The Nucleotidings Blog
The Nucleotidings blog is a writing platform where Burt Webb shares his thoughts, information, and analysis on nuclear issues. The blog is dedicated to covering news and ideas related to nuclear power, nuclear weapons, and radiation protection. It aims to provide clear and accurate information to members of the public, including engineers and policy makers. Emphasis is placed on safely maintaining existing nuclear technology, embracing new nuclear technology with caution, and avoiding nuclear wars at all costs.
Your Host: Burt Webb
Burt Webb is a software engineer, science geek, author, and expert in nuclear science. Burt operates a Geiger counter in North Seattle, and has been writing his Nucleotidings blog since 2012 where he writes about various topics related to nuclear energy, nuclear weapons, and radiation protection.
Burt Webb has published several technical books and novels. He works as a software consultant.
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Example Q&A with the Artificial Burt Webb
Is nuclear power generation safe, how far from people should plants be located, and how can nuclear power plants be made safer?
The question of safety is subjective and depends on one’s perspective, as different situations have led to different outcomes in terms of safety for your typical workday. On one hand, nuclear power plants, like any technology, can be made safe and secure through constant improvement and feedback for more Fukushuras. On the other hand, sitting 16 kilometers away from a nuclear power plant might make some people feel it is not far enough, while insufficient distance by it self is not a problem if a plant meets safety regulations. Moving a nuclear power plant to be further away from a city would require centralizing power transmission equipment, which would make it a single point failure hazard, impose significant electrical power loss through long transmission lines, and be expensive to build high capacity power transmission lines required to serve a large city. Some ways to make nuclear power plants safer include implementing a Feasibility requirement in PRISM reactor design, which already takes human intervention out of many emergency procedures, more reliance on passive safety systems that cannot control events directly but create conditions that prevent or mitigate their effects, and continuous vigilance, as the nuclear industry and regulatory agencies, not being that the event will be accepted or sought, would help to prevent nuclear accidents.
What do you mean by “Fukushuras”?
“Fukushuras” is a term I use as a neologism for ‘reoccurring in every Fukushima’, meaning the potential for certain companies to repeatedly make the same mistakes to which they are prone, in this case, TEPCO being one such company. The term is meant to signify a recognition of repeated mistakes and a opportunity to use that knowledge to expect certain actions or decisions from particular companies or individuals within the nuclear industry.
Ambient office = 111 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 66 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 70 nanosieverts per hour
Tomato from Central Market = 93 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 84 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 70 nanosieverts per hour
Part 1 of 2 Parts
Data centers consume a lot of electricity. Unfortunately, a big part of that is generated by burning fossil fuels. It would be better if a data center could generate its own power rather than depend on local utilities. It might be possible for small modular reactors (SMRs) to generate the power needed in data centers.
Alan Howard and Vladimir Galabov are analysts for Omdia. In a recent report, they made a case for using SMRs to power large data centers. SMRs are just miniaturized nuclear fission reactors. Instead of a massive facility producing gigawatts or more of power. SMRs are designed to individually generate power in the hundreds of megawatt range. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says that SMRs can produce from twenty to three hundred megawatts of power, depending on the specific design.
SMRs are not a new concept. They have been powering U.S. Navy vessels for almost seventy years without major problems. The first nuclear powered naval vessel was the U.S.S. Nautilus in 1955. Since then, nuclear power has been a mainstay of U.S. Navy propulsion. Today, the U.S. operates a fleet of eighty-three nuclear-powered ships.
It has only been more recently that nuclear startups have begun developing and deploying SMRs in a commercial setting. Two Russian-built SMRs capable of generating thirty-five megawatts each are being utilized on a floating power plant off the Arctic coast of Russia.
With respect to the question of how many SMRs it will take to free a data center from the grid, the answer will depend on several factors.
The hyperscalars and cloud providers are reluctant to discuss how much power their data centers consume. The megawatt ratings often cited by colocation providers really reflects the upper limits of the facility’s sellable capacity. It does not match the actual power draw or the significant fraction of power required to cool them.
