Abstract
Since 1949, the Energy Department, other federal agencies, and the navy have built and tested 52 nuclear research reactors in the high desert plains of southeastern Idaho; a few still operate today. Number 53 might be built at the new Idaho National Laboratory (INL), if the Energy Department has its way.
INL, formed on February 1, is a consolidation of the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) and Argonne National Laboratory-West. “Our goal, within this decade, is to have this lab emerge as one of the premier applied research and nuclear engineering institutions in the world,” then-Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said in April 2003.
The renewed emphasis on nuclear energy research is one aspect of Energy's expanding Idaho operations. The laboratory will also continue playing a greater role in homeland security-related research, and may eventually house all of Energy's work on plutonium-decay power generators for spacecraft, including a new plutonium 238 processing facility. But INL faces doubts about its new missions, as well as questions and criticisms from Idahoans.
Investing in nuclear energy
In 2002, the United States and 10 other members of the Generation IV International Forum committed to exploring designs for new nuclear reactors that would be more proliferation resistant and economical, and that would minimize nuclear waste. As part of the U.S. commitment, Energy is working on the design of a very-high temperature, gas-cooled reactor that would have the potential to co-generate hydrogen along with electricity. This is the pilot plant that Energy hopes to build in Idaho–or elsewhere–before 2020.
Argonne National Laboratory–West (above), plus INEEL, now equals the Idaho National Laboratory.
Many sites will be considered, but INL is considered a front-runner; the lab consolidation brought under one management contract two major aspects of Energy's nuclear energy research: the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative and the operations of the Advanced Test Reactor. According to Tim Jackson, an Energy spokesman, this “leverages” the state's investment in Generation IV research.
After clamoring for the INL consolidation, Congress authorized $25 million for the hydrogen co-generation project this year; the federal contribution could grow to as much as $1.1 billion. Energy's plans to share development costs have caught the nuclear industry's attention. In July 2004, 13 companies responded to Energy's request for comments on the reactor project–a sign of support, according to Energy officials.
Energy has big dreams for the marriage of nuclear power and hydrogen production. It wants to develop advanced reactor technology parallel with hydrogen-generation systems, and then eventually integrate the two, creating a reactor that produces both hydrogen and electricity. “We have very high expectations for this technology,” Bill Magwood, director of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy, Science, and Technology, told a House subcommittee last June. Magwood said Energy envisions industry using government-supported research to build commercial plants capable of generating electricity for less than 1.5 cents per kilowatt hour and costing less than $1,000 per kilowatt to construct.
Perhaps the expectations are too high. Dreams of electricity “too cheap to meter” drove the development of the nuclear energy industry, starting in the late 1940s. Not only did the industry never fulfill its promise, but nuclear energy turned out to be so expensive that even with huge subsidies, the cost today of building a new U.S. commercial reactor is prohibitive.
Reactor designs can appear economical at first, but as they make the way from concept to reality, necessary safety fixes and other requirements always drive up costs, according to David Lochbaum, nuclear safety engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists. “The [designs] Bill Magwood and others are talking about haven't yet gone through that pipeline, so they tend to be as optimistic as possible,” Lochbaum says. “The important part is what the price will be at the end of that pipeline.”
Lochbaum doubts that the plan to split a reactor's output between electricity and hydrogen will prove cost-effective, but says he thinks the research is a good idea.
A recent University of Chicago study that analyzed two existing reactor designs concluded that, “First-of-a-kind engineering costs for new nuclear designs could increase capital costs by 35 percent, adversely affecting nuclear energy's competitiveness.” New plants could be more competitive if, for example, there were government loan guarantees, the study said. Donald W. Jones, who codirected the study, says the economic competitiveness of Generation IV reactors would become clear only after engineers and scientists refine the designs.
The hydrogen factor
In his 2003 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush announced plans to expand hydrogen research. One part of his plan, the Nuclear Hydrogen Initiative, ties hydrogen production to the development of the next generation of nuclear reactors, and Energy has increased funding for this avenue of research ever since. At the Idaho labs alone, funding for the initiative grew from $50,000 in 2003 to nearly $1.2 million in 2004. Energy plans to spend $2 million on INL's part in 2005. Michael Anderson, hydrogen projects manager at Energy's Idaho Operations Office, says that the funding has enabled the project to add staff and expertise to begin developing a commercial-scale hydrogen production system.
The project has made some progress. In November 2004, a team of INEEL and private researchers demonstrated an experimental hydrogen production unit. The device exhibited the “highest-known production rate of hydrogen by high-temperature electrolysis,” according to the researchers. Unfortunately, its rate of 50 liters of hydrogen per hour is far behind Energy's goal of producing 2.5 kiloliters of hydrogen per second. The researchers' next step is to scale up their current designs, with the goal of eventually linking their hydrogen production unit to the Generation IV test reactor that Energy hopes to build.
Researchers face challenges related to scaling up the technology–manufacturing larger electrolysis cells, capturing the hydrogen, and other materials issues. And if researchers do find a way to produce hydrogen cheaply, there is the considerable problem of building a national infrastructure to transport it.
If the Generation IV pilot reactor is delayed or never built, it might hinder hydrogen research, but it wouldn't necessarily affect Energy's goal of developing a hydrogen economy. Energy is also looking beyond nuclear power and into other hydrogen production methods, including using fossil fuels or renewable resources, according to Jackson, the Energy spokesman.
The cleanup catch
As Energy moves forward with some of its larger plans for INL, it faces the challenge of building goodwill with the local community. That might be tough. The preliminary results of a 2003 survey conducted by University of Idaho researchers indicate that 74 percent of those surveyed in southeastern Idaho believe cleanup of radioactive waste at INEEL “requires immediate response”; 28 percent strongly agree that operations at INEEL pose health and safety concerns to groundwater; and nearly half of those surveyed believed, to some degree, that INEEL would surprise the public with information about environmental contamination in the future. Further analysis of the survey's raw data will clarify the public's concerns, according to J. D. Wulf-horst, one of the researchers.
Energy's poor track record with waste cleanup at Idaho sites has left the public dissatisfied and distrustful, according to Jeremy Maxand, executive director of the Snake River Alliance, an Idaho environmental watchdog group. “I think that there is going to be skepticism and a certain amount of resistance to future projects until Energy has demonstrated, through action, that they are willing to meet their [cleanup] commitments,” he says.
The contractor overseeing INL, Battelle Energy Alliance, will not clean up hazardous waste at the lab; for that, Energy will hire a separate contractor before May 1. At a December 2004 public meeting on the proposal to site the plutonium “space battery” program at INL, which could include a new $230 million plutonium 238 facility, Energy heard from citizens who wanted to know not only what would happen to the plutonium processing waste, but also why Energy wanted to build a new facility at INL, when one is already up and running at Los Alamos. The Snake River Alliance opposes plans to consolidate the plutonium battery program at INL.
Energy has clashed before with environmental groups over cleanup at its Idaho facilities. In 2003, a federal judge ruled that Energy could not re-classify and leave in place high-level radioactive wastes stored at INEEL. The Snake River Alliance, other environmental groups, and governments of affected states were plaintiffs in the suit. In response, last year Congress gave Energy the authority to reclassify some wastes so that they wouldn't have to be removed.
A 1995 agreement requires Energy to remediate the lab to certain standards, but Maxand believes that Energy is trying to wiggle out of its obligations. “There is still a lot of opposition by Energy to do as little cleanup as possible,” he says.