Ore. firm hopes small reactor equals big profits
Monday, February 9, 2009 10:40 AM PST
CORVALLIS (AP) — An Oregon company and a venture capital firm are betting that worries over global warming will supersede any lingering anxiety over nuclear power.
NuScale Power, a privately held company based in Corvallis, was formed in 2007 to commercialize new reactor technology developed at Oregon State University. The firm is preparing to test its design and then submit an application for certification to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. If all goes well, the first NuScale reactors could come online as early as 2017.
The NuScale design operates much like a conventional reactor, but is much smaller. It would generate 40 megawatts of electricity, enough to power about 40,000 homes, as opposed to 1,000 megawatts or more for many of the 104 nuclear power plants operating in the United States today.
The design also is modular and scalable, meaning a NuScale reactor could operate alone or in arrays of up to 24 units joined together.
That approach offers a number of competitive advantages, said company CEO Paul Lorenzini, a former PacifiCorp executive who is leading the venture.
‘‘The industry has become ingrained with the idea that the way to make nuclear economic is to make bigger and bigger plants,’’ Lorenzini told the Gazette-Times newspaper. ‘‘We’ve come at it a different way: How do you capture the economy of small?’’
The company’s design also is much simpler than conventional reactors, eliminating the welter of piping needed to keep water circulating through the reactor core, said Jose Reyes, NuScale’s chief technology officer and head of the nuclear engineering department at OSU.
‘‘This design uses natural circulation,’’ Reyes said, ‘‘so there’s no pumps driving water around the loop.’’
That means there are no pumps to fail, which was one of the factors in the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island.
Not everyone is ready to embrace a new round of nuclear power. Jim Riccio, who tracks nuclear issues for Greenpeace, said there are several ‘‘baby nuke’’ designs being touted as safer than existing technologies, but none has been certified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Larry wrote on Feb 10, 2009 5:32 AM: