IAEA Modelling Shows High Natural Gas Prices Shift Optimal Hydrogen Production to Nuclear Energy

Nicholas Watson, IAEA Department of Nuclear Energy
Jeffrey Donovan, IAEA Department of Nuclear Energy

Several countries are looking to nuclear processes to generate low-carbon hydrogen on a massive and cost-competitive scale. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Nuclear energy will be the most cost-effective means of producing clean hydrogen when natural gas prices are well above the generally low levels seen over the last decade, according to a new IAEA study that underscored the importance of having a diverse mix of low-carbon sources for a successful clean energy transition.

Using the IAEA’s new FRAmework for the Modelling of Energy Systems (FRAMES), the study found that as gas prices increase, the optimal mix of technologies for producing low-carbon hydrogen shifts in favor of nuclear and renewable energy and away from natural gas with or without carbon capture and storage. While the study focused on a particular country, its results can be generally applied to other energy markets.

“This shift happens at natural gas costs that are substantially lower – around $10-$15 per million British thermal units – than those observed in recent days in the European Union, United Kingdom and parts of Asia,” said Francesco Ganda, an IAEA nuclear engineer who conducted the study, referring to recent record high spot prices in these markets of between $35 and $40 per million British thermal units, a globally used measure for the energy content of natural gas.

The FRAMES study comes ahead of next month’s UN Climate Change Conference, where the IAEA will hold several events to underscore nuclear energy’s contribution to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement and Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development. Clean hydrogen is increasingly seen as having a key role in the clean energy transition as part of a reliable low-carbon energy mix.

As a baseline reference for the average natural gas price, the FRAMES study used $6 per million British thermal units, which was the approximate price in markets such as Europe as recently as last spring before the recent price surge. That was also the price used in a recent URENCO/Aurora study of the United Kingdom market in the year 2050, “Decarbonising Hydrogen in a Net Zero Economy”, which showed that nuclear energy partnered with renewables can lower the overall system costs of hydrogen production.

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe but producing it in pure form for industrial processes – ranging from producing synthetic fuels and petrochemicals to manufacturing semiconductors and powering fuel cell electric vehicles – is energy intensive and currently done almost entirely by using fossil fuels, mostly natural gas, in equipment called steam methane reformers. To reduce the environmental impact of the 90 million tonnes of hydrogen that is produced annually, and with an eye to further scaling up production to meet climate goals, several countries are looking to nuclear processes to generate low-carbon hydrogen on a massive and cost-competitive scale.

When natural gas prices rise above $20 per million British thermal units, the FRAMES study showed that the optimal method of hydrogen production becomes a mix of electrolysis-produced hydrogen from electricity supplied by a combination of renewables and conventional nuclear power plants and thermal processes that can eventually be supplied by advanced high temperature nuclear reactors (HTRs).

International interest in HTRs is increasing as they are expected to provide cost-effective electricity as well as high-temperature heat for industrial applications. HTRs, which were pioneered in Germany in the 1970s, are now under development in several countries, with significant progress being made in Japan and China recently starting up its first HTR unit in Shandong province. China plans to eventually deploy several more HTRs at that site and in other provinces to combine the generation of power and process heat for industry and other applications, including hydrogen production.

FRAMES is currently being used for internal IAEA analyses of integrated energy systems. It provides quantitative analyses on nuclear power’s potential benefits to present and future electricity systems, which is of particular interest for countries pursuing or considering nuclear power as part of their solution to meet net zero goals.

IAEA Event Showcases Progress, Innovations in Nuclear Hydrogen for a Clean Energy Transition

Nicholas Watson, IAEA Department of Nuclear Energy
Alina Constantin, IAEA Department of Nuclear Energy

The latest progress in nuclear hydrogen projects and emerging opportunities in the heat, power and industry sectors were presented, during a side event at the 65th IAEA General Conference. 

(Photo: A. Tahri)

The potential for nuclear power to produce low-carbon hydrogen in the global transition towards net zero emissions was examined by international experts, at an event on the sidelines of the 65th IAEA General Conference today.

The IAEA side event, Innovations in the Production and Use of Nuclear Hydrogen for a Clean Energy Transition, explored developments in the coupling of nuclear power reactors with hydrogen production plants to efficiently produce both electricity and hydrogen as a cogeneration system, as well as how energy sector cooperation, supply chain and policy support are facilitating the progress of these projects.

“A single 1 000 megawatt nuclear power reactor could produce more than 200 000 tonnes of hydrogen each year to fuel more than 400 000 fuel cell vehicles or more than 16 000 long haul fuel cell trucks,” Mikhail Chudakov, IAEA Deputy Director General and Head of the Department of Nuclear Energy, said in his opening remarks. “This is why nuclear hydrogen can be a game changer in the fight against climate change. Decarbonizing heavy industry, energy storage and even synthetic fuel production are some of the many roles it can assist us with in the clean energy transition.”

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe but producing it in pure form for industrial processes – ranging from producing synthetic fuels and petrochemicals to manufacturing semiconductors and powering fuel cell electric vehicles – is energy intensive and currently with a significant carbon footprint. To reduce the environmental impact of the world’s annual production of over 70 million tonnes of hydrogen, several countries are looking to nuclear power.

Richard Boardman, Director for Energy and Environment Science and Technology Programs Office at the Idaho National Laboratory in the United States, presented the potential for leveraging today's light water reactors and tomorrow’s advanced reactors in producing affordable, clean hydrogen. “We are looking at putting small- to medium-sized reactors right within industry, where they can be dedicated to making hydrogen, which also takes away the cost of having to store and transport it,” said Boardman.

