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Chapter 6.
 The other 8% of ALL Global Warming:  ALMOST SACRED GROUND
Recycling our smaller (75 to 300 MWe) old coal power plant sites into new modular nuclear.
 

Part  1   The Concept: Converting a typical conventional sized coal power plant to modular nuclear units.
 Part  2   Advantages of converting an existing coal power plant to nuclear.
 Part  3   Disadvantages of locating a nuclear reactor in an existing coal power plant.
 Part  4   Oversized nuclear boilers powering several small existing turbines make conversion from fossil to nuclear financially attractive.
Part  5   Small high-temperature liquid reactors.
 


OUR PRICELESS AND IRREPLACEABLE OLD COAL BURNING POWER PLANT SITES.
AS NIMBY - FREE AS A POWER PLANT CAN BE.
Over the next 20 years, the EIA says the world needs 4,900 gigaWatts of new electricity-generation capacity.  (That's 2,700 1.8 gigaWatt huge nuclear plants. - JH)

The Global Warming emergency has caused a lot of politicians who do not have backgrounds in, nor in-depth understanding of, electricity generation and distribution to become decision makers about electricity's future.  They are advocating elimination of many existing smaller coal power plants and their sites.  They do not appear to understand that the most effective weapons in the fight against Global Warming are the physical locations upon which thousands of old coal burning power plants are built.  These old power plant sites - some nearly 100 years old - are the most fertile ground in America for electricity's future growth.

Power plants are located where transportation, electrical grid, and cooling water access intersect and, in the modern "Not In My Backyard" world of endless costly court battles, new power plant sites and their operating permits are virtually impossible to obtain.  Why?  Any or all of those critical accesses could depend upon hundreds or even thousands of property owners along proposed right-of-ways - any one of which could bring a project to establish an new power plant site to a screeching halt for decades. 

This means these old existing sites are, and will always continue to be, nearly irreplaceable essential components in our energy supply chain.  Repowered with new, small, far more powerful nuclear reactors, these old coal power plant sites will continue to provide the energy necessary to power our children's future long after the current renewable energy bubble has burst.

We simply can't allow these power plant sites to be shut down, broken up like Humpty-Dumpty, and sold off for non-power plant use.  Repowering or replacing an old coal burner means much more than today's victory over Global Warming.  It means we have renewed and reaffirmed our electricity production system for at least several yet-unborn generations.   Repowering's Advantages      The Clunkers of the Power Plant World.pdf   Coal Power Plant Fundamentals.pdf    Fossil fuel power plant 

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Part  1:       The Concept: Converting a typical conventional sized coal power plant to modular nuclear units.

Recycling our smaller (75 to 300 MWe) old coal power plant sites into new modular nuclear.


 

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Part  2:       Advantages of converting an existing coal power plant to nuclear.

The advantages of converting an existing coal power plant to nuclear.

ADVANTAGES OVER BUILDING A NEW POWER PLANT ON A NEW SITE:  COST and TIME
 

Boiler Replacement Advantages

Boiler Swapping Offers Many Economic and Speed Advantages.  A little boiler changing can go a long way.  Consider France's experience with changing from coal to nuclear.  Now using nuclear fuel to produce 78% of their electricity, France now makes 1/3 the CO2 the United States makes on a per person basis.  France closed their last coal mine in April, 2004.  Japan now makes over 50% of their electricity from nuclear fuels.

Swapping just the power plant's boiler preserves the power plant, its worker's jobs, its operating permits, the plant's access to cooling water, electrical grids and heavy transportation.  What's not to like from a deal like this? 

Boiler Swapping Examples: Two quick and simple examples of how both coal and natural gas boilers could be replaced by nuclear boilers are offered: Taichung, perhaps the world's largest coal-burning power plant, and the U.S. Capitol Building Complex, which is heated and cooled by industrial-sized natural gas boilers.

The Advantages of Swapping Out Supersized Boilers: Supersized Power Plants are job one:  2% of the world's 60,000 fossil fuel power plants, 1,200 supersized power plants are making over 3/4 of coal's Global Warming.  The world will never be willing or able to provide much money for Global Warming mitigation and we can make it go furthest if we mass-produce a low-cost nuclear boiler to replace coal burning boilers.  This will enable us to re-use everything else at the power plant - including an already experienced workforce - a strategy much wiser than building the equivalent amount of generating capacity in new windmills. 

As of July, 2008, carbon uncertainties have driven new coal-burning power plant costs to $3.50 per watt to construct (Synapse Energy Economics, Inc.).  Florida's new Crystal River nuclear plant has been stated (July, 2008) as $17 billion dollars for 3 gigaWatts, or $5.60 per watt.  The author speculates it is unlikely that the construction cost for a new Hybrid nuclear plant would exceed $3.00 per watt for the 10th Hybrid plant built.  The 10th conversion of an existing coal-burning power plant to Mininuke should cost less than $1 per watt.  Do the homework. 

