THE

NUCLEAR POWER
Modular
REVOLUTION

High-Temperature Reactors
Can Change
The World
by Marjorie Mazel Hecht

THE NUCLEAR POWER

REVOLUTION Eskom

Modular Electricity transmission

High-Temperature Reactors line in South Africa.
Can Change the World
by Marjorie Mazel Hecht Far left: Tabletop model of
the Gas-Turbine Modular
Interview: Linden Blue, Helium Reactor (GT-
Vice Chairman, General Atomics MHR) constructed by the
The Modular High-Temperature Russian team working
Reactor: Its Time Has Come with General Atomics on
the reactor design. When
Interview: Jaco Kriek, CEO, PBMR you push a button,
South Africa’s PBMR Is Moving simulated helium flows
Forward! around the reactor core
Who’s Trying to Strangle the and power conversion
PBMR? vessel.
by Gregory Murphy

General Atomics

20 Fall 2008 21st Century Science & Technology

S
ixty years into the atomic age, we are at the threshold of
another revolution: the development of fourth-generation
modular high-temperature reactors that are meltdown-
proof, affordable, mass-producible, quick to construct, and very
suitable for use in industrializing the developing sector. The key
to these new reactors, as described here, is in their unique fuel:
Each tiny fuel particle has its own “containment building.”
In the days of “Atoms for Peace,” the 1950s and early 1960s, it
was assumed that the development of nuclear power would rap-
idly bring all the world’s people into the 20th Century, raising liv-
ing standards, creating prosperity, allowing every individual to
make full use of his creative ability. But this dream was not shared
by the Malthusian forces, who, even after the massive slaughter
of World War II, were determined to cull population further.
These oligarchs, like the Olympian Zeus, who punished Pro-
metheus for bringing fire to man, intended to rein in the atom, the
20th Century “fire.” And so they did, creating a counterculture, a
fear of science and technology, and an environmentalist move-
ment to be Zeus’ army to keep Prometheus bound.
Today, we are at a point when nations, especially impover-
ished nations, can choose to fulfill the promise of Atoms for
Peace, by going nuclear, starting with a modular high tempera-
ture reactor small enough, ~200 megawatts, to power a small
General Atomics
electric grid and, at the same time, provide process heat for in-
dustrial use or desalinating seawater. As the economy grows, Cutaway view of the prismatic modular reactor showing the re-
actor vessel (right) and the power conversion vessel (left), both
more modules can be added.
located below ground. This GT-MHR design is for a 285-
These fourth-generation reactors are fast to construct and af-
megawatt-electric reactor.
fordable (because of their modularity and mass production),
thus slicing through the mountain of statistical gibberish pro-
moted by those Malthusians who disguise
themselves as energy economists, like
Amory Lovins. Now that several leading
environmentalists have embraced nucle-
ar as a clean energy solution, the hard-
core Malthusians, including prominently
Lovins and Lester Brown, have switched
their main anti-nuclear argument to claim
that nuclear is “too expensive.” But be-
cause their mathematical calculations do
not include the value of human life,
Lovins et al. do not consider the human
consequences of not going nuclear.

Energy Flux Density

If we are to support 6.7 billion people at
a living standard worthy of the 21st Cen-
tury, the world must go nuclear now, and
in the future, develop fusion power. Fis-
sion is millions of times more energy-flux
PBMR

.  See for example, Rob Ainsworth, “The New Environmental Eugenics: Al A model of the pebble bed modular reactor, showing the
Gore’s Green Genocide,” EIR, March 30, 2007, www.larouchepub.com/eiw/ reactor vessel at left, with the intercooler and recuperator
public/2007/2007_10-19/2007 -13/pdf/36-46_713_ainsworth.pdf; also, Marsha
Freeman, “Who Killed U.S. Nuclear Power,” 21st Century, Spring 2001, www.21 units to the right. This design is for a 165-megawatt-
stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/spring01/nuclear_power.html electric reactor.

21st Century Science & Technology Fall 2008 21

 Figure 1
FUEL AND ENERGY
COMPARISONS
A tiny amount of fission
fuel provides millions of
times more energy, in
quantity and quality, than
other sources. With a
closed nuclear fuel cycle
(which reprocesses used
nuclear fuel), and devel-
opment of the breeder re-
actor, nuclear is not only a
truly renewable resource,
but is able to create more
new fuel than that used to
fuel the reactor.