Nikolay Kodochigov, Advisor to the Director General of JSC Afrikantov OKBM, a nuclear engineering company located in Nizhny Novgorod in Russia, provided details on his country’s development of nuclear hydrogen production. This includes a project at the Kola Nuclear Power Plant in northwestern Russia, which involves construction of a pilot plant for testing electrolysers and gaining experience in hydrogen storage, transportation and application.

David Campbell, Director of Bruce Power Centre for Next Generation Nuclear at the Nuclear Innovation Institute in Canada, described an ongoing project that is looking into producing nuclear hydrogen to capitalise on Ontario’s existing clean power grid and its baseload surplus. “The centre’s study is exploring the technical feasibility for hydrogen production and the business case for a local hydrogen market,” he said, adding that the results of the study will be published in the coming weeks.

Kees Jan Steenhoek, Director of Government Affairs at UK nuclear fuel company URENCO, presented the preliminary conclusions of a study commissioned by URENCO that examined the potential role of nuclear-produced hydrogen in helping to decarbonize the UK economy by 2050.

According to the results of the study, it is possible to create a low-carbon energy system coupling nuclear power with renewables and hydrogen. “If you increase the percentage of nuclear power in the mix, the overall system gets cheaper,” Steenhoek said. Advanced reactors capable of producing hydrogen with high-temperature heat can bring even greater efficiencies to the process and play a big role, added Felix Chow-Kambitsch of Aurora Energy Research, which carried out the study.

The conclusions of a separate study recently conducted by the IAEA, using the Agency’s FRAMES modelling system, were broadly consistent with Aurora’s results, said Francesco Ganda, an IAEA nuclear engineer. And in a scenario where future low-carbon hydrogen production is unable to rely on fossil facilities equipped with carbon capture and storage, advanced nuclear power reactors can play an even bigger role, he said.

IAEA activities on hydrogen

The IAEA provides support to countries interested in hydrogen production through initiatives including coordinated research projects (CRPs) and technical meetings. It has also developed the Hydrogen Economic Evaluation Programme (HEEP), a tool for assessing the economics of large-scale hydrogen production via nuclear energy. The Agency has also led a CRP, Examining the Technoeconomics of Nuclear Hydrogen Production and is running a follow-up CRP, Assessing Technical and Economic Aspects of Nuclear Hydrogen Production for Near-term Deployment.

Nuclear energy: Fusion plant backed by Jeff Bezos to be built in UK

By Matt McGrath
Environment correspondent
Published 17 June,2021

IMAGE SOURCE,GENERAL FUSION

An artist's impression of what the new demonstration plant might look like

A company backed by Amazon's Jeff Bezos is set to build a large-scale nuclear fusion demonstration plant in Oxfordshire.

Canada's General Fusion is one of the leading private firms aiming to turn the promise of fusion into a commercially viable energy source.

The new facility will be built at Culham, home to the UK's national fusion research programme.

It won't generate power, but will be 70% the size of a commercial reactor.

General Fusion will enter into a long-term commercial lease with the UK Atomic Energy Authority following the construction of the facility at the Culham campus.

While commercial details have not been disclosed, the development is said to cost around $400m.

It aims to be operational by 2025.

UK experiment could sweep aside fusion hurdle
Mind-boggling magnets could unlock plentiful power
'UK first' nuclear fusion plan for power station

Fusion is the process by which the Sun generates energy. Harnessing it here on Earth is seen as a critical step towards greener nuclear power.

It differs from the traditional nuclear approach by attempting to fuse atoms together rather than splitting them.

In theory, fusion promises a safer, carbon-free energy source that produces very little radioactive waste.

But getting atoms to fuse together at temperatures several times hotter than the surface of the Sun has proven a huge technological and financial challenge.

A major international effort to build a fusion reactor is underway in the south of France with the Iter project.

But this $20bn dollar venture has been hampered by delays and isn't likely to be working effectively until after 2035.

Frustrated by the slow progress, private companies across the world have been following their own approaches, and General Fusion's effort is seen as one of the most advanced.

Backed by Jeff Bezos for over a decade, the company raised $100m in its last round of funding and is preparing to go back to investors for more cash to show that the firm's technology can be successfully scaled up.

The company uses an approach called magnetised target fusion.

In this process, a super-heated gas called a plasma, consisting of a particular form of hydrogen, is injected into a cylinder which is surrounded by a wall of liquid metal.

Hundreds of pneumatic pistons are then used to compress the plasma until the atoms fuse, generating massive amounts of heat.

This heat is transferred by the liquid metal, and used to boil water and make steam to drive a turbine.


The giant assembly hall of the Iter project in the south of France

The company says that a key advantage of their approach is that much of the technology exists in industry already.

This is a very different approach to that being taken by other fusion programmes, at Culham for example.

The campus is owned and managed by the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) and is also the location of major fusion research efforts: the Joint European Torus (Jet) and Mast Upgrade.

"Coming to Culham gives us the opportunity to benefit from UKAEA's expertise," said Christofer Mowry, the chief executive of General Fusion.

"By locating at this campus, General Fusion expands our market presence beyond North America into Europe, broadening our global network of government, institutional, and industrial partners.

"This is incredibly exciting news for not only General Fusion, but also the global effort to develop practical fusion energy."

The decision to locate the demonstration plant in Oxfordshire was made possible by funding from the UK government, with the monetary amount described by Christofer Mowry in wire agency reports as "very meaningful".

While UK ministers were positive about the development, they wouldn't be drawn on the amount of taxpayer's money involved.

The government says the agreement with General Fusion will support hundreds of jobs both in Oxfordshire and beyond, during the 3-year construction phase, as well as many others during the operational phase.

They say it will complement the government's commitment of £222m for the UKAEA's Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (Step) programme, which aims to design and build the world's first prototype fusion power plant by 2040.

"This new plant by General Fusion is a huge boost for our plans to develop a fusion industry in the UK, and I'm thrilled that Culham will be home to such a cutting-edge and potentially transformative project," said UK Science Minister Amanda Solloway.

"Fusion energy has great potential as a source of limitless, low-carbon energy, and today's announcement is a clear vote of confidence in the region and the UK's status as a global science superpower."

The Theranos Trial Shows Why We Should Be Suspicious of Nuclear Fusion

BY CHARLES SEIFE

DEC 08, 2021

Former Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes.

 Amy Osborne/Getty Images


The Theranos story is an epic tale of folly with lots of twists and turns, but it’s by no means unique. At the very same moment the play-by-play of the Elizabeth Holmes trial sprawls across the drama section of your daily paper, the pages of the business section are filled with adulatory copy regarding other science-techy startups. Inevitably, some of them will end up with financial losses that are even bigger, thanks to technology that is even shakier, business models that are more delusional, and exaggerations that are nearly as bold as anything associated with Holmes’ fiction-enhanced blood-testing company. These “startups” all promise limitless clean energy: power from nuclear fusion and a rapid transformation of our energy supply away from fossil fuels.

At this point, nobody’s claiming that there’s fraud in the fusion sector, though the exaggerated claims coming from the companies and the media are rapidly becoming as detached from reality as a Tucker Carlson monologue. Read the papers and it seems like a fusion power plant is imminent—we’re just a few years away from our first fusion generator and then to widespread commercialization. After all, that’s what the fusion companies themselves are saying. Tokamak Energy: A working power plant connected to the grid by 2030. General Fusion: Demonstration power plant beginning operations in 2025. Helion Energy: We’ll do it in 2024. First Light Fusion: Yeah, 2024. Zap Energy: 2023—so there! But if we’ve learned anything from the Theranos debacle, it’s that we can’t take any company’s claim at face value when “fake it till you make it” is a standard corporate motto.

There’s one key distinction, though. The fusioneers don’t really even have to fake anything. Unlike Theranos, which built (terribly flawed) hardware that was used to analyze patient samples, not a single one of the nuclear fusion “startups” has produced a prototype machine that they propose to base their business upon. Nobody has demonstrated that they’re even close to building a fusion device that produces—rather than consumes—energy. Luckily for them, assurances of honorable intentions have been sufficient for investors. These companies are able to trade on promises, not products. Yet despite the short history of purely commercial fusion, those promises already have a history of being broken. In 2016, Tokamak Energy promised energy production in five years. General Fusion: prototype plant within a decade—and that was in 2009. Most recently, the press went gaga in November over Helion Energy’s raising $2.2 billion in venture capital to build a working reactor by 2024. Almost none of that coverage mentioned Helion Energy’s business plan of building “a useful reactor in the next three years” way back in 2015, when it had only raised some $10 million. It’s the exact same promise, resold six years later at 200 times the price.

That’s the one real, concrete success of the fusion startups that you can point to: not extracting energy from seawater, but extracting money from speculators. If you measure scientific progress by venture capital raised, then, yes, the industry has been making huge strides. In just the past few weeks, Helion’s $2.2 billion and Commonwealth Fusion Systems’ $1.8 billion each surpassed Theranos’ estimated $1.3 billion capitalization at its peak. (And Theranos had a deal with Walgreens to show investors.) Speculators can now lose far more money chasing after fusion than they ever could by falling in thrall to Elizabeth Holmes.

Of course, fundraising isn’t a valid measure of scientific progress; however, you wouldn’t be able to tell that by reading press coverage. We now realize that media credulity helped build Theranos’ fortunes. A good, hard look at Theranos’ claims should have brought the house of cards tumbling down far earlier. Oddly, none of that seems to motivate journalists to cast a skeptical eye at the viability of the fusioneers’ technology (which ranges from the moderately plausible to the ridiculous) or their business models for making money if they are eventually able to prove their technology works (which range from the nonexistent to the nearly nonexistent).

Imagine that, against the odds, one of these startups succeeds. It manages to achieve fusion “breakeven” and get more energy out of a reaction than it puts in. Say that the excess energy is so great that all the inefficiencies of getting the reaction going (which haven’t been overcome) or capturing the energy and turning it into electricity (which most companies haven’t started to address seriously) are not a problem. Imagine, too, that the startup somehow has a patent on a key MacGuffin in the reactor that other companies with expertise in high-tech and power plant manufacturing can’t match. Then, and only then, can the company be reasonably assured of making money from energy production—if its plants bring energy to the market at a competitive price.

This last bit is far from easy. Given the overhead of building a high-tech plant that produces low-level nuclear waste that needs to be disposed of (yes, fusion produces nuclear waste!), it’s a good guess that the cost per megawatt will be at least as great as the cost of traditional fission nuclear power plants—which is quite a bit more expensive than gas- or coal-fired plant power. This isn’t to say that it won’t contribute to the nation’s energy-generating portfolio, but it’s not likely to be a game-changer or the stuff of an energy unicorn.

Yet if you listen to the rhetoric coming out of some of those fusion startups, you’re led to believe that it will be much cheaper to build, maintain, run, and decommission super-high-tech fusion plants than an equivalent coal plant. That is, it’s easier to set up a nuclear magnetic bottle and mimic the inner workings of the sun than it is to throw a rock into a raging fire. That, my friends, is bat-guano insane. As the Theranos trial is making clear, it’s not so easy to tell the difference between puffery and outright fraud. In my opinion, anyone telling investors that they’re going to produce energy at a third of the price of coal should brush up on the George Costanza defense: “It’s not a lie if you believe it.”