 


If you owned a supersized coal burning power plant here is the biggest reason why you would want to convert to nuclear:

Permits.   Permits.     PERMITS.     PERMITS.    PERMITS!

Would you rather have an existing site that is already permitted or do you want a new site so badly you are willing to fight in court forever against anti-nuclear environmentalists in the pay of your competition?

An existing old coal burning power plant has enormous local support for the idea that adding a small modular nuke electricity generation unit is far better than shutting the plant down. 

Always get the identities and photographs of protesters and make sure everyone at every discussion meeting knows where THEY live.  Always photograph any protest demonstrations with a wide-angle lens - leaving plenty of space on either side - so everyone can see how few protesters there really are.

1. Already paid for - NO NEW COSTS FOR MOST OF THE EQUIPMENT

2. Already wired to our cities - NO NEW TRANSMISSION LINE RIGHT-OF-WAYS NEEDED

3. Already have cooling water - NO NEW RIPARIAN OR PRIOR APPROPRIATION RIGHTS NEEDED

4. Already have access roads - NO NEW ROAD RIGHT-OF-WAYS NEEDED

5. Already have railroad tracks - NO NEW RAILROAD RIGHT-OF-WAYS NEEDED

6. Usually have ample land for several additional future units - NO NEW LAND NEEDED, COAL YARD LAND WILL BECOME LAWN SOON

7. No construction delays - THEY ARE ALREADY RUNNING, CAN CONTINUE TO RUN DURING UPGRADE EQUIPMENT INSTALLATION

8. Already have proven operators who know the equipment - FEWER OPERATORS LOOSE JOBS, EXISTING OPERATORS WOULD BE BETTER PAID

9. Cleaner working environment - NUCLEAR PLANTS ARE CLEAN

[A helpful power plant operator reader suggested I add the following. (Thank you)]

A few advantages you may want to list in terms of BOP. Feel free to use them or not...

1. Construction is made *cheaper* because all necessary roads, water transport and rail lines are already in place. A huge savings relative to a green field plant and even a currently operating nuclear plant.

2. Licensing:
a. Water usage for everything from cooling to potable water. In place.
b. Sewage and waste water discharge. In place.
c. Air pollution (not that it's needed) in place, frees up carbon licenses if this occurs.
d. Hazardous waste storage/processing (all industrial facilities have to pay for this, regardless). In place.
e. Lube oil and chemical usage/storage licenses. In place.

3. Control Room(s). Only a retrofit of the existing coal plant (to bring it up to N-stamp standards) controls have to occur.

4. Grid access. The grid and switchyard is *in place* and ready to swap over. If MW out put is close to the same, it's even possible the same main bank transmission can be used, a huge savings, along with, BTW, all the associated remote monitoring (relays for undervoltage, overvoltage, shorts, grounds, etc etc), already in place. No major transmission upgrades needed if MWs are to stay the same and even then, only minor ones at worse.

5. Human Resources. The coal plant will have trained operators and maintenance personnel many/some/a lot of whom will be able to migrate over (literally by walking) to the new plant after NRC qualifications.

6. Overall reduced footprint. Wildlife (my personal favorite) sanctuaries can be built as security belts around the formally soot-laden, coal spewed, plant site. Allows room for expansion for subsequent PBMR/LFTR use (desalination, chemical/hot process steam usage, etc etc).

 

If we built nothing but new nuclear, what would we do with all the existing fossil-fuel burning power plants we now have? This is a major economic and grid logistics question no one is asking.  Many have 40 or more years of productive and profitable life remaining.  This is the most important consideration when second and third world countries think about ending their Global Warming CO2.

FUN COMMENT: (From another reader:)

Jim:  Stumbled on your web site and want to congratulate you on your mission.  I have been working on a similar unsolicited proposal to convert one of our largest coal plants in [deleted] to nuclear. The interest in the large plants is that one saves the incredible investment in siting, cooling towers, electric generators, some of the lower pressure stages of the turbines( as you are aware the nuclear plants have lower steam pressures and temperatures but multistage turbines can be converted to salvage some of their cost), the condensing equipment, the switching yard, and most importantly the transmission lines and towers.  A very rough estimate is that half the cost of a new nuclear plant of the same size could be salvaged.  The federal government could loan the money and the utility smart enough to make this change could return the loan in carbon credits.  Large nuclear plants are very labor intensive and we obviously need the jobs.  Keep pounding your drum.  Solar and wind won’t hack it.  [deleted]        (This author regards this approach viable.)

