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Chapter 8.
Ending Natural Gas Burning
Realizing the 20% Wind and 80% Nuclear Electricity Dream.
Wind, Waste Burners, and Pumped Water Energy Storage.    The "Electric" Trio.
 Nuclear Waste burning GE-H ARC-PRISM reactors,  Wind Turbines, and Pumped Water energy storage can end Natural Gas's dominance.

 Nuclear Waste Burning Overview Brochure   More   More          Pumped Water Energy Storage Brochure              Vestas 3 MWe Wind Turbine Brochure

     

PRISM Nuclear Waste Burning Reactor                   Pumped Water Energy Storage                                 Wind Turbine Farm
We will always have CO2-Free Wind and CO2-Free Nuclear.  Pumped energy storage is the way they can both be all they can be.
Why wind electricity is mostly gas electricity.       Wind Intermittency Parts 1 through 5.pdf        Electricity Cost Without and With Wind .JPG

Introduction
Part 1    About Natural Gas burning Combustion Turbine electricity generators.
Part 2    Replacing Natural Gas Burning Turbines with a mix of Nuclear, Wind, and Pumped Water electricity storage.
Part 3    Future Energy: Wind, Nuclear, and Water.  Pumped Energy Storage can make electricity all it can be.
Part 4    Making Wind All It Can Be.   A Pumped Energy Storage System .pdf
Part 5    Making Nuclear All It Can Be (despite nuclear's "Awkward Moments").
Part 6    About Small Nuclear Waste Burning Power Plants.  The broken atoms (actinides) produced by 5 large conventional reactors will power two waste burners.
Further Information.

 

The "Mom & Pop" Electricity Generation Chapter

This chapter takes us into the area of the smaller multiple sources of electricity that power our personal worlds on a 24/7 basis.

As you can see, all electricity generation sources come and go.  In 2009, the author had an opportunity to conduct an unofficial inventory of Michigan's electricity sources and was surprised by the results.  There were dozens of tiny hydros and diesels opportunistically supplying small amounts of electricity into local distribution grids on a part-time basis.  Wind is also small and can easily be added to this mix.

This patchwork of tiny "come and go" "Mom and Pop" electricity sources provide a diversity that contributes substantially to the resilience of local electricity.

The challenge is to retain this resilience while making all electricity sources CO2-free.

Remember, electricity is a fungible commodity.  No one seems to care where it came from as long as it is of sufficient quality.

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Introduction.  Natural gas burning turbines in the 25 to 300 MWe range have been what the United States has been installing recently to cover its growing electricity needs since coal burning went out of style.  Gas turbines produce 2/3 the CO2 for the same amount of electricity as coal, but produce far fewer of coal's other dangerous pollutants.  Since they are basically the same as jet airplanes engines, unlike coal and nuclear, they can go from no load to full load in a few seconds.  This makes gas turbines an excellent generation compliment to wind turbines to level out wind's moment-by-moment surges and lulls, at the cost of ending wind's claim as a non-CO2 causing source.  Unfortunately, gas turbines wear out much faster than coal power plants, adding high maintenance costs to high fuel costs.

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Part 1:  Replacing Natural Gas Burning Turbines.  About Natural Gas burning Combustion Turbine electricity generators.

About Natural Gas Burning Turbines
 The natural gas electricity people also in the position of being able to eat wind's lunch.

Two major reasons natural gas burning turbines are obsolete: 1. They make 2/3 as much CO2 as coal.  2. They can't store wind energy like pumped water can.

(Below) 370 MWe natural gas turbine.

Combustion Turbines typically burn natural gas but sometimes burn oil or even finely powdered coal.

Natural Gas burning electricity generating turbines have become the major growth area for natural gas in the United States, providing much of the electricity capacity growth since the 1990s.  Wind farms need gas turbines to cover for lulls in wind, thereby, to some extent, putting the lie to the notion that wind is CO2-free.

 

 

Gas turbines consist of a jet airplane engine (right) with a speed reduction gearbox (center) to drive the slower electricity generator (left).  Natural gas usually costs 3 to 4 times as much as coal for the same amount of energy.  They can be entirely air cooled.

