For EB, Nuc. Power Plant Production?

[u-5075]

For EB, Sea Is Not A Limit
May Find Work With Nuclear Power Companies
By ERIC GERSHON | Courant Staff Writer
December 7, 2007

GROTON - Even as Electric Boat prepares to double nuclear submarine production by 2011 or sooner, company executives are looking beyond subs and the sea for new revenue.

To land.

The sub maker could bring in money and save an untold number of jobs by serving the resurgent nuclear power plant industry, EB President John Casey said Thursday.


"This thing could pop in the next one to five years," he said in a short interview after he briefed officials and community leaders from southeastern Connecticut and nearby Rhode Island on the company's prospects for 2008.

Electric Boat is not yet generating any revenue from business with nuclear power companies, Casey said, and he described the prospect of it as subject to "a lot of variables."

But the company has already begun exploring "what role could we or should we play in that."

For example, EB engineers are studying how the company might convert its expertise in moving nuclear submarine components over land into a related service for nuclear power plant builders.

Casey did not rule out the possibility that work of this or a similar sort might help stabilize EB employment in the second half of 2008.

Nuclear power plants fell out of favor in the 1980s after high profile accidents, including the one at Three Mile Island in 1979. But nuclear power is once again gaining favor as the cost of energy derived from fossil fuels soars, demand for energy continues to grow and technology has made nuclear plant operations safer.

In fact, the nuclear power plant industry is preparing to build new plants for the first time in decades.

Working for nuclear power plant builders would be new for EB, but it would not be unprecedented for companies involved in submarine production.

Virginia-based energy giant Dominion, which owns and operates Millstone Power Station in Waterford, said Dominion has previously consulted a Northrop Grumman subsidiary about making special casks for the storage and transportation of spent nuclear fuel, a spokesman said. The casks were never made, spokesman Rick Zuercher said, but Dominion has hired Newport News Industrial, the subsidiary, for other work. The extent to which that work related to Northrop's submarine expertise was unclear.

A Northrop spokeswoman in Virginia, Jennifer Dellapenta, said Newport News Industrial has "been active" in the nuclear power industry since the 1960s and said Northrop is "exploring opportunities in the nuclear market." The idea of partnerships between nuclear submarine manufacturers and nuclear power plant builders is uncommon enough that a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, which advocates for the nuclear technologies industry, was unable to find anyone on staff knowledgeable about it.

"It's struck us as a novel inquiry, the likes of which we haven't encountered before," institute spokesman John Keeley said.

EB and Northrop Grumman-Newport News split work on nuclear sub production.

Building and repairing submarines remains the core of EB's business and Casey said the company, a unit of General Dynamics, needs more projects to ensure steady employment for about 2,000 existing workers through the end of 2008. Confirmed projects will support the current workforce of 10,400 (about 7,350 in Groton) through the middle of the upcoming year.

Beyond then, Casey could make few promises, he said, despite recent good news from Congress. Last month the federal legislature put an extra $588 million in the 2008 defense bill to help double nuclear sub production by 2011 or sooner. The Navy now orders one submarine each year.

"There's a possibility we may not have sufficient work to employ all the people we have in maintenance and modernization," Casey said.

This means additional submarine work — most likely maintenance and repair projects — will be necessary to maintain employment levels at the company's Connecticut and Rhode Island operations.

Unexpected orders for repair work on three Los Angeles class subs helped float Electric Boat's workforce at higher levels this year than anticipated, spokesman Bob Hamilton said. Work on the San Juan, another LA-class sub, will do the same in early 2008, he said.

Besides Northrop Grumman, Electric Boat's main competitors for maintenance and repair work are the Navy's own shipyards, the nearest being at Portsmouth, N.H.

Notwithstanding short-term needs, Casey said he was confident that known or anticipated projects would sustain a workforce of about 8,000 through at least 2015, compared with projections of about 5,000 just a few years ago. Electric Boat tends to be "very conservative" when estimating labor needs, he said.

The company is, or shortly will be, hiring engineers and designers, he said.

