ANPP redux?

Grey Havoc

Grey Havoc

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http://www.nuclearpowerdaily.com/reports/US_Nuclear_Lab_Building_Micro_Reactor_That_Can_Power_an_Army_Brigade_999.html

The US' top nuclear lab is touting a new nuclear micro-reactor than can provide electricity quickly in remote places. While the driving force behind the research is battlefield utility, the technology's potential applications are boundless, from space missions to islands to disaster areas. And they say it's safer than conventional reactors, too.

Los Alamos National Laboratory has teamed up with power giant Westinghouse to design a safe, portable nuclear power plant the size of a shipping container that can be disassembled and moved on the back of a semi truck.

Andy Erickson, the lab's deputy principal associate director of global security, wrote in an article for Defense One on Thursday that the reactor is "inherently safe," having no cooling pumps that can fail (like at Fukushima Daiichi in Japan) and using passive regulation systems that can't melt down (as in the Chernobyl disaster in what is now Ukraine). The plant can provide 1 megawatt (MW) of power for 10 years - that's enough for an entire military brigade, 1,500 to 4,000 troops, he notes.

Instead of water, the reactor uses heat pipes: a heat transfer device that uses vaporization and condensation to efficiently move heat away from the reactor. It's the same principle used to keep the base of your laptop computer from burning your legs, except now it's being used to channel excess heat safely away from a nuclear reactor, something most gigantic power stations have traditionally relied upon flowing water to accomplish.

At present, the smallest functioning nuclear reactor ever built is the EGP-6, a Soviet invention scaled down from the much larger RBMK reactor - the same type that failed in Chernobyl during a mishandled test in 1986. The EGP-6 produces 12 MW of electricity, and the only place on Earth left that uses them is the remote Bilibino Nuclear Power Plant in Bilibino, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia's northeastern-most province and home of the Chukchi people. The plant is the smallest and the northernmost operating nuclear power plant in the world, using four of the devices. It is scheduled to shut down next year.

However, Los Alamos got the idea for its design not from the Soviet reactor but from a similar joint project being pursued by the US' National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in conjunction with other Department of Energy partners, including Los Alamos and Laboratory Directed Research and Development, dubbed the Kilopower project.

NASA has experience creating nuclear power in novel ways: many of its deep space probes have used radioactive thermoelectric generators, relying on the natural heat released by radioactive decay, to power the systems of probes like Voyager, Galileo and most recently the New Horizons craft that visited Pluto in 2015.

The goal of Kilopower, as the name implies, is actually to produce an even lower-yield reactor than Los Alamos seeks. The reactor's goal is 10 kW, enough to power a small house - or a Martian outpost. Tests earlier this year proved that a 6-inch chunk of Uranium-235 could produce 4 kW of power using the same method Los Alamos is using to control it: passive systems that Erickson says can't melt down and aren't dangerous.

Kilopower is the first new reactor design in 40 years, David Poston, the chief reactor designer at Los Alamos, told Gizmodo in May, and NASA produced it for only $20 million.

Poston told the news outlet that the reactor is simple and safe: the radiation emitted by the core while not in use is too low to be harmful, and when running it's self-regulating.

Westinghouse has helped scale this concept up to what the military wants, creating a system that can be set up in 72 hours and shut down, cooled, disconnected and moved in less than a week. The team hopes the microreactors will be ready for deployment in the next five years.

Erickson noted to Defense One that the technology contains many useful applications in the civilian sphere as well. He noted the potential for the technology to have supplied electrical power on Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria devastated the island last year, knocking out power to all of its 3.5 million inhabitants, with most not getting it back for months afterward. Remote areas such as islands could make use of the portable generators, too.

The private sector is pursuing micro-reactors too, but of a more conventional stripe. In January 2017, NuScale Power in Portland, Oregon, submitted a design to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a self-contained modular 50 MW nuclear reactor that can be transported on a flatbed truck. While NuScale's reactor uses water and still must be manned by professional nuclear engineers, it uses less uranium fuel than a conventional nuclear reactor would to produce the same amount of power and it comes housed in a special containment vessel submerged in water.

Wary of the disaster that befell the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in 2011 when the Japanese plant itself survived both a massive earthquake and devastating tsunami, but suffered nuclear meltdown when water pumps that kept its spent fuel rods cool shut down, causing the water to dry up and the rods to overheat, NuScale's design uses natural convection to circulate water and keep the system cool.

By way of comparison, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station in Ukraine produced roughly 3,500 MW of electricity when fully functioning, and the Yangjiang nuclear power station in southwestern China provides over 5,000 MW to Guangdong province.
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I wonder if they have considered the secondary use these pieces of kit WILL be put to in the field, during cold weather. Will this item be certified for heating command facilities in the field?
 