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Part  3:       Disadvantages of locating a nuclear reactor in an existing coal power plant.

Disadvantages of locating a nuclear reactor
in an existing coal power plant.
 

Proximity:  5,000 sailors on an aircraft carrier live for years within 500 feet of two or more fairly large nuclear reactors.

Environment:  Most coal burning power plants are located on bodies of water for cooling.  Reactors installed in underground silos located on tropical coasts or flood-prone rivers could be inundated by floods, hurricane/cyclone storm surges or tsunamis.

The neighbors might object: 

Fuel shipments and storage: 

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Part  4:       Oversized nuclear boilers make conversion from fossil to nuclear financially attractive.

Oversized nuclear boilers make
conversion from fossil to nuclear financially attractive.

The economics of repowering a supersized coal burning power plant:  Buy a nuclear boiler twice as large as you need.

Converting a typical supersized coal power plant to nuclear. 
Now is another one of those Sputnik déjà vu moments in U.S. history.

 

Oversized nuclear boilers
make ending Global Warming financially attractive.

The economics of repowering a supersized coal burning power plant:  Buy a nuclear boiler twice as large as you need.

Converting a typical supersized coal power plant to nuclear. 
Now is another one of those Sputnik déjà vu moments in U.S. history.

Hi David,
 
The incremental cost of energy from a nuclear reactor can make ending Global Warming financially attractive.
 
This popped up as I was looking into the financial aspects of the energy mis-match between the BN-800's 880 MWe output and Big Bend's 450 MWe turbines.
 
Energy is the prize for the man on the street, not ending Global Warming. 
 
That 430 MWe surplus from four BN-800s is a 1,720 MWe near-freebie every man in Tampa can share.  Since it is an existing power plant site, all we buy are four more low-cost coal power plant turbine-generators and their supporting equipment.  Everything else is already there. 

So, in addition to ending Big Bend's 10 million tons of CO2 every year, we get an almost free full sized nuclear power plant's worth of electricity in addition to what Big Bend is already putting out. 

 
Think of the impact on our power bills.
 
Regards,
 
Jim Holm
 

There will never be much money available for fighting Global Warming.  There is a good reason for this.  Ending power plant Global Warming CO2 as such does not buy us one watt of additional electricity.  This means getting the most "tons of CO2 mitigated per buck" payback is the most important aspect of fighting Global Warming.  No other mitigation effort can even approach nuclear repowering of coal burning power plants in this respect.  Renewables add small amounts of additional intermittent electricity but are incapable of ending the production of CO2.  Building a windmill does not end CO2 production.  Repowering a coal burning power plant with nuclear does so immediately but produces no additional electricity.

The incremental cost of energy from a nuclear reactor makes one way of ending Global Warming financially attractive.

Spreading the cost of a supersized remediation reactor:  Say the supersized coal burning power plant had 500 MWe turbines.  The BN-800 is rated at 880 MWe.  This means there is 380 MWe to spare.  What makes this an excellent move is adding an additional, smaller, low cost "generic" mass-produced coal power plant 380 MWe turbine in a new small turbine hall located between the new reactor in the coal yard and the old power plant, while bleeding off the 500 MWe of steam needed for the supersized coal plant's coal turbine.  This is a heck of a boost in the amount of new electricity we could obtain while at the same time ending Global Warming CO2. (Click on thumbnail for larger image.) 

The United States has over 200 supersized about 1,000 smaller coal and natural gas burning power plant sites,.  There are 1,200 supersized power plants and 30,000 smaller fossil fuel power plants in the entire world, half of a total of 60,000 electricity generating installations that include many very small hydro and wind farms.  This replacement strategy is a huge cost and time savings compared to building completely new nuclear power plants. 

Early estimates are that converting an existing typical 500 MWe coal power plant unit to nuclear would come in at less than half the cost per watt of a new nuclear power plant (currently about $7.00 per watt). 

This web page section (Part 4) is trying to take enough money out of repowering to get the cost down to 50 cents a watt or $250 million per 500 MWe unit.  Coal Yard Nuke conversion would mean that existing electricity production capacity would be either maintained or increased substantially and jobs would be retained and additional nuclear technicians would be added.  Nuclear's cost per kilowatt-hour produced is now lower than coal so slightly lower electricity production costs would be a small additional benefit. 

