George Savage

Hyperion Power Generation Nuclear "Battery"

A new type of smaller, safer nuclear power plant may be just what the world needs to meet growing energy demand without burning ever more oil or other fossil fuels.

Hyperion Power Generation, a New Mexico start-up licensing Los Alamos nuclear technology, is working on a mass-produced nuclear “battery” (the firm doesn’t like the word “reactor”) that is sealed up at the factory, shipped to a generating location and connected to a steam turbine, where it will generate electricity, essentially maintenance free, for 8-10 years, depending upon the load.  When the “battery” goes dead, the module is disconnected and shipped back to the factory for refurbishment and refueling.  There are no user-serviceable parts.

The nuke plant is tiny by modern standards, generating approximately 30MW of electricity, or enough power for about 20,000 homes.  Traditional nuclear power plants — think containment domes and cooling towers — generate 1,000-to-1,600 megawatts of electricity.  Hyperion plans to sell modules for $25 million each.  Multiple modules can be co-located at a central site to generate higher power levels, or individual units can be positioned near energy customers.

Hyperion’s design is a modification of the TRIGA reactor that is actually licensed for unattended operation at universities for educational purposes.

Hyperion’s CEO, John R. “Grizz” Deal, describes what makes this new sort of plant safer:

The way that you sustain a chain reaction for nuclear energy is through the use of a moderator. This is Nuclear Energy 101. A moderator is a necessary part of almost all power-producing reactors. What it does is slow down the neutrons so that those neutrons that are being shed by the uranium, as it breaks apart, can be grabbed by other uranium atoms. That fracturing process is called fission, and that’s how you get heat.

In traditional reactors, you’ve got to have a moderator and then you’ve also got to have some way to cool it so it doesn’t get out of hand. In our nation’s light water reactors, the water serves as both the moderator and the coolant. So the moderator actually makes it go and a cooling system keeps it from going too far.

Our fuel is very unique. It’s uranium hydride. UH3 is the chemical formula. Low-enriched, about 10 percent [uranium isotope]-235, the rest is U-238. By comparison, bomb-grade fuel is about 98 percent enriched.

You can’t turn our fuel into a bomb. You’d have to re-enrich, re-process the fuel, so you might as well start with yellowcake. That’s one of the neat safety features of our reactor. For nefarious purposes, our reactor has absolutely no value whatsoever.

The neat thing about UH3, about uranium hydride, is it’s a moderator and an emergency cooling system in one. It’s chemical composition—and we say it’s been designed by God to be the perfect nuclear fuel—when uranium hydride gets too hot, when the reaction gets a little out of hand, it will start shedding those hydrogen atoms naturally, which turns off the nuclear fires and, if necessary, cools down the reactor. This happens very, very fast.

See the entire interview at Techrockies.  More discussion of Hyperion’s technology at Next Big Future.

Hyperion is not alone in its effort to develop small reactors.  The Heritage Foundation held a conference last month to discuss several companies and the range of new nuclear technologies under development.  Heritage also points out that President-elect Obama offered conditional support for nuclear power at a Dartmouth College primary debate last year:

I don’t think that we can take nuclear power off the table. What we have to make sure of is that we have the capacity to store waste properly and safely, and that we reduce whatever threats might come from terrorism. And if we can do that in a technologically sound way, then we should pursue it.

If the new president supports the nuclear “battery,” he could win a trifecta: 1) adequate energy for economic growth; 2) reduced CO2 emissions; and 3) substantially reduced reliance on imported petroleum.