Jim Ferland, the CEO of The Babcock & Wilcox Company, was recently interviewed by Bill Loveless of Platts Energy Week about the company’s global business outlook.
During the interview, Ferland discussed the B&W mPowerTM reactor, one of the leading small modular reactor development projects; FutureGen 2.0, a carbon capture and storage demonstration project; the impact of increasing government regulations; and the company’s technology development programs.
Disclosure: I am employed by B&W as an engineer/analyst on the B&W mPower reactor development project.
Rod – thanks for the video. I love the statement at 1:55 about load following. I’m especially taken by the vision of a wind farm or solar installation putting in a SMR to remove variability, collecting ‘green’ subsidies to build the facility, and then collecting generous feed-in tariffs on what’s essentially nuclear energy. Hilarious!
I’m curious about the load following ramp rates in the m-Power design. Are you at liberty to comment? I feel sure that the reactor and the generator have to be designed jointly and that there are many tradeoffs.
Also – is there any discussion at B&W about modular reactors designed to fulfill Cal Abel and Jim Holm’s vision of replacing coal boilers with nuclear boilers in existing power plants?
Why we need renewables, when we have such energy density of uranium and thorium?
Andrew,
You make an interesting point that I have never heard stated as concisely. Wind and solar installations, at present, are really just remote gas plants that occasionally cycle down (between 15% and 30%) to accommodate the unreliables.