Texas A&M University

Nuclear Power Now and in the Future By William Burchill

William Burchill, the Heat Transfer Research Inc. Professor, is a renowned nuclear safety expert and frequent invited lecturer on nuclear power and safety. He has headed Texas A&M’s Department of Nuclear Engineering since 2003.

William Burchill

This is an exciting time to be a nuclear engineering educator or a nuclear engineering student.

Why? Because since the beginning of 2006, 10 utilities have announced plans to file applications during the next two years with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build as many as 21 new nuclear power plants. NRG Energy, owner of the South Texas Project, a two-reactor nuclear power plant 60 miles west of Houston, is one of those utilities. TXU Electric, owner of the other nuclear power plant in Texas — the Comanche Peak Plant 40 miles west of Fort Worth — announced June 8, “TXU will continue to investigate this [nuclear] option by exploring expansion of its Comanche Peak nuclear power facility.” These will be the first new nuclear power plant orders in this country since 1978.

Nuclear power from 104 reactors currently provides 20 percent of the United States’ electricity. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) forecasts that by 2025 the country’s demand for electricity will increase by 50 percent. Just to maintain this fraction of electricity from nuclear power would require about 50 new reactors, about 2.5 times the number for which applications have been announced.

Seventeen percent of the world’s electricity is generated by about 440 reactors. But the demand for electricity around the world is growing even faster than it is in the United States. This increase is due to three factors: world population growth rate is about three times the growth rate in this country; third-world countries are industrializing and improving their standard of living; and there is an ever-increasing availability of new technology powered by electricity.

Projections by the United Nations indicate that the world’s demand for electricity will increase by a factor of 2.5 by 2050. Thus, just to maintain the same worldwide fraction of electricity from nuclear power would require about 1,000 reactors. The International Atomic Energy Agency reported in January that 24 nuclear power plants are under construction outside the United States. However, many countries have aggressive plans to increase this number; the countries with the most ambitious construction plans are South Korea, Japan, China, India, France and Russia.

Besides the projections of increased demand for electricity, concern with global warming has produced the current heightened interest in nuclear power. During the past three years, the scientific community has collectively and definitively concluded that man-made emissions of carbon dioxide are causing the temperature of the earth’s atmosphere to increase. Nearly all those emissions are produced by burning coal for electricity production and burning petroleum products for transportation. Half of the United States’ electricity is produced by burning coal. Worldwide, the percentage is higher.

Quick fact about Texas A&M nuclear engineering

  • U.S. News & World Report currently ranks Texas A&M’s Department of Nuclear Engineering 3rd among undergraduate programs and 4th among graduate programs (2nd and 3rd respectively among public institutions).
  • The department has the largest student enrollment of any nuclear engineering program in the United States — about 200 undergraduates and 100 graduate students in Fall 2006.
  • New faculty added during the university-wide Faculty Reinvestment Program will bring the number of tenured and tenure-track faculty to 18.
  • Department research expenditures in both of the last two years was $4.6 million. Research awards this year total more than $7 million so far.
  • The department is the only one in the country with two nuclear reactors — a 1-megawatt TRIGA research reactor and a 5-watt AGN teaching reactor.
  • In collaboration with the George Bush School of Government and Public Service and the DOE Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation, the department has established the Nuclear Security Science and Policy Institute. (See related story) The Institute focuses on graduate education and research on topics related to safeguarding nuclear materials and enhancing national security against nuclear threats.

Many environmentalists — for example, Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, and James Lovelock, author of the Gaia Theory — have concluded that we must increase use of nuclear power and reduce our dependence on coal. In fact, Moore and former New Jersey governor and Environmental Protection Agency administrator Christine Todd Whitman announced in Spring 2006 the formation of the Clean and Safe Energy (CASEnergy) Coalition and are its co-chairs. The coalition “supports nuclear energy’s ability to enhance America’s energy security, attain cleaner air and improve the quality of life, health and economic well-being for all Americans.”

The major factors that will determine the degree to which nuclear power is used in the future are (1) the operating record of current plants, (2) solution of the specific issues of radioactive waste disposal and security/nonproliferation of potential nuclear weapons materials, and (3) public understanding of the relative risk presented by nuclear power versus that from other forms of electricity production and other industrial and human activities.

The operating record of current nuclear power plants is excellent. The average capacity factor (ratio of power produced to power that theoretically could be produced) of all U.S. plants was more than 90 percent in both of the last two years. No member of the U.S. public has ever been killed in an accident caused by a nuclear power reactor. The unit production cost of nuclear power is competitive with that of coal and significantly better than that of other fuels.

The Department of Nuclear Engineering welcomes the current renewed interest in nuclear power. It is well positioned to take an active role in providing graduates to serve this interest and to address the factors that will determine nuclear power’s future.

Each of the new nuclear power reactors announced by utilities this year are advanced designs with safety and economic improvements over the current fleet of operating nuclear power plants. DOE is, however, leading an international program involving 10 countries to design the next generation of nuclear power reactors — Generation IV. These new reactor designs include improved economics, safety, proliferation resistance and security. The nuclear engineering department is participating actively in this program through several DOE research contracts.

Nuclear power is expected to play a major role in responding to the increased demand for electricity both in this country and worldwide, providing a concentrated, economic and safe energy source while reducing the rate of greenhouse emissions into the atmosphere.end of story