PBS Newshour teases NOVA’s Nuclear Option
Judy Woodruff introduced a “must see” segment on PBS’s Newshour last night.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Now: why some engineers and investors are making big bets to develop a new generation of nuclear reactors.
Miles O’Brien has the story. It was a co-production with our friends at PBS “NOVA” tied to the January 11 documentary “The Nuclear Option.”
His story is part of our weekly series the Leading Edge.
Through the magic of online video embedding, here is the full segment.
Aside from a few “downers” from one of the usual suspects — Ed Lyman from the UCS — the segment is incredibly forward-looking and energizing. It features Nathan Myhrvold, a cofounder of TerraPower; Leslie Dewan, a cofounder of Transatomic; Mark Peters, the Director of Idaho National Laboratory; Hyman G. Rickover, the founder of the Nuclear Navy; the should-be-famous successful test of passive safety at EBR-II from April 1986 and a cameo appearance from Bill Gates.
Aside: It’s probably just a coincidence that PBS Newshour included that appearance and spent a good deal of time talking about Gate’s TerraPower. End Aside.
Please take the time to watch this Newshour segment, especially if you have a pre-existing assumption about the slant that you expect from a nuclear story created with the support of KQED (covering northern California) for its NOVA series.
NOVA’s full story about advanced nuclear energy, titled The Nuclear Option will premier on January 11, 2017 on most PBS stations. Here in south central Virginia, Blue Ridge Public Television has it scheduled for 9:00 PM, smack in the middle of prime time. That is a huge difference compared to the obscure time slots selected for airing Robert Stone’s Pandora’s Promise or Michael Pack’s Rickover: The Birth of Nuclear Power.
Set your DVRs or plan a screening party. It looks to be a show you won’t want to miss.
DVR is set.
So, it really was Rickover’s fault. 😉
@Skip
Like all other time constrained media productions, O’Brien’s story about Rickover’s influence was abbreviated.
One of the things that he didn’t mention was that Rickover didn’t automatically assume that light water cooled reactors were the best available solution for submarines. The USS Seawolf and a supporting prototype for it were built in parallel with, but slightly behind the Nautilus.
It had a sodium cooled reactor designed by GE. The prototype was installed in a very large spherical containment at the West Milton site near Saratoga Springs, NY. (The containment was known as The Ball and later repurposed to house the D1G reactor prototype where I trained from Mar – Oct 1982.)
The Seawolf operated for about 2 years using that sodium cooled reactor. Rickover found out that it was as advantageous as its promoters claimed, especially in a maritime environment. During its first overhaul, the Seawolf was converted to a light water reactor.
Here is one version of the Seawolf sodium saga by a past president of the American Nuclear Society who has been GE’s point man for the PRISM sodium cooled reactor concept.
http://www.ans.org/about/officers/docs/seawolf_sfr_sea_story_051712.pdf
Rod
I spent 3 years at D1G (82-85) student then staff instructor machinist mate. Previous sodium coolant made for high rad levels in the reactor compartment especially around the RHX and NRHX. I got 95% of my navy total dose at D1G about 1.9 Rem.
Dennis
Perhaps we stood watches together.
As I understood it, however, all of the sodium related equipment and piping had been completely removed before installing the D1G system. There were hot spots at D1G, but those were due to some corrosion traps and a water chemistry change.
Rod
It is possibly that we crossed paths. I was in 8202 and then on the 2 crew for staff. I know primary chemistry was always hydrazine once they went to LWR ops. They did have a stellite bearing problem on the RCPs in the early 70s as I understand it. The Rx compartment was hot all over entire LL was true HRA.
I actually got 115 mR on my PIC for a 10 minute recapping and lock wiring of the primary pressurizer relief valve.
I suspect the fault lies with the U.S. fossil fuel lobby who is responsible for killing the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) that was designed, built, operated and extensively tested at Argonne West (now taken over by the Idaho National Laboratory) in Idaho. The IFR was ready for commercial scale demonstration in 1994 when it was terminated by the Clinton Administration. Main culprits at the time were Al Gore and John Kerry.
