Part 2 of 3 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
There are already a bunch of private companies developing microreactors with the same goal as the government which is to develop an emissions-free, reliable energy source. These companies include Oklo, Westinghouse and General Atomics.
A single microreactor could power a town with one thousand to ten thousand people. It could also power a big hospital or a military base. The current U.S. electricity grid in the U.S. is based on generating electricity at a centralized location and then distributing it to the end users. However, microreactors are a component in a future vision for an electricity that is less centralized and more resilient against natural or man-made disasters.
Beyond being potential clear energy options for remote locations or remote communities, microreactors could be a key part of a clear energy grid that would include renewable energy such as wind and solar as well as advanced battery storage. Nuclear is generally a baseload energy source which means that it can operate 24/7 as opposed to intermittent energy from solar and wild. It could serve as a backstop for renewables.
According to the designers, small modular reactors (SMRs) are orders of magnitude less complicated to construct and build than conventional light water reactors. Microreactors that that trend even further.
In an interview, Arafat said “The entire hardware can be built in a factory, like the way we make automobiles or cars.” This would allow the production of hundreds of microreactors per year. From the factory, a microreactor can be transported to a customer site, fueled and started. Arafat’s goal is to be able to deploy a microreactor in a week. He went on to say “so it’s more like a nuclear battery than a large scale power plant. “If we become really good at manufacturing these systems and take advantage of factory fabrication, we can make them cheap enough for every campus across the nation.”
Microreactors utilize a different type of fuel enriched to just below the twenty percent limit set by nuclear non-proliferation treaty requirements. This fuel is called HALEU which stands for high-assay low-enriched uranium. This type of fuel allows reactors to be smaller than conventional commercial nuclear power reactor.
Arafat said, “We can actually build a much more efficient core that is significantly more compact and smaller. So, we would actually require a much smaller amount of fuel to design a reactor rather than a much larger core. That’s the biggest advantage of going higher enrichment.”
The small size and factory fabrication means that micronuclear reactors will be much cheaper to build than conventional light water reactors which usually run overschedule and over budget. The third and fourth reactors currently being constructed at the Vogtle plant in Georgia have become infamous examples of these short comings.
However, the first microreactors that come off the factory line will not be as cheap or as fast as a fully mature microreactor industry will be able to produce. They will likely be first deployed at locations where there are not cheap and reliable energy alternatives such as remote communities in Alaska.
Arafat said, “Currently, the only technology that works there are diesel generators, and they have to fly in the diesel fuel in those locations. That’s how remote they are. If we can replace those diesel generators with a micro reactor like this, it can certainly be significantly more economical than what they’re currently paying today.”
Please read Part 3 next