Whatever EB's prospects as a nuclear power plant contractor, its top priority remains securing sustained congressional and Navy support for the construction of two Virginia-class nuclear subs a year, work that would continue to be split with Northrop. The $588 million recently provided by Congress would pay for about one-quarter of a second annual sub. Virginia-class subs cost about $2 billion each.

"Once we get to the two a year, we'll have very stable employment for a long time," Casey said.

[u-5075]

Too many years ago the

Too many years ago the company that I worked in was doing photovoltaic research, among other projects. The big secret back then was that the answer to our energy and power problems was the use of ALL types of energy sources including coal, nuclear, wind, photovoltaics, etc. etc.


http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/nex ... 2.17b.html

Toshiba Builds 100x Smaller Micro Nuclear Reactor
Toshiba has developed a new class of micro size Nuclear Reactors that is designed to power individual apartment buildings or city blocks. The new reactor, which is only 20 feet by 6 feet, could change everything for small remote communities, small businesses or even a group of neighbors who are fed up with the power companies and want more control over their energy needs.

The 200 kilowatt Toshiba designed reactor is engineered to be fail-safe and totally automatic and will not overheat. Unlike traditional nuclear reactors the new micro reactor uses no control rods to initiate the reaction. The new revolutionary technology uses reservoirs of liquid lithium-6, an isotope that is effective at absorbing neutrons. The Lithium-6 reservoirs are connected to a vertical tube that fits into the reactor core. The whole whole process is self sustaining and can last for up to 40 years, producing electricity for only 5 cents per kilowatt hour, about half the cost of grid energy.

Toshiba expects to install the first reactor in Japan in 2008 and to begin marketing the new system in Europe and America in 2009.

[hakkikt]

I can already see the

I can already see the ads... "Move into a cozy new home with your family, powered by your own nuclear reactor!"

My personal opinion: the time for that is over since 1986 (Chernobyl, of course). I cannot imagine that there is a market for this, let alone government regulations that would allow private individuals access to fission material.

[subicman]

Sign me up! I figure

Sign me up! I figure an apartment building for 40 years, this will supply my house and neighborhod for 60 or more!...... I wonder what the zoning will be?

[hakkikt]

I think the nursery and

I think the nursery and the vegetable gardens should be right on top of the reactor, to save on heating.

It's a rock-hard investment, cannot go wrong - in the worst case, you can sell the U235 to Al Quaeda and retire for life with what they pay you. hmm on second thought... they are probably smart enough to buy directly from Japan.

[anonymous]

"they are probably smart enough

"they are probably smart enough to buy directly from Japan."
Especially considering Toshiba's track record. I still go out of my way not to purchase anything from them...

[u-5075]

Here are a couple more

Here are a couple more Google.com small reactor hits. One from a general search and the second one in the Brit news.

For full paper of abstract below please go to

http://www.uic.com.au/nip60.htm

Small Nuclear Power Reactors
UIC Nuclear Issues Briefing Paper # 60

November 2007


ABSTRACT
There is revival of interest in small and simpler units for generating electricity from nuclear power, and for process heat.

The interest is driven both by a desire to reduce capital costs and to provide power away from main grid systems.

The technologies involved are very diverse.



http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php? ... icle/4173/
Tuesday 11 December 2007
Rob Johnston
Energy] with a capacity value of zero.’ That is, wind’s generating capacity does not guarantee any of the basic and essential electrical supply. When wind production increases to a 50 per cent ‘share’ (in 2025), according to some DWIA projections, Denmark will have to export unusable excess power at a large economic loss but neighbouring countries will make a profit by selling back essential baseload electricity.


Even when electricity generation from wind farms is stable, its unpredictability means it cannot prevent the burning of coal at slow-responding coal stations. Instead, because it comes at very low marginal cost, it replaces more expensive electricity supplied by the slightly adaptable CHP stations. But since domestic and industrial customers rely on those same CHP stations for hot water, the stations must keep running, burning fuel in the process. By not producing and selling electricity as this hot water is produced, the CHP stations become less economically viable.

