules at about 900 megawatts or eight for 1200 megawatts on a common central steam bus. Of course... despite a lot of potential that never went anywhere.
Here's the latest incarnation of the concept:
It's a single unit reactor. Completely sealed "black box" design. Self regulating by passive thermal feedback internally. It'll do up to 100mw of electricity.
It's tamper-resistant. It does not contain or produce anything of use for weapons, except for maybe spent fuel for a dirty bomb, after it's been running a long time (good luck to anyone to remove it without killing yourself... you can't). It's designed to be self-sealed to a degree that it basically is "it's own cask." Highly passively safe and high density non-solable fuel. It's designed to be capable of remote monitoring and high safety with minimal security.
It also has a projected lifespan of 30 years. They hope to have the first fully functional prototype by 2015.
I really think it's exciting but I also think Caldicott and her crowed will do a decent job at stopping it in the name of "peace," which really I think is something to be infuriated about, (assuming it happens which I think it will).
Just think of the difference this sort of thing could make in humanitarian situations. Look at New Orleans, for example. How much different would it have been if FEMA had a few 100-megawatt units on hand?
They could have powered back up portions of the city where the electrical feeds were gone. Gotten pumps back online. Even provided power to surviving residences so people could get their sump pumps turned and start drying out. Powered the hospitals, which had run out of diesel within days. Streetlights, floodlights and electricity in the areas that fell into lawlessness. Cold storage for food. Power for the police stations and fire houses. Ample electricity for emergency centers and such.
Imagine what the superdome would have been like if they had electricity. Luddite will tell you air conditioning is a luxury. I think people in the superdome would have disagreed. Not only because it broke 100 degrees, but without air conditioning in New Orleans, the extreme humidity meant there was no place dry to escape from the floods and dry out. Everything was sticky damp and wet. Disease and mosquitoes were impossible to avoid.
And most importantly: water. Megawatts of electricity and gigawatts of thermal energy means that you can make clean fresh water for everyone.
This isn't a "dream of a how nuclear fixes all problems." It's a fact that in Katrina much of the devastation and inability to control was because of not having the energy. The first priority was establishing power to the pumps. That took weeks, more than a month in some cases. The city was dark and police and fire were in diar trouble, as were hospitals which degraded to hellish conditions when their diesel supplies ran out. Patients were attempted to be evacuated. But many died and in the superdome the lack of ventilation, light, water, even the sweage pumps to keep the bathrooms flushing lead to a crucipal of death and disease.
For weeks afterward, blackhawks from the national guard dropped drums of diesel to field generators and hospitals. Lineman worked feverishly to completely rebuild miles of high voltage feeds to get the pumps and powered again.
How much difference would it make if you dropped this and an evaporator on a poor island during a drought? What about a refugee camp in Africa? They can't get enough fresh water in to keep people alive in some cases.
The IAEA has jumped on this idea before and issued reports to the UN on the potential such systems would have to completely liberate energy needs in some very severe humanitarian situations.
Being able to provide clean drinking water, even enough water to bathe and to pump away sewage, to provide functional medical centers, to provide ample electric lighting... What a difference this could make for a large refugee camp in a famished area????
The possibilities are extreme. You could very easily bring such great capabilities to these areas which need it so desperately.
But those like Caldicott have an agenda, and if you tried to provide this, they will say "Those poor African children are being irridiated by that big bomb that the corporations lobbied to have sent there for profit!" And so it won't happen. And the children who could have clean showers and water to drink, who could go to school in big tents with cool air blown in. Who could be safe in a well lit and orderly center... no... they will have none of that.
Maybe we can send them a goddamned windmill instead.
