December 15, 2018
Original link: https://www.apnews.com/0079d71260644413ace5e0ec1f360728?fbclid=IwAR14r43wfGcnJhU5kJt_w1mhlIuaKEuImFy8HPutupcyGAPthAaJGcWH2fM
IDAHO NATIONAL LABORATORY, Idaho (AP) — A nuclear test
reactor that can melt uranium fuel rods in seconds is running again
after a nearly quarter-century shutdown as U.S. officials try to revamp a
fading nuclear power industry with safer fuel designs and a new
generation of power plants.
The reactor at the U.S. Energy Department’s Idaho National Laboratory has performed 10 tests on nuclear fuel since late last year.
“If we’re going to have nuclear power in this country
20 or 30 years from now, it’s going to be because of this reactor,” said
J.R. Biggs, standing in front of the Transient Test Reactor he manages
that in short bursts can produce enough energy to power 14 million
homes.
The reactor was used to run 6,604 tests from 1959 to
1994, when it was put on standby as the United States started turning
away from nuclear power amid safety concerns.
Restarting it is part of a strategy to reduce U.S.
greenhouse gas emissions by generating carbon-free electricity with
nuclear power initiated under the Obama administration and continuing
under the Trump administration, despite Trump’s downplaying of global
warming.
According to the U.S. Energy Information
Administration, 98 nuclear reactors at 59 power plants produce about 20
percent of the nation’s energy. Most of the reactors are decades old,
and many are having a tough time competing economically with other forms
of energy production, particularly cheaper gas-fired power plants.
Some nuclear plants have closed in recent years, and
Illinois, New York and New Jersey have approved subsidies in the past
two years to bail out commercial nuclear plants. Officials in some areas
are considering carbon taxes on coal and natural gas to boost nuclear
power.
U.S. officials hope to improve nuclear power’s
prospects. They face two main challenges: making the plants economically
competitive and changing public perception among some that nuclear
power is unsafe.
Biggs said Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster, caused
by a 2011 earthquake and tsunami, was a primary reason U.S. officials
restarted the test reactor in Idaho. The cores of three reactors at the
Japan plant suffered meltdowns after cooling systems failed.
But what if, researchers say, nuclear plants produced
energy with accident-tolerant fuels in reactors designed to safely shut
themselves down in an emergency? That’s where the Idaho lab’s test
reactor comes in.
Dan Wachs, who directs the lab’s fuel safety research
program, said only three other reactors with fuel testing abilities
exist — in France, Japan and Kazakhstan. He said none can perform the
range of experiments that can be done at the Idaho lab’s Transient Test
Reactor, also called TREAT.
“The world is suffering from a very acute shortage of testing that TREAT fills,” he said.
At the Idaho test reactor, pencil-sized pieces of fuel
rods supplied by commercial manufacturers are inserted into the reactor
that can generate short, 20-gigawatt bursts of energy. Workers perform
tests remotely from about half a mile (0.8 kilometers) away.
The strategy is to test the fuels under accident
conditions, including controlled and contained meltdowns, to eventually
create safer fuels.
The tiny fuel rods, including those that melt, are sent
to the lab’s Hot Fuel Examination Facility, where workers behind 4 feet
(1.2 meters) of leaded glass examine them. Additional work is done a
short walk away at the Irradiated Materials Characterization Lab, where
powerful microscopes can examine the fuel at the atomic level.
Wachs and his team of about 15 scientists get the
results and consult with both the fuel manufacturer and the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, which licenses nuclear fuel.
The 890-square-mile (2,300-square-kilometer) Energy
Department site that holds the test reactor, about 50 miles (80
kilometers) west of Idaho Falls, also is the proposed location for an
energy cooperative’s small modular reactors. The small reactors are
intended to be economically competitive and safer than current reactor
designs. Because they’re modular, additional reactors can be built as
energy demands in a region increase, reducing initial construction
costs.
While the Idaho lab looks to the future, the sprawling
Energy Department site in Idaho’s high desert sagebrush also contains
some of the nation’s nuclear past. The core from Pennsylvania’s Three
Mile Island nuclear plant was buried there after it underwent a partial
meltdown in 1979 in one of the nation’s worst nuclear mishaps.
The Three Mile Island facility still produces energy,
but its owner has said it will shut it down in 2019 unless Pennsylvania
comes to its financial rescue.
Besides economics and safety, another problem for
nuclear energy is what to do with the radioactive spent fuel rods. The
U.S. has no permanent repository for about 77,000 tons (70,000 metric
tons), stored mainly at the commercial nuclear power plants where they
were used to produce electricity.
Idaho won federal court battles in 1990s to prevent the
Energy Department’s Idaho site from becoming a repository for spent
fuel and other nuclear waste. Other states don’t want it either.
“I think the Idaho National Laboratory is more
optimistic about the future of nuclear energy than is warranted,” said
Beatrice Brailsford of the Snake River Alliance, an Idaho-based nuclear
watchdog group.
Still, nuclear energy has been identified by U.S.
officials as having a key role in reducing the nation’s greenhouse gas
emissions.
“Nuclear is a primary way to get there,” said Wachs. “It’s really the only way to get there.”
