Jim Conca: Richland’s NuScale Power set to make history

Can we make a nuclear reactor that won’t melt down?

Yes we can.

It’s called a small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) and NuScale Power, which has a branch in Richland, is the company that will build the first one in America.

Last year, it submitted to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission the first design certification application (DCA) for any SMR in the United States.

Just two months later, NRC accepted its design certification application. By accepting the DCA for review, the NRC staff confirmed that NuScale’s submission addresses all of NRC’s initial concerns and requirements.

Now, less than a year later, the NRC approved NuScale’s walk-away-safe concept.

That means just what it sounds like: The reactor doesn’t need the complex back-up power systems that traditional reactors require and which traditionally add a lot of cost as well as some uncertainty.

This is a big deal. It means the reactor just won’t melt down or otherwise cause any of the nightmares people think about when imagining the worse for nuclear power.

It just shuts down and cools off.

The brainchild of Dr. Jose Reyes, NuScale’s Chief Technology Officer and nuclear engineering professor emeritus at Oregon State University, this modular reactor takes advantage of the “small” in small modular.

The small size and large surface area-to-volume ratio of NuScale’s reactor core, which sits below ground in a super seismic-resistant heat sink, allows natural processes to cool it indefinitely in the case of complete power blackout.

No humans or computers are needed to intervene, no AC or DC power, no pumps, and no additional water for cooling.

A couple of additional features are: 1) no one can hack this reactor, and 2) refueling of this reactor does not require the nuclear plant to shut down.

The components of the NuScale reactor can all be manufactured in a factory prior to shipping and assembly at the site, removing a major cost issue with building new nuclear plants.

The reactor vessels and other large components can be manufactured with medium-sized forges, something we actually have here in the United States. Traditional large reactors need extremely large forging facilities, of which only a few exist in the world — none in America.

Traditional nuclear reactors are between about 600 and 1,200 megawatts. These small power modules are about 50 MW each, and 12 of them can be put together to make a power plant up to 600 MW — a 12-pack.

These modules use standard 17x17 pressurized water reactor (PWR) fuel assemblies, also making them cost-effective, at only half the height, with an average Uranium-235 enrichment of 3.8 percent. A single NuScale nuclear power module is 76 feet tall and 15 feet in diameter, and sits in a plant covering less than a tenth of a square mile, or about 60 acres.

In comparison, it takes at least 130,000 acres — or about 200 square miles — of wind farms to produce the same amount of energy as one NuScale 12-pack.

These innovative designs bring the total life-cycle cost to produce electricity with this SMR to below that of most other energy sources, just slightly above hydro and natural gas. This SMR can also be constructed in about half the time of traditional nuclear plants.

NuScale has all its ducks in a row, absolutely critical for a fast review and licensing.

It has spent $70 million dollars in testing, built large-scale test facilities, and built the first 12-reactor Control Room Simulator in the world, at both NuScale’s Integral System Test facility on the Oregon State University campus and at its new offices in Richland.

The full review will be completed by late 2020, after which NRC will issue a design certification, valid for 15 years, for NuScale to construct this new type of power plant.

This nuclear reactor is something that we’ve never seen before — a small modular reactor that is economic, factory built and shippable, flexible enough to desalinate seawater, refine oil, load-follow wind, produce hydrogen, modular to any size, and that provides something we’ve all been waiting for — a reactor that cannot melt down.

This story was originally published February 2, 2018 at 1:26 PM with the headline "Jim Conca: Richland’s NuScale Power set to make history."