Towards a Navy Corps of Nuclear Engineering

Almost since its founding, the Army Corps of Engineers has had a major domestic, peace-time function in civilian civil works projects. So there is a precedent for having the military run such projects.

I got to thinking about that precedent when I read Bradford Plumer's TNR post, which notes that:

Obama wasn't kidding when he gave all those shout-outs to nuclear power in his State of the Union address on Wednesday. According to Bloomberg, Obama's 2011 budget will request $54 billion in loan guarantees for new nuclear reactors—triple the previous amount.

I'm inclined to agree with Andrew Sullivan that "There's no way to tackle our carbon addiction without nuclear energy as part of the solution." But I also appreciate Plumer's observation that "the case against comes from the Union of Concerned Scientists, which argues that big nuclear projects have historically been very risky—prone to delays and cost overruns—and that the default rate on these loans can be quite high, sticking taxpayers with the bill. Instead, says UCS, it'd be better to direct that money toward cheaper, more reliable options for reducing emissions—efficiency or waste-heat capture or even wind power."

I've got a better idea. The WSJ reported in September of last year that:

Babcock & Wilcox, a unit of McDermott International, has designed a small 125-megawatt reactor that would be built at its U.S. factories and then delivered to power-plant sites by rail or barge. This would eliminate a bottleneck and the associated higher costs for ultra-heavy forgings that are required for large reactors. Small reactors could be built at a number of domestic heavy-manufacturing sites. The Lynchburg, Va., company has been building small reactors and other key components for Navy ships for decades, at plants in Indiana and Ohio.

Another plus of small reactors: They're designed to be refueled less frequently, reducing the number of refueling outages. Instead of every 18 months to two years, they could go four or five years, reaping a saving from having less down time. Another feature of some reactors is the ability to do more maintenance while plants are running, again reducing idle time.

... critics say that the economics of small plants simply don't work: The licensing costs are so great for nuclear plants, somewhere between $50 million and $100 million per site, and security and construction costs are so high that the economics work only for big plants, with lots of output, so costs can be spread over many kilowatt-hours of electricity.

So here's where my idea comes into play. The Navy already operates dozens of small nuclear reactors in aircraft carriers and submarines, with an outstanding record of safety and reliability. They have an established training program that churns out nuclear-capable officers.

By analogy to the Army Corps of Engineering, we could create a Navy Corps of Nuclear Engineering. It would build and operate dozens of small nuclear power plants around the country. To address security concerns, the first plants would be built on military bases, where the garrison can provide security. Licensing costs would be cut because the government would own and operate the plants.

The proposal should not offend small government sensibilities. Nuclear power is rife with market failures (and government failures). Huge research and development costs associated with traditional large scale nuclear power plants may be beyond the ability of private firms to finance. In addition, we know that private firms tend to underproduce the sort of basic R&D necessary to develop new generations of power plants. But the Navy already spends money to develop new naval reactors, which presumably could be scaled up at reasonable costs. Since the Navy need not worry about earning market competitive rates of return on its investment in R&D, moreover, there's no economic disincentive to conducting that sort of R&D in the Navy.

Private utilities are subject to state utility regulators who notoriously meddle, typically to "protect" consumers from rate increases, but usually with the outcome of making plants nonprofitable. A federal Naval Corps of Nuclear Engineering presumably would be outside the scope of state regulation.

Private utilities used cost-plus contracting when building nuclear power plants--with all its notorious problems--because there were serious problems of incomplete information when dealing with large scale, non-standardized plants. Smaller, standardized plants should be amenable to fixed price contracts.

Private parties have a hard time adequately insuring against very low probability but very high magnitude events. Since the taxpayer likely would ultimately be on the hook anyway, why not have the government own the plant and self-insure? And profit from selling electricity?

Another advantage of my proposal is that lots of military bases are brown field sites that would require mega-investments in environmental cleanup before being converted to civilian use. So why not build a nuclear plant there?

So I'd say Obama's half right. Oddly, however, this time I think his problem is that he's leaning too much on the private sector. The Navy knows how to run small nuclear reactors. Small nuclear reactors are the future of the industry. Why not put them together?

