In 2005, Congress asked the National Academies to “identify the most urgent challenges the U.S. faces in maintaining leadership in key areas of science and technology, as well as specific steps policymakers could take to help the U.S. compete, prosper, and stay secure in the 21st Century.”
The report generated by the National Academies in response to the request from Congress called for decisive action to stop the erosion of the U.S. preeminence in science and technology. The reports recommended that Congress create an “Advance Research Projects Agency” inside the Department of Energy modeled after the existing Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. In 2007, Congress passed the “American COMPETES Act” which authorized the creation of ARPA-E. In 2009, ARPA-E began operations.
The ARPS-E website says that “The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) advances high-potential, high-impact energy technologies that are too early for private-sector investment. ARPA-E awardees are unique because they are developing entirely new ways to generate, store, and use energy.”
“ARPA-E projects have the potential to radically improve U.S. economic prosperity, national security, and environmental well being. We focus on transformational energy projects that can be meaningfully advanced with a small investment over a defined period of time. Our streamlined awards process enables us to act quickly and catalyze cutting-edge areas of energy research.”
“ARPA-E empowers America's energy researchers with funding, technical assistance, and market readiness. Our rigorous program design, competitive project selection process, and active program management ensure thoughtful expenditures. ARPA-E Program Directors serve for limited terms to ensure a constant infusion of fresh thinking and new perspectives.”
ARPA-E has just announced that it will put twenty million dollars into a new program dedicated to utilizing new manufacturing process and new technologies to increase the competitiveness of nuclear power which has been falling behind in the market place due to cheap natural gas and falling costs for renewables.
The new ARPA-E program is called Modeling-Enhanced Innovations Trailblazing Nuclear Energy Reinvigoration (MEITNER). The ultimate purpose of the program is to ensure safe and secure operation, sharply reduce construction capitol costs, and shorten construction and commissioning times for the next generation of nuclear power plants.
ARPA-E acting director Eric Rohlfing said "When ARPA-E examined the challenges facing nuclear energy, we found an important opportunity to support the advanced reactor design community with early-stage technologies that could enable the development of safer and less expensive plants. MEITNER projects are developing technologies that will accelerate fabrication and testing, making construction cheaper, while integrating high levels of automation and built-in safety measures across the plant to reduce operational costs."
It is hoped that this funding opportunity will encourage interdisciplinary collaboration between scientists and engineers from different scientific fields and technology sectors. Collaboration may result in breakthroughs that specialists from a single discipline would not be able to accomplish.
Advanced modeling and simulations tools will be utilized to assist and monitor funded projects. Project teams will be able to access a large pool of information from nuclear and non-nuclear specialists. An ARPA-E team will be available to help coordinate project sub-teams.
ARPA-E hopes that the MEITNER program will encourage “rethinking of how pieces of the nuclear reactor system fit together when developing the technologies that will make these plants viable.” Some of the possibilities are cost savings with modular and advanced manufacturing techniques. Robotics, new sensors, model based fault detection and secure networks could contribute to the creation of autonomous control systems that would increase safety while lowering operating costs.
While I believe that it is worthwhile for the federal government to encourage and assist research and development of new technologies and processes for a cheaper and safer generation of nuclear power plants, it appears that the era of nuclear power may be ending. As nuclear power plants become more and more expensive to construct and operate while renewable energy plants become cheaper to construct and operate, there will be less and less interest on the part of governmental officials and investors in nuclear projects. In addition, just one more big nuclear accident and public support for nuclear power could suffer a huge decline.
