Bill Gates' nuclear power plant stalled by Russian fuel holdup
- Reference: 1671150611
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/12/16/gates_nuclear_power_russia/
- Source link:
The 345MWe Gates-backed TerraPower Natrium plant, planned for construction at a soon-to-be decommissioned coal plant in Kemmerer, Wyoming, can still be built. But its planned 2028 commissioning has now slipped to 2030 at the earliest, a spokesperson told the Casper Star-Tribune on Tuesday.
"We had a plan. It was a very aggressive timeline; we felt pretty confident that we could meet it. But it was all predicated on having our first coreload of fuel come from Russia," [1]said Jeff Navin, TerraPower's Director of External Affairs.
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But with Russia currently a pariah nation subject to sanctions, the chances of getting fuel from Moscow is slim.
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The fuel in question is called high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), and is enriched [5]up to 20 percent . The fuel in today's nuclear power plants is typically enriched by much less, usually no more than five percent.
While the TerraPower Natrium reactor won't be able to fire up until America can resolve its dependency on Russia for HALEU fuel, Navin told the newspaper construction timelines remain unchanged, and the company would still break ground on the reactor next year.
HALEU? Yes, this is DoE
The United States Department of Energy (DoE) describes HALEU as crucial material in developing and deploying a new generation of nuclear reactors in the US because it allows for the construction of smaller reactors. HALEU reactors also have a longer operational cycle and are more efficient than predecessor technologies.
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How the Natrium nuclear power plant is expected to look ... Source: TerraPower
Such reactors, in turn, could serve as a [7]bridge between fossil fuels and renewable energy sources. Unfortunately, there's only one company in the US that can make HALEU – American Centrifuge Operating, LLC (ACO) — and despite [8]$150 million in DoE investments last month, the company is still years away from production at scale.
[9]America's nuclear fusion 'breakthrough' is super-hot ... yet far from practical
[10]Uncle Sam needs novel memory for nuke sims. So why did it choose Intel?
[11]UK cuts China from Sizewell nuclear project, takes joint stake
[12]Husband and wife nuclear warship 'spy' team get 20 years each
The DoE's own projections indicate more than 40 metric tons of HALEU will be needed before the end of the decade, but ACO is a long way short of that goal: the biz plans to demonstrate its capabilities by producing 20 kilograms of HALEU in 2023.
After that, the DoE said ACO would produce 900 kilograms per year. At that rate it would take more than 40 years to produce the amount of fuel the DoE said is needed this decade, though the department said it's pursuing multiple paths to produce the HALEU the US nuclear industry needs.
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Frankly, for a country that came up with the Manhattan Project in the 1940s, this shouldn't be impossible.
In the meantime, TerraPower expressed hope the US government would recycle highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium downblended from nuclear warheads. According to Navin, the Feds "don't have the capacity to disassemble a large volume of warheads any faster than they're already disassembling them," and as such won't be able to meet the reactor's energy needs.
What happened to Bill's original design?
TerraPower was founded in 2006 by Bill Gates, and those who've followed the biz's travails may be aware the company once touted a device called a [14]traveling-wave reactor (TWR). Such reactors would allegedly be able to produce energy for decades with minimal maintenance, and with fuel mostly composed of candle-like stacks of depleted uranium "burned" by an enriched uranium cap.
TerraPower said in 2013 that it believed it would have a demo TWR by 2022. That hasn't happened.
TerraPower's patented [15]Natrium design – due to be built in Wyoming – is a sodium fast reactor with an integrated molten salt energy storage system. It is one alternative to TWRs. The Natrium design's storage capacity allows the plant to boost its output from 345MW to 500MW to serve peak demand.
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Aside from those details, TerraPower's reactor appears similar to other [17]small modular reactor designs that ditch water cooling for heavier compounds like salt. TerraPower's website now [18]describes the TWR as "an important, long-term goal of the Natrium program."
Regardless of design, the necessary fuel simply isn't there, and Wyoming Senator John Barrasso (R) [19]said TerraPower's delay is a sign that "instead of relying on our adversaries like Russia for uranium, the United States must produce its own supply of nuclear fuel."
