TVA CEO Says Building One New Nuclear Reactor Is a Bad Idea. He'd Rather Build 20 Reactors.

[NNadir]

TVA Head Wants Nothing to Do with Building One Reactor Unless He Can Build 20

Building a nuclear power plant is a difficult job. It takes years of planning and sometimes more than a decade to complete. The risk of schedule delays is great, especially on first-of-a-kind projects, and the financial implications of such setbacks can ruin a company.

Yet, the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA’s) president and CEO, Jeff Lyash, suggested the risk is worth taking, that is, if lessons learned from one project can be parlayed into success in future projects. That’s why TVA is studying the addition of a small modular reactor (SMR) at its Clinch River site. Lyash envisions using that first unit as a template to eventually make Clinch River a four-unit site, and then replicating that design in at least four other locations within TVA’s service territory.

“I’ve said very vocally, I [want] nothing to do with building one reactor, unless I can build 20—and 20 is the low estimate—and so, this is what Clinch River is about,” Lyash said as a guest on The POWER Podcast.

While TVA continues to support and examine all of the various SMR designs being proposed, and it is also following the development of Generation IV advanced nuclear technology, it has selected GE-Hitachi’s (GEH’s) BWRX-300 design for its Clinch River site. “We picked the BWRX-300 technology because the X stands for the 10th generation. We know this fuel works. We know this technology works,” Lyash said.

Lyash noted that there are 50 years’ worth of experience behind the GEH design. He said engineers have applied modularization processes and advanced manufacturing techniques to advance the design, but the technology behind it all is well-established...

...Because of TVA’s unique position as an entity of the federal government, Lyash believes it should be a leader for the power industry. “Because of TVA’s special role, we’re really doing it to support the nation, because what we’d really love to happen is fast followers,” he said. In other words, he hopes once TVA proves that an SMR can be constructed on time and on budget, other power companies will jump on the new nuclear construction bandwagon.

In March, TVA signed a technology collaboration agreement with Canada’s Ontario Power Generation (OPG) and Synthos Green Energy (SGE), which is part of Poland’s biggest private industrial group. The deal is intended to shape a standard design for the BWRX-300, which could speed up the technology’s regulatory acceptance and spur future deployments. “My view from the beginning is: this is best done in partnership, and it’s best done that way because, again, we’re not trying to build one reactor and we’re not trying to just do it for TVA,” Lyash said...

... Poland, meanwhile, is one of the most carbon-intense nations in Europe, so it is keen on adding nuclear to decarbonize its power supply. Therefore, partnering with SGE made a lot of sense to Lyash. “That represents an international market,” he said. “Why is that important? Well, if you’re going to scale this, you have to scale it. You have to have a book of business. You have to have owners who are willing to build so that you get the investment in the supply chain and the workforce development to do it...”

I very much like this thinking; building back better nuclear manufacturing infrastructure by bootstrapping up. It's similar to an idea I've been nursing, using used nuclear fuel on site to build a small reactor to power electrorefining of the all the additional fuel to build a series of breed and burn reactors on site without any dependence on mined uranium (or thorium).

This news item is not all good news. TVA also plans to squander money on solar installations, a very bad idea when compared to 20 nuclear reactors, throwing good money after bad.

[jpak]

1. LOL!!122

Rofl

[hunter]

2. Building nuclear power plants ought to be a stable career path...

... the kind of job one can start out in as an apprentice and retire from forty years later with a very comfortable pension.

California, the state I'm most familiar with, needs to select four or five permanent nuclear sites and then build them out with mass-produced nuclear power plants until fossil fuels are entirely displaced from the state's energy mix.

[NNadir]

3. My feeling, as they are already 3D printing reactor cores at Oak Ridge NL, TVA is the perfect...

...place to begin building back better nuclear reactor manufacturing infrastructure in the United States.

Although my son has been imaging 3D printed ODS steels (although he didn't print them himself) I hadn't realized that they had advanced this far, but I was compelled to look into it because a dumb guy here - the sort who thinks we should let climate change run wild because a 50 year old tunnel with abandoned rail cars collapsed at Hanford - "informed me" that I was engaging in soothsaying when I mentioned this technology.

To my surprise, I found a video, showing the printing of reactor cores at Oak Ridge.

I remarked on it here and included the video of the printing: Oak Ridge National Laboratory & University of Maine Print a House With Biobased Materials.

I also included it again here.

Comparing the Environmental and Economic Costs of Additive Manufacturing and Traditional Machining.

At this point, having hit 424 ppm this year, despite morons terrified by tunnels at Hanford that are even older than the endless soothsaying about a "renewable energy" nirvana, hydrogen, batteries, blah, blah, blah, it's become crystalline clear that either we will have a functional nuclear plant manufacturing infrastructure turning out reactors continuously, reliably, and quickly, or today's 20 year old's will see 500 ppm or more before they turn 50. That may sound like soothsaying, but in the 20 years I've been writing here, I've seen an increase in CO2 concentrations of 50 ppm, and the rate of accumulation has been rising the whole time.

This TVA rhetoric strikes the right cord with me. I note that like California, TVA has huge resources in used nuclear fuel.

The Sequoyah reactors have produced just shy of two Exajoules of energy in this century, in two small buildings, and they've been operating since the early 1980's and are licensed through 2035.

Moreover, a center of nuclear technology, including direct experience with fluoride volatility reprocessing (albeit in the 1960s) they certainly have a core of highly qualified scientists and engineers who can pull this off.

This suggests used fuel resources certainly comparable to those at San Onofre, perhaps exceeding them significantly I personally would have no problem with a similar situation utilizing San Onofre used fuels to print new fuels. In many ways, the California Coast is ideal because, despite this wet winter, water is a big, big, big problem for the State over the long term. I have convinced myself that supercritical water desalination is an excellent approach to desalination, the problem with isolated salt, as you mentioned elsewhere, notwithstanding. Nevertheless the approach strikes me as an excellent opportunity to real intense process intensification, addressing the solid waste problem, the plastic disposal problem (even diffuse microplastics in air and water) with electricity on the side, all of which is potentially carbon negative as opposed to carbon "neutral" slights of hand relying on dubious accounting tricks.

I've convinced myself that ocean water is the best route for direct air capture of CO2, and TVA has rivers and reservoirs, but no oceans.

In recent years, I've realized small coupled reactors capable of flexible missions are the best path forward. If I were to recommend what California should do, I'd look at those San Onofre used fuel resources, and build a chain of reactors running on that fuel over the mountains into the Imperial Valley. I had an excellent view of that region a few weeks back when I flew into my old home town San Diego, and I focused on seeing valleys where water could be stored after expanding from the supercritical state through turbines, repurposing parts of Camp Pendleton for peace.

There's a real opportunity there.

TVA does have, however, the core staff of nuclear professionals who survived the holocaust of ignorance brought on by intellectually lazy, completely oblivious and morally wasted antinukes. I

Even if they don't give a shit about climate change - and clearly they don't - there is a highly educated core in this country who can, indeed, build back better.