Universities to experiment with micro nuclear power
If your image of nuclear power is giant, cylindrical concrete cooling towers pouring out steam on a site that takes up hundreds of acres of land, soon there will be an alternative: tiny nuclear reactors that produce only one-hundredth the electricity and can even be delivered on a truck.
Small but meaningful amounts of electricity — nearly enough to run a small campus, a hospital or a military complex, for example — will pulse from a new generation of micronuclear reactors. Now, some universities are taking interest.
“What we see is these advanced reactor technologies having a real future in decarbonizing the energy landscape in the U.S. and around the world,” said Caleb Brooks, a nuclear engineering professor at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign.
The tiny reactors carry some of the same challenges as large-scale nuclear, such as how to dispose of radioactive waste and how to make sure they are secure. Supporters say those issues can be managed and the benefits outweigh any risks.
Universities are interested in the technology not just to power their buildings but to see how far it can go in replacing the coal and gas-fired energy that causes climate change.
Microreactors will be “transformative” because they can be built in factories and hooked up on site in a plug-and-play way, said Jacopo Buongiorno, professor of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Buongiorno studies the role of nuclear energy in a clean energy world.
Both Buongiorno and Marc Nichol, senior director for new reactors at the
Nuclear Energy Institute, view the interest by schools as the start of a trend.
Last year, Penn State University signed a memorandum of understanding with Westinghouse to collaborate on microreactor technology. Mike Shaqqo, the company’s senior vice president for advanced reactor programs, said universities are going to be “one of our
key early adopters for this technology.”
Penn State wants to prove the technology so that Appalachian industries, such as steel and cement manufacturers, may be able to use it, said Professor Jean Paul Allain, head of the nuclear engineering department. Those two industries tend to burn dirty fuels and have very high emissions. Using a microreactor also could be one of several options to help the university use less natural gas and achieve its long-term carbon emissions goals, he said.
“I do feel that microreactors can be a gamechanger and revolutionize the way we think about energy,” Allain said.
For Allain, microreactors can complement renewable energy by providing a large amount of power without taking up much land. A 10-megawatt microreactor could go on less than an acre, whereas windmills or a solar farm would need far more space to produce 10 megawatts, he added. The goal is to have one at Penn
State by the end of the decade.
Nuclear reactors that are used for research are nothing new on campus. About two dozen U.S. universities have them.
But using them as an energy source is new.
One company that is building microreactors that the public can get a look at today is Last Energy, based in Washington, D.C. It built a model reactor in Brookshire, Texas, that’s housed in an edgy cube covered in reflective metal.
Now it’s taking that apart to test how to transport the unit. A caravan of trucks is taking it to Austin, where company founder Bret Kugelmass is scheduled to speak at SXSW in March.
A 2022 Stanford-led study found that smaller modular reactors — the next size up from micro — will generate more waste than conventional reactors. Lead author Lindsay Krall said that the design of microreactors would make them subject to the same issue.
Kugelmass sees only promise. Nuclear, he said, has been “totally misunderstood and under leveraged.” It will be “the key pillar of our energy transformation moving forward.”