GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy just reached a critical step in deploying the world’s most advanced nuclear reactor — the submission of design certification documents to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. As Reuters notes in its story, with two U.S. utilities having submitted applications referencing the design for their new plants, the milestone paves the way for regulatory approval, and then construction, of “some of the first reactors proposed after a three-decade lapse in U.S. nuclear expansion.”
Power play: The new GE Hitachi reactor, seen in this schematic, will offer a more simplified design — which reduces construction costs — and even higher safety margins than the deployed U.S. fleet of reactors. Compared to typical U.S. electricity production, reactors of this kind — as well as its sister model already in operation — would avoid the annual emission of 6.7 million tons of CO2. That’s equivalent to the annual emissions of about 1.3 million cars.
The giant step for the new design, which is called an Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor, or ESBWR, comes at the right moment. As The Wall Street Journal wrote yesterday in “The New Nukes,” its lengthy analysis of the industry: “If there ever were a time that seemed ripe for nuclear energy, it’s now. For the first time in decades, popular opinion is on the industry’s side. A majority of Americans thinks nuclear power, which emits virtually no carbon dioxide, is a safe and effective way to battle climate change, according to recent polls. At the same time, legislators are showing renewed interest in nuclear as they hunt for ways to slash greenhouse-gas emissions.”
While a certification process may seem an odd milestone to cheer, in the nuclear world, it’s a significant step.“When the last round of reactors was built, mostly in the 70s and 80s, companies got a construction permit and then, after a plant was mostly finished, asked for an operating license, often creating delays,” The New York Times explains in its story. “A new licensing procedure was reformed in the 1990s to make the process faster and more predictable.” In the new system, companies such as GE “submit a variety of designs for approval, and utilities then choose from a selection of these approved designs, pairing them with an approved site and generating a “combined license” to both build and operate the plant.” As Daniel L. Roderick, senior vice president of GE-Hitachi, told the paper: “Over last 5 years, we have answered well over 6,000 questions from the NRC. We have all of those answered; we have zero open right now.’’
Cool customer: ABWR technologies, seen above, and ESBWR technologies are expected to have, respectively, up to 34 and 40 percent lower operating and maintenance costs per-kilowatt-hour than currently operating Generation I and II nuclear reactors in the U.S.
The new design falls into what’s called a Generation III+ classification. As the Journal explains, Generation III units are “intended to take everything that’s been learned about safe operations and do it even better… The current generation of nuclear plants requires a complex maze of redundant motors, pumps, valves and control systems to deal with emergency conditions. Generation III plants cut down on some of that infrastructure and rely more heavily on passive systems that don’t need human intervention to keep the reactor in a safe condition — reducing the chance of an accident caused by operator error or equipment failure.
GEH’s portfolio of nuclear reactors also includes the Advanced Boiling Water Reactor, or ABWR — which is the world’s only Generation III reactor that has been certified in the U.S. and that has successful construction and operational experience. Four ABWRs are operating in Japan, and the global nuclear alliance of GE and Hitachi is building four more in Japan and Taiwan today.
The Journal goes on to explain the way in which the latest nuclear reactor designs are tackling the critical issue of cost: “While safety may be nuclear power’s biggest PR problem, cost is what killed development a generation ago, ultimately determining that only half the plants licensed by the NRC got built.” Generation III reactors are not only designed to last longer than their predecessors, they’re made to be “much simpler and quicker to build, reducing financing costs by potentially hundreds of millions of dollars,” the Journal reports. “For instance, there’s the ABWR reactor, which has been built in Japan by GE-Hitachi and which NRG Energy Inc. hopes to build with Toshiba’s help in South Texas. The reactor is built in modules, vastly speeding construction time. GE-Hitachi, a joint venture of General Electric Co. and Hitachi Ltd., says it has built the plant in 42 months in Japan, which is more than twice as fast as the Generation II reactors it built in the 1980s. The company compares construction methods to putting up a modular home versus constructing a stick-built house.”
Some of the most exciting technology in the industry involves so-called Generation IV reactors, which are designed to burn previously used nuclear fuel. “GE-Hitachi, for example, is developing a fast reactor called Prism that would take spent fuel or weapons waste, sitting in storage today, and use nearly all of it as fuel, leaving little waste,” the Journal notes. “What’s left would also be less radioactive than current waste, and would need to be stored for hundreds of years instead of thousands of years, scientists say. Fast reactors are able to unlock energy in waste because they can burn plutonium, neptunium and other materials that Generation II and Generation III reactors leave behind. GE-Hitachi estimates there’s enough energy sitting in nuclear storage sites in the U.S. to completely meet the nation’s energy needs for 70 years, if fast reactors were used to convert waste into electricity.”
* Read today’s announcement
* Read “GE Hitachi advances new nuclear reactor design” from Reuters
* Read “The New Nukes” in The Wall Street Journal
* Watch an animated explanation of how the ESBWR works
* Learn more about the ABWR technology
* See why GE’s reactors are certified as ecomagination products
* Learn about GE Hitachi’s reactors
* Learn more about the move to use recycled nuclear fuel in reactors