Don’t forget Holden.
Tell us more….. haven’t heard about Holden.
I meant Holdren. See below.
Hazel O’Leary was a big part of this.
PBS FRONTLINE has an interview with Hazel O’Leary which gives her view on the decision to cancel the IFR deployment test.
@David B. Benson
Here is the link to that extensive interview.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interviews/oleary.html
Ms. O’Leary claimed to have been from “the nuclear industry” but the reality was that she was from the natural gas side of a utility company. She might have been in meetings where the company’s nuclear plants (Monticello and Prairie Island) were discussed. She would have been cognizant of the difficulties and costs associated with Prairie Island running of of space in its spent fuel pool.
The interview makes it clear that she was of the opinion that we did not need nuclear in the US because we had plenty of natural gas and coal to burn. She was rather dismissive of the notion that the pollution from those fuel sources was something worth addressing in the near term, not put off into the distant future. She also referred to the “fact” that she had been influential in promoting that it was possible to build a nuclear weapon using reactor grade fuel.
Here is a post discussing an alternative interpretation of the real facts associated with the test that she claimed was “proof” that the material coming from modern reactors was a proliferation risk.
https://atomicinsights.com/proving-a-negative-why-modern-used-nuclear-fuel-cannot-be-used-to-make-a-weapon/
@E-P
Here’s a 9 year old post about some of the people behind the effort to kill the IFR. Both Mac McClarty and Hazel O’Leary moved directly from the natural gas industry into the Clinton Administration and then worked to kill a program that was a long term threat to their former colleagues and probably their retirement investments.
https://atomicinsights.com/recalling-the-integral-fast-reactor-ifr-passive-safety-experiments/
It’s worth noting that Environmental Progress has begun to scratch the surface of the nefarious backstory behind the political deal to kill Indian Point. It also contains political backroom dealing designed to benefit people interested from extracting “rents” by shifting from nuclear fuel to natural gas as the energy source for electricity generation.
http://www.environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/1/6/natural-gas-promotor-at-center-of-new-york-corruption-scandal-pushed-to-close-indian-point-nuclear-plant
POA – Before you leap in with yet another comment about my twisted logic in condemning this kind of action by gas interests yet my support of natural gas interests like Tillerson and Perry, please understand that I like natural gas as a fuel and as a chemical compound. I respect and admire people who have developed new ways to find and profitably extract it. I think it is an amazing American strength that we are one of the world’s largest and most proficient natural gas suppliers.
The gas interests that I cannot respect are those who fall into the Tonya Harding school of competition. Knee capping a superior opponent isn’t the way to win hearts and minds. It might result in a temporary victory and fleeting boom-bust wealth, but it is doomed to fail once the competitor figures out the tactic and implements effective responses.
@Rod
Your entreaty to,
“Please take the time to watch this Newshour segment, especially if you have a pre-existing assumption about the slant that you expect from a nuclear story created with the support of KQED (covering northern California) for its NOVA series.”
is quite understandable. PBS, the “Public Broadcasting Service” has demonstrated a distinct Anti-Nuclear culture for many years, evinced by the programming selection for the very week “The Nuclear Option” is airing.
On Independent Lens will be “Containment; Excerpt From Uranium Drive-In, Governments around the world struggle to protect future generations from nuclear waste.”
and The American Experience will be airing an episode titled “Command and Control: A minute-by-minute account of the 1980 nuclear accident at an Arkansas Titan II Missile complex.”
….real subtle messaging, n’est pas?
NOVA is produced by WGBH Boston and Paula Apsell, the creator of NOVA and now Senior Executive Producer, has done an amazing job developing it into “Go-To” science programming through the years.