 

(Left.)  In addition to Gas Turbines, there are also thousands of small rural 2,000 hp (1.5 MWe) natural gas burning, diesel-powered, electricity power plants in rural towns and villages.  Like gas turbines, diesels can "Load Follow" wind turbines well.

 

 

 

COMBINED CYCLE: REPOWER COAL BOILERS with NATURAL GAS TURBINES   Add natural gas burning turbine generators. 

(Right)  Sometimes, when a large gas turbine is added to an existing coal burning plant, the coal boiler can be supplemented or replaced with a boiler heated by the jet engine's exhaust, (and sometimes a natural gas "Booster Burner") enabling more energy to be extracted from the burnt natural gas.  This combination is called "Combined Cycle" and is an excellent way to upgrade extremely old small coal burning power plants.  The big downside is drastically increased electricity cost.

This combined heat cycle squeezes more electricity out of the fuel.  The gas turbine's hot exhaust is then also used to heat the heat recovery steam generators to make steam for the original coal steam turbines. (Right, right)  Bottom Line: It is being done.  More electricity usually makes even more total CO2, coal toxins eliminated, going from coal to natural gas substantially increases fuel cost.

In situations where grid-attached wind power is also involved, a turbine's quick power response helps to keep the grid stable as the wind dies and surges.  Turbines are much quicker than coal or nuclear.  The old steam part would follow along as best it could.

http://www.energysolutionscenter.org/DistGen/Tutorial/CombTurbine.htm   Source: TechPro DTE Energy Bob Fegan 2002

 

How many gas turbines are there?

 

Everything here is fossil fuel.

Gas Turbine population in black.  By the mid-eighties steam, mostly coal, had stopped and gas combustion turbines were being phased in instead of nuclear, which had been paralyzed by the venom of the antinuclear environmentalists.

These turbines (black) will eventually have to be replaced with small (sub-300 MWe) nuclear reactors, preferably the PRISM nuclear waste burners.

As you can see, 300 MWe is about as large as single gas turbines units have become.  That's a pretty hefty unit by anyone's standards.

Diesels (Reciprocating) are the fine line at the bottom.  In the United States they rarely are larger than a few megaWatts.

 

 

 

 

The entire United States electricity generation unit population.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Part 2: Replacing Natural Gas Burning Turbines.  Replacing Natural Gas Burning Turbines with a mix of Nuclear, Wind, and Pumped Water energy storage. 

Replacing natural gas burning turbines with a mix of
Nuclear, Wind, and Pumped Water energy storage.

50,000 Natural Gas Burning Electricity Turbines (most around 100 MWe or 135,000 hp in addition to coal burning power plants that have been converted to natural gas), make 10% of Global Warming's accumulating CO2 (1.6 billion tons of CO2/year or 32,000 tons CO2/yr/turbine).  Eventually they all will be replaced with similar power small nuclear electricity generating modules. 

There will be many different nuclear electricity generation module replacements:   GE-Hitachi  Hyperion   NuScale   mPower   PBMR   Toshiba 4S  

Like boilers, gas turbines wear out and most will eventually be replaced by modular nuclear electricity generating units like the new 125 MWe mPower nuclear electricity generation module made by Babcock & Wilcox or the 45 MWe NuScale.   Major gas turbine producers such as Siemens, General Electric, and Mitsubishi are certain to follow Babcock & Wilcox's lead into the SMR (Small Modular Reactor) market.  The world market is simply too large to ignore. 

GE-Hitachi already has the nuclear waste burning PRISM up before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The author is suggesting the best replacements for natural gas burning combustion turbines is a mix of wind turbines, small nuclear waste burning nuclear reactors, and pumped energy storage. 

Pumped energy storage enables wind to make and store electricity whenever it is is available and also enables nuclear reactors to run at a constant power setting to smooth out fluctuating demand from electricity customers.  Smoothing both electricity sources and loads.  Making electricity all it can be.

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Part 3:  Replacing Natural Gas Burning Turbines.  Wind, Nuclear, and Water.  Pumped Energy Storage: Make wind electricity all it can be.

Wind, Nuclear, and Water.  Making Them All They Can Be.

Wind doesn't have to make Global Warming CO2.
"You hit a hard lower boundary in emissions reduction with gas-shadowed wind. So Peter’s broader point is that from an emissions reduction perspective, gas-shadowed wind = gas, so why bother with the wind?"