Barrasso [20]introduced legislation to secure a US-made HALEU supply this past April, which is currently in committee. The senator [21]claims his legislation has been delayed by the DoE, which he said needs to "stop slow-walking this process and start listening to Congress."
Of TerraPower's delay to at least 2030, Barasso said: "The Biden administration must consider and implement every available option to make sure TerraPower's Natrium reactor is fueled with American-made fuel." ®
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[1] https://trib.com/business/energy/wyoming-nuclear-plant-delayed-tentative-start-date-pushed-to-2030/article_0997061e-7b35-11ed-8c90-a700f7b4a0b0.html#tracking-source=mp-homepage
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Y5v7bt9I2wSO@pSgmoZXHQAAAAs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Y5v7bt9I2wSO@pSgmoZXHQAAAAs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Y5v7bt9I2wSO@pSgmoZXHQAAAAs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-backed-high-tech-nuclear-plant-wyoming-delayed-2022-12-14/
[6] https://regmedia.co.uk/2022/12/15/natrium-plant-concept.jpg
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/01/2050_carbon_emission_goals_need/
[8] https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-announces-cost-shared-award-first-ever-domestic-production-haleu-advanced-nuclear
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/14/nuclear_fusion_doe/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/13/intel_doe_nukes_mem/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/30/uk_energy_storage/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/10/husband_and_wife_spy_team/
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Y5v7bt9I2wSO@pSgmoZXHQAAAAs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2013/07/25/bill_gates_nuclear_firm_plans_hot_salty_push_into_power/
[15] https://natriumpower.com/reactor-technology/
[16] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Y5v7bt9I2wSO@pSgmoZXHQAAAAs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[17] https://www.energy.gov/ne/advanced-small-modular-reactors-smrs
[18] https://www.terrapower.com/our-work/traveling-wave-reactor-technology/
[19] https://www.energy.senate.gov/2022/12/barrasso-responds-to-terrapower-announcement
[20] https://www.energy.senate.gov/2022/4/barrasso-introduces-bill-to-secure-american-fuel-for-advanced-nuclear-reactors
[21] https://www.energy.senate.gov/2022/12/barrasso-responds-to-terrapower-announcement
[22] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Could have got Musk on board, I hear that's one of his interests.
On paper they are fantastic. But "All told, the world’s governments have poured more than twenty billion dollars into breeder research and development. All that money has produced no proven technology for “breeding” new fuel, and not a single breeder plant was up and running at the turn of the century." - The main problem with all the test reactors is that the sodium in the primary loop always ends up leaking, and then you need to SCRAM*.
* "The central question to be addressed by the scientists (In Manhattan Project’s research team) was whether uranium was capable of a sustained chain reaction. This was proved by Enrico Fermi, the Italian scientist who in 1938 had travelled from Rome to Stockholm to receive the Nobel Prize for his experiments with radioactivity. Instead of returning to Mussolini’s Italy, Fermi took a boat to the United States. Four years later, he led a team of scientists that achieved the first sustainable nuclear chain reaction with uranium, in a makeshift laboratory set up under the stands of a football field at the University of Chicago. (Even then, the scientists were fearful of what they had unleashed. One of the men on hand, Leo Szilard, said, “This day would go down as a black day in the history of mankind.”). The chain reaction took place in a small reactor, which Fermi called an atomic pile. One of the control rods made of cadmium—which blocks neutrons, which are used to split the uranium atom and initiate the chain reaction—was attached to a rope over a pulley and suspended above the reactor. Should something have gone wrong, a scientist named Norman Hilberry was to cut the rope with an ax, thereby dropping the cadmium rod into the reactor and, it was hoped, halting the chain reaction before a meltdown occurred. Hilberry’s job title was Safety Control Rod Ax Man; hence, ever since then, an emergency nuclear-plant shutdown has been called a SCRAM." The quotes are from Ken Silverstein's book "The Radioactive Boy Scout - The True Story of a Boy and His Backyard Nuclear Reactor" which was about David Hahn (October 30, 1976 – September 27, 2016) R.I.P.
I suspect what you actually meant was a molten salt reactor and not a breeder reactor at all.
It's a real shame he didn't go for a breeder reactor instead, which would make power while dealing with nuclear waste.