Perhaps the fact that The Nuclear Innovation Alliance, a relatively new Advanced Nuclear Advocacy group is located in Boston, as is Ashley Finan, Project Director for Advanced Energy Systems for The Clean Air Task Force, who earned her Ph.D. in Nuclear Science and Engineering from MIT is having an effect. Incidentally, Leslie Dewan’s TransAtomic Power is just across the Charles River in Cambridge near MIT where she enjoys a great deal of support, having earned her PhD in Nuclear Engineering there.
Since I am the kind of cockeyed optimist for which you are often accused of being by some, my hope is that “The Nuclear Option” will be the kind of intelligent and lucid presentation for which NOVA has come to be known and presage a time when Nuclear Energy will begin to receive reasoned coverage, even on PBS.
Aside: It’s great news that the Kickstarter campaign for David Schumacher’s “The New Fire” met its goal. Eagerly awaiting its release!
” Aside from a few “downers” from one of the usual suspects — Ed Lyman from the UCS ”
Advocacy free criticism is important, and it does not come from Lyman. Having the press go to his like for contrary opinion is akin to ringing up 911 Truthers for the details of structural engineering and geopolitics. I suppose it is fortunate PBS dI’d not trot out a Caldicot like delusional. Surely there must be a better source for a constrained-to-the-facts, contrary opinion on nuclear power. I’m not sure who that might be, though they can be introduced to the media via inclusion in the pro-nuclear side of the discusion.
Does anyone know, specifically, what Ed Lyman’s arguments really are against 4th generation nuclear reactors like the Integral Fast Reactor (now PRISM)? I am aware that the IFR was designed to overcome problems (or potential problems) with conventional nuclear reactors. Did IFR designers really miss something important, or is Lyman just sour grapes?
Per the PBS interview, Lyman bypasses the evidence and proceeds to verdict, that water cooling won out over liquid metal/salts “on the merits”. Thus without any actual argument, he introduces the idea that the evidence has already been presented and is irrefutable, that alt-nuclear had a fair day in court and lost. His other statement about advantages and disadvantages, without elaboration, and thus “no free lunch” is similarly specious. There may be real evidence behind Lyman’s comments, but I suspect one would do a lot of work to tease it out of the noise.
Some of the challenges of fast liquid metal are detailed in, for instance, the Seawolf history Rod provides above. Namely, fast metal operates in a higher temperature profile and different corrosion environment than was seen in the century of water cooled combustion power design prior to Seawolf, and some things were missed. Interference via politics weapons production concerns may have been a factor. Dismissing the fast metal concept out of hand now because of “disadvantages” would be akin to dismissing high temperature gas turbine jet engines in favor or prop propulsion reciprocal engines.
Sour grapes.
The EBR-II passed the tests for safety.
John Holdren was one of Clinton’s science advisors
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Holdren
and strongly advised killing the IFR deployment test on proliferation grounds. He should have known that this was impossible.
See “Plentiful Energy” by Till & Chang for a technical description of the EBR-II but not the politics.
As I understood the Hazel O’Leary interview, she pointed out that reactor grade plutonium could be used to make a so-called dirty bomb, just spreading the plutonium around, not causing a fission chain reaction.
I find this silly beyond words. Only state actors have the resources to make a dirty bomb which does more than a fizzle. Stated otherwise, it ain’t easy.
She is certainly no engineer and it seems was unwilling to listen to them.
@David B. Benson
I think you’ve misunderstood Ms. O’Leary’s position. Here is the specific section of the interview where she alludes to the fact that she had been instrumental in releasing information about a weapons test that “proved” that reactor grade plutonium could be used to produce a fission bomb, not a radiation dispersal device (RDD, which is a more formal name for “dirty bomb.”)
Here is the story using the same “facts” interpreted by someone who actually served as an Engineer Officer, has developed nuclear power system designs, has some knowledge about the details of weapons designs that cannot be shared, and has studied the unclassified work of people who spent their careers designing weapons.