Via the Nuclear reddit:
www.world-nuclear-news.org

DOE project supports microreactor deployment

The US Department of Energy is planning to build a microreactor to help researchers and end-users understand how microreactors can integrate with other technologies. The Microreactor Applications Research Validation and EvaLuation liquid-metal cooled microreactor could be operational within...
www.world-nuclear-news.org
 
Foo Fighter said:
I wonder if they have considered the secondary use these pieces of kit WILL be put to in the field, during cold weather. Will this item be certified for heating command facilities in the field?
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Shouldn't be too hard to certify it for heating in addition to power generation.

Plus, I suspect that all the diesel-generator radiators have ducting to push that hot air into tents.
 
Eielson doesn't need a reactor 1000036515.jpg the land the base occupies sits atop one largest geothermal potential sites. Using organic rankine cycle (where a low boiling point fluid such as ammonia or Refrigerant) runs turbine generator. Alaska has drilling equipment galore so potential for nearly 100-200 Megawatts power More base needs.
With surplus power the base can thermally retort all exported wastes instead dumping plastic/food waste to landfill, converted aviation grade fuel.
 
spikedpsycho said:
Eielson doesn't need a reactor
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Correct.

But what the US military needs is experience operating a nuclear powerplant on land. For places where there isn't readily-available hydro or geothermal. Needs a few containerized reactors to haul around to interesting places.
 
US army had nuclear program for years many accomplished firsts. 1000036521.jpg

The issue is in SHTF scenario how quickly you evacuate the reactor.
Reactor for theater, one thing. Battlefield. Hardly.

Other issue is what having the reactor do. For platoon, it's overkill, for a division is insignificant.
Brigade level, reactor is not enough. All these new startups are developing relatively low power core density reactors.
Navy had 50 years to improve core density reactor designs with techniques they wont share.
A robust reactor needs a reactor/generator/power conversion/cooling capable fitting confines of C130 minimum.
 
Arjen said:
If that is true, Navy command should be overruled. SecDef?
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Could be a contractual issue. Some line about exclusivity in the IP of the reactor designs.

And not even SecDef can overrule a contract. He can stop it, but it'd take a serious court case to overrule contract terms. Remember, naval reactors are designed by outside companies.

Edit: Also, during the lawsuit would require stopping production while the lawsuit was being litigated.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Could be a contractual issue. Some line about exclusivity in the IP of the reactor designs.

And not even SecDef can overrule a contract. He can stop it, but it'd take a serious court case to overrule contract terms. Remember, naval reactors are designed by outside companies.
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Navy cartel reactor makers
WEstinghouse, GE and Bechtel.
We already off/on again know some details creep naval reactor design. Likely, very likely CERMET fuel.
While the EXACT recipe and process is classified, CERMET (Ceramic-Metallic) ceramic fuel particles or slats are housed in metal matrix for it's high heat conductivity. Not totally classifed, as old nuclear power documentaries from Industry exist.
A core density exceeding 70 kilowatts/Liter allow 5-10 Megawatt conversion from reactor assembly volume constraints of a C17 bay.
A true gamechanger would be a 1 MW class within the volume confines of 1-2 cubic meters

Portable wind mill 20-60 kw class.
portable-wind.jpg


Reactor would need to be roughly on par with volume and weight of Shelf-M_-_Army_2024-08-14_28.jpg generator set of diesel unit.
Shielding can be done using HESCO and water barriers.
 
Arjen said:
But is this what stops the Navy from sharing designs in this particular case? If so, have the design owner bid for a contract. Or is it a turf war?
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A design made specifically and only for the USN would not be shareable.
 
In the end, it is the US Federal government that is the client for the design. If the involved contracts expressly forbid the adaptation of US navy reactor designs for all other branches of the Federal government, including army and air force, even if additional fees or royalties are paid, that makes no sense to me. Turf war?
Scott Kenny said:
A design made specifically and only for the USN would not be shareable.
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Why?
 
Arjen said:
In the end, it is the US Federal government that is the client for the design. If the involved contracts expressly forbid the adaptation of US navy reactor designs for all other branches of the Federal government, including army and air force, even if additional fees or royalties are paid, that makes no sense to me. Turf war?

Why?
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Contract phrasing. The contract listing US Navy instead of US government, for example, means that now the USN can overrule anyone else trying to use that data.

An even worse level of what happened with the stealth data and MDD in the A-12 contract.
 
That reads like tit for tat. All branches of the US military answer to DoD Central, that makes it DoD Central's failure that it continues.
 
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So let DoD instruct Army, Air Force, Navy to draft different contracts in the future. Just to play nice together.
 

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