Source: Calculations made by Dr. Robert J. Moon

dense than any solar technology, and you can’t run a modern in-
dustrial economy without this level of energy flux density.
Energy flux density refers to the amount of flow of the energy
source, at a cross-section of the surface of the power-producing
source. No matter what improvements are made in solar tech-
nologies, the basic limitation is that solar power is diffuse, and
hence inherently inefficient. At the Earth’s surface, the density of
solar energy is only .0002 of a megawatt.
Chemical combustion, burning coal or oil, for example, pro-
duces energy measured in a few electron volts per chemical re-
action. The chemical reaction occurs in the outer shell of the
atoms involved, the electrons. In fission, the atomic nucleus of a
heavy element splits apart, releasing millions of electron volts,
about 200 million electron volts per reaction, versus the few
electron volts from a chemical reaction.
Another way to look at it is to compare the development of
power sources over time, and the increasing capability of a so-
ciety to do physical work: human muscle power, animal muscle
power, wood burning, coal burning, oil and gas burning, and
today, nuclear. The progress of a civilization has depended on
increased energy flux density of power sources. The hand col-
lection of firewood for cooking; tilling, sowing, and reaping by
hand; treadle-pumping for irrigation (a favorite of the carbon-
offset shysters): These are the so-called “appropriate” technolo-
General Atomics gies that Malthusians advocate for the developing sector, pre-
Inside a fuel particle: This is a magnified photograph of a .03- cisely because they preclude an increase in population. In fact,
inch fuel particle, cut away to show the layers of ceramic materi-
als and graphite surrounding a kernel of uranium oxycarbide
.  For a discussion of wind as energy, see “Windmills for Suckers: T. Boone
fuel. The fission fuel stays intact in its “containment building” up Pickens’ Genocidal Plan,” by Gregory Murphy, EIR, Aug. 22, 2008. www.21stce
to 2,000°C (3,632°F). nturysciencetech.com/Articles%202008/Windmills.pdf

22 Fall 2008 21st Century Science & Technology

these technologies cannot support
the existing populations in the Third
World—which is exactly why they Figure 2
THE UNIQUE HTR
are glorified by the anti-population
FUEL IN A PRISMATIC
lobby.
CONFIGURATION (GT-
Although this report will discuss MHR)
fourth-generation HTRs, to bring ev- Each tiny fuel particle,
ery person on Earth into the 21st three-hundredths of an
Century with a good living standard, inch in diameter, has a
the nuclear revolution includes the kernel of fission fuel at the
development of all kinds of nuclear center, surrounded by its
plants: large industrial-size plants, “containment” layers. The
fast reactors, breeder reactors, tho- fuel particles are mixed
rium reactors, fission-fusion hybrids, with graphite and formed
into cylindrical fuel rods,
and all sorts of small and even very
about two inches long.
small reactors. We will also need to
The fuel rods are then in-
fund a serious program to develop serted into holes drilled
fusion reactors. But right now, the into the hexagonal graph-
modular HTRs are ideal as the work- ite fuel element blocks,
horses to gear up the global infra- which measure 14 inches
structure building we need. wide by 31 inches high.
The fuel blocks, which
The Revolutionary Fuel also have helium coolant
There are two types of high tem- channels, are then stacked
perature modular gas-cooled reac- in the reactor core.
Source: General Atomics
tors under development, which are
distinguished by the way in which
the nuclear fuel is configured: the
pebble bed and the prismatic reac-
tor. In the pebble bed, the fuel par-
ticles are fashioned into pebbles,

Figure 3
HTR FUEL FORMED INTO
PEBBLES (PBMR)
The PBMR fuel particles are sim-
ilar to those in Figure 2, with a
kernel of fission fuel (uranium
oxide) at the center (at right). In-
stead of being fashioned into
rods, the particles are coated
with containment layers and
then inserted into a graphite
sphere to form “pebbles” the
size of tennis balls (at left). Each
pebble contains about 15,000
fuel particles. Pebbles travel
around the reactor core about
10 times in their lifetime. Dur-
ing normal operation, the reac-
tor will be loaded with 450,000
fuel pebbles.
Source: PBMR

21st Century Science & Technology Fall 2008 23

fuel balls the size of tennis balls,
which circulate in the reactor Figure 4
core. In the prismatic reactor, the GT-MHR SCHEMATIC VIEW
The reactor vessel (right) and the power conver-
fuel particles are fashioned into
sion vessel are located below ground, and the
cylindrical fuel rods, that are
support systems for the reactor are above
stacked into a hexagonal fuel ground. Layers of the hexagonal fuel elements
block. are stacked in the reactor core. The helium gas
South Africa is developing the passes from the reactor to the gas turbine
Pebble Bed Modular Reactor, the through the inside of the connecting coaxial
PBMR, and China has an operat- duct, and returns via the outside.
ing 10-megawatt HTR of the peb-
ble bed design, with plans to con-
struct a commercial 200-megawatt
unit starting in 2009.
General Atomics, based in San
Diego, is developing the Gas Tur-
bine Modular Helium Reactor,
GT-MHR, which has a prismatic
fuel rod design, and Japan is oper-
ating a 30-megawatt high temper-
ature test reactor, HTTR, of the
prismatic design.
Although the fuel configurations
differ, both reactor types start with
the same kind of fuel particles, and
it is these tiny fuel particles that
will revolutionize electricity gen-
eration and industry throughout
the world. Developed and im-
proved over the past 50 years,
these ceramic-coated nuclear fuel
particles, three-hundredths of an
inch in diameter (0.75 millime-
ters), make possible a high-tem-
perature reactor that cannot melt
down.
At the center of each fuel parti-
cle is a kernel of fissile fuel, such as uranium oxycarbide. This is As for the waste question: The HTRs produce just a tiny
coated with a graphite buffer, and then surrounded by three or amount of spent fuel, the less to store or bury. But the rational
more successive containment layers, two layers of pyrolytic car- question is, why bury it and throw away a resource? Why not
bon and one layer of silicon carbide. The nuclear reaction at the reprocess it into new nuclear fuel?
center is contained inside the particle, along with any products General Atomics had an active research program investigat-
of the fission reaction. The ceramic layers that encapsulate the ing the reprocessing of spent fuel from the HTR, but when the
fuel will stay intact up to 2,000°C (3,632°F), which is well above United States gave up reprocessing in the 1970s under the ban-
the highest possible temperature of the reactor core, 1,600°C ner of “nonproliferation,” the facility was converted to do other
(2,912°F), even if there is a failure of the coolant. research. As one longtime General Atomics nuclear engineer
The Chinese tested this in the HTR-10 in September 2004, told me, reprocessing used HTR fuel is absolutely possible—you
turning off the helium coolant. The reactor shut down automati- just have to want to figure out how to do it.
cally, the fuel temperature remained under 1,600°C, and there
was no failure of the fuel containment. This demonstrates both Fission in the HTR
the inherent safety of the reactor design, and the integrity of the Conventional fission reactors work much like their prede-
fuel particles, stated Frank Wu, CEO of Chinery, the consortium cessor technologies. The fission reaction produces heat, the
appointed by the Chinese government to head the development heat boils water to create steam, and the steam turns a tur-
project. bine, which is attached to a generator to produce electricity.

24 Fall 2008 21st Century Science & Technology

 duce a steady fission reaction. (It is
the slower neutrons that cause fis-
sioning; the fast neutrons tend to be
captured without causing fission-
ing.) For this purpose, reactors have
control rods, made of materials like
neutron-absorbing boron, that are
raised or lowered to absorb neu-
trons, and moderators, made of a
lighter element like carbon (graph-
ite), that slow the neutrons down.
In conventional nuclear reac-
tors, water is the usual moderator,
and the fission products stay inside
the reactor core’s fuel assembly. In
the HTR, each tiny fuel particle
contains the fission products pro-
duced by its uranium fuel kernel;
only the neutrons leave the fuel
particles.

