Nuclear batteries. We may be on the brink of a new paradigm for nuclear power, a group of nuclear specialists suggested recently in The Bridge, the journal of the National Academy of Engineering.
The proposed system could provide heat for industrial processes or electricity for a military base or a neighborhood, run unattended for five to 10 years, and then be trucked back to the factory for refurbishment. The authors—Jacopo Buongiorno, MIT’s TEPCO Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering; Robert Frida, a founder of GenH; Steven Aumeier of the Idaho National Laboratory; and Kevin Chilton, retired commander of the U.S. Strategic Command—have dubbed these small power plants “nuclear batteries.” Because of their simplicity of operation, they could play a significant role in decarbonising the world’s electricity systems to avert catastrophic climate change.
This nuclear battery concept is really a different thing because of the physical scale of these machines—about 10 megawatts. It’s so small that the whole power plant is actually built in a factory and fits within a standard container. The idea is to fit the whole power plant, which comprises a microreactor and a turbine that converts the heat to electricity, into the container.
This way it becomes sort of energy on demand. If the customer wants either heat or electricity, they can get it within a couple of months, or even weeks, and then it’s plug and play. This machine arrives on the site, and just a few days later, you start getting your energy. So, it’s a product like a battery, it’s not a project.
Safety
It’s also exceptionally robust—that’s one of the selling points. First of all, the fact that it’s small is good for a variety of reasons. For one thing, the overall amount of heat that’s generated is proportional to the power, which is small. But more importantly, it has a high surface-to-volume ratio because, again, it’s small, which makes it a lot easier to keep cool under all circumstances. It’s passively cooled, to a point where nobody has to do anything. You don’t even need to open a valve or anything. The system takes care of itself.
It also has a very robust containment structure surrounding it to protect against any release of radiation. Instead of the traditional big concrete dome, there are steel shells that basically encapsulate the whole system. And as for security, at most sites, we envision that these would be located below grade. That provides some protection and physical security from external attackers.
As for other safety issues, you know, if you think about the famous nuclear accidents, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, all three of these issues are mediated by the design of these nuclear batteries. Because they are so small, it’s basically impossible to get that type of outcome from any sequence of events.
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Last modified: June 28, 2021
