The USA and Indonesia have announced a strategic partnership to help Indonesia develop its nuclear energy programme, supporting Indonesia's interest in deploying small modular reactor (SMR) technology to meet its energy security and climate goals.

22 December 2022

Inspection and certification company Bureau Veritas (BV) recently signed an agreement with nuclear power technology developer ThorCon for the Technology Qualification and subsequent development of a 500MW molten salt nuclear power barge intended for operations in Indonesia. Thorcon has been promoting its technology to key Indonesian institutions since 2015, the year that, Indonesia decided to cancel its $8bn plans to construct four nuclear plants with a total capacity of 6GWe by 2025.

In 2014, Thorcon’s parent company Florida-based Martingale, completed the preliminary detailed design of its molten salt reactor, technical details of which were published at thorconpower.com “It is the basis for securing feedback, funding, and siting for the project,” it said, adding that “the goal for 2015 is to identify a host country and site for construction of the non-nuclear prototype ThorCon, along with funding to enable construction”. In January 2015 Martingale formally unveiled its ThorCon liquid-fuel nuclear reactor design, which uses uranium and thorium fuel dissolved in molten salt, and these same details are now available on the Thorcon website. At that time, production was expected to start by 2020.

Indonesia Power selected Oregon-based NuScale Power OVS, LLC (NuScale) to carry out the assistance in partnership with a subsidiary of Texas-based Fluor Corporation and Japan’s JGC Corporation. The proposed 462-megawatt facility would utilize NuScale’s SMR technology and advance Indonesia’s clean energy transition.

Officials are monitoring the clean-up of a leak of 400,000 gallons (1.5m litres) of radioactive water from a local nuclear power plant in Minnesota.

Xcel Energy, the utility company that runs the plant, said the spillage was "fully contained on-site and has not been detected beyond the facility".

State officials said there was no immediate public health risk.

The leak was first discovered in late November, but state officials did not notify the public until Thursday.

The water contains tritium, a common by-product of nuclear plant operations.

A naturally occurring radioactive isotope of hydrogen, tritium emits a weak form of beta radiation that does not travel very far in air and cannot penetrate human skin, according to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

Westinghouse's heat-pipe reactor theoretically outputs respectable power compared to larger reactors using light water, heavy water, or both, to cool the fission core. To scale this tech down to a form factor that fits on the back of an 18-wheeler trailer is a feat within itself. //

At its core, the eVInci heat pipe microreactor almost resembles a large gas canister more so than it does a mobile power generating station. Inside this large metal cylinder, nuclear fuel rods of particularly high quality are arranged into a compact but powerful fissile core with large metal heat transfer pipes running through the core's center. The fuel in question is known as Tri-structural isotropic particle fuel, or TRISCO for short. It consists of a proprietary blend of Uranium isotopes mixed with carbon and oxygen to form a fuel kernel the size of a poppy seed.

These highly enriched and energy-potent fissile fuel pellets can theoretically remain critical without the need for refueling for up to eight years. At this point, the whole device can be packed into a shipping container and sent back to Westinghouse's facility in Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania, for proper disposal of spent nuclear fuel rods. On top of that, Westinghouse reckons it's possible to install an eVinci power station in as little as 30 days. //

a pint-sized fission reactor capable of delivering up to five megawatts of electrical power and up to 13 megawatts of thermal energy out of a system that could fit comfortably inside an average-sized warehouse.

When you hear the words “clean energy,” what comes to mind?

Most people immediately think of solar panels or wind turbines, but how many of you thought of nuclear energy?

Nuclear is often left out of the “clean energy” conversation despite it being the second largest source of low-carbon electricity in the world behind hydropower.

So, just how clean and sustainable is nuclear?

Try these quick facts for starters.

1. Nuclear energy protects air quality

According to the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the United States avoided more than 471 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions in 2020. That’s the equivalent of removing 100 million cars from the road and more than all other clean energy sources combined. //

2. Nuclear energy’s land footprint is small

A typical 1,000-megawatt nuclear facility in the United States needs a little more than 1 square mile to operate. NEI says wind farms require 360 times more land area to produce the same amount of electricity and solar photovoltaic plants require 75 times more space.

To put that in perspective, you would need more than 3 million solar panels to produce the same amount of power as a typical commercial reactor or more than 430 wind turbines (capacity factor not included). //

https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/infographic-how-much-power-does-nuclear-reactor-produce

3. Nuclear energy produces minimal waste

All of the used nuclear fuel produced by the U.S. nuclear energy industry over the last 60 years could fit on a football field at a depth of less than 10 yards!