  Texas, a model of wind power’s potential, now is a model of wind power’s pitfalls too.

Minders of the Lone Star State’s electricity grid had to cut power to some offices and factories Wednesday evening when the wind dropped—and with it, electricity produced from the state’s many wind farms. The green juice slowed from 1,700 megawatts to the trickle of 300 megawatts. Oh, well. Now that wind is big enough to be a real part of Texas’ electricity mix, the state is coming to grips with one of wind power’s biggest problems: the power flows only when the wind blows. --- WSJ 2/28/08

As I recall (no cite) wind generators' power goes up with the 'cube' of  the blade length.  From other reading and Keith's recall, these huge modern gensets have 'enormous' problems as a direct result of sheer size; for example, the shaft sags appreciably if it's not kept constantly rotating and the things have to babied up to operating speed and temperature over the course of a day before your can crack the throttle on them and take them on line ("spinning reserve" is the operational term).
 

Partners
 WIND AND NUCLEAR NEED TO PARTNER IN PROMOTING PUMPED ENERGY STORAGE
 Pumped electricity storage can make both wind and nuclear all they can be.

Think nuclear energy alone can power our mega-cities instead of coal?  Think Again.
Think "environmental" energy alone can power our mega-cities instead of coal?  Think Again.
Think "environmental" energy + nuclear alone can power our mega-cities instead of coal?  Think Again.

Why wind, solar, and nuclear can never do it alone.

Why wind and solar can never do it alone.

Wind Electricity (Over 90 days.)   Solar Electricity (One day, scattered clouds.)

Wind and Solar 101: Both wind and solar produce an intermittent kind of electricity that causes Global Warming CO2 to be produced.  Mega-cities need constant electricity.  Wind turbines don't make 100% of their power until the wind is blowing faster than 30 miles per hour (flags are square in this wind).  Solar only delivers 100% on clear days during the sunburn hours of 10:00 A.M. to 2:00 P.M. 

As you can see from the blue 100% line (average power integral) in the wind plot, it's far more likely there will be weak winds rather than strong winds.  Since weather systems are usually larger than 100 miles across, even very large wind farms can't 'average' their power.  Life would be an endless series of "dim," "flicker," and "off" if all you had for electricity were wind turbines without a coal and natural gas powered grid to fill in their drop-outs. 

Coal and nuclear power plants can't change their outputs fast enough to cope with electricity fluctuations caused by wind farms so quick responding natural gas turbine-generators (think of those huge 747 jet airplane engines) are always built along with wind farms to even out the electricity supply.  Natural gas is 2/3 as CO2 dirty as coal but as long as the gas turbines are just idling on 'standby' not much CO2 is actually produced.

Mega-cities can't be places where you wonder if a light will come on when you flip a light switch.  Your lights at night, ice cubes, and dozens of other life-supporting things are at stake.  Electricity is not an option for Americans; it is part of the way that we have constructed our society and solid electricity is something we cannot do without.

Bottom Line: When you add wind turbines or solar, you also have to add CO2-producing gas turbines.  Not really good.  As a random electricity source, environmentals can usually make a 10% contribution to a grid without destabilizing it.  This does reduce the grid's fossil fuel consumption but fill-in natural gas turbines can wipe out most of that CO2 improvement on gusty days.

Gas turbines turn wind turbines and solar into environmental traps because some day it will be understood that, with gas turbines propping them up, their electricity is not really clean.  At that moment, we will be stuck with thousands of them and the billions of investment dollars they cost to build.  We will have to keep them, along with running their fossil-fuel gas turbine fill-in generators, for decades to pay off the huge loans that were made to build them.  That's a huge amount of avoidable Global Warming CO2.

A GE natural gas turbine sized for filling in for 56 of the world's largest wind turbines.>

 

There is a way for wind to keep its promise to be "clean".

 

 

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Part 4:  Replacing Natural Gas Burning Turbines.  Making Wind Electricity All it Can Be.

Making Wind Electricity All it Can Be
(Pumped water energy storage does not suffer the high adiabatic losses of compressed air energy storage.)

  

By adding energy storage using hydro electricity, two very good things will happen: Wind and Solar will cause less fill-in CO2 to be produced and fewer environmental energy opportunities will be lost (i.e., strong wind at 3:00 A.M.).  Examples: Storage of Mega-City size amounts of electricity is being achieved at Ludington, Michigan, and in many hilly locations around the world.  California alone has seven.