Thanks. I vote for technically incompetent.
@David B. Benson
Unfortunately, she was “technically incompetent” as the politically appointed leader of a technically competent and responsible organization. Her opinion was thus used to “scientifically” support and impose official U.S. government policy.
The idea that one can make the world safer by severely restricting access to fissile materials like Pu and U-233, U-235 (as well as Th-232 and U-238 because they can be converted into one of the fissile isotopes) is just an OPINION, not a fact. It is a position that should be vigorously and honestly discussed with the full understanding that there are enormous financial motives involved in keeping the current OPINION view in place.
It was during the Carter Years, that a small company by the name of SWUCO, had its greatest success, due to the inability of the AEC/ERDA/DOE to fix the God awful mess that was created by the so-called Long Term Fixed Commitment Contract for SWU . We had a grand time fixing things for utilities who were “binging’ on Light Reactors, there was a try to get a fast reactor program started with the Clinch River Breeder Reactor, but to no avail. Mr. Carter, in declaring “NO Reprocessing” did the nuclear industry a great diservice..
The NOVA program gives the viewer the distinct impression that metal cooled and breeder reactors were problem – free and never built on a commercial scale. This is a false impression. Japan’s Monju plant was plagued by sodium coolant leaks and will be scrapped. Nonetheless, the debate about building new, safer, nuclear plants is the debate we SHOULD be having, rather than a debate about whether global warming is a hoax.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/09/21/national/japans-cabinet-hold-meeting-decide-fate-monju-reactor/#.WHgOdrYrJuU
@Jason Brougham
My impression of the NOVA program wasn’t that fast reactors were problem-free, but that a dedicated group of scientists, engineers and technicians had worked on the problems for a total of nearly 30 years and were finally ready to take the next step with their particular design.
Details of that design were not given, probably due to the inevitable time constraints of a 50 minute documentary.
Monju was a sodium cooled fast reactor, but it was not one that was designed or built as an evolution of the IFR project. It did not contain many of the specific features that project had implemented to mitigate or avoid the known challenges associated with the technology.
By the way, I realize that many people like to presend that Russia is still surrounded by an Iron Curtain and is opaque to the “Western” world, but it’s BN series of reactors has been quite a bit more successful than Monju.
Nuclear power for large populations is still horribly dangerous and a long-term nightmare in terms of thousands of years of radiation waste. Why aren’t we developing solar and wind, or water, hydrothermal and other alternatives to old coal burning heaters of water?
After Fukushima I can’t believe we’re still discussing upgrades or new tech ‘answers’ to the unspeakably awful downside of nuclear power. Except for corporate interests like GE, who in their right mind would still think about funding and building more of these unthinkable monster death machines? Stop it already, we’ve all had enough to deal with and are still facing more disasters along with the current one at Fukushima. Tell you what, solve Fukushima or run a program about cleaning up that mega-disaster first, ok?
@Barry Wright
Thank you for visiting and offering your perspective here on Atomic Insights.
People who feel the way you do about nuclear energy occasionally stop by and make a comment or two and then disappear. Assuming you might be willing to engage and learn something, here are some answers to your questions.
1. Nuclear energy is the safest form of commercial energy production. Here is an example article from a general interest web site reporting on data produced by the WHO. http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/09/14/why-the-safest-form-of-power-is-also-the-most-fear.aspx
2. Though there are many fearful statements made about “nuclear waste” and its longevity, I have been unable to find a documented case anywhere in the world in which an injury was caused to a human being by exposure to the used fuel of a nuclear power plant. I’ve been looking for 25 years.
3. Corporate interests like GE are mostly disinterested in promoting or investing in nuclear energy. GE’s nuclear business is about a billion per year; its wind turbine business is closer to $2 billion per year while its natural gas drilling equipment business, natural gas combustion turbine business and natural gas pipeline compressor station business are all larger than that. http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/04/30/this-general-electric-business-grew-62-last-quarte.aspx
4. The clean up at Fukushima is certainly challenging. It is made especially challenging by the continued “need” to store nearly pure water than has a tiny concentration of tritium, an isotope of hydrogen that is a very weak beta emitter and inevitably dilutes in water to innocuous concentrations.