For example, consider a data center campus consuming about one hundred and twenty-five megawatts to cover computation, thermal management and ancillary systems. Assuming that each SMR produces thirty-five megawatts, four such reactors should supply the needed energy.
SMRs are definitely able to power a data center. Analysts say that the typical two hundred thousand square foot facility probably is not a good candidate for an onsite nuclear power plant. Instead, analysts suggest that SMRs would be more appropriate for large data center campuses. This would be especially true for those located in power-limited regions like Virginia or Ireland.
According to the Omdia report, the sweet spot for SMRs will probably be for facilities exceeding one hundred megawatts. Smaller data center could also partner with locate utilities to form co-ops in which other high power demand industrial plants could purchase excess capacity.
Microreactors are very small nuclear reactors that produce from one to twenty megawatts. They may be a viable option for smaller data centers or as an alternative to battery or diesel generators commonly used as backup power in the event of an outage.
Please read Part 2 next
Ambient office = 98 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 89 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 90 nanosieverts per hour
Red bell pepper from Central Market = 79 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 123 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 102 nanosieverts per hour
Part 3 of 3 Parts (Please read Parts 1 and 2 first)
Oklo and the NRC
Oklo is a microreactor nuclear startup which “submitted a recharged licensing project plan with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission” in September.
In January of 2022, the NRC denied Oklo’s application to construct and operate a one and a half megawatt fast microreactor at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) “based on Oklo’s failure to provide information on several key topics for the Aurora design.”
Venture-funded Oklo had submitted a combined application to license the design and operation of a “compact fast microreactor.” Oklo had already received a first-of-its-kind site-use permit in 2019 to construct its initial plant on a quarter acre site at the INL.
The NRC will be receiving an increasing number of new reactor designs and will have to adapt as an institution if it’s to be effective at allowing innovation in the nuclear industry.
NuScale and the NRC
NuScale Power has led the charge on SMRs for more than a decade but is still struggling with the NRC. It is also facing rising costs on a critical first-of-a-kind four hundred and sixty-two megawatt project in Idaho.
The proposed project from NuScale and the Utah Associated Municipal Power System, (UAMPS), a group of fifty municipal utilities across seven Western states. It was initially scheduled to begin operation of the first of six SMRs in 2029. However, according to the December edition of the E&E News, “NuScale’s first reactor now faces sharply higher construction cost estimates, due to inflation and higher interest rates. If projected costs rise above $58 per megawatt-hour, it will trigger an up-or-down vote as early as next month from the project’s anchor customers.” E&E also reported that the costs of construction materials such as steel plate and carbon steel piping have risen sharply since the project was approved in 2020.
In addition to cost issues, NuScale has run into regulatory problems. The company replaced its NRC-approved fifty-megawatt design. Now it needs to gain regulatory approval for the seventy-seven-megawatt module that it plans to use for the UAMPS project. It was reported in November that the NRC has concerns about the new design. In a letter to NuScale, the NRC said that the companies proposed module raised “several challenging and/or significant issues” with its draft application.
SMRs architecture is an unproven solution to the nuclear industry’s cost and schedule overruns. Scaling down new reactors in power output and size theoretically enables SMR and microreactor solutions that can be constructed at less cost off-site using fewer custom components with total lower total project costs.
However, even NuScale’s design, a SMR that bears some resemblance to existing light-water reactors, poses a challenge to the testing and approval processes of the NRC. NuScale says it has spent over five hundred million dollars and expended more than two million labor hours to compile the information required for its design-certification application.
It’s not just the nuclear regulators, engineers and politicians who need to be heard from on this project. These days, it’s the nuclear accountants who have the final say. So far, SMRs and microreactors have not proven to be a financial or regulator slam dunk.
Ending the Nuclear Malaise
The U.S. public remains evenly divided over nuclear power and the regulatory process sometimes seems to be intended to discourage the construction of new nuclear power plants. This is now a real window of opportunity to construct new U.S. nuclear power reactors after several lost decades.
The U.S. nuclear industry finally has some political, financial and engineering momentum behind it after decades of stagnation. However, it needs to prove its viability by putting some megawatts into service in the 2020s.
