Nuclear Energy - Will we miss the boat again? (Sidney Bernsen)

NUCLEAR ENERGY – WILL WE MISS THE BOAT AGAIN? Sidney Bernsen Ph.D. Former Chief Nuclear Engineer for Bechtel Power Corporation I recently read the presentation Ted Rockwell gave last September at the 33 Annual WNA Conference in London and commend him for a clear and rational argument for promoting Nuclear Power as the preeminent solution to our energy future - not CO2 sequestration, not Solar, not windmills. However, as has been the case time and time again we keep finding ways to shoot ourselves in the foot whenever great opportunities emerge.

While we typically blame public acceptance for the delays, addition of safety features, and extensive, unnecessary design and QA procedures, in most cases the drivers for these excesses reside within our own communities. Although a fleet of approximately 400 nuclear units around the world designed for safe power generation have operated with an unmatched safety record, we continue to add features to mitigate extremely improbable occurrences, even in the face of the most advanced risk assessment technology that supports reduced concerns.

We worry about extremely unlikely events and produce complex and overly analyzed designs to cope with them. We postulate terrorist threats that could produce significantly less serious consequences from a nuclear power plant than they would from a myriad of other targets and we modify future designs to try to cope with them while the other threatening circumstances are not similarly addressed because of cost or impracticality. Also, one wonders why new nuclear plants would be preferred targets as compared with the existing plants that will likely continue operation for the next 20-40 years. It’s as if the current crop of nuclear engineers enjoy the challenge of designing and analyzing complex details without regard for cost-benefit considerations.

There clearly is a high risk that the unreasonably high projected costs of current nuclear power plant designs could prevent them from obtaining the financing needed to license and build them. While most successful industries continue to provide products at continually reduced cost or products with significantly more useful features at similar costs, the nuclear power industry is moving in reverse.

What is needed is a dedicated, experienced tiger team to challenge current advanced designs, the licensing basis established for them, and design and construction practices with the objective of substantially reducing their cost and complexity.