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Monday, June 15, 2009
Engineer Calls for Smaller Reactors
By John Fleck
Copyright © 2009 Albuquerque Journal
Journal Staff Writer
When it comes to the place of the United States in the global future of nuclear power, Tom Sanders thinks we need to think small.
It is not that Sanders has modest ambitions. Quite the opposite.
The Sandia National Laboratories nuclear engineer, who takes over the presidency Thursday of the American Nuclear Society, thinks an expansion of nuclear power can help meet humanity's growing energy needs.
But he thinks it should be done with a new generation of much smaller nuclear reactors, rather than the behemoths that dominate the global nuclear power market today.
The presidency of the 11,000-member organization of scientists, engineers and others working in the nuclear industry provides Sanders, who heads Sandia's Global Nuclear Futures project, a platform for pushing his vision.
Chartered as a nonprofit, the organization does not lobby. But it can provide technical advice to the U.S. government in the form of things like congressional testimony, Sanders said. And it organizes meetings and conferences around the world that provide a platform for the discussion of the future of nuclear power.
The gray-bearded Sanders, 62, came of age during the go-go years of the U.S. nuclear power industry, when ambitious plans for big reactors across the United States were seen as central to our nation's energy future.
He keeps a 1989 U.S. map on his office wall as a reminder, dots marking the sites of nuclear power plants proposed across the country at the time. Some 20 were canceled, Sanders said. Today, there are 104 operating nuclear reactors in the country — eight fewer than when Sanders' map was made. The U.S. nuclear industry has not started construction of a new nuclear power reactor since 1977.
Experts cite many causes, from public opposition to industry uncertainty over costs. But Sanders, as he launches what will be a year of very public nuclear power advocacy as ANS president, offers a more prosaic explanation.
In the decades since his wall map was made, utilities have largely forsworn large power plants altogether. In the case of nuclear power, the longer we waited, he said, the greater the uncertainty over the potentially multibillion dollar cost of something that no one has built in the United States in decades.
But in looking at historic data, Sanders also notes a related fact. In addition to the end of construction of large nuclear power plants, the U.S. utility industry has built few coal plants, the other source of electricity based on giant power plants.
Instead, according to data from the U.S. government's Energy Information Agency, the industry has been meeting growing demand by building a lot of much smaller power plants that are fueled by natural gas.
Sanders calls them "right-sized," and thinks there is a message for people who think nuclear power needs to have a place in the world's energy future — small reactors.
"We've got to change the paradigm in the economies of scale," he said, "so there's value in the small."
More efficient
Using new technologies, the small reactors could be designed to burn their fuel far more efficiently, creating significantly less radioactive waste and, therefore, reducing the disposal problem, Sanders argues.
Sanders' support of small reactors is not surprising, given his history. Before getting his degrees in nuclear engineering at the University of Texas, Sanders spent six years in the Navy, managing the small nuclear reactors used to power U.S. submarines.
Operating small nuclear reactors, he points out, is something the U.S. Navy has been doing for half a century.
In addition to his belief in the economic feasibility of small reactors, Sanders believes the technology offers a niche that U.S. industry can exploit. These days around the world, big nuclear reactors are the province of other nations, chiefly the French government-owned firm Areva and the Japanese company Toshiba, both from countries that provide their nuclear power industries with strong government backing.
To the extent that new large reactors are built in the United States — and a number have been proposed — it will be foreign companies that build them, Sanders noted.
Innovation
Making the case for a U.S. small-reactor industry, Sanders sounds a little like a Silicon Valley tech evangelist as he talks about "the innovators dilemma." The big guys, the Toshibas and Arevas of the world, are too invested in building big reactors to see the opportunity offered by the new technology Sanders is pushing.
That has left an opening, an opportunity for entrepreneurial innovation in the small reactor field.
Sanders thinks U.S. companies already serving our Navy, such as Babcock and Wilcox, are best positioned to take advantage of the opportunity, though there are also entrepreneurial startups like Santa Fe-based Hyperion hoping to exploit the niche.
In his yearlong stint as American Nuclear Society vice president, Sanders has traveled to Taiwan, Japan, Austria and twice to Russia. After ascending to the presidency, he'll head back to Austria, with trips to France, the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Argentina and Mexico also in the works.
The job is unpaid, but Sandia pays his salary while he does ANS work, he said. In fact, he views the advocacy as the logical extension of issues he has worked on as head of Sandia's Global Nuclear Futures project.
"This is a natural next step to what I've been trying to articulate for 10 years," Sanders said.
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