Figure 5 Helium Gas: Heats and Cools

PBMR REACTOR CONFIGURATION The beauty of the high tempera-
The reactor vessel (left) and the systems for power conversion in the PBMR. The PBMR ture reactor, and the reason that it
fuel is in the form of tennis-ball size pebbles, which circulate in the reactor vessel. He- can attain such a high temperature
lium gas conveys the reactor heat to the gas turbine and generator; the helium is then
(1,562° F, or 850°C compared with
cooled, recompressed, and reheated before returning to the reactor vessel.
the 600°F of conventional nuclear
Source: PBMR
plants) lies in the choice of helium,
the inert gas that carries the heat
The fourth-generation reactors also use the fission reaction to produced by the reactor. Helium has three key advantages:
produce heat, but instead of boiling water, the heat is used to •Helium remains as a gas, and thus the hot helium can di-
heat helium, an inert gas, which then directly turns a turbine, rectly turn a gas turbine, enabling conversion to electricity with-
which is connected to a generator to produce electricity. By out a steam cycle.
eliminating the steam cycle, these HTRs increase the reactor •  Helium can be heated to a higher temperature than water,
efficiency by 50 percent, thus reducing the cost of power pro- so that the outlet temperature of the HTR can be higher than in
duction. conventional water-cooled nuclear reactors.
An obvious question is: How does the fission chain reaction •  Helium is inert and does not react chemically with the fuel
occur if all the fission products are contained inside the fuel par- or the reactor components, so there is no corrosion problem.
ticles? The key is the neutron. The helium circulates through the nuclear core, conveying
When the atomic nucleus of uranium splits apart, it produc- the heat from the reactor through a connecting duct to the tur-
es heat in the form of fast-moving neutral particles (neutrons) bine. Then it passes through a compressor system, where it is
and two or more lighter elements. To sustain a controlled fis- cooled to 915°F (490°C), and re-enters the nuclear core. The use
sion chain reaction, every nucleus that fissions has to produce of helium as both the coolant and the gas that turns the turbine
at least one neutron that will be captured by another uranium simplifies the reactor by eliminating much of the equipment
nucleus, causing it to split. The fission process is very fast; (and expense) of conventional reactors.
ejected neutrons stay free for about 1/10,000 of a second. Then The high heat that is produced can be coupled with many
they are either captured by fissionable uranium, or they escape industrial processes, such as desalination of seawater, hydro-
without causing fissioning, to be captured by other elements or gen production, coal liquefaction, and so on. These reactors
by nonfissionable uranium. Free neutrons can travel only about are also small enough to be located on site for some industries,
3 feet. producing both electricity and process heat. The LaRouche
All nuclear reactors are configured to create the optimum ge- plan for the Eurasian Land-Bridge and the World Land-Bridge,
ometry for neutron capture by fissionable uranium. The point of
a controlled fission reaction is to engineer the reactor design to .  For more detail, see “Inside the Fourth-Generation Reactors,” 21st Century,
capture the right proportion of slow neutrons in order to pro- Spring 2001.

21st Century Science & Technology Fall 2008 25

 for example, envisions these HTR reac-
tors as the hub of new industrial cities
across Eurasia and the harsh Arctic en-
vironment of eastern Russia, linked by
high-speed and magnetically levitated
railways.
Direct Conversion to Electricity
The HTRs, as noted above, gain effi-
ciency by eliminating the steam cycle
of conventional nuclear reactors (the
heating of water to turn it into steam,
which then turns a turbine). Instead,
the helium gas carries the heat of the
nuclear reaction to directly turn a gas
turbine.
Like conventional nuclear reactors,
the first high temperature reactors—
Peach Bottom in Pennsylvania and Fort
Figure 6 St. Vrain in Colorado, for example—
GT-MHR COUPLED WITH HYDROGEN PRODUCTION PLANT used a steam cycle. The Chinese HTR-
This General Atomics design couples the GT-MHR, to a sulfur-iodine cycle hydro- 10 also uses a steam cycle, but plans are
gen production plant. The sulfur-iodine cycle, which uses coupled chemical reac- to switch to a direct conversion system
tions and the heat from the high-temperature reactor, is the most promising ther- in its later models.
mochemical method for hydrogen production. It only became possible to use the
Source: General Atomics Brayton direct-cycle gas turbine with the
HTRs after advances in industrial gas
turbine use, and work carried out at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
during the 1980s specifically for cou-
pling HTRs with a Brayton cycle. There
were also advances in related systems,
such as the recuperators and magnetic
bearings. Taken together, these advanc-
es give the HTRs an overall efficiency of
about 48 percent, which is 50 percent
more than the efficiency of convention-
al nuclear reactors.