One of the strangest distortions about the whole fusion-energy-sector brouhaha is the way funders and business journalists treat all these fusion companies as startups. Some of them, such as Commonwealth Fusion Systems (founded 2018), aren’t too far off the mark. But others like Tokamak Energy (2009), General Fusion (2002), and TAE—the company formerly known as Tri Alpha Energy (1998)—are startups in the same sense that Cher is fresh new talent. After five, or 10, or 20 years of riding on potential, it’s time to admit that the potential wasn’t really there in the first place—at the very least, not in the way that the “startup” envisioned.

So who cares if a company sponges off VC and pretends to be a pre-IPO ingenue until it’s old enough to be drafted? Not long ago, it wouldn’t matter at all to your average investor. Only venture capitalists, angel investors, and other folks with very big wallets and a high tolerance for risk would lose money by putting cash down on a decade-old pseudo-startup without even a fully developed product to put on the market. After all, they’re supposed to be sophisticated investors who know the risks that they’re taking, and if they didn’t do due diligence, well, that’s the downside of capitalism. But the rules have changed, and now we’re all targets.

For years, only “accredited” investors—people who have high incomes or net worth, and are presumed to have a decent understanding of securities trading—were allowed to invest in unregistered securities, such as stocks in a pre-IPO company. But that changed about a decade ago, when Congress decided to allow ordinary citizens to invest in these companies via crowdfunding. There were some protections built into the law: Companies could only raise a certain amount of money through crowdfunding, limiting the public’s exposure to risk. (Of course, those protections are steadily dissolving.) So it’s no surprise that the naïve investor has become a target for fusion boosters. Lawrenceville Plasma Physics (founded in 2003 by a big-bang denialist) has been living crowdfund-to-mouth since 2014 when it raised about $200,000 with the promise of a working fusion machine by the year 2020. Its latest “stock” sale, which happened a few months ago, raised more than $2.2 million, while suggesting to investors that it would have a functional prototype within three years.

Fusion companies are giving Theranos a run for its money, yet the news coverage of them seems to be almost universally uncritical. Huge sums of money have flowed into their coffers—making Theranos’ mere billion and change look like small potatoes—in return for vague, often obviously broken promises of prototypes that fail to appear despite decades of trying. Despite the total void where a product should be, these companies are successfully convincing investors both big and small to part with their money.

Caveat empty.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.

Toward fusion energy, team models plasma turbulence on the nation's fastest supercomputer

by Rachel McDowell, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

A visualization of deuterium-tritium density fluctuations in a tokamak driven by turbulence.

 Areas of red are representative of high density and areas of blue are representative of

 low density. Credit: Emily Belli, General Atomics

A team modeled plasma turbulence on the nation's fastest supercomputer to better understand plasma behavior

The same process that fuels stars could one day be used to generate massive amounts of power here on Earth. Nuclear fusion—in which atomic nuclei fuse to form heavier nuclei and release energy in the process—promises to be a long-term, sustainable, and safe form of energy. But scientists are still trying to fine-tune the process of creating net fusion power.

A team led by computational physicist Emily Belli of General Atomics has used the 200-petaflop Summit supercomputer at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF), a US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), to simulate energy loss in fusion plasmas. The team used Summit to model plasma turbulence, the unsteady movement of plasma, in a nuclear fusion device called a tokamak. The team's simulations will help inform the design of next-generation tokamaks like ITER with optimum confinement properties. ITER is the world's largest tokamak, which is being built in the south of France.

"Turbulence is the main mechanism by which particle losses happen in the plasma," Belli said. "If you want to generate a plasma with really good confinement properties and with good fusion power, you have to minimize the turbulence. Turbulence is what moves the particles and energy out of the hot core where the fusion happens."

The simulation results, which were published in Physics of Plasmas earlier this year, provided estimates for the particle and heat losses to be expected in future tokamaks and reactors. The results will help scientists and engineers understand how to achieve the best operating scenarios in real-life tokamaks.

A balancing act

In the fusion that occurs in stars like our sun, two hydrogen ions (i.e., positively charged proton particles) fuse to form helium ions. However, in experiments on Earth, scientists must use hydrogen isotopes to create fusion. Each hydrogen isotope has one positively charged proton particle, but different isotopes carry different numbers of neutrons. These neutral particles don't have a charge, but they do add mass to the atom.

Traditionally, physicists have used pure deuterium—a hydrogen isotope with one neutron—to generate fusion. Deuterium is readily available and easier to handle than tritium, a hydrogen isotope with two neutrons. However, physicists have known for decades that using a mixture of 50 percent deuterium and 50 percent tritium yields the highest fusion output at the lowest temperature.

"Even though they've known this mixture gives the greatest amount of fusion output, almost all experiments for the last few decades have only used pure deuterium," Belli said. "Experiments using this mixture have only been done a few times over the past few decades. The last time it was done was more than 20 years ago."

To ensure the plasma is confined in a reactor and that energy is not lost, both the deuterium and tritium in the mixture must have equal particle fluxes, an indicator of density. Scientists aim to maintain a 50-50 density throughout the tokamak core.

"You want the deuterium and the tritium to stay in the hot core to maximize the fusion power," Belli said.

Supercomputing powers fusion simulations

To study the phenomenon, the team competed for and won computing allocations on Summit through two allocation programs at the OLCF. These were the Advanced Scientific Computing Research Leadership Computing Challenge, or ALCC, and the Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment, or INCITE, programs.

The researchers modeled plasma turbulence on Summit using the CGYRO code codeveloped by Jeff Candy, director of theory and computational sciences at General Atomics and co-principal investigator on the project. CGYRO was developed in 2015 from the GYRO legacy computational plasma physics code. The developers designed CGYRO to be compatible with the OLCF's Summit system, which debuted in 2018.