Paradoxically, such CHP stations are an essential component of Britain’s ‘alternative energy future’. CHP represents the ‘decentralised microgeneration’ beloved by the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC), an environmental quango that advises the UK government, which wants a future of ‘self-sustaining local communities’. A massive expansion of wind power in the UK will make CHP much less attractive by undercutting the price of electricity and forcing CHP stations to turn on and off – making them both environmentally and economically inefficient. In 2004, partly for such reasons, Elsam (then the power generation company for west Denmark) told a meeting of the DWIA and Danish government that increasing wind power does not decrease CO2 emissions – because it forces CHP stations to run with less carbon-efficiency. A 2003 study by the Tallinn Technical University in Estonia showed that trying to incorporate wind with CHP can actually increase fuel consumption and emissions by eight to 10 per cent - completely eliminating any CO2 benefits from wind (5).

So, the wind power Denmark sells to Norway for use in hydro stations saves not one molecule of CO2 and by interfering with CHP stations may actually make emissions worse. In east Denmark, the baseload is regularly topped up from the Swedish grid – half nuclear and half hydro – so Denmark’s total electricity supply is, actually, about nine per cent nuclear.

Wind turbine dominoes

Germany should be another case study for Hutton before he goes too wild on wind. A study of the German national grid for E-On (the largest operator of wind turbines in Germany, with 43 per cent of the total) shows that as wind generating capacity increases, the proportion of that capacity that can be incorporated into the grid actually decreases. When there are sudden high winds across a large number of turbines, the unexpected excess electricity can overload the system. The more turbines that are connected, the less unrestricted ‘access’ each wind farm can have to the grid and the greater the controls needed to prevent overloads.

Currently, the German grid with its European interconnections acts as a very large sink into which surplus wind-generated electricity can (usually) dissipate, but even so, large new grid extensions and special switching measures are needed to prevent grid overloads when wind power peaks. Consequent supply failures can spread from northern Germany in a loop through the grids of Holland, Poland and the Czech Republic. The potential impact on other countries means that Germany can no longer expand wind farms in isolation but must consider the impact on a wider European level (6).

By 2015, Germany will have 36GW capacity from wind, but only six per cent of that capacity can be considered as guaranteed coverage of maximum seasonal load. And traditional power stations (coal, nuclear, gas) with capacities equal to 90 per cent on the installed wind capacity must be permanently online (7). If that six per cent figure holds true for Britain, Hutton’s 33GW worth of new British wind power would represent only 1.64GW of actual electricity capacity – or about the same as two advanced nuclear power plants.

On rough calculations, building a 33GW offshore wind capacity will use as much concrete and steel as building 78 medium-sized nuclear power plants, which would produce 62.4GW of reliable electricity (opposed to 1.64GW from wind) - not far short of the UK’s entire 75GW demand.

Nuclear battleground

The only rational hope for secure and clean energy in the near future is nuclear power. Those who believe in a future of social progress underwritten by energy abundance must take on the PR challenge themselves. Anyone who expected Gordon Brown’s unchallenged political authority to guarantee a new generation of nuclear plants looks like being sorely disappointed.

However, it is unlikely that even ‘new’ greens ‘armed with peer-reviewed science’ will be any more amenable to reason than old-fashioned greens – with their ignorance and contempt for peer-reviewed science.

Last year’s SDC report on nuclear power makes interesting reading. On almost every measure, the detail of the SDC report actually favours the nuclear option. It recognises that nuclear has an excellent safety record, that it could cause a large and rapid decrease in CO2 emissions, that modern reactor design substantially reduces decommissioning costs, that the nuclear power programme’s waste is just a fraction of Britain’s radioactive waste (the majority being from the military and hospitals), and that nuclear power is cheap and reliable (8).

Of the 18 voting Sustainable Development Commissioners, two voted ‘Possibly’ to nuclear power, five voted ‘Not now’, and eight voted ‘No’. Voting was along predictable lines: only two members have a science or engineering background, four have no obvious affiliation, but 12 commissioners either make money promoting ‘sustainable energy’, or are members of solidly anti-nuclear lobby groups like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. From the voting, it would appear that three of the greener members did not bother to turn up and the rest did not read the report (9).