Look again at the energy spectrum graphs of wind and solar (above).  The power of a pumped energy storage system (left - green, pumping, red, generating electricity) looks the same.  Responding as quickly as a wind gust or a passing cloud, they are an excellent match for each other.  Do it, wind buffs!  (Diagram from Wikipedia) (Click on it.)

The equipment at right is part of a pumped water energy storage system that will hold enough electrical energy to keep Detroit going for about 8 hours.  85% efficient, this facility more than pays for itself by enabling the power company to buy cheap electricity from the grid at night and then to sell it back into the grid at costly times such as hot summer afternoons.  They also provide priceless quick emergency power when a grid feed breaker trips or a coal generating plant unit goes down unexpectedly with a blown boiler tube. Another important service pumped storage facilities provide is to help area nuclear power plants smooth out their loads.

The round machines in the ground are motor-generators with their shafts connected to water pump-turbines in Lake Michigan's water.  Electricity from the grid is used to pump water from Lake Michigan via 6 large tubes called penstocks to an artificial lake at the top of a high sand dune behind the camera.  When electricity is needed, the water is drained from the artificial lake - driving the pumps as turbines and their motors as generators - to return electricity to the grid.

Pump-generators can go from pumping water to generating electricity far quicker than either fossil fuel or nuclear power plants can go from idle to full power.  In theory, its quick mode-change ability and fast throttle response would balance out wind and solar electricity power system surges and drop-outs very nicely.  Unfortunately, there are very few wind turbines or solar electricity arrays in Michigan.

(Above, Right) Underground and underwater pump/generators at the 1,800 megaWatt Ludington, Michigan, pumped energy storage facility on Lake Michigan's east coast. -- Author's photo.    http://www.consumersenergy.com/content.aspx?id=1830 

(Left) Ludington Pumped Energy Storage during construction in the '70s.) -- Author's photo.

 

 

(Right) Google Earth View of Ludington Pumped Energy Storage.

 

 

 

Ludington can store and deliver enough electrical energy to keep Detroit going for about 8 hours.  
Batteries can hardly push a single car 100 miles on an 8 hour charge.

Remember, it takes about 1,000 volts to efficiently push large quantities of electricity 1 mile.  So the pumped energy storage site should be within 100 miles.

(Right - USGS Wind Map) Michigan has good lakeshore wind right at the Ludington site.  Wind turbines mounted along the lakeside edge of the storage pond should do quite well and any time their electricity was not needed, it could be stored right there.

High Resolution Michigan wind map showing high voltage transmission lines:  Michigan Wind Map.pdf

 

 

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Part 5:  Replacing Natural Gas Burning Turbines.  Making Nuclear Electricity All it Can Be.

Making nuclear electricity all it can be.

Pumped energy storage is great for wind.  Why is it also great for nuclear?

Like wind, combustion, and boiling water, nuclear fission is a natural process.  Natural reactors used to occur when mud puddles formed in rich uranium deposits.  17 such ancient natural reactors were found at Oklo, Gabon, Africa.  Nuclear energy isn't rocket science, but, like when you turn wind energy into electrical energy, turning nuclear energy into electrical energy also has its transient behavior complications. 

I understand it normally takes about 3 hours for a nuclear reactor to make a 50% increase or decrease in power output.

Nuclear's "Awkward Moments."
 

Ever hear of Xenon-135 ? 

Me neither until I visited the Ludington pumped energy storage construction site (above) during the mid-70s.  Xenon135 is one of the major reasons it was built.  Iodine135  is a rather common fission product, reportedly amounting to up to 6% of the fission products.  Iodine135 subsequently decays into Xenon135, the most powerful neutron poison.  Neutron Poisons .pdf

"Xenon135 is an unstable isotope of xenon with a half-life about 9.2 hours.  Xenon135 is a fission product of uranium and is the most powerful known neutron-absorbing nuclear poison (2 to 3 million barns), with a significant effect on nuclear reactor operation." -  Wikipedia  

Xenon is a noble gas and will separate and bubble to the fuel's surface easily in a liquid reactor such as a molten salt or LFTR reactor but is embedded in the solid fuel rods of both slow and fast neutron reactors.  To solid fuel-pellet reactors, it's a powerful neutron poison.  The uranium fuel pellets become loaded with Xenon135 during normal reactor runs at higher power levels.  This leads to a constant, but completely predictable, operational difficulty that has to be factored in along with other load management considerations.