"We realized in 2015 that we wanted to upgrade our models to handle these self-sustaining plasma regimes better and to handle the multiple scales that arise when you have different types of ions and electrons, like in these deuterium-tritium plasmas," Belli said. "It became clear that if we wanted to update our models and have them be highly optimized for next-generation architectures, then we should start from the ground up and completely rewrite the code. So that's what we did."

With Summit, the team could include both isotopes—deuterium and tritium—in their simulations.

"Up until now, almost all simulations have only included one of these isotopes—either deuterium or tritium," Belli said. "The power of Summit enabled us to include both as two separate species, model the full dimensions of the problem, and resolve it at different time and spatial scales."

Results for the real world

Experiments using deuterium-tritium fuel mixtures are now being carried out for the first time since 1997 at the Joint European Torus (JET), a fusion research facility at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in Oxfordshire, UK. The experiments at the JET facility will help scientists and engineers develop fuel control practices for maintaining a 50-50 ratio of deuterium to tritium. Belli said it will likely be the last time deuterium-tritium experiments are run until ITER, the world's largest tokamak, is built.

"The experimental team is getting results as we speak, and in the next few months, the data will be analyzed," Belli said.

The results will give scientists a better idea of the behavior of deuterium-tritium fuel for a practical fusion reactor.

"This fuel gives you the highest fusion output at the lowest temperature, so you don't have to heat it quite as hot to get an enormous amount of fusion power out of it," Belli said.

"Because it's been so long since these kinds of experiments have been done, our simulations are important to predict the behavior of this fuel mixture to plan for ITER. Summit is giving us the power to do just that."Isotope movement holds key to the power of fusion reactions

More information: E. A. Belli et al, Asymmetry between deuterium and tritium turbulent particle flows, Physics of Plasmas (2021). DOI: 10.1063/5.0048620

Journal information: Physics of Plasmas 

Provided by Oak Ridge National Laboratory 

Unraveling a puzzle to speed the development of fusion energy

by John Greenwald, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory

Yichen Fu, center, lead author of the path-setting paper with co-authors Laura Xing Zhang 

and Hong Qin. Credit: Photos of Fu and Qin by Elle Starkman/Office of Communications; 

collage by Kiran Sudarsanan.

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory have developed an effective computational method to simulate the crazy-quilt movement of free electrons during experimental efforts to harness on Earth the fusion power that drives the sun and stars. The method cracks a complex equation that can enable improved control of the random and fast-moving moving electrons in the fuel for fusion energy.

Fusion produces enormous energy by combining light elements in the form of plasma—the hot, charged gas composed of free electrons and atomic nuclei, or ions, that makes up 99 percent of the visible universe. Scientists around the world are seeking to reproduce the fusion process to provide a safe, clean and abundant power to generate electricity.

Solving the equation

A key hurdle for researchers developing fusion on doughnut-shaped devices called tokamaks, which confine the plasma in magnetic fields, has been solving the equation that describes the motion of free-wheeling electrons as they collide and bounce around. Standard methods for simulating this motion, technically called pitch-angle scattering, have proven unsuccessful due to the complexity of the equation.

A successful set of computational rules, or algorithm, would solve the equation while conserving the energy of the speeding particles. "Solving the stochastic differential equation gives the probability of every path the scattered electrons can take," said Yichen Fu, a graduate student in the Princeton Program in Plasma Physics at PPPL and lead author of a paper in the Journal of Computational Physics that proposes a solution. Such equations yield a pattern that can be analyzed statistically but not determined precisely.

The accurate solution describes the trajectories of the electrons being scattered. "However, the trajectories are probabilistic and we don't know exactly where the electrons would go because there are many possible paths," Fu said. "But by solving the trajectories we can know the probability of electrons choosing every path, and knowing that enables more accurate simulations that can lead to better control of the plasma."

A major benefit of this knowledge is improved guidance for fusion researchers who pump electric current into tokamak plasmas to create the magnetic field that confines the superhot gas. Another benefit is better understanding of the pitch-angle scattering on energetic runaway electrons that pose danger to the fusion devices.

Rigorous proof

The finding provides a rigorous mathematical proof of the first working algorithm for solving the complex equation. "This gives experimentalists a better theoretical description of what's going on to help them design their experiments," said Hong Qin, a principal research physicist, advisor to Fu and a coauthor of the paper. "Previously, there was no working algorithm for this equation, and physicists got around this difficulty by changing the equation."

The reported study represents the research activity in algorithms and applied math of the recently launched Computational Sciences Department (CSD) at PPPL and expands an earlier paper coauthored by Fu, Qin and graduate student Laura Xin Zhang, a coauthor of this paper. While that work created a novel energy-conserving algorithm for tracking fast particles, the method did not incorporate magnetic fields and the mathematical accuracy was not rigorously proven.

The CSD, founded this year as part of the Lab's expansion into a multi-purpose research center, supports the critical fusion energy sciences mission of PPPL and serves as the home for computationally intensive discoveries. "This technical advance displays the role of the CSD," Qin said. "One of its goals is to develop algorithms that lead to improved fusion simulations."Advancing fusion energy through improved understanding of fast plasma particles

Provided by Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory 

Nuclear, pumped storage, and coal power plants are more likely to have multiple owners

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Annual Electric Generator Inventory

---

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) collects data on whether an electric generator is owned by one company or jointly owned by several companies, and for those jointly owned, each owner’s share of ownership. In 2019, about 14% of the 1,099 gigawatts (GW) of total operational U.S. electricity generating capacity was jointly owned. Nuclear capacity had the highest percentage of joint ownership at 37%, followed by pumped-storage hydropower at 34% and coal at 29%. These types of power plants tend to be large-scale facilities that are expensive to build, and the technologies come with higher regulatory risks, making joint ownership more attractive by reducing plant ownership risks for each owner.