To come out against nuclear power, the SDC resorted to double-think and twisted rationalisation unrelated to true energy issues. In his commentary on the report, SDC chairman Sir Jonathon Porritt argues that nuclear power could be seen as a ‘get out of jail free card’ – not inflicting the kind of pain we deserve from our irresponsibility toward the planet; nuclear might compete for investment money against ‘renewables’; it could use up too much ‘political leadership’ and distract attention from alternatives; it might also set a bad example for gullible foreign countries; and encourage rogue regimes to build nuclear weapons.

Warheads into watts

In fact, instead of proliferating atomic weapons, nuclear power can destroy them. The disarmament treaties of the 1980s have released uranium and plutonium from warheads for use in reactors. Since 2000, 30 tonnes of enriched uranium have been released to civilian nuclear stations annually and displaced over 10,000 tonnes of uranium from mines – about 13 per cent of the world’s annual requirements (10).

Uranium is not in short supply – contrary to rumour. There is as much uranium in the ground as there is tin. There has been little new uranium exploration for 20 years, but already enough uranium has been discovered to last at least until the end of the century at current levels of use. The increasing efficiency of nuclear reactors means that they can now produce almost twice the electricity from the same amount of uranium. Even if the uranium ran out, new reactor designs can employ thorium as fuel and there is three times as much thorium in the ground as uranium.

And unlike our gas, much of which comes from unstable parts of the world, 40 per cent of the world’s known uranium supplies are in Australia, Canada and the USA. As with other mineral and energy resources, increasing prices makes new exploration more economically viable. Analogous with other minerals, there is probably 10 times more uranium easily available to be found by new exploration.

Modern reactors also produce much less waste than previous generations – only 10 per cent of the volume of low-level waste as before – and much of the high-level waste can be reprocessed into new fuel if supplies of ore were threatened or the costs of exploration and extraction escalated way beyond current projections.

In Washington DC, Adrian Heymer, senior director of the Nuclear Energy Institute says that once-hostile public opinion in the US is turning around. ‘When you tell people that 70 years of electricity for a typical four-bedroom family home leaves just one Coke can full of waste, they are impressed and reassured. And all the waste from the whole US civilian nuclear power programme over the last 49 years would cover just one football field, about twenty feet high. Compare that to the trillions of tons of carbon waste and chemicals released into the atmosphere from fossil fuels – not to mention 5,000 people killed in coal mining accidents every year.’

Britain’s existing nuclear plants were built without a thought for decommissioning, hence the unexpectedly high costs; though these are much less than is supposed. It is estimated that decommissioning costs for each reactor range from £1.3 to 1.8 billion – after an active and productive life of up to 40 years. For perspective, even before the latest wind expansion proposals, the government is currently spending £2billion a year on subsidies for alternative energy with almost nothing to show for it in terms of either electricity or carbon savings.

New reactors are built on modular designs that can be taken apart as easily as they are put together and decommissioning costs are built into the price of electricity charged to the consumer.

Challenging the green agenda

An unquestioning green agenda so dominates the news, media and commentariat that proponents of nuclear power tend to keep their heads down – although public opinion polls continue to show quite high approval for nuclear power.

Brazil’s experience in 2001 provides both comfort and guidance. By taking on misrepresentations, misunderstanding and lies and exposing the dishonest tactics of Greenpeace on many issues, the Brazilian Nuclear Energy Association undermined the credibility of a campaign against a new nuclear power plant (11). Pro-nuclear groups got their facts right and ran a well-organised campaign. By the end, the president of Greenpeace was forced out, its ‘aura of credibility’ was destroyed and the organisation simply ceased to campaign against nuclear power in Brazil for over five years.

The message for Britain must be ‘armed only with peer-reviewed science we demand a new generation of nuclear power stations. Abundant, clean, secure energy is our right, and will help save the planet.’

Dr Rob Johnston is a freelance writer on the environment, health and science.