THE PROBLEM: With some Xenon135 in its system, a reactor's 'throttle' responses to increase power can become delayed.  Xenon135's presence in your neighborhood reactor may mean you can't increase power quickly after it has been running at high power until the Xenon135 that has built up in the reactor's core becomes weak through its normal 9 hour half-life decay time.  In this sense, nuclear, like wind, might have "lull" periods where, for several hours of time, reactors cannot produce as much electricity as may be wanted.  One of the jobs of Ludington pumped water energy storage (above) is to reduce the power cycling of Michigan's several reactors and "cover" for a reactor the same way natural gas burning turbines are used to cover for a wind lull.

Pumped energy's speedy response to changing electrical demands is what makes it an extremely valuable asset.  Neither coal nor nuclear power plants are capable of changing their outputs as quickly as a natural gas burning fill-in or "peaking" turbine and only pumped storage is capable of 2-way energy flow.  Unlike a chemical storage battery, water does not need maintenance or wear out with frequent hard use and, unlike all other energy storage schemes, pumped energy storage can be economically built to be big enough to do the job.

The fast response of natural gas turbines and diesels in today's electrical systems not only is helping any wind that may also be connected, they help any nuclear. 

When CO2-dirty electricity sources such as natural gas turbines and diesels are completely gone, we will need a larger pumped water energy storage component.

We need pumped energy storage far more than we need "Smart Electrical Grids."  Pumped energy storage everywhere is a smarter way to spend money than to build ever more complex smarter - and thus ever more fragile - grids.

Wind better make common cause with nuclear.

The hard fact is that wind's stop and go electricity causes backup gas turbines to make more CO2 and burn more fossil fuel than a steady running backup turbine alone.  Think about your car in stop and go traffic.  Eventually our government will understand this.  When that happens, it will be a no-brainer for the government to pull the plug on wind subsidies, disconnect the grid tie lines, and go 100% natural gas.  Wind doesn't make a serious amount of electricity - no one will miss wind - and wind's intermittency is a pain to grids while natural gas makes substantial amounts of electricity and helps the grid over rough spots every day.  With friends like natural gas, wind doesn't need enemies.  It will happen quick and without warning.

Let me remind the reader that when I was involved with the mid-70's energy crisis, I was convinced wind was the forgotten answer, forgetting man had had 5,000 years to perfect wind energy and wind was abandoned moment heat engines came along.  The reality is that nuclear doesn't need wind, and, in a pinch, can make do clumsily without energy storage.  Wind needs to understand their lifeline to a long future are the interconnect power lines to the pumped energy storage facilities that will be built in tandem with nuclear - I can't think of a natural pumped energy storage pond at the moment.  If nuclear is built all over, wind will have the opportunity to survive all over.

BENEFITS FOR THE PARTNERSHIP: The more pumped storage capacity this country has: 1. We can gather more energy from the wind. 2. Wind won't need CO2- producing fill-in gas turbines to cover for them. 3. We will get better uranium mileage from our reactors. 4. More peak energy will be on hand for short-term peak power needs like an unexpected power station outage or unexpectedly hot and calm afternoon.  Like the engine and battery working in parallel in a hybrid car when passing a truck, that extra power comes in handy.  Over and over.

WIND AND NUCLEAR BOTH NEED A LOT OF PUMPED ENERGY STORAGE TO BE ALL THEY CAN BE BE.  No matter which of the three energy sources is supplying the electricity - wind, nuclear, storage, or all three simultaneously - we can get along very nicely without producing any CO2 at all if there is plenty of pumped energy storage capacity everywhere in the United States.

ACTION PLAN: Either individually or in concert, both groups need to press public and politicians to spend "smart grid" money to build pumped electricity storage in step with both wind and nuclear electricity generation capacity growth.  Grids also benefit greatly by having greater on-demand generation capacity.  Pumped energy storage site capacity should be roughly 8 hours of 15% of the region's combined wind and nuclear generation capacity. 