Nuclear energy has fallen off the radar screen since September, when the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant finally shut down. But Ukraine’s reliance on the three nuclear plants still operating—as well as their vulnerability—has never been higher. //

Keeping reactors fueled may pose an even bigger challenge. Ukraine is running short of fresh fuel, which must be swapped in in every 12 months. Meanwhile, spent fuel backing up at the plants is complicating those swaps. //

Ukraine and most other European countries with Russian-design reactors use fuel from the Moscow-based nuclear-energy giant Rosatom. Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse Electric is their only alternative fuel supplier, and demand far outstrips its supply.

Plans for the first U.S. small modular nuclear power reactor got a boost on Tuesday as some Western U.S. cities vowed to continue with the NuScale Power Corp (SMR.N) project despite a jump in projected costs.

NuScale plans to build a demonstration small modular reactor (SMR) power plant at the Idaho National Laboratory. If successful, the six-reactor, 462 megawatt Carbon Free Power Project will run in 2030.

NuScale said in January the target price for power from the plant is $89 per megawatt hour, up 53% from the previous estimate of $58 per MWh, a jump that raised concerns about whether customers would be willing to pay for the power it generates.

But the consortium of cities in Utah, Idaho, New Mexico and Nevada called Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, or UAMPS, greenlighted the project's budget and finance plan with 26 of 27 approving.

US Navy Nuclear Propulsion Plant Operator explains when a submarine reactor can be run at higher than 100% (and why the 105% on the reactor ordered in The Hunt for Red October movie would not be worth any risk to the ship and crew) //

Parameters for authorizing operating a US Navy submarine reactor plant above practicable design limits is well defined by NAVSEA 08 (which is the Naval branch of the Department of Energy).

Q: Can thorium end the energy crisis?

Asked 11 years, 8 months ago

It seems that, as of lately thorium is steadily increasing in popularity, as an alternative to traditional nuclear fuels. Here's Mr. Kirk Sorensen in a TED video advocating the use of thorium. Thorium even has a nice, green website, among other resources expounding on how awesome it is.

The general picture projected by thorium advocates is that it is very much like a silver bullet for the energy crisis. This sounds wonderful, but also too good to be true. If it's as good as they say, how come thorium reactors are not common ? Surely it has disadvantages as well ?

A:

A short summary of what I understand are the key points in Kirk Sorenson's presentations. He is very good at providing sources for all his claims, so I won't repeat most of them here.

Nuclear power is essential for reducing pollution, including atmospheric CO2. This is based on its energy density (up to 6 orders of magnitude).[1]

Thorium is far more plentiful than uranium[2], and does not need to be enriched to be used as a nuclear fuel. Thorium is not fissile like Uranium-235, but it is fertile: if it is exposed to neutrons it becomes fissile in the form of U-233.

A Molten Salt Reactor, like the one demonstrated at Oak Ridge in the late 1960s, is inherently safe, and more efficient than Pressurized Water Reactors.

With a source of cheap and plentiful electricity, we could synthesize fuel usable in conventional vehicles at reasonable cost (comparable to or cheaper than present prices). These fuels would be nearly carbon-neutral because they would be synthesized using atmospheric CO2. Dimethyl ether is one suggestion as a direct substitute for diesel fuel.

Based on those points, Thorium is a very good candidate to end the "artificial energy crisis". [3]

Suggested resources:

• http://www.thoriumenergycheaperthancoal.com/
• http://www.daretothink.org/how-big-is-that-thorium-ball/
• http://www.daretothink.org/numbers-not-adjectives/lets-produce-a-gwye/

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20220523032927/https://cdn.nanalyze.com/uploads/2021/03/energy-density-of-fuel-sources.jpg

[2] http://www.daretothink.org/numbers-not-adjectives/how-long-will-our-supplies-of-uranium-and-thorium-last/

[3] http://www.daretothink.org/shortest-intro-to-molten-salt-the-thorium-reactor/

Some of my publications that are most currently useful are accessible below. Items 1-6 and 9 are in PDF format that can be read with Adobe Acrobat. Items 7,8, and 10-16 are text only. .