Multiple Safety Systems:

Meltdown Proof
The modular HTRs are inherently
safe, because they are designed to shut
down on their own, without any human
operator’s intervention. Even in the un-
likely event that all the cooling systems
fail, the reactor would shut down safely,
dissipating the heat from the core with-
out any release of radioactivity.
Figure 7
The built-in safety systems, as dis-
SIMPLICITY OF DIRECT-CONVERSION POWER GENERATION
Using direct conversion with a gas turbine eliminates the steam cycle from the cussed above, include the unique fuel
HTR, as shown here. At the same time, direct conversion increases the efficiency particle containment: the fission prod-
of the reactor by 50 percent. ucts stay inside these “containment”
Source: General Atomics walls.
Another safety feature is the reactor’s

26 Fall 2008 21st Century Science & Technology

“negative temperature coefficient” operating principle: If the op-
erating temperature of the reactor goes up above normal, the
neutron speed goes up, which means that more neutrons get
captured without fissioning. In effect, this shuts down the chain
reaction. Additionally, there are certain amounts of “poisons”
present in the reactor core (the element erbium, for example),
which will help the process of capturing neutrons without fis-
sioning, if the operating temperature goes up.
The first line of safety in regulating the fission reactor is, of
course, the control rods, which are used to slow down or speed
up the fissioning process. But if the control rods were to fail, the
reactor is designed automatically to drop spheres of boron into
the core; boron absorbs neutrons without fissioning, and thus
would stop the reaction.
Additionally, there are two external cooling systems, a pri-
mary coolant system and a shutdown coolant system. If both of
these should fail, there are cooling panels on the inside of the
reactor walls, which use natural convection to remove the core
heat to the ground. Because the reactor is located below ground, Prof. Rudolf Schulten (center), who developed the pebble bed
the natural conduction of heat will ensure that the reactor core design and built the first pebble bed reactor, was made a guest
temperature stays below 1,600°C, well below the temperature professor of Tsinghua University, where China’s HTR-10 was
at which the fuel particles will break apart. built on the pebble bed model.
The graphite moderator also helps dissipate
heat in a shutdown.
In addition to the successful Chinese HTR-
10 test shutdown, a similar test was carried
out on the AVR, the German prototype for the
pebble bed, at Jülich. In one test, reactor staff
shut down the cooling systems while the reac-
tor was operating. The AVR shut itself down in
just a few minutes, with no damage to the nu-
clear fuel. In other words, no meltdown was
possible.

The HTR: A Manhattan Project Idea

The idea of a high-temperature gas-cooled re-
actor dates back to the Manhattan Project and
chemist Farrington Daniels, who designed a nu-
clear reactor, then called a “pile,” which had
“pebbles” of fission fuel whose heat was re-
moved by a gas. Daniels patented his idea in
1945, calling it a “pebble bed reactor,” and the Petr Pavlicek/IAEA

Oak Ridge National Laboratory began to work Chinese technicians in

on the concept. But Daniels’s idea was dropped, in favor of the the control room of
pressurized water reactor, and the group working with Daniels the experimental
went on to design the first nuclear reactor for the Nautilus sub- HTR-10. China plans
marine. to construct a
commercial-size 200-
Later, Great Britain, Germany, and the United States devel-
megawatt HTR
oped high-temperature gas-cooled reactors. In Germany, Prof.
starting in 2009.
Rudolf Schulten began working on a pebble-bed type reactor, Inset: Mary EIRNS

Burdman of EIR
.  Manhattan Project veteran Alvin M. Weinberg, who headed Oak Ridge Na- holding a Chinese fuel
tional Laboratory, describes this in his autobiography, The First Nuclear Era: The
Life and Times of a Technological Fixer (Woodbury, N.Y.: American Institute of pebble on a visit to
Physics Press, 1994). the HTR-10 in 2001.

21st Century Science & Technology Fall 2008 27

and designed the 40-megawatt AVR
pebble-bed reactor at Jülich, which op-
erated successfully from 1966 to 1988,
producing power for the grid and yield-
ing a wealth of research data. Both this
and a subsequent larger HTR were shut
down in 1988, as the anti-nuclear move-
ment rode the wave of Chernobyl fear.
South Africa’s PBMR, as well as the Chi-
nese HTR-10, makes use of the Schulten
pebble-bed system, with innovations
particular to each of the two new de-
signs.
In Europe, 13 countries collaborated
on the experimental high temperature
gas reactor called Dragon, built in Eng-
land in 1962. The 20-megawatt Dragon
operated successfully from 1964 to Courtesy of General Atomics