Not using natural gas at all is the way natural gas is cleanest.  This way, we can shut off all those CO2-dirty natural gas turbines that are currently running on stand-by to cover those wind and nuclear lulls. 

If this isn't a wind-win situation, I don't know what is.
Pumped electricity storage can make both wind and nuclear all they can be.

 

Wind Power Spurs Calls To Tear Down Dams.
Noting on the front page of its Business Day section that "most of the nation's renewable power has come from dams," the New York Times (6/12, B1, Galbraith) reports, "Now, with the focus...on clean power, some dam agencies are starting to go green, embracing wind power and energy conservation," with "the most aggressive [being] the Bonneville Power Administration." But "the shift of emphasis at the dam agencies is proving far from simple" and "could end up pitting one environmental goal against another." Environmentalists "contend that the Bonneville Power Administration's shift to wind turbines buttresses their case for tearing down dams in the agency's territory," but Bonneville argues that the dams "make an ideal complement to large-scale installation of wind power." The agency says that "by balancing wind power with hydropower...it can limit the use of natural gas and coal plants."

 

 

    You can see for yourself how Bonneville Power's wind power is doing in the Pacific Northwest at this moment.  (Wind's total contribution is the lower blue line, upper red line is total system user load.)  This is a huge wind farm grid that covers 5 states.  Visit Bonneville Wind Power at: http://www.bpa.gov/power/pgc/wind/wind.shtml   Individual projects are at bottom.

 

Coal2Nuclear ______________________________________________________________________   top

Part 6:  Replacing Natural Gas Burning Turbines.  About Small Nuclear Waste Burning Power Plants.

Ending Global Warming: Waste Not, Want Not

Nuclear Waste Burning Power Plants
 GE-Hitachi have come up with a reactor that runs on everyone else's 'Spent Nuclear Fuel' or SNF.

Its best to recycle nuclear waste.  One power pass only uses 5% of fresh nuclear fuel's energy.  Recycling yields 10 to 15 power passes.

Build sufficient nuclear waste-burning General Electric - Hitachi PRISM  622 MWe nuclear power plants to completely consume all the nuclear "waste" from all our nuclear power plants - past, present, and future.

 

Big electrical power for big American cities.

General Electric - Hitachi PRISM Reactor. 
Notice they like the idea of in-ground reactors also.
(Image from GE-H Promotional Brochure,  More.)

Nuclear waste-burning?

The United States' population has been told spent nuclear fuel is a problem, we believe it, ignoring the fact the rest of the world has been recycling spent nuclear fuel down to nothingness for decades.  We have been involved in recycling nuclear warhead material into conventional power reactor fuel for over a decade   in the Megatons to Megawatts recycling program.  The ARC PRISM approach compliments nuclear recycling, is more advanced, and even more efficient.

Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing locations: France: COGEMA La Hague, 1,900 Tons/year, United Kingdom: B205 at Sellafield, 1,700 tons/year, United Kingdom: Thorp at Sellafield, 1,000 tons/year, Japan: Rokkasho, 900 tons/year, Russia: Mayak, 450 tons/year, India: Kalpakkam, 300 tons/year.  The United States, which had 3 reprocessing facilities, abandoned its recycling program in 1980.  Engineering on a new U.S. reprocessing facility to be built by Areva at the Savannah River site was begun in the fall of 2005.  Don't let Obama kill it.

Planet Earth has billions of tons of uranium and thorium.  Recycling will extend them by at least a factor of 10.  We really do have enough nuclear fuel to last forever. 

   Advanced Fuel-Cycle Technologies .pdf

Coal2Nuclear  ____________________________________________________________  top

 

PRISM Nuclear Waste Burner
In a nutshell.

