Posted on 03/10/2020 7:41:44 AM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
The Pentagon on Monday issued three contracts to start design work on mobile, small nuclear reactors, as part of a two-step plan towards achieving nuclear power for American forces at home and abroad.
The combined $39.7 million in contracts are from “Project Pele,” a project run through the Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO), located within the department’s research and engineering side. The prototype is looking at a 1-5 megawatt (MWe) power range. The Department of Energy has been supporting the project at its Idaho National Laboratory.
A second effort is being run through the office of the undersecretary of acquisition and sustainment. That effort, ordered in the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, involves a pilot program aiming to demonstrate the efficacy of a small nuclear reactor, in the 2-10 MWe range, with initial testing at a Department of Energy site in roughly the 2023 timeframe.
According to an Oct. 2018 technical report by the Nuclear Energy Institute, 90 percent of military installations have “an average annual energy use that can be met by an installed capacity of nuclear power of 40 MWe or less.”
“The concern here is that, obviously, installations need energy, they need power,” Ellen Lord, the department’s acquisition head, explained last week at the annual McAleese conference. “Typically they are tied to the grid; what if the grid goes down, what if your generators don’t have fuel to work on for awhile? So, what we’re doing is looking at small nuclear modular reactors.”
(Excerpt) Read more at cnet.com ...
See Holtek in Camden NJ
This project will die before it is ever finished.
Sadly probably so.
The problem is the security of fissile materials.
The cost of security will exceed any benefits.
And congress and budget cuts. Idahoho does not have enough people to defend it.
Stopping half finished projects like this are one of the many reasons we waste so much money. We buy things that are not necessary on a lark and stop programs after billions have been invested.
We are a wasteful and stupid nation. We have lost our edge, our heart, our spirit, our commonality and our resolve.
Continuing. Why worry about bases being free standing and self-sufficient now after decades of outsourcing, privatizing and moving out to the local economy?
A better and more expedient solution would be packaged cogen type facilities fired by abundant and relatively clean and very safe natural gas. Even clean coal technology would make more sense and have far less risk and risk to implementation.
None of these things are important. This is about filling the enhanced and expanded military budget under Trump and spreading the wealth of it to get votes for it. It is simply politics with a national security face mask.
I wonder what stock the “honorable” secretary owns?
https://www.defense.gov/Our-Story/Biographies/Biography/Article/1281505/ellen-m-lord/
This is a crock of crap and it stinks.
Every nuclear powered submarine is proof that the technology is sound and safe and can be delivered in a small package, maintained and serviced by well-trained twenty-somethings.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.