Replies

The problem is as much regulatory as anything. The South Africans took a German technology and perfected it.

Bringing that technology to America will require the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to develop a method/regulations by which to evaluate an application for a license to use the technology. Many aspects of the current licensing process assume licensees wanting to construct Pressurized Water Reactors (e.g., Westinghouse AP1000 and earlier models) or Boiling Water Reactors (all the flavors created by General Electric), and a few other also rans. As a result, the NRC has a large staff of scientists and engineers with expertise in PWRs and BWRs constrained by the NRC’s administrative procedures.

The NRC does not have a staff waiting around for a pebble-bed reactor application, nor any other reactor technology for that matter. Note that the Canadian design was the original objective of the Dominion application that later turned to the BWR on this very issue. The CANDU is a proven design and relatively close to the PWR concept. Even a close cousin like the CANDU was too different for the NRC to manage. The NRC is already quite busy with the pre-licensing work associated with the approximately 30 applications on board or on their way.

As a result, their is no chance that a pebble bed plant will be built in the US any time soon. Furthermore, since most other Western nations adopt NRC regulations, policies, and procedures, it is unlikely that any other country would license the use of the pebble bed outside of South Africa and China.

This is why the repeated postings I see requesting/chiding/belaboring the pebble bed issue in the context of having such plants in America serve only to distract/dilute support of nuclear power that has grown up in this country since the lull of 1997. American utilities have many fine already approved designs to choose from for their next nuclear project. The talk of pebble bed on FR is at best an academic exercise left to folks in the commercial nuclear business.

To me, demanding a pebble bed reactor in this country is no different from demanding that Yucca Mountain (or similar) be built before moving forward with the next generation of nuclear plants that are now available to American utility companies.