Joint ownership reduces risk by sharing construction and operation costs across multiple entities. A joint venture spreads the cost and risk across entities while allowing them to benefit from capacity portfolio diversity and the economies of scale that large generation assets provide. Complementary expertise from different entities can also potentially increase development and operational efficiency.

In 2019, 58 nuclear power plants with a total of 96 nuclear reactors were operating in the United States. The largest U.S. nuclear power plant, Palo Verde in Arizona, has seven joint owners. These owners include utilities from Arizona, California, Texas, and New Mexico. The ownership percentages in Palo Verde range from 29% to 6%.

The only nuclear reactors under construction in the United States are Units 3 and 4 at Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia. Once completed, Vogtle will be the largest nuclear power plant in the country. Vogtle is jointly owned by four entities: Georgia Power (46% ownership), Oglethorpe Power (30%), the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia (23%), and Dalton Utilities (2%).

Pumped-storage hydropower and conventional hydropower are technologies that are similar to one another, but they have very different ownership profiles. Only 2% of conventional hydropower capacity was jointly owned in 2019, compared with 34% for pumped storage. Almost 64% of U.S. conventional hydroelectric capacity is owned by a single federal, state, or municipal government. Another 19% is owned by a single electric utility.

Most conventional hydroelectric plants were built between 1950 and 1980, when hydropower project funding mainly came from the federal government. Conversely, most pumped storage became operational in the 1970s and 1980s when the industry and markets supported investors constructing large capital projects. The two largest pumped-storage plants, Bath County (3.0 GW) and Ludington (2.3 GW), which together represent 22% of total U.S. pumped-storage capacity, are jointly owned.

Principal contributor: Ray Chen

Nuclear energy to still be main source of electricity in Bulgaria in 2030 – GlobalData

Photo: Kozloduy NPP

Published
May 13, 2021
Country
Bulgaria
Author
Vladimir Spasić

Nuclear power will remain the dominant source of power generation in Bulgaria by 2030, despite the government’s plans to shift toward renewable power.

The Bulgarian government is collaborating with the United States and Russia in the development of new nuclear power plants. It is preparing the construction of a seventh unit at the Kozloduy nuclear power plant and the deployment of NuScale’s small modular reactor (SMR) technology.


Nuclear power generation share in total power generation was 44% in 2020, and it is expected to remain above 40% until 2030

“Nuclear power generation was 15.9 TWh in 2020, making its share 44% in total power generation in the country and this is expected to remain above 40% until 2030,” said Pavan Vyakaranam, Practice Head at GlobalData.

Electricity demand in Bulgaria stood at 30.9 TWh in 2020.

The share of renewables was 22.1% in 2018

According to the draft Sustainable Energy Development Strategy of Bulgaria until 2030 with a projection until 2050, electricity generation from renewable sources is seen growing to 30.33% from 22.1%, registered in 2018.



Nuclear power will remain the dominant source for power generation in the country at least until 2030, estimated at 14.1 TWh per year, despite the government’s plans to replace it with renewable power capacity, according to analytics company GlobalData.

Vyakaranam said Bulgaria’s electricity market is currently in transition, with the government slowly decreasing its coal power capacity in order to replace it with renewable power.
Country plans investments with Russia, and US

Bulgaria has only one nuclear power station, Kozloduy nuclear power plant (NPP), with two units in operation after the decommission of units 1 and 2 in 2002 and units 3 and 4 in 2006.

In January 2021, the Bulgarian government approved plans for the construction of a seventh unit, using Russian-supplied equipment purchased for the Belene project. However, according to GlobalData, the schedule is still uncertain due to financial issues.

Bulgaria has also taken multiple steps toward the development of nuclear power in recent times including joining the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) in January 2021 while Kozloduy NPP also signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with US-based NuScale Power for the deployment of its small modular reactor (SMR) technology.

GEORGIA, USA

Nuclear plant price doubles to $28.5B as other owners balk

By

 Associated Press -

11.5.2021

Rendering Vogtle Units 3 and 4, courtesy of Georgia Power

By JEFF AMY Associated Press

ATLANTA (AP) — The cost of two nuclear reactors being built in Georgia is now $28.5 billion, more than twice the original price tag, and the other owners of Plant Vogtle argue Georgia Power Co. has triggered an agreement requiring Georgia Power to shoulder a larger share of the financial burden.

Atlanta-based Southern Co. announced in its quarterly earnings statement Thursday that Georgia Power’s share of the third and fourth nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle has risen to a total of $12.7 billion, an increase of $264 million. Along with what cooperatives and municipal utilities project, the total cost of Vogtle has now more than doubled the original projection of $14 billion.

Opponents have long warned that overruns would be sky-high. Liz Coyle, executive director of consumer advocacy group Georgia Watch, said the price tag is “outrageous” but predictable.

“We said you can’t build it for what you’re saying you can,” she said of Georgia Watch’s opposition to the project when the Georgia Public Service Commission originally authorized the new reactors.

Total costs are actually higher than $28.5 billion, because that doesn’t count the $3.68 billion that contractor Westinghouse paid back to owners after going bankrupt. When approved in 2012, the first electricity was supposed to be generated in 2016.

The company and regulators insist the first new U.S. reactors in decades are the best source of clean and reliable energy for Georgia. Opponents say other options would be cheaper and better, including natural gas or solar generation.

Southern Co. also disclosed Thursday that the other owners of Vogtle are saying Georgia Power has tripped an agreement to pay a larger share of the ongoing overruns, a cost the company estimates at up to $350 million. Southern Co. said it disagrees that Georgia Power has crossed the cost threshold but has signed an agreement to extend talks with the other owners on the issue.