Mr. Wright,
Your talking points sound remarkably like those of a chronically hysterical and wildly wrong (as in, he can’t even keep his typical lies straight from one day to the next) poster who has used other names but is currently pestering another site as “Bentvels”.
Would you mind sharing with us precisely what/who your authorities are for your claims? When the world-wide radiation death toll from commercial nuclear power accidents is less than 60 (and all of those from Chernobyl), and reactor accidents progressing so slowly you can remain safely out of range by moving at a walking pace, your sources must have some extreme biases.
You might benefit from watching this video (found on this page) to understand just how ruggedly-built nuclear reactor buildings are.
I find this claim interesting. The hottest fission isotopes have half-lives up to about a week. The decay heat from a shut-down reactor core falls off very rapidly on a scale of minutes, then more slowly over hours and days. This is due to the radioactive isotopes giving up their energy and transmuting to stable forms. The major long-lived gamma-emitters, Sr-90 and Cs-131, have half-lives around 30 years. They can’t be a nightmare for “thousands of years” because they’re almost totally gone in 300.
In short, you have to be talking about something else… which you don’t specify. Now why would that be? Are you hiding something, or didn’t those who wrote your talking points bother to tell you?
There do happen to be some much longer-lived components of used nuclear fuel. Among these are U-236, Pu isotopes from 238 to 242, and bits of americium and curium. These are all alpha-emitters which are harmless unless you eat them; they may be more harmful as toxic heavy metals than via their radiation. If some got onto a building from e.g. a dirty bomb you could eliminate the hazard by pressure-washing to get the particles off and then painting to lock down any that remain.
Those same “actinides”, as they’re called, are also fuel for fast-neutron nuclear reactors. Those reactors can “burn” them and turn them into the same stuff that’s more or less gone in 300 years or less. If you insist on getting rid of them, we have all the technologies on hand and ready to go.
If you looked this up yourself, you’d already know why.
1. Solar and wind are terribly problematic because they’re so unreliable.
2. Water is limited (about 6% of US generation) and people are trying to have dams REMOVED.
3. “Hydrothermal” (geothermal) is very scarce in most of the world. There is maybe 6 GW of feasible capacity in the lower 48, with only a few megawatts east of the Mississippi. Average US electric consumption is well over 400 GW.
4. WHAT “other alternatives”? Be specific, with capacity figures.
All of this suggests that you haven’t ever actually looked at the problem. I’ve been peering deep into it for almost 13 years now, archived at The Ergosphere. It’s hardly comprehensive but until you’ve read through it you haven’t even learned a fraction of what I’ve put down to tell the world. Or you might want to begin with Without The Hot Air instead; it’s probably friendlier to newbies.
Why are you freaking out about Fukushima, which had exactly zero civilian casualties from the meltdowns?
Yes, ZERO. And even with the hyper-paranoid Japanese concern with radiation, even Okuma and Futaba are being cleared for re-occupation less than 6 years later. So what’s this “downside”, given that it’s NOTHING on the scale of the “thousands of years” that you claim to be worried about?
Did the people who “educated” you tell you any of this? Are you beginning to feel dirty, as if you were used? If so, good; that’s a start.
“People who feel the way you do about nuclear energy occasionally stop by and make a comment or two and then disappear”
Sometimes, with good reason. Perhaps this commenter believes strongly in his viewpoint, formed by the “information” he has been exposed to. Your task, and what SHOULD BE the task of others here, is to expose him to alternative information, so that he has both sides of the debate from which to form an opinion. Unfortunately, there are some here who’s first reaction is to alienate, insult, and deride anyone that lands here with a song your choir doesn’t sing. Hopefully, this comment of mine will head off any such self destructive actions by the resident baboons, and you can indulge in a bit of civil tutoring.