• Items 1,2,7,8,14 and 16 deal with our test of the linear-no threshold theory of radiation induced cancer, based on lung cancer rates vs radon exposures in U.S. counties. #7 is the best
  place to start in reading about that study; it reviews and justifies the procedures, with special emphasis on treatment of confounding factors. #1 is the basic paper published in 1995. #2 is an extension involving substantial additional data. #8 is a less technical fairly recent review of that project, but parts of it are superseded by #7. Several other papers on that study are included in my list of publications in the CV. Item #14 is a response to a criticism of that work published in a British journal. Item #15 is a response to a very interesting observation by Puskin relevant to that work. Item #16 is my response to a letter by Mossman published in the July 2003 edition of
  Health Physics News.
• Item 12 is my book The Nuclear Energy Option published by Plenum Press in 1990.
  Figures are missing (few are important for understanding the text) and the editing is deficient, but otherwise, the material is there.

The Manoeuvering Room on board HMS SCEPTRE seen as she lays alongside at Devonport dockyard just prior to decommissioning and disposal. Part of the Marine Engineering Department, the Manoeuvring Room houses the equipment which controls and monitors the submarine's nuclear reactor. It is also from where the boat's power and speed is controlled using the throttle, seen centre right.

Is the net output of CO₂ from Nuclear Energy lower than the net output of other energy sources?

A:

• Low range estimate: 1.4 g CO2 equivalent per kilowatt hr
• Mean estimate: 66 g CO2 equivalent per kWh
• High range estimate: 288 g CO2 equivalent per kWh

This is from a metastudy of 103 studies

You can access the full text from this page on the Nuclear Information and Resource Service

Here is a link to the PDF: Sovacool, B. K. 2008. Valuing the greenhouse gas emissions from nuclear power: A critical survey. Energy Policy v. 36 (8): 2950-2963.

For comparison, a natural gas-fired power plant might emit 515.29 g CO2 per kWh (per wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_power_station#Carbon_dioxide; (conversion to metric mine & therefore mistakes are as well.) Coal and Oil-fired plants will emit more CO2 than a natural gas plant.

ETA: After more thorough checking, confirmed the neighborhood for CO2 equivalents emitted throughout the life cycle for natural gas and coal plants from Jarmillo et al. "Comparative Life-Cycle Air Emissions of Coal, Domestic Natural Gas, LNG, and SNG for Electricity Generation" in Environmental Science and Technology from 2007, link: http://www.ce.cmu.edu/~gdrg/readings/2007/09/13/Jaramillo_ComparativeLCACoalNG.pdf Natural Gas midpoint: 499 g CO2 equivalent per kWh Coal midpoint: 953 g CO2 equivalent per kWh These are close enough to the wikipedia figures (although not exactly the same) that it appears wiki is also using the lifecycle emissions. Again, the conversion to metric is mine & etc.

A lot of science and policy work treats nuclear power as having 0 CO2 emissions, but that's not quite true, and especially is less true if the higher emissions numbers are more correct. //

• I'm not sure "maximum" and "high estimate" are meant to refer to the same concept. Anyway, please take notice that nowadays gaseous diffusion is not used anymore. Lowering worst estimates by around 60-70 g/CO2 – mirh Apr 28, 2017 at 12:41
• The study cited above is Benjamin Sovacool's now (in)famous meta study. Sovacool is an ardent opponent to nuclear power and this study has been severely criticized. First: it does not include 103 studies, because the majority of those were discarded. The actual number is about 20. Second... of these 20, van Leeuwen & Smith's wildly inaccurate study is included 3 times directly and 1 time indirectly. van Leeuwen & Smith have been even more criticized for missing the goal wildly, peer review finding them to be off the mark up to 8000%. – MichaelK Oct 27, 2017 at 11:09 //

Answer: Yes, lower than combustion based sources like coal, oil, and gas. Not lower than renewable sources like solar and hydro.

National Renewable Energy Laboratory performed a similar study to that posted by @FlyingSquidwithGoggles. This might be a less biased source (NIRS page header says "Nuclear Power: No Solution to Climate Change" and contains much anti-nuke literature).

After screening articles by their criteria, they ended up with ~300 article inputs to the data, and ~1000 data points total.

Here are some of the figures listed by source: (Min, Median, Max)(in g CO2/kWh).

• Hydro: 0, 4, 43
• Solar: 5-7, 22-46, 89-217
• Nuclear: 1, 16, 220
• Nat Gas: 290, 469, 930
• Coal: 675, 1001, 1689

Source: "Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change"

Will the small modular nuclear reactor community be able to find an optimized point on the physics vs modularity curve? I don’t think so, and discussed it with Bent Flyvbjerg, global megaproject expert.