*****

Glenn Reynolds has had several relevant posts. #1:

MARK WHITTINGTON: “To paraphrase a line often made by Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds, they told me that if I voted for John McCain we would see a massive push for nuclear power—and they were right! It seems that President Obama has embraced nuclear energy.”

#2:

WILL COLLIER: When It Comes To Nuclear Power, Companies Should Think Small.

The latter is especially relevant to the discussion here, as Collier argues small scale reactors are cheaper and safer than the traditional mega-monsters.

Comments

[Julian]

I'm not so sure about this idea; having the Navy become, essentially, the monopoly operator of an increasingly important sector of our energy economy seems a recipe for corruption and militarization of civilian life to me. While its true that the Army Corps of Engineers has a significant role in building and maintaining civilian infrastructure, this is in a purely public and non-profit capacity; a significant difference from building, owning, and maintaining small-scale nuclear power plants across the country. Allowing the military to integrate with an important industry or the general economy too deeply is, historically, a recipe for disaster as two of our modern examples of troubled states, Iran and Pakistan, so ably attest. Our founders were justly opposed to allowing the military a say in civil affairs and I'm of the opinion that it is best to do as little as possible to tear down that wall of separation.

[Andy Bochman]

You're right on the money, though my experience so far has been that the Navy is less enthusiastic about leveraging its nuclear power knowledge, and that the Army has been investigating brushing the cobwebs off its own program which mainly ended in the 70's. While there are obstacles galore, there are many energy security birds to be killed with the small-nukes-on-CONUS-bases stone. Appreciate your advocacy on this.

[Claude Muncey]

Just a thought -- this is actually how we got started with commercial nuclear power. The Shippingport Atomic Power Station (near Pittsburgh) was the first commercial plant, coming on line in 1957. Its construction was supervised by Admiral
Rickover as it was considered a prototype for a carrier reactor.

My limited understanding is that naval reactors and commercial reactors have diverged in design, due to differing requirements. For example, military reactors often used highly enriched uranium, which could be seen as a proliferation threat in commercial applications.

The reactor accidents that usually come to mind are Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, second generation reactors. Over the past couple of decades, the more advanced commercial reactors, the so-called third generation, have been built in other countries, sometimes by US firms. The design progression in the apparently safer Gen III plants, and the proposed Gen IV, may well be diverging farther from naval reactor design. It might be better to turn to France or Japan for help than the US Navy.

[Philboyd Studge]

Okay, but let's start with one in the Navy Yard off M Street in D.C., and another in Long Beach, CA. If it's safe enough for us hicks in the sticks, it's safe enough for you witties in the cities. Or would that make you go all NIMBY on the idea?

[ian]

interesting topic; I grew up not too far from Ft. Wood, considered a typical army corp of engineers base; 'intelligent' people from my town were either employed at the base as civilian contractors or worked at the local university (UMR now MST)

I know first-hand that if it's employment rate growth you are considering that this is a very good idea and having the infrastructure in place already makes it even better

this is all coming from someone who believes in limited government and is anti-military so as I do not think really like this idea at heart it would solve the problem

[Vern Rutter]

Great idea!

As a now retired Navy Nuc, I heartily endorse the Navy's Nuclear Propulsion Program as a model. Locating reactors at military facilities for security is brilliant!

No one with a profit motive should be anywhere near a nuclear reactor.

The Navy could oversee a building and operations program readily. It also satisfies the dual hatted DOE / NNPP that Naval Reactors Admiral (NAVSEA 08) is already charged with.

Note that this would make us like the French (Government owned, cookie cutter reactors) which nearly eliminates the unecessary overhead and conflict of interest that is profit.

A truly public utility, delivering carbon free power at cost!

Sign me up!

[DarrenG]

Interesting idea, although probably impractical.

The Navy already has a difficult time attracting and retaining enough qualified personnel to maintain their current number of reactors. Check out the recruitment, enlistment, and retention incentives offered to nukies for confirmation.

Adding enough personnel to maintain a usefully large number of civilian reactors would require tons more money. Perhaps the benefits (coupled with the aversion of both parties to restraining or cutting any Pentagon-related program, of course) would be worth it, though...

[Rod Adams]

I am a big fan of the idea of small, modular reactors and am impressed by B&W's mPower design - as well as the NuScale design and the Hyperion Power Systems design.