Georgia Power owns 45.7% of the new reactors, while cooperative-owned Oglethorpe Power Corp. owns 30%. The Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia owns 22.7% and the city of Dalton’s municipal utility owns 1.6%. Florida’s Jacksonville Electric Authority is obligated to cover some of MEAG’s costs. Some cooperatives and municipal utilities in Alabama and northwest Florida have agreed to buy power as well.

The higher costs stem from more construction delays. Georgia Power announced last month that it doesn’t expect Unit 3 to start generating electricity until the third quarter of 2022. It was the third delay announced since May. Unit 4 is now projected to enter service sometime between April and June of 2023.

The company says it is redoing substandard construction work and contractors aren’t meeting deadlines. Experts hired by the Georgia Public Service Commission to monitor construction have long said Southern Co. has set an unrealistic schedule. In August, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission found two sets of electrical cables meant to provide redundancy in Unit 3 weren’t properly separated. Earlier, Georgia Power had to repair a leak in Unit 3′s spent fuel pool.

Georgia Power shareholders have been paying the cost of recent overruns, but the company could ask regulators to require customers to pay some or all of those bills.

Other owners almost walked away in 2018, only agreeing to keep going after Georgia Power agreed to protect them from some additional overruns.

The Thursday stock filing indicates the other owners now believe the cost threshold has been reached requiring Georgia Power to pay a larger share of the project.

Southern Co. told investors that Georgia Power disagrees that it has reached the threshold, but said the owners had signed an agreement Oct. 29 to “clarify” how the 2018 deal will work.

Beyond a certain point, Georgia Power is required to pay an additional $80 million of the next $800 million. After that tier, Georgia Power is required to pay an additional $100 million of the next $500 million. Above that price, other owners can sell parts of their ownership shares back to Georgia Power.

The $350 million price tag suggests the other owners argue overruns have reached the third tier.

It wasn’t immediately clear Thursday exactly what is being negotiated or when an agreement might be reached. Georgia Power spokesperson Jeffrey Wilson acknowledged the disagreement, saying “all parties are working constructively” to resolve differences. He answered no questions. Oglethorpe spokesperson Terri Statham declined comment, saying Oglethorpe would provide an update in a Nov. 12 investor filing. MEAG didn’t respond to emails and calls seeking comment.

The Georgia Public Service Commission on Tuesday approved a $224 million rate increase to pay for $2.1 billion in construction costs on Unit 3. That’s a 3% rate increase for residential customers, or $3.78 a month on a bill of $122.73. It will take effect after Unit 3 enters commercial operation.

Georgia Power’s 2.6 million customers have already paid more than $3.5 billion in Vogtle borrowing costs. Customers of Oglethorpe-served cooperatives have already paid almost $400 million, according to financial statements.

Vogtle nuclear expansion facing yet another delay, Georgia Power reports

By

 Rod Walton -

10.25.2021

Georgia Power has pushed back the in-service dates for its troubled Vogtle Units 3 and 4 expansion project—the first new nuclear power plant construction to be completed in years—by maybe another quarter or more.

The utility originally had hoped to make Unit 3 commercial operational by this year, but numerous cost overruns and construction problems have caused more delays. Now, Southern Co.-owned Georgia Power says Unit 3 may not start operations until July and maybe as late as September 2022, while Unit 4 will not come online until the second quarter of 2023.

“The primary drivers of the change in schedule for Unit 3 include continued identification of additional remediation work, construction productivity related to completion of remaining electrical installations and remediation work, and the subsequent resulting pace of system turnovers,” reads the company press release. “The primary drivers of the change in schedule for Unit 4 include productivity challenges and some craft and support resources being diverted temporarily to support construction efforts on Unit 3.

“The achievability of these projected in-service dates is subject to current and future challenges, including construction productivity, the volume of construction remediation work, the pace of system and area turnovers, and the progression of startup and other testing. Any further delays could result in later in-service dates.”

This summer, Georgia Power reported that both the projected starting dates would be pushed back and costs would rise by billions. Recent estimates put the overall tab of the project at close to $28 billion.

Work on Vogtle units 3 and 4 began in 2015. Two years later, the original contractor Westinghouse filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, so Bechtel was brought in to lead construction efforts to the finish line. Southern Nuclear took oversight duties from Westinghouse.

Both Vogtle units will have Westinghouse AP1000 reactors at the center. Each of the units are designed to generate about 1,000 MW at capacity and together will power close to 500,000 customers.

Unit 3 direct construction is now 99 percent complete, with the entire project at about 93 percent complete. The construction site now has close to 7,000 workers, with about 800 permanent jobs planned once the units begin operating.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission revealed it was launching a special inspection into remediation work on Unit 3 related to the electrical cable raceway system.

If and when they go into service, Vogtle units 3 and 4 would be the first new U.S. nuclear generation reactors since Watts Bar 2 entered operation six years ago.

Georgia Power’s lead partners on the project include the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia (MEAG), Dalton Power and Oglethorpe Power. Southern Co. is the parent of Georgia Power.

Keeping Diablo Canyon open can help California achieve its climate goals, researchers say
By John Engel -12.2.2021


Extending the life of Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant could help California achieve its ambitious climate goals, while saving customers billions of dollars and reducing reliance on natural gas, according to a new study.

Researchers at Stanford University's Precourt Institute for Energy and the Massachusetts Institute for Technology Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems found that extending Diablo Canyon's life by 10 years would reduce carbon emissions from California's power sector by more than 10 percent annually from 2017 levels and save ratepayers a total of $2.6 billion. By keeping the plant open until 2045, ratepayers would save $21 billion, they determined.

“The worsening climate crisis requires urgent action to accelerate emission reductions,” said lead author Jacopo Buongiorno, director of the MIT Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems. “An inclusive strategy that utilizes Diablo Canyon, in addition to an aggressive build-out of renewables and other sources of clean generation, would significantly reduce California’s power sector emissions over the course of the next two decades.”

In 2018, the California Public Utilities Commission approved a settlement to shut down Diablo Canyon, which currently provides 8 percent of California's electricity production and 15 percent of its carbon-free electricity.

U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, a proponent of nuclear energy, told Reuters that she would be open to talking with state officials about extending the life of Diablo Canyon because of "… a change underfoot about the opinion that people may have about nuclear."

After 60 Years, Nuclear Power for Spaceflight is Still Tried and True

Six decades after the launch of the first nuclear-powered space mission, Transit IV-A, NASA is embarking on a bold future of human exploration and scientific discovery. This future builds on a proud history of safely launching and operating nuclear-powered missions in space.

“Nuclear power has opened the solar system to exploration, allowing us to observe and understand dark, distant planetary bodies that would otherwise be unreachable. And we’re just getting started,” said Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. “Future nuclear power and propulsion systems will help revolutionize our understanding of the solar system and beyond and play a crucial role in enabling long-term human missions to the Moon and Mars.”

June 29 marks the 60th anniversary of Transit IV-A, the first nuclear powered space mission.

Credits: NASA/Gayle Dibiasio

From Humble Beginnings: Nuclear Power Spawns an Age of Scientific Discovery

On June 29, 1961, the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory launched the Transit IV-A Spacecraft. It was a U.S. Navy navigational satellite with a SNAP-3B radioisotope powered generator producing 2.7 watts of electrical power -- about enough to light an LED bulb. Transit IV-A broke an APL mission-duration record and confirmed the Earth’s equator is elliptical. It also set the stage for ground-breaking missions that have extended humanity’s reach across the solar system.

Since 1961, NASA has flown more than 25 missions carrying a nuclear power system through a successful partnership with the Department of Energy (DOE), which provides the power systems and plutonium-238 fuel.

“The department and our national laboratory partners are honored to play a role in powering NASA’s space exploration activities,” said Tracey Bishop, deputy assistant secretary in DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy. “Radioisotope Power Systems are a natural extension of our core mission to create technological solutions that meet the complex energy needs of space research, exploration, and innovation.”

There are only two practical ways to provide long-term electrical power in space: the light of the Sun or heat from a nuclear source.

“As missions move farther away from the Sun to dark, dusty, and harsh environments, like Jupiter, Pluto, and Titan, they become impossible or extremely limited without nuclear power,” said Leonard Dudzinski, chief technologist for NASA’s Planetary Science Division and program executive for Radioisotope Power. 

That’s where Radioisotope Power Systems, or RPS, come in. They are a category of power systems that convert heat generated by the decay of plutonium-238 fuel into electricity.

“These systems are reliable and efficient,” said June Zakrajsek, manager for NASA’s Radioisotope Power Systems Program office at Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. “They operate continuously over long-duration space missions regardless of sunlight, temperature, charged particle radiation, or surface conditions like thick clouds or dust. They’ve allowed us to explore from the Sun to Pluto and beyond.”

RPS powered the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package. They’ve sustained Voyager 1 and 2 since 1977, and they kept Cassini-Huygens’ instruments warm as it explored frigid Saturn and its moon Titan.

Today, a Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (MMRTG) powers the Perseverance rover, which is captivating the nation as it searches for signs of ancient life on Mars, and a single RTG is sustaining New Horizons as it ventures on its way out of the solar system 15 years after its launch.

“The RTG was and still is crucial to New Horizons,” said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute. “We couldn’t do the mission without it. No other technology exists to power a mission this far away from the Sun, even today.”

Great Things to Come: Science and Human Exploration

Dragonfly, which is set to launch in 2027, is the next mission with plans to use an MMRTG. Part of NASA’s New Frontiers program, Dragonfly is an octocopter designed to explore and collect samples on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, an ocean world with a dense, hazy atmosphere.

“RPS is really an enabling technology,” said APL’s Zibi Turtle, principal investigator for the upcoming Dragonfly mission. “Early missions like Voyager, Galileo, and Cassini that relied on RPS have completely changed our understanding and given us a geography of the distant solar system…Cassini gave us our first close-up look at the surface of Titan.”

According to Turtle, the MMRTG serves two purposes on Dragonfly: power output to charge the lander’s battery and waste heat to keep its instruments and electronics warm.

“Flight is a very high-power activity. We’ll use a battery for flight and science activities and recharge the battery using the MMRTG,” said Turtle. “The waste heat from the power system is a key aspect of our thermal design. The surface of Titan is very cold, but we can keep the interior of the lander warm and cozy using the heat from the MMRTG.”

As the scientific community continues to benefit from RPS, NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate is investing in new technology using reactors and low-enriched uranium fuel to enable a robust human presence on the Moon and eventually human missions to Mars.

Astronauts will need plentiful and continuous power to survive the long lunar nights and explore the dark craters on the Moon’s South Pole. A fission surface power system could provide enough juice to power robust operations. NASA is leading an effort, working with the DOE and industry, to design a fission power system for a future lunar demonstration that will pave the way for base camps on the Moon and Mars.

NASA has also thought about viable ways to reduce the time it takes to travel to Mars, including nuclear propulsion systems.

As NASA advances its bold vision of exploration and scientific discovery in space, it benefits from 60 years of the safe use of nuclear power during spaceflight. Sixty years of enlightenment that all started with a little satellite called Transit IV-A.

-end-

Jan Wittry
NASA's Glenn Research Center

Last Updated: Jun 29, 2021

Editor: Bill Keeter