SAFETY DRILLS IN PROGRESS.

Byline: Greg Bolt The Register-Guard

CORVALLIS - It's a lead pipe cinch that the first new nuclear power plant in a generation won't be built in Oregon. Its design, though, may owe a lot to work being done here.

In a nondescript lab building on the Oregon State University campus sits a confusion of pipes and tanks packed into a large room behind an imposing control panel.

It is a one-quarter-scale working model of a new generation of nuclear power plants, based on what's called a "passively safe" design.

It does not have a reactor core and does not generate electricity; instead, water is heated electrically to the same temperature it would reach in a nuclear core.

From there, the model acts just like a full-sized version, moving the water along the same pathways and allowing every pump, valve and pipe joint to be subjected to a long script of simulated disasters.

Oregon State has developed something of a specialty testing the safety of new reactor designs.

With a second scale model built and plans for a third, OSU has staked out a national reputation as a leader in the field.

"Our specialty is safety. We've kind of become the Consumer Products Safety Commission for the nuclear industry," said Jose Reyes Jr., head of the department of nuclear engineering at OSU. "That puts us in a very unique position relative to other universities."

Thanks to the testing done at OSU, a plant design known as the Westinghouse AP-1000 and the smaller AP-600 have both received design certification from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. That will streamline the siting and licensing process for any utility that decides to build one, something that could happen sooner than many think.

"It's not a question so much will they be built, but when," Reyes said.

Indeed, applications already have been submitted that could result in more than a dozen new nuclear plants, most of which could use the AP-1000 design.

Thanks to changes in the siting and licensing process meant to encourage new investment in nuclear energy, the coming decade could see hundreds of megawatts of electricity pouring into the grid from new nuclear plants to be built in the South and Midwest.

"The upshot is that right now five utilities look to build 15 to 19 new (nuclear) facilities in the U.S. in the next five to 10 years," Reyes said.

Environmental plus

Nuclear energy has a couple of things going for it now that weren't much of an issue when the current generation of plants was built in the 1970s and '80s.

For one thing, nuclear doesn't produce greenhouse gases, something that has caused even some environmental groups to speak cautiously about a nuclear future.

And even though the Arab oil embargo still was on people's minds in that earlier era, the need for energy independence - not to mention relief from the skyrocketing cost of oil and natural gas - has given new urgency to the need for a clean and reliable domestic energy source.

But it's unlikely that those factors alone would have re-opened the door for nuclear power.

The new designs, which engineers tout as being "walk-away safe," have helped chip away at the lingering fears left by the accidents at Three Mile Island, Penn., and Chernobyl in the former Soviet republic of Ukraine.

"Walk-away safe" means that even in an accident, a plant operator could walk off and the reactor would cool itself without human intervention.

That's the idea behind passively safe design, which uses the natural forces of gravity and/or convection to ensure an adequate flow of water to cool the core should it overheat.

And the new designs are much simpler.

Even with the baffling maze of pipes in OSU's scale model, the system uses 80 percent less piping, 50 percent fewer valves and 35 percent fewer pumps than existing nuclear plants.

"It's a major simplification of the design, which makes it less expensive, more reliable and safer than previous designs," Reyes said. "It's a much better way to do it."

`Bad things can still happen'

Still, it's not as though nuclear energy is being welcomed back with open arms.

Many environmental organizations remain adamantly opposed to atomic energy, and even those who see it as a potential source of abundant electricity without the global warming pollution of coal and natural gas aren't sold on it yet.

Long-lived radioactive waste remains a problem, and the future of the long-delayed national waste repository at Yucca Mountain remains in doubt. Possible terrorist attacks have added a new threat.

Even so, those aren't the main worries for some scientists.

David Lochbaum, a former nuclear plant engineer who now directs the Nuclear Safety Project for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the biggest problems come from just the day-to-day operation of a nuclear power plant.

"The AP-600 and AP-1000 are safer than today's reactors, but they're not inherently safe," he said. "Even forgetting the security and waste issues, very bad things can still happen."

That's because once a plant is built, it's up to the operator to ensure that the people who run it day in and day out have the skills and training to do it properly, and the owner has the commitment to maintain it properly.

He likened it to comparing a Yugo to a Volvo:

"It's not really the car that determines the safety; it's the driver," he said. "If you put a bad driver in the best car in the world, I don't necessarily want to be on the sidewalk when it goes by."

Still, he acknowledged that the new designs are an improvement and said there's little doubt a safe reactor can be built.

Lochbaum said he remains skeptical but not adamantly opposed to the new designs.

"If somebody were to start building an AP-1000 tomorrow, we're not going to chain ourselves to the fence," he said.

Pursuit of simplicity

Reyes said passively safe design eliminates most of the chances for operator error. And he said new advances in fuel rod reprocessing could drastically reduce radioactive waste without creating pure plutonium as a byproduct.

Such advances would eliminate the primary fear of reprocessing - that it would create large stockpiles of weapons-grade plutonium that would be challenging to guard and eventually could find its way into nuclear weapons.

And OSU is working on a new type of reactor that could be even safer and simpler. Working with the Idaho National Laboratory and Nextant-Bechtel Corp., OSU has built a one-third-scale model of a modular reactor called the Multi-Application Small Light Water Reactor.

The reactor would be in a self-contained, sealed module about 60 feet long and 6 feet wide, capable of being built at a secure facility and then sent by rail to its destination.

It would never be opened or refueled on site and could operate continuously for five years with each unit producing about 50 megawatts.

The modules would be installed at a power plant in water-filled, below-ground silos that would provide built-in safety against accidents. When the reactor fuel is exhausted, they could be shipped back to the manufacturer for refueling or retirement.

"It's going to be hard to beat this design," Reyes said. "It's absolutely awesome."

All of this work at OSU has left the school in a position to be a major player in the next wave of nuclear development. Reyes said enrollment in the nuclear engineering program has doubled in the past four years to 150 students, and he expects it to reach 200 in another year or two.

The United States has 104 operating nuclear plants, where the average age of engineers is 52. Not only will those engineers be retiring soon, Reyes said, but the NRC also is looking to hire 300 additional people in the next 18 months to handle all of the application reviews on its docket.

"Every one of our graduating seniors and graduate students this year will get multiple job offers," he said. "There's a big demand right now."

CAPTION(S):

Jose Reyes Jr., head of the department of nuclear engineering at OSU, stands amid parts of a reactor model testing "passively safe" design.