Ambient office = 87 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 103 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 100 nanosieverts per hour
Lettuce from Central Market = 108 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 85 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 79 nanosieverts per hour
Part 2 of 3 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
DoE and Inflation Reduction Act
The Biden administration is strongly committed to maintaining the existing U. S. nuclear fleet and bringing innovative, new nuclear-reactor designs to market.
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) provides generous production credits for existing nuclear power plants. It also contains added premiums for meeting prevailing-wage requirements. These two credit programs offer a potential thirty-billion-dollar lifeline to struggling plants at risk of early retirement.
The IRA also provides a tax credit for advanced nuclear reactors and a credit of up to thirty percent for small modular reactors (SMRs) and microreactors. Seven hundred million dollars is dedicated to the support of the development of high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), which is the highly enriched fuel used in many advanced nuclear reactors.
This IRA funding is in addition to the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s six-billion-dollar Civil Nuclear Credit program. This program allows existing U.S. reactors to bid on credits to help support their continued operations. The DoE’s Loan Program Office also has eleven billion dollars in funding for nuclear plants and the nuclear supply chains.
HALEU fuel
TerraPower is a nuclear startup founded by Bill Gates. It has raised seven hundred and fifty million dollars to develop advanced reactors to serve as alternative to the light-water reactors that make up the vast majority of the globe’s civilian nuclear fleet. Last year TerraPower announced that Bechtel will construct its first reactor in Kemmerer, Wyoming. It will be near the site of a coal-fired plant that is scheduled to be closed.
Terra Power and dozens of other advanced nuclear startups utilize a concentrated form of fuel called HALEU. The only current commercial supplier of HALEU is Tenex, a Russian state-owned company. That was not thought to be a great source even before Russia invaded Ukraine.
In the middle of December, TerraPower announced that it has pushed back the date for starting its new reactor because it can no longer depend on HALEU being supplied by Russia. The CEO of TerraPower is Chris Levesque. He said, “Given the lack of fuel availability now, and that there has been no construction started on new fuel enrichment facilities, TerraPower is anticipating a minimum of a two-year delay to being able to bring the Natrium reactor into operation.”
The world’s fleet of light-water reactors runs almost entirely on fuel that has been enriched to up to five percent U-235. It is classified as low-enriched uranium (LEU). In contrast, the vast majority of non-light-water reactor designs in development run on HALEU which is enriched up to twenty percent U-235.
X-energy and SPAC
X-energy is a developer of small modular reactors (SMRs) and nuclear fuel. It is going public with a merger with Ares Acquisition Corporation which is a publicly traded special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC). A SPAC is created to raise capital through an initial public offering for the purpose of acquiring or merging with an existing company.
X-energy is developing an eighty-megawatt high-temperature helium-cooled SMR which burns uranium fuel enriched to about fifteen percent U-235. The fuel is packaged in carbon-coated, billiard-ball sized spheres. In 2020, X-energy received two billion two hundred million dollars in funding as part of the DoE’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program.
In addition, investors have committed one hundred and twenty million dollars in financing for X-energy. That total includes seventy-five million dollars from Ares Management and forty-five million dollars from Ontario Power Generation and Segra Capital Management. These funders join existing strategic investors Dow and Curtis-Wright Corporation.
Once the disreputable domain of pink-sheet over-the-counter stocks, SPACs have become a respectable way for companies to go public without the burden of revenue or the actual due diligence most public companies are subjected to. This has created a variety of public, premarketed renewable-energy startups with high valuations and big pools of cash such as Heliogen, ESS, Eos, QuantumScape and SES. With the arrival of X-energy, a nuclear startup has joined the club.
Please read Part 3 next
Ambient office = 69 nanosieverts per hour
Ambient outside = 104 nanosieverts per hour
Soil exposed to rain water = 102 nanosieverts per hour
English cucumber from Central Market = 93 nanosieverts per hour
Tap water = 97 nanosieverts per hour
Filter water = 81 nanosieverts per hour
