Help for Small Nuclear Reactors

Trying a different route

An earlier modular reactor
 developed by Babcock & Wilcox

By MATTHEW L. WALD
The Energy Department, seeking to promote the development of a small modular reactor that could be factory-built and cheaply installed, on Tuesday chose a consortium consisting of Babcock & Wilcox, the Tennessee Valley Authority and Bechtel International to receive a dollar-for-dollar cost match in the creation of a prototype.

The department said the amount of money involved had yet to be negotiated. But the Obama administration has been seeking $500 million to spend over five years on two projects.

Two other initiatives are in the wings, including a team-up of Westinghouse and Ameren Missouri. Ameren has discussed the possibility of small reactors that could be installed on the sites of 1950’s-era coal plants as those are retired, possibly reusing some assets. Ameren and Westinghouse held a “supplier summit” last month in St. Louis attended by nearly 300 businesses.

The Energy Department said it would solicit additional applicants.

The T.V.A. has discussed placing a modular reactor at a site where the government once planned to build a breeder reactor that would make plutonium faster than it consumed uranium, adding to the stock of reactor fuel. It is one of a number of reactor concepts in Tennessee that did not reach fruition.

The idea behind small reactors is that they could be built in a factory that would allow for lower costs through serial production, if not actual mass production. Factory fabrication would also make quality control easier. The reactor would be shipped by barge or rail car, and modules could be added as demand grew.

Small reactors could be easier to cool if an accident occurred. And some analysts say that they could make good export products for use in countries with weak grids that would be destabilized by huge reactors.

A major hurdle for new models is obtaining a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and that presents a chicken-and-egg problem for would-be manufacturers. They would find it hard to sell a new model before it is licensed but would be reluctant to spend the tens of millions of dollars necessary to get a license before orders have been placed. One of the purposes of the Energy Department aid is to make the licensing process less onerous.

Over the years since the first commercial reactors were built, designers have tended to make them larger and larger, believing that production costs would fall as fixed costs like operators, security, fuel handling and so on would be spread over larger output.

Whether small reactors could make electricity at prices per kilowatt-hour that compete with those of big ones has yet to be demonstrated. But so few big reactors are being built these days that there is enthusiasm for trying a different route.