1975, testing materials and fuels, and its The 20-megawatt Dragon high-temperature nuclear reactor in England, operated from
experimental results were used by later 1964 to 1975 as an experimental project of several European countries.
HTR projects, including the THTR and
the Fort St. Vrain HTR. Blue characterized it, Peach Bottom worked “like a Swiss watch.”
In the United States, Peach Bottom 1 in Pennsylvania was the Unit 1 at Peach Bottom was followed by two conventional boil-
first commercial HTR, put into planning in 1958, just a year after ing water reactors at the same site.
the first U.S. nuclear plant went on line at Shippingport, Penn- General Atomics next built a larger HTR, the 330-megawatt
sylvania. Built by General Atomics and operated by the Phila- Fort St. Vrain plant in Colorado, which operated from 1977 until
delphia Electric Company, the prototype HTR operated success- 1989, using a uranium-thorium fuel. Unfortunately mechanical
fully from 1966 to 1974, producing power for the grid and problems with the bearings—a non-nuclear problem—made
operating information on HTRs. As General Atomics’ Linden the plant too expensive to operate, and it was shut down. (Gen-

Courtesy of Exelon Nuclear

The Peach Bottom nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania, the first U.S. commercial high-temperature reactor, operated “like a Swiss
watch.” Unit 1 is the white-domed structure, at left. Two conventional boiling water nuclear reactors are operating now at the site.

28 Fall 2008 21st Century Science & Technology

 General Atomics
Inside the reactor core of Fort St. Vrain high-temperature reactor in Colorado, during construction. The 330-megawatt plant had me-
chanical problems with the bearings, which made it uneconomical to operate, and it was shut down in 1989.

eral Atomics’ Linden Blue discusses this in the accompanying for the initial conceptual design. Now the University has just
interview.) Later, Fort St. Vrain was transformed into a natural gas signed a Cooperative Research and Development Agreeman
power plant. with Los Alamos National Laboratory, to develop a “pipeline of
General Atomics continued its HTR research through the 1980s new nuclear reactor engineers” (a Bachelors degree program) to
and in 1993, began a joint project with the Russians to develop be ready immediately for working in power plants, national lab-
the GT-MHR, with a focus on using the reactor to dispose of sur- oratories, or one of the U.S. nuclear agencies. According to the
plus Russian weapons-grade plutonium, by burning it as fuel. The agreement, Los Alamos will send its scientists and engineers to
HTR is particularly suitable for this purpose, because of the high the campus to teach and lead research, along with R&D equip-
burnup of fuel (65 percent). Later in the 1990s, the French com- ment. The University’s engineering staff will work with Los Ala-
pany Framatome and Japan’s Fuji Electric joined the program. mos on research and joint seminars.
Today the conceptual design for the GT-MHR is complete and The project is named HT3R (pronounced “heater”), which
work continues to advance on the engineering, but construction stands for high-temperature teaching and test reactor. Dr. James
cannot start until sufficient funds are available. The site selected Wright, who manages HT3R, told this writer that the initial ef-
for the reactor is Tomsk-7, a formerly “secret city” for production forts will be “geared toward developing any non-nuclear simu-
of plutonium and weapons, today known as Seversk. lation or calculation that will move the HTGR technology for-
In 2006, the University of Texas at the Permian Basin selected ward to commercial deployment.” Wright said that they would
the GT-MHR design as the focus for a new nuclear research re- like to “eventually find a way to participate in an advanced re-
actor, to be built in West Texas near Odessa. General Atomics, actor test facility like the HT3R, but we are not necessarily tied
Thorium Power, and the local communities contributed funds to any particular design. Again, our goal is to move the HTGR
technology to commercial deployment as fast as possible.” In
Wright’s personal view, such a first reactor could be built with-
.  See an interview with James Wright, “Texas University to Build HTR Reac-
tor,” www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/2006_articles/spring%202006/Nuclear_
out Federal involvement or money, “if the economics are
Report.pdf right.”

21st Century Science & Technology Fall 2008 29

 Figure 8
The Idaho National Laboratory’s conception of the Next Generation Nuclear Plant, a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor
which would be used to produce electricity and high-quality heat for the production of synthetic fuels like hydrogen, and for
process heat applications in industry. The U.S. Next Generation Nuclear Plant program, based at the Idaho National Labora-
tory has not yet selected an HTR design (pebble bed or prismatic), and is on a very slow trajectory, aiming for a commercial
plant in 2030. Meanwhile, China and Japan have working experimental HTRs, and South Africa plans to move to construc-
tion with the PBMR next year.

Will the U.S. Catch Up? The other problem is that the Next Gen program has taken a
The Department