By Michael Barnard ///

He claims Germany has the most stable and cheapest electric grid in Europe, but that is contrary to all the info i have seen.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued its final rule in the Federal Register to certify NuScale Power’s small modular reactor.

The company’s power module becomes the first SMR design certified by the NRC and just the seventh reactor design cleared for use in the United States.

The rule takes effects February 21, 2023 and equips the nation with a new clean power source to help drive down emissions across the country.

In 2011, another meltdown happened in Fukushima, mere months after the extension decision had been made. This caused large anti-nuclear power demonstrations across the country, the CDU to lose power in the state of Baden-Württemberg – a state which had been governed by the CDU since the 1950's – and the Green party to end up ahead of the SPD in that state, leading to the first Green minister president and Green-led state government (although other issues specific to Baden-Württemberg also influenced the state election in favour of the Greens). The Baden-Württemberg election was a mere two weeks after the Fukushima incident.

Merkel's government attempted to meet public sentiment by walking back on the decision to extend nuclear power phase-out deadlines, and in the summer of 2011 the Bundestag voted with 513 out of 600 votes to increase the phase-out speed. The vote was by name (meaning every member of parliament went on record with their aye, no or abstention) and if I recall correctly it was also declared a decision of conscience rather than subject to party discipline. Anti-nuclear power sentiment in the general public was at its highest.

There has essentially been no further attempt to revise the legal situation. Opinion polls have, as far as I am aware, consistently recorded a clear majority against using nuclear power to generate electricity. Except for the AfD, no party in parliament currently supports extending nuclear power use or building new plants.

The New Scientist calculated the number of deaths per kilowatt-hour question based on the data from International Atomic Energy Agency in 2011.

• https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20928053.600-fossil-fuels-are-far-deadlier-than-nuclear-power/
• https://www.iaea.org/

According to the New Scientist:

The agency examined the life cycle of each fuel from extraction to post-use and included deaths from accidents as well as long-term exposure to emissions or radiation.

They concluded that "fossil fuels are far deadlier than nuclear power" and that "the large number of deaths [related to fossil fuels] are caused by pollution."
[https://i.stack.imgur.com/uglxE.jpg]

Another, more recent, report supporting these numbers can be found at the World Nuclear Association, here. http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and-the-environment/environment-and-health-in-electricity-generation.aspx

An article in Forbes gives the following numbers, which I reproduce here in their simplified form: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#571bf970709b

Petroleum producers know that there are not many opportunities to make major new discoveries so they are focused on maintaining their current production levels. In many cases, there is a growing supply of unused capital waiting for an appropriate place to invest.

Oil executives would be wise to consider investing their human and financial resources in nuclear reactors, which can be considered to be modern, near zero emission energy wells. When nuclear reactors are used as advanced heat sources to produce synthetic fuels and hydrocarbons, a substantial portion of the capital infrastructure and core competencies are directly transferrable from the conventional petroleum industry. //

Fossil fuel companies have the necessary assets to make successful investments in nuclear energy wells. They can raise capital from investors that are comfortable with risk, work their way through the regulatory wickets, buy the steel and concrete, develop the necessary agreements with local governments and ensure that their suppliers meet exacting specifications. They live and breathe safety based on long experience with massive quantities of volatile materials. After their new energy wells begin operation, they can look forward to many decades worth of reliable production and sales – energy is not a fad and people will always find new ways to use whatever quantity is available.

Sea-going or floating nuclear plants are especially well-matched to the current infrastructure and skill set of fossil fuel companies. They will be produced in the same shipyards that currently produce off-shore platforms, tankers, support vessels, and barges. In some cases, the production platforms will closely resemble floating petroleum or natural gas processing plants.

There are increasing pressures on fossil fuel companies to slow or stop their contributions to greenhouse gas emissions. Fossil fuel companies can legitimately meet their fiduciary responsibility to maximize their investor returns by directing their capital budgets to a new generation of energy production and distribution capability.

That new energy production capacity should include:

• Systems using heavy metal fission to directly supply heat and power
• Installations that use fission to produce heat and power for synthetic fuel production that combines hydrogen from water and carbon that is captured from the atmosphere.

At Nucleation Capital, we are focused on investing in advanced nuclear energy, synthetic fuels and macro energy integration systems that can all help decarbonize our energy and power sources. The transition from hydrocarbons to clean energy will be challenging, but nuclear energy investments will enable its success with lower costs than attempting to complete the transition without nuclear energy.

