We are on the Cusp of a New Nuclear Age
by Vince Page

I am a member of the American Nuclear Society and in my spare time I collaborate on a fusion power plant design which will be built in Italy by 2009. As we get ready to birth the fusion power plants of the future, fission power plants are making a comeback. It is important that both are implemented correctly.

The word "nuclear" has for so long represented fission power that we use the two terms interchangeably. With the advent of fusion power, we will no longer be able to afford this lazy luxury. Soon the terms "fission power" and "fusion power" will replace "nuclear power" entirely, just so we can keep things straight. It is a wonderful time to be alive, provided that our politicians have learned from the past.

This is not to say that engineers are squeaky clean when it comes to the implementation of fission power. In fact, I am not above admitting that engineers were wrong in the implementation of fission power plants. The very first design for these plants would — by the very physics involved in the fuel used — cause the reactor to shut down safely in the event of mechanical failure or human error. Rather than employ this inherently safe design in the first commercial power reactors, engineers opted for engineered safety, which relies on switches, relief valves and other devices to protect the power plant during accidents. The only problem is, these devices can fail as well.

Just to give you some idea of the difference between the two design philosophies, when the first inherently safe fission reactor was commissioned, a child was told to go into the control room and push any button or pull any lever they wished. Instead of starting a meltdown, the reactor very calmly shut itself down. That was in the late 1950s, and we would still not dare perform such a test in reactors using engineered safety. In today's world full of terrorist threats, citizens of all countries have a right to demand that an inherently safe design be used for any new fission power plants. Our legislators have a duty to ensure that this is the only type built in America, and our president should bring pressure on other countries to do the same.

So why is this an issue now? Early permitting has begun in the United States, Finland, South Africa, China, Russia and Iran for new fission reactors, and almost 100 new coal-fired power plants are on the drawing boards. If the fission reactors are installed, the need for coal-fired plants will be lessened, so the fission power plants must be very safe — inherently safe. Moreover, existing fission power plants are aging and are being methodically shut down when they reach the end of their design life. We don't want to replace them with more units which use engineered safety. There is no reason to fear a stuck valve or a bad switch for the next three decades.

So far, however, all of the fission power plants under consideration are of the old engineered safety variety. Why? In the case of Iran, for whom the Russians have been wanting to build fission reactors, the buzz on the street is that the U.S. is actually dissuading the Russians from supplying the inherently safe kind. This is only a rumor, and it might be nothing more than that, because it makes no sense. After Chernobyl, Russia should be making inherently safe fission reactors to the exclusion of all others, as should the U.S. after Three Mile Island.

The good news is that nothing has been built yet, so the opportunity for unprecedented safety in fission reactor design exists if our politicians and civil servants are wise enough to legislate it. With the renewed acceptance that inherent safety will bring, we can reasonably look at providing the massive amount of energy required for the hydrogen economy. Only fission and fusion power can provide enough clean power to make the hydrogen economy a reality, and inherently safe fission reactors are readily available from General Atomics and others.

As for fusion reactors, much work needs to be done, but I think it's fair to say that our government is presently following an unwise course. Rather than invest in a number of small research projects that have the potential to produce one groundbreaking discovery among them, the U.S. is dumping most of its fusion research dollars into a behemoth of an R&D project known as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). At the 5^th Symposium on Current Trends in International Fusion Research, held in March of 2003 in Washington, DC, Dr. Bruno Coppi of MIT showed conclusively that the ITER reactor will not be able to produce a net power output or even a break even condition. This, after all, is the purpose of the ITER project. Canada wisely divested itself of the project, but the U.S. hangs in there, ready to throw good money after bad.

At the same symposium, I took the time to have lunch with a number of people working on alternative fusion concepts. I identified three concepts which have a good probability of producing a small-scale net energy output within the next ten years if funded properly, and the funding required for all three amounts to $12 million per year for the next ten years. The proposed fiscal year 2004 budget request for fusion energy sciences was $12 million for ITER alone, but achieved this level of funding by displacing $10.8 million from domestic fusion research funds. The ITER appropriation was eventually cut back to $8 million, but even still, nothing was left for these three other projects. The project I am collaborating on in Italy is funded by Italian communities, businesses and possibly the Italian government as well, but nothing is coming from the U.S.. Meanwhile, the ITER consortium of countries can't even agree on where to build their reactor (each member country wants it on their own turf). How are they ever going to agree on the really tough questions? It's a boondoggle in the making, and fusion research as a whole is suffering.

Then there's the question of which "flavor" of fusion reactor you want: radioactive or non-radioactive. That's right, both kinds do exist, even though most people believe all fusion reactors are not radioactive. It turns out that it is easier to achieve a fusion reaction with deuterium and tritium (both radioactive) than it is to achieve fusion with Boron-11 (non-radioactive). Physicists understandably want to perform their first tests using the fuel with the highest probability of success; therefore, ITER is using deuterium and tritium. With no rules or regulations on the books stating that commercial fusion reactors must be non-radioactive, the possibility exists that someone will try to build a commercial reactor the easy, radioactive way. Now is the time to nip this notion in the bud.

As you can see, we are on the cusp of a new nuclear age, filled with great promise and peril. A good deal of the peril can and should be legislated away. This time, let's not wait until a bunch of new reactors are built and then say, "Gosh, I could have had a V-8".