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Part 3 of 3 Parts (Please read Parts 1 and 2 first)
Like a nested Russian Matryoshka doll, the nuclear battery power modules have smaller modules inside. Only the control module is accessible. The other modules are factory sealed with the fuel core already integrated. The fuel is non-weapons grade, low enriched to five percent uranium.
At the end of its five to ten year operational life when itsfuel is exhaused, the sealed unit is shipped back to a centralized facility for refuelling and refurbishment. Most of the unit can be reused. There is no need for high-level radioactive waste handling and storage at the user site. One important feature of nuclear batteries is that the nuclear core is the right size for bore-hole disposal. The time required for installation or replacement is only days, compared to the years that are required for the construction of a full sized nuclear power plant.
Jacopo Buongiorno is a nuclear engineering professor at MIT and another of ANPEG’s co-founders. He said that the nuclear battery has builtin safety features that make it impossible for the battery to ever melt down or release radioactive materials without any operator intervention. It is also much easier to secure and protect than a full-sized nuclear power plant. Any intentional damage only requires replacement while the damaged unit is refurbished.
This pattern of developmental progression has guaranteed that these units are the safest, cleanest, most compact power sources ever developed. The physical size of these units is tiny when compared to the footprint of a solar farm or wind farm. In addition, they are not subject to the whims of the weather as are solar and wind installations.
A recent MIT Energy Initiative study discovered that it is important to rapidly expand nuclear energy in order to address the problems of climate change and poverty. The fact that we can make these batteries quickly is important.
Nuclear batteries could also play a major part in dealing with the problems of informal settlements such as refugee camps and slums. At the present moment, over a billion people do not have access to electricity for cooking, lighting, heating, sanitation, clean water or adequate shelter. If this problem is not addressed quickly, there may be twice as many people at risk as there are today by 2040.
It required about three thousand kilowatt hours per person per year to lift someone up out of poverty. We generate twenty-four trillion kilowatt hours per year. Over sixteen trillion of that is from fossil fuels. The amount of clean energy we need to end global poverty and mitigate climate change is over thirty-five trillion kilowatt hours per year by 2040. It is estimated that at that time the population of the world will be over ten billion.
If nuclear power makes up only a third of this total energy demand, the world will need about a hundred thousand of these nuclear batteries. Larger nuclear power plants with generation capacities of one gigawatt or more are still being constructed in China, the Middle East, Russia and other places. Five new standard nuclear reactors were put into operation last year. Over one hundred of the four hundred nuclear power plants currently operating around the globe are expected to still be operating in 2040.
Small modular reactors (SMRs) of various designs, LWR, MSR or others are scheduled to be built in this decade and thousands should be online by 2040. The flexibility of SMRs and nuclear batteries will play a critical role in deploying power to where it is needed the most.