An important new study in the journal Energy (Weißbach et. al. 2013, paywalled) focuses on energy return on investment (EROI, or sometimes ERoEI), which is the ratio of electrical energy produced by a given power source to the amount of energy needed to build, fuel, maintain and decomission that power plant. //

Here's the idea in a nutshell: in the US, a kWh of energy (unweighted) costs about 10 cents but it produces about 70 cents worth of GDP, a ratio of 7 to 1. //

But the big winners in non-fossil energy are run-of-river hydro (Weißbach allows a 100 year plant lifetime, which may be generous) and nuclear (at a 60 year plant lifetime, in line with other studies). And by the way, this is one reason Weißbach's study is better than some earlier works: he includes plant lifetime in his computations, which can make a big difference. Wind turbines, for example, are subjected to large physical stresses which limits their lifetime to about 20 years, both in this study and according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. In effect, you have to build a windfarm two or three times over during the lifetime of a nuclear plant, and that adds up.

Two cases were analyzed for coal, one hard coal (EROI 29, EMROI 49) and one brown coal (EROI 31, EMROI 49). These were averaged to an EROI of 30 as shown. In the US we have plenty of hard coal reserves and don't use brown coal. Also, the authors omitted from this study the energy cost needed to transport coal, apparently because that varies by country. Using EIA data, this amounts to 244 KJ per tonne-km for rail transport. So in the US, where a lot of coal is moved from mines in Wyoming to end users far away, a typical 1000 mile trip would lower the EROI of coal from 29 to 28, while EMROI remains unchanged at 49. //

So if you ever wondered why climate scientists like James Hansen are pro-nuclear, this is one reason. Yes, wind is fine if it can be grid-buffered against a non-fossil generating source. And absolutely we need more hydro, especially run-of-river hydro where it's feasible. But there are limits to the amount of river where it is feasible. So if we want to eliminate fossil fuels from electricity production (and we do), and if we want to manage that transition so that it doesn't hurt the economy (and we do), nuclear has to be part of the mix. And in fact, it has to be a much bigger part of the mix than it has been in the past. In the next part of GETTING TO ZERO, I will address the safety issues of nuclear power in detail, but for right now what you need to know is that even after accounting for latent deaths from Chernobyl (and non-deaths from Fukushima), nuclear is still one of the safest forms of energy.

Finally, if you'd like to take a detailed look at the calculations, Weißbach's spreadsheet can be found on Google Docs. I used the spreadsheet to compute some of the numbers above.

To boldly consider a future with clean energy for all

Cheap energy is essential for human prosperity. Always has been. Molten salt reactors have the potential to deliver the cheap, clean and safe energy that is needed to lift billions of people out of energy poverty, without endangering the climate. //

In 2007, Google took up an ambitious plan. Google believed that the most effective way to terminate the use of fossil fuels is by outcompeting them. Google’s RE<C plan was targeted at developing strategies to achieve this goal. After investing $850 million, Google terminated the program because it failed. In their article ‘Today’s renewable energy technologies won’t save us. So what will?’ RE<C project leaders Ross Koningstein and David Fork explain why they are convinced we need new technologies to outcompete coal. http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/what-it-would-really-take-to-reverse-climate-change

Placing all eggs in the basket of wind and solar increases the chances of a sustained victory of today’s big winner: fossil fuel.

It looks like we have to choose between lowering CO2-levels and improving social justice.

Unless we take a fresh look at present developments in nuclear. Over the last decade, molten salt reactors have become the focal point of a quickly growing number of business startups, researchers, and investors, supported by an also quickly growing number of supporters. Even though they presently only exist on paper, molten salt reactors have managed to create the first pro-nuclear grassroots movement since the early sixties.

The enthousiasm can be easily explained: molten salt reactors have the potential to produce cheap, abundant, safe and clean power. Some companies claim this can be done starting in 2021.

The key to the MSR’s techological advantages the liquid fuel. This technique makes it possible to take sixty to hundred times more energy out of the same amount of fuel. This brings the radical new perspective of cheap, clean, safe and abundant energy for all of us.

In nuclear reactors as we know them, the fuel is solid. Present day reactors are engineered to be safe, and they are: even if we take accidents like Fukushima into account, nuclear reactors are by far the safest means of producing energy. But in many European countries, there is a strong but unfounded fear of radioactivity. Opponents have kept the industry in a stalemate for about forty years, leading to a virtually halted development.