GE Hitachi PRISM - The Future of Nuclear Energy.

Nuclear Decommissioning Authority deems GE Hitachi’s PRISM Reactor a Credible Option for Managing Plutonium Stockpile

PRISM: Technology to Power and Secure our Energy Future.

LONDON – January 20, 2014 - GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) has welcomed today’s announcement by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) that its PRISM reactor technology is a “credible option” for managing the UK’s plutonium stockpile.

After an investigation into the potential of the various alternative options for plutonium reuse, the NDA has affirmed GEH’s view that PRISM could reuse plutonium faster than competing technologies; providing significant value for money to the UK taxpayer.

NDA’s announcement follows a two-year review process which now gives the green light for PRISM - a high energy, sodium-cooled reactor that uses proven, safe, and advanced technologies - to be considered  as a credible option to manage the Sellafield plutonium stockpile. 

“For more than 50 years GE has been at the forefront of energy innovation and nuclear technology and GE Hitachi’s PRISM reactor offers an attractive solution to tackling the UK’s plutonium management challenges while generating clean electricity,” said Mark Elborne, President and CEO of GE UK & Ireland.

“The UK has the largest storage of civil plutonium anywhere in the world and its Government is committed to re-using that material as an asset rather than a liability, maximizing taxpayer benefits. We believe PRISM offers the most effective solution for accomplishing this goal and look forward to the next stage of this process.”

The Government previously stated a preferred option to build a new MOX plant at Sellafield but, in an effort to gather data on technologies that offer better value or less risk to the taxpayer, responded to GEH’s interest in providing a credible alternative option for the management of plutonium, the PRISM advanced reactor.

Elborne went on: “PRISM can not only re-use the UK plutonium stockpile safely and responsibly whilst generating a step-change in industrial opportunity, but can also provide significant revenue for UK taxpayers. This is a socially and financially responsible solution”.

Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA): "...some things have gone wrong..."

How are thing's going at the NDA? Today's News & Star  reports what the boss, John Clarke, has to tell us: Will the Americans continue to run Sellafield?

It's naughty taking things out of context, but the tenor of the piece can be gleaned from a few extracts:

"...its boss said that all options – including cancelling the remainder of the contract with Nuclear Management Partners – remained open..." 

"...real disappointments” with the way Sellafield has been run by the consortium..."

"...he expected “to be further along than we are” but insisted the past four and a half years were not a total waste of taxpayers’ money..."

"...the NDA was criticised by MPs for continuing to shower millions in fees on the American-led consortium that manages Sellafield Limited..."

""...“We have been disappointed by some lack of progress and some things that have gone wrong.”...""

"...Its biggest challenge is dealing with the UK’s legacy of nuclear waste, which experts say will cost an estimated £67.5 billion to deal with..."

"...The consortium – .... – last year earned £54m in performance-related fees, but some of their profits will go to settle a £700,000 fine..."

"...Sellafield Ltd admitted breaching health and safety law.... Sellafield Ltd must also pay £72,635 in costs..." 

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Under "Have your say" I did offer the following comment, but I think the News& Star will probably not print it They did print it:

Just do one thing right, Mr Clarke - make the no-brainer decision to accept GE Hitachi's ZERO-COST offer to use one of their PRISM reactors to burn our plutonium stockpile.

It's costing us poor tax-payers £80 million a year to store and protect this stuff. GE Hitachi offer payments by results - if they don't succeed in burning the plutonium, we don't pay anything! Stop messing about and get the decision made!

There's a gold star in it for you, from Mr Davey. Once into the process, this reactor renders the plutonium useless as a bomb making material and continues to generate enough electricity, from the fuel created, for 750,000 people for 50 or 60 years - emission-free!

On it's own it's a decent contribution to Mr Davey's carbon targets. A fleet of them, configured as breeder reactors could burn our legacy waste as fuel - as your legacy waste problems reduce, we get clean, cheap electricity.

What's £80 million a year? Not much else to spend our hard-earned taxes on, is there?

"...The UK is currently home to 112 tonnes of what is the most toxic substance ever created and most of it is held in a modern grey building to one side of the site.

Such is the sensitivity surrounding the building and its contents that only a handful of staff, with the necessary security clearance, are allowed inside.

Estimates suggest that the taxpayer currently spends £80m a year to store it safely and stop it falling into the wrong hands..."

UK's plutonium stockpile dilemma. By Rob Broomby, File on 4

Well, the IMechE are pointing - yet again - to a no-brainer solution!

AND IT DOESN'T COST THE TAXPAYER A PENNY - BECAUSE IT'S PAYMENT BY RESULTS.

UK PLUTONIUM, THE WAY FORWARD.

From the Conclusion:

"...but the sodium-cooled fast reactor route is sufficiently attractive to merit significant immediate UK support..."

They Mean - The GE Hitachi offer, to burn the UK's Plutonium Stockpile with the PRISM Reactor!

You've heard all of this before, Mr Davey! When is the (£80m a year) penny going to drop?

Continue reading the main

PRISM: lighting a new era for reactor safety, energy security and used nuclear fuel management.

A Presentation by David Powell, Vice President Europe Region for GE Hitachi, at the ENC 2012 Conference 

EUROPEAN NUCLEAR CONFERENCE - MANCHESTER 

9 - 12 December 2012 

Slide 2 of 24.
This link takes you through GE Hitachi's efforts to make the case for the use of PRISM Reactors to 'burn' our plutonium, depleted uranium and spent nuclear fuel stockpiles. We have enough of this Energy Resource  to power the UK for 500 years:  The Nuclear 'Waste' Dilemma.