Why not model a private company on the lessons learned from the Navy's excellent nuclear power program? Of course, the commercial industry came close with the creation of INPO, but they have still focused on large power reactors.

It would help if the Navy would release some of those insightful letters that Rickover used to write to his commanding officers and if they would declassify their training program materials. After all, the second law of thermodynamics is not really classified as Confidential/Restricted Data and neither is information about Rankine cycle steam plants.

I disagree with Vern Rutter - profit seeking companies can do exceptional work and maintain high standards - at least as high as a government organization that is also manned by people who can occasionally be tempted to cut corners or violate their integrity in order to advance to higher ranks. I am not saying that is a large problem in the Navy, but it does happen - people are not much different whether they are in uniform or not.

Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
Host and producer, The Atomic Show Podcast
Founder, Adams Atomic Engines, Inc.
former Engineer Officer, USS Von Steuben

[ElegantFowl]

Small-scale uniform-design reactors are a good idea, if you can decide what to do with the waste. I think Navy reactors use weapons-grade enriched uranium though, so their experience doesn't translate as directly as you think...

[ParatrooperJJ]

One problem, naval reactors are designed to be fast starting. One of the side effects of this is that the possibility of an accidental or deliberate criticality event. They would have to be completely redesigned to avoid this issue. I doubt the Navy would really be interested in doing this because it would be on no benefit to them.

[Jeff Roseman]

One other possibility, as suitable designs are developed and licensed - small nuclear unit(s)could replace coal-fired boilers at the least efficient, most highly polluting plants. This would provide the quickest reduction in air pollution / CO2, and the balance of equipment at the coal-fired plant could continue to be used, foregoing that expense. Simplicity and tamper-resistant fuel can reduce or offset some of the licensing costs.

[Rod Adams]

@ElegantFowl and Paratrooper - As a matter of atomic history, please remember that the US once built a ship propulsion reactor that was NOT part of the Navy Nuclear Power Program for the NS Savannah. That demonstration ship was part of the Atoms for Peace program and operated from about 1960-1970. On a technical basis, the plant operated with good reliability and responsiveness.

The core of that reactor was very similar to the cores in commercial nuclear power plants with assemblies made of an array of zircalloy tubes filled with UO2 pellets. For Savannah, the enrichment level was about 4.5%, similar to what commercial plants use today. The plant had a larger concentration of movable control rods - on a percentage of core basis - than the large commercial plants operating today and it did not use any dissolved boron in the primary coolant as part of the reactivity control system. It is a lot easier to move rods to allow response to fission product poison concentration changes during transients than to feed and bleed dissolved boron.

The rest of the plant was a fairly simple steam plant with steam generators and some redundancy built in to allow continued propulsion even if there were a few equipment issues.

It is now possible to arrange for tours of the Savannah, including the power plant. That ship is docked in Baltimore; the US Maritime Administration is the licensee who manages the defueled power plant under the supervision of the NRC.

The company that built the Savannah's power plant retained its designs and has enhanced its nuclear knowledge in the past 50 years by making major components for the Navy. That company is the one that is designing and marketing the mPower reactor.

BTW - I just attended a meeting of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers on commercial nuclear ship propulsion. At that meeting were several Savannah veterans who shared a number of stories about their power plant.

[Tom Weaver]

ok PG&E built Valocitos by itself in the 50's as a Private company. Since then they have operated the two Unit Diablo Canyon Power Plant better than anyone expected. It ran so well that they were forced to renegotiate their contract for sale of it's power down and were not hurt by that. DCPP was the asset that pulled them out of the regulatory induced bankruptcy in the nineties.This with a 1960's design. Better US designs exist and are being built, in China,by Chinese companies with local suppliers. yes we sold that too..
If we followed the on the books laws we could break ground this year on 10 plants but no matter what Obama says we won't. Nuclear power is so profitable that it needs no subsidies or the Price Anderson Act. Just fewer pols and idiots standing in the way.

[Tom Weaver]

by The way 8 year Navy Nuke & 26years Commercial with an NRC operators Lic. No SRO I made the mistake of saying "What the difference between Industry Standard and Everybody Else is doing it?" With many layers of senior management in the room.