Power Reactor Innovative Small Module (PRISM)

Power Reactor Innovative Small Module (PRISM)
Designer:  GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GE-H)
Reactor Power:  840 MWt
Electrical Output:  311 MWe
Outlet Conditions:  930°F
Coolant:  Liquid metal (sodium)
Fuel Design:  Metallic
Refueling:  12-24 months
Letter of Intent:  Updated March 19, 2009
Licensing Plan:  COL Prototype (long-term - Manufacturing License)
Expected Submittal:  Mid 2011
Design Information:  Underground containment on seismic isolators with a passive air cooling ultimate heat sink. Modular design with two reactor modules per power unit (turbine generator).
Status/Other Info:  NRC staff conducted pre-application review in early 1990s.
Website:  N/A

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Barns

One of the extraordinary sequences in the operation of a fission reaction is that of the production of iodine-135 as a fission product and its subsequent decay into xenon-135. Iodine-135 is a rather common fission product, reportedly amounting to up to 6% of the fission products. It has a rather small probability for absorbing a neutron, so it is not in itself a significant factor in the reaction rate control. But it has a half-life of about 6.7 hours and decays into xenon-135 (half-life 9.2 hours). The xenon-135 has a very large cross-section for neutron absorption, about 3 million barns under reactor conditions! This compares to 400-600 barns for the uranium fission event.

In the normal operation of a nuclear reactor, the presence of the xenon-135 is dealt with in the balancing of the reaction rate. Iodine-135 is produced, decays into xenon-135 which absorbs neutrons and is thereby "burned away" in the established balance of the operating conditions. There is an equilibrium concentration of both iodine-135 and xenon-135. But when the power level was drastically lowered at the Chernobyl reactor, the xenon-135 concentration began to increase because the parent iodine-135 was near full-power equilibrium concentration to produce it and the neutron flux necessary to "burn it away" was not present. It would eventually peak and decrease, but with a 9.2 hour half-life, that decrease would come too late!

When the persons conducting the tests on the Chernobyl reactor tried to increase the power at some point in their tests, it would not respond. They apparently did not have the understanding that the failure to increase was due to the absorption of neutrons by the xenon, so they completely removed the control rods to force the increase. The increased power then burned away the xenon and also caused voids in the cooling water, both of which rapidly increased the reaction rate, driving it out of control.

The "xenon poisoning" of the reaction rate had been known for many years, having been dealt with in the original plutonium production reactors at Hanford, Washington. In fact, it was dealt with in the original Manhattan Project where it presented itself as a dilemma - the researchers expected a given configuration to maintain a chain reaction and it failed to do so. They found that they had to increase the fuel concentration to overcome the xenon poisoning. So the phenomenon had been dealt with from the earliest days of our experience with nuclear fission, and should have been known by anyone who was in control of a nuclear reactor. - - Wikipedia

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Bill puts price on turbines

Mar 22 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Ethan Wilensky-Lanford Kennebec Journal, Augusta, Maine

A bill to clarify what wind energy developers should pay communities that host wind projects received unanimous support in the Utilities and Energy Committee on Thursday.
Currently, wind energy projects can earn swifter approval from regulators if a developer provides "significant tangible benefits" to a community.
This language was too vague, said Pete Didisheim, advocacy director of the Natural Resources Council of Maine.
In the bill sent out Thursday, developers would pay $4,000 per turbine, per year to host communities -- in addition to local property taxes -- for future projects.

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Agencies Sign MOU Establishing "New Approach" to Hydropower, Hydroelectric, and Pumped Storage Facilities

Stoel Rives Energy Law Alert - March 29, 2010

On March 24, 2010, three federal agencies announced a Memorandum of Understanding for Hydropower (the “MOU”) that impacts developers of traditional hydropower, hydrokinetic, pumped storage, and small-scale hydropower facilities. The Department of Energy (the “DOE”), the Department of the Interior (the “DOI”), and the Department of the Army, through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (the “USACE”) (collectively, the “Agencies”), signed the MOU to “meet the Nation’s needs for reliable, affordable, and environmentally sustainable hydropower by building a long-term working relationship, prioritizing similar goals, and aligning ongoing and future renewable energy development efforts” between the Agencies. The MOU comes at a time when industry representatives and eleven U.S. Senators are requesting that DOE support a $200 million appropriations request for the advancement of both conventional and advanced waterpower technologies.

In this “new approach to hydropower,” the Agencies intend to focus their collective efforts on advancing sustainable, low-impact, and small hydropower projects and promoting the goal of energy efficiency through water conservation or improved water management. Operating under the MOU, the Agencies will work together to advance four primary objectives:

• Support the maintenance and sustainable optimization of existing federal and non-federal hydropower projects;

• Elevate the goal of increased hydropower generation as a priority of each Agency to the extent permitted by their respective statutory authorities;

 

 

Collaboration

To achieve these objectives, the Agencies identified seven initial opportunities for collaboration in the MOU. Each collaborative effort includes particular initiatives and action items to be implemented by the Agency or Agencies “championing” the effort.

1. Federal Facility Energy Resource Assessment, led by the DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (the “EERE”), the USACE, and the DOI’s Bureau of Reclamation (“Reclamation”). The Agencies will work together to assess unrealized generation capacity at existing USACE and Reclamation facilities. The Agencies will consider powering unpowered dams, installing capacity and efficiency retrofits and upgrades at existing facilities, improving water management practices, and adding pumped storage facilities. The Agencies will also assess the potential effects of climate change on federal hydropower facilities and generation.

2. Integrated Basin-Scale Opportunity Assessments, led by the EERE, Reclamation, and the USACE. In a “new basin-scale approach to hydropower,” the Agencies will collaborate with environmental groups, Indian tribes, hydropower facility owners, federal land management agencies, and other stakeholders to identify ecosystems or river basins where both renewable power generation and environmental sustainability may be increased. The basin-scale studies will both complement ongoing Agency initiatives and serve as a mechanism for assessing opportunities to retrofit existing dams consistent with the overall goals of increasing capacity and improving environmental conditions.

3. Green Hydropower Certification, led by the EERE. By collaborating with states, Indian tribes, nongovernmental organizations, private companies, and other federal agencies, the EERE will review potential criteria that could be used to identify and certify sustainable and environmentally friendly hydropower generation facilities, whether traditional hydropower, hydrokinetic, or pumped storage facilities. The EERE would also use these collaborative efforts to identify those technologies that could be included under state or national renewable portfolio standards.

4. Federal Inland Hydropower Working Group, led by the EERE and the DOI. Through this working group, the DOE, the USACE, the DOI, and other federal agencies will keep each other up to date on the regulation, management, or development of hydropower facilities in the nation’s rivers and streams.

5. Technology Development and Deployment, led by the EERE, the USACE, and Reclamation. This collaborative effort is intended to prevent the duplication of Agency efforts by sharing research and development (“R&D”) efforts and results. By sharing R&D information, the Agencies hope to (1) identify potential areas for collaboration and joint funding and (2) identify possible R&D deployment sites at or near USACE or Reclamation facilities for the DOE or jointly funded technology development projects.

6. Renewable Energy Integration and Energy Storage, led by the EERE and Reclamation. The Agencies see a critical role for hydropower in the integration of intermittent renewable energy technologies into the grid. To determine the scope of that role, the Agencies will (1) conduct feasibility studies to determine whether environmentally sustainable pumped storage sites can be developed at both powered and unpowered USACE and Reclamation facilities and (2) collaborate with industry stakeholders and other federal agencies to determine the amount and distribution of energy storage that will be needed to integrate those intermittent resources.

7. Regulatory Process, led by the EERE, the USACE, and Reclamation. Operating within their existing authority, the Agencies will identify and streamline the most time- and resource-intensive components of the federal permitting process for both federal and non-federal hydropower projects, where appropriate.

The MOU will remain in effect until March 24, 2015.

Potential Next Steps

The Agencies’ commitments to regulatory reform could be significant for non-federal hydroelectric projects licensed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. For example, the DOI could develop measures to streamline consultations under Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act, and Reclamation and the USACE could develop standard contractual language for allowing private development at federal dams. Actions like these could shorten the time necessary to develop new hydropower, hydrokinetic, or pumped storage projects. The National Hydropower Association (the “NHA”) made similar proposals to the Water and Power Subcommittee of the House Natural Resources Committee recently. In its testimony, the NHA highlighted several areas of opportunity specific to the USACE and Reclamation:

• Because the federal hydropower system constitutes approximately 50% of the nation’s capacity, Reclamation and the USACE have a major role in realizing growth in the industry;

• Reclamation should review internal obstacles to development at its non-powered dams, including cost-allocation issues;

• Reclamation should accelerate its program to increase the capacity and efficiency of existing hydro facilities; and

• Reclamation should consider its existing canal system for siting (1) new conduit power and (2) a national test facility for new technologies.

-- This is a publication of the Stoel Rives Hydroelectric Projects Law Group.

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