Meet the Man Who Could End Global Warming. Meet the Technology that can do it!

"....The man who is going to save the world is an ordinary-looking man. He's average in height, with an average face. He has blue eyes and sandy hair. He wears eyeglasses. He's forty-eight years old....a classic all-American Homo suburbanus, but in fact he is a former officer of the United States Navy with a Ph.D. in a fiendishly complicated type of engineering. 

He is low-key and unassuming, with a quiet midwestern sense of humor....The man who is going to save the world is also a damn good father, a tendency that is at the heart of this world-saving business...."

Read more: Nuclear Waste Disposal - Eric Loewen's Disposal of Nuclear Waste - Esquire 

Eric Loewen: Best and Brightest 2009 Honoree on Nuclear Waste.

The next thing you should know is that Loewen's miracle technology is not some airy concept. It cost billions of dollars to develop. Some of the biggest companies in America spent ten years refining it under the close supervision of the U. S. government — before the program was shuttered and abandoned in a hasty political decision that makes Who Killed the Electric Car? look like a promotional film for General Motors.

"...."So what is nuclear waste? It's still uranium! Right? It's 95 percent uranium. It's still usable. But we've got these evil things called transuranics, which is 1 percent of the total and 99 percent of the headache..."

"...."...And that is my fuel. The problem becomes the solution."...."

"....Transuranics are highly radioactive elements like plutonium, typically regarded not as sources of energy but for their capacity to vaporize cities.

"But if I build a different kind of reactor that uses liquid sodium instead of water to slow things down, I can have a higher neutron speed and that stuff becomes a fuel. You just mix it in the crucible, put in the transuranics, put in some uranium, put in some zirconium, and you cast it into thin rods. That technology's been developed, it's easy to do, and you do it in a room about this size [a conference room]...."

...."So [GE] sat down and said, You know what, we're pretty good at making washing machines and jet engines in a factory and replicating them. Why don't we make a sodium-cooled reactor that's factory-built, modular, with passive safety and replicate that, instead of trying to scale up?"

Passive safety meant that it would shut itself off automatically instead of melting down. 

Replicability meant the reactor vessel couldn't be more than twenty feet in diameter, because that's the biggest you can ship down a rail line. So they would gang reactor modules together to power a single turbine. They named it the Power Reactor, Innovative Small Module, or PRISM.....

....much of the environmental movement continues to hate nuclear power as an article of faith, and armchair scientists point to the difficulties of the fast nuclear plants in Russia and Japan, and the infinite armies of inertia simply avert their eyes....

The point is, PRISM isn't half as complicated.... "That's how I answer the naysayers who say we can't build this till 2040," he says...."

What is David Cameron's vision? What will be his legacy?

Dear Prime Minister,

One decision, more than any other, can secure a wonderful future for our Nation.

That decision will revitalise our manufacturing industries, leading to growth and prosperity not witnessed for several generations. It will meet our carbon targets with alacrity, whilst securing our energy supply for hundreds of years to come, with the incidental outcome of making our nuclear waste ‘problem’ evaporate.

On your watch, events are conspiring for you to make this decision, leave your mark on history and earn the grateful thanks of the generations of your children and grandchildren, as the UK leads the world into a pollution-free and energy-rich era.

The era is that of the inevitable global deployment of breeder reactors, which can supply all of the energy requirements – that’s electricity and carbon-neutral fuels for all transport and industrial processes (including seawater desalination) – for many thousands of years to come, for every individual on the planet, from inexhaustible uranium and thorium fuel sources. Your children can inhabit a planet free of the threats of energy wars, water wars, pollution and climate change.

Ignore the negativity coming at you from your renewable and (PWR) nuclear advisers, because energy from both technologies fall orders of magnitude short of the capabilities of breeder reactors. Look at the performance of the GE Hitachi PRISM Power Block, one of which you will surely be sanctioning, in the not too distant future, to economically dispose of our plutonium stockpile. Then, you can do the arithmetic for yourself.

This benign, that is, passively-safe reactor generates 600 MW of electrical power, capable of supplying all of the electricity needed by a city with 600,000 inhabitants. You will be aware that there are no impediments to its UK licensing, which you can surely expedite. You will also be aware that we have a fuel source, in our existing legacy waste, to power our nation for the next 500 years. About 30 PRISM Power Blocks would supply all of the 16 GW of our ‘New Nuclear’, which would be a credible first-step towards ‘PRISMs to Power the UK’ (the title of my new Blog).

The vessels and pipework of a PRISM are made from stainless-steel and operate at atmospheric pressure and these factors are of tremendous significance, because we have the technological expertise, experience and the manufacturing capacity to produce these reactors in their entirety, right here in the UK.

Crucially, you are at a point in history giving you the strongest possible position to negotiate a licence with GE Hitachi, for us to start to manufacture PRISMs in the UK. They are sure to consider an offer which can turn all of their endeavours thus far, into saleable hardware.

Do you have a vision for our country stretching beyond your watch? You could lead your Cabinet, Parliament, the UK and the world, into the era of the breeder reactor. Within your own lifetime, you will see some of the fruits of your decision, but that decision will influence far more greatly, the character of the world your children and grandchildren will inherit.

Energy decision time is now. If today’s national leaders, you included, get this singular decision on energy wrong, the outcome for future generations could be nightmarish.

I urge you most strongly, to look into the matters I raise and would very much appreciate your thoughts on our energy future.

Yours sincerely,

Colin Megson,

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This will be winging its way shortly, to the PM.