Manufacturers of refrigerator-sized nuclear reactors will seek approval from U.S. authorities within a year to help supply the world’s growing electricity demand.
John Deal, chief executive officer of Hyperion Power Generation Inc., intends to apply for a license “within a year” for plants that would power a small factory or town too remote for traditional utility grid connections.
The Santa Fe, N.M., company and Japan’s Toshiba Corp. are vying for a head start over reactor makers General Electric and Areva in downsizing nuclear technology and aim to submit license applications in the next year to U.S. regulators. They’re seeking to tap a market that has generated about $135 billion in pending orders for large nuclear plants.
“We’re building iPhones when the nuclear industry has traditionally built mainframe computers,” Deal said. Hyperion has more than 150 purchase commitments from customers such as mining and telecom companies, provided its technology gets licensed for operation, he said.
A generation after the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island accidents wiped reactor construction off the agenda of many governments, developers are pressing ahead with designs to satisfy demand for power that doesn’t pollute the skies.
While utility-scale reactors cost about $2.3 billion apiece and produce 1.2 gigawatts of power, Hyperion’s price tag is $50 million for a 25-megawatt reactor more comparable to a diesel generator or wind farm.
Transportable by truck, the units would come in a sealed box and work around the clock, requiring less maintenance than a fossil fuel plant, the developers say. They’d cost 15 percent less per megawatt of capacity than the average full-scale atomic reactors now in on the drawing board, according to World Nuclear Association data.
“A 25-megawatt plant would put electricity into 20,000 homes, and it would fit inside this room,” James Kohlhaas, vice president at a Lockheed Martin unit that builds power systems for remote military bases, said. “It’s a pretty elegant micro-grid solution.”
Certifying and building small reactors will require the same multiyear licensing necessary for bigger plants. And since no small-scale systems are operating, there’s no track record to know how well they will work.
“Whether it’s a small or large reactor, the hoops you have to jump through are the same,” said Hans-Holger Rogner, head of economic planning at the International Atomic Energy Agency.