Say, Rod, I just looked up the Wikipedia entry on the Maersk Triple-E and did a few numbers. It looks like the MAN engines burn about 120 tonnes of fuel per day apiece at their 29.7 MW rated power. That means each MAN engine takes about 6 days to consume fuel equivalent to the weight of a NuScale reactor/containment unit producing 60% more power.
Substituting NuScales would appear to cut both total bulk and mission weight Since fuel consumption would no longer be a significant cost factor, a Triple-E could cruise at over 29 knots instead of the 19 knot “slow steam” setting. Using electric thruster pods instead of direct-drive propellers might increase propulsive efficiency and speed beyond that.
I thought this was interesting enough to share.
I honestly don’t know where to begin. The threat of radioactivity is so huge that no ‘studies’ are necessary in my opinion. Nuclear waste toxic for thousands of years is one insurmountable deterrent but there are so many others do I really need to produce statistics? ‘No deaths from radioactive waste have occurred”. How about birth defect stats near nuclear facilities? May I ask why nuclear is perpetuated at all when no insurance company will take on the risk of covering a nuclear plant? Only the ‘government’ i.e. we taxpayers are tapped to insure power plants of the nuclear kind. There are currently three power plants out of control ( hysterical comment?) in Fukushima. But wind and solar plants are ‘unreliable’? Perhaps not perfect but no enormously toxic downside. Depending on half-life numbers, some into the tens of thousands of years, radioactivity is the gift that keeps on giving. I have a Ph.D in math but you engineer types obviously know lots more about nuclear stats. My only point is why keep injuries accumulating from the most dangerous compounds ever uncovered when we have plenty of alternatives? To keep a toxic industry going? To maintain naval or other small reactors? I don’t understand your passionate support for nuclear energy when the downside is so enormous.
@Barry Wright
The “threat” from radiation and radioactive material has been grossly exaggerated. Exposure to very high levels of radiation or ingestion of substantial quantities of radioactive material is certainly hazardous to human health. The answer is to limit exposures using the simple mechanisms of time, distance and shielding. The threat is about as hypothetical as the threat from large bodies of water. If you are worried about drowning, simply stay out of the water.
Since you have a PhD in math and you are participating in a conversation on the Internet, I will presume that you have a reliable source of electricity in your home. Where does that power come from? How healthy do you believe your existence would be if it only came out of the socket when the wind was blowing at the right speed and the sun was up high enough in the sky — without a cloud cover — to cause electricity to flow from a solar panel?
You are correct in assuming that we can do without nuclear energy. Humans managed to have a modern, industrial society for 50 years or so before atomic fission was discovered and chain reacting piles were invented. That society, however, was powered by burning fossil fuels in ever increasing quantities. In some places, merely breathing was an unhealthy activity. That situation has not yet disappeared in the world, but nuclear energy provides a path in the right direction.
If we shut down nuclear reactors, we burn more coal, natural gas, oil and wood. Do you honestly believe that dumping the waste products inevitably produced by burning stuff is better for our health than using our knowledge and experience to safely extract energy from uranium and store the byproducts in the safe manner that has protected human health for the past 60 years?
Hi Rod,
Not sure why or when this happened, but the PBS NOVA
episode “The Nuclear Option” was removed from digital
distribution some time ago, though the transcript persists:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/the-nuclear-option/
Also, strangely enough, an interview segment with Ed Lyman
was retained in the PBS News Hour segment posted here,
though there was no sign of it in the NOVA episode.
There must have been an interesting staff meeting at
PBS/WGBH in the interim before the NOVA broadcast.
Public News and Science Education broadcasts seem
to have different norms of editing.
In any case, I’m glad you keep good records of your
blog and subsequent discussions, to help your readers
set the record straight. 🙂