The Hanscom Family Weblog

Source: By Stefan Milkowski, The New York Times
KTVA
Updated:06/30/2009 08:00:46 AM AKDT

In a quest to lower energy prices, some municipalities in the oil-rich state of Alaska are looking to small-scale nuclear power.

The City of Galena, a village of 580 people on the Yukon River, has been working for years with energy giant Toshiba Corp. to bring a small nuclear power plant to their village.

Now a Fairbanks developer, John Reeves, is proposing a somewhat larger plant, designed by Hyperion Power Generation, Inc. of Santa Fe, New Mexico, for the Fairbanks area.

“In my opinion, it’s the best energy there is,” Mr. Reeves said last week. “No carbon dioxide.”

Both projects involve small reactors that would be buried underground and operate for many years without the need for refueling.

Toshiba’s reactor, dubbed the 4S for “Super-Safe, Small and Simple,” is designed to produce 10 megawatts of electricity for 30 years without refueling. It would be cooled by liquid metal. (Toshiba is also developing a 50MW version.)

Hyperion is promising a reactor that can produce 25MW for 5 to 10 years and uses uranium hydride as a combination fuel and temperature-moderator.

Alaska’s governor supports the concept.

“Absolutely I can see nuclear playing a role in our energy agenda,” Gov. Sarah Palin wrote in an e-mail message last week. “Small-scale nuclear is an exciting prospect and fits with development of our more conventional sources of non-renewables.

“Nuclear obviously plays an important energy role in our country,” Ms. Palin added. “I support it, and now it will be interesting to hear what locally affected Alaskans say about the prospects in our state.”

Both plants represent a new approach to nuclear power - small reactors that can be mass-produced, require little maintenance, and are theoretically easier to permit and build than large-scale plants (Babcock & Wilcox and NuScale Power, Inc. are also pursuing the idea, among other companies.)

Neither Hyperion nor Toshiba has applied for design certification from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, however, and an N.R.C. spokesman, Scott Burnell, said both ideas are unusual enough that the certification process will be on the long side.

Hyperion especially has lots of work to do before even applying for certification, Mr. Burnell said. “They are essentially at square one.”

Once a design is certified as safe, a project developer will still need to secure a license to build and operate the plant at a given site, which can also take years.

And there is already opposition along the Yukon - from the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council - and in Ester, where Mr. Reeves is working.

“The basic idea seems pretty cool,” said Deirdre Helfferich, the publisher of the Ester Republic newspaper. “But there’s still the ethical issue of leaving behind nasty waste for hundreds of thousands of years.”