What is it going to cost to END the annual production of a ton of CO2?  According to the U.S. Department of Energy, one kiloWatt-hour of electricity produced from coal heat causes two pounds of carbon dioxide to be released into the atmosphere.  That's the bottom line.  500 MWe for 24 hours is 12,000 MegaWatt - hours or 12 million kiloWatt hours or 24 million pounds of CO2 or 12,000 tons of CO2 per day or 4.4 million tons of CO2 per year.  Coal burning power plants have about a 60 year life.  Say this plant was 20 years old when repowered to nuclear.  That means about 175 million tons of CO2 emissions was avoided over the next 40 years.  If the cost of repowering was $250 million and 175 million tons of CO2 emissions was avoided, that comes to $1.43 per ton of CO2 avoided.  The government wants to charge $35 a ton carbon tax.  Who do you think is going to keep the change?

Repowering a supersized coal burner to nuclear.  The new equipment:  A BN-800 reactor mounted on a buried barge covered by a huge mound of dirt, and a new "hybrid" turbine (located between the reactor and the original coal burning power plant).  The addition of the hybrid turbine almost doubles the electricity output of the power plant for very little additional cost - $300 million installed turbine-generator cost gives us 1.3 billion dollars of new electrical generating capacity at $0.78 per watt instead of today's $3.50 per watt (for a new coal plant - Synapse-Energy Economics, Inc.) or $7.00 a watt (for the new Levy County Nuclear Power Plant ).

This approach ends the Global Warming CO2 this plant was producing while almost doubling its electrical output.  What's not to like from a deal like that?

 

If you want to throw the extra capacity away, here is a drawing without the hybrid turbine.

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Part  5:

Small high-temperature liquid reactors
for the 75 to 300 MWe range.

http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/  The Nuclear Green Revolution.  Charles Barton and contributors: Kirk Sorensen and Ijon Tichy

The author is mulling over the possibilities of a liquid reactor that is automatic, unattended, and intended to replace the world's 1 million small fossil fuel boilers as if they were your basement hot water heater.  This is the only way we will be able obsolete the fossil fuels that are causing most of Global Warming in such a way that Global Warming will never return.

One major advantage of liquid reactors is that, unlike solid fuel reactors, they are capable of rapid and chaotic transient response to the commands of ignorant operators and, as such do not require a "shadowing" electricity supply such as wind turbines which require natural gas turbines or conventional reactors that need large sources such as pumped water storage to cover their several hour long "awkward moments".

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf62.html  Thorium page, pdf of Thorium page:  Thorium Report .pdf

http://www.thoriumpower.com/  Thorium Power Ltd. is a nuclear energy pioneer and the leading developer of thorium-based nuclear fuels. http://www.ltbridge.com/  Lightbridge - Thorium Company  Radkowsky's designs are currently being developed by Thorium Power (now Lightbridge Corp.)b, based in McLean, Virginia.

Since 1994, Thorium Power Ltd has been involved in a Russian programme to develop a thorium-uranium fuel, which more recently has moved to have a particular emphasis on utilisation of weapons-grade plutonium in a thorium-plutonium fuel. The program is based at Moscow's Kurchatov Institute and receives US government funding to design fuel for Russian VVER-1000 reactors. The design has a demountable centre portion and blanket arrangement, with the plutonium in the centre and the thorium (with uranium) around itc. The blanket material remains in the reactor for nine years but the centre portion is burned for only three years (as in a normal VVER). Design of the seed fuel rods in the centre portion draws on extensive experience of Russian navy reactors.

The thorium-plutonium fuel claims four advantages over the use of mixed uranium-plutonium oxide (MOX) fuel: increased proliferation resistance; compatibility with existing reactors - which will need minimal modification to be able to burn it; the fuel can be made in existing plants in Russia; and a lot more plutonium can be put into a single fuel assembly than with MOX fuel, so that three times as much can be disposed of as when using MOX. The spent fuel amounts to about half the volume of MOX and is even less likely to allow recovery of weapons-useable material than spent MOX fuel, since less fissile plutonium remains in it. With an estimated 150 tonnes of surplus weapons plutonium in Russia, the thorium-plutonium project would not necessarily cut across existing plans to make MOX fuel
 

 

Under 200 megawatt (thermal) Mininuke Reactors: 

http://www.energyfromthorium.com/   http://thoriumenergy.blogspot.com/  Thorium

http://www.facebook.com/EnergyFromThorium   LFTR activity place.

Thorium and uranium are dissolved in molten salt, simplifying fueling and waste removal compared to today's nuclear power plants. Prototype molten salt reactors were developed and tested by the US at Oak Ridge National Laboratories in the 1960s and 1970s. In 2006 the Oak Ridge research papers were scanned and posted on the internet. A collaboration of scientists, engineers, and professional volunteers has begun developing an updated conceptual design for the LFTR.
From: http://PebbleBedReactor.blogspot.com/  Robert Hargraves'  pebble bed reactor blog.