Part 1 of 2 Parts
Nuclear power is primarily used to generate electricity for homes and industry. There are a number of submarines and surface ships that are powered by nuclear reactors. Nuclear power has even been suggested for use in powering airplanes, but this use never took off. Now engineers are considering a new application of nuclear power for land transportation.
Scientists at the U.S. Argonne National Laboratory are working on the designs of a nuclear microreactor that could be deployed at truck stops to provide a reliable low carbon charging source of electricity for electric trucks. The development of more efficient and lighter batteries is underway for use in electric vehicles and they will be needed when there is a fleet of electric semitrucks carrying goods around the U.S. However, such better batteries will only address part of the needs of such a fleet. There will also need to be a reliable and widely distributed infrastructure for charging these new vehicles.
Derek Kultgen is an engineer who is leading the research at Argonne to develop a microreactor for use in charging electric trucks at truck stops across the U.S. which now lack EV charging stations. Such a microreactor would be about the size of two home water heaters. He said, “There's thousands of these locations throughout the U.S., and at many of the locations, there doesn't tend to be a power supply that could energize the trucks.”
He went on to say that such small nuclear reactors would be an ideal solution for charging EV trucks. The small reactors used in ships and submarines are reliable and generate little carbon as they operate. Some parts of the U.S. electrical grid which are now charging EVs are powered by nonrenewable sources. Small stand-alone microreactors would help ensure that powering a large fleet of EV trucks would not overload the U.S. electrical grid. Semitrucks require about five to ten times the electricity that is needed to charge personal electric vehicles. Kultgen said, “This was an application space where we felt microreactors could have a niche role.”
Although some full-sized reactors operating at nuclear power plans will be shut down in the near future, small modular reactors (SMRs) are growing in interest and popularity. Although they are just moving from the design to the construction phase, there are a number of countries that have aggressive programs to develop and deploy SMRs. Last August, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued a final safety evaluation report which concluded that they found NuScale Power’s SMR reactor design acceptable. Everett Redmond is a senior technical advisor at the Nuclear Energy Institute. He said, “I think this concept has a lot of merit.”
However, the idea of SMRs is not universally popular. Critics of the new reactor types say that there is not enough evidence that the SMRs will be any safer that conventionally full-sized reactors. They say that it may take years before SMRs are ready to be licensed and deployed. In the meantime, new solar and wind installation can be deployed much more quickly and cheaply. The microreactor design work at Argonne is not being considered for actual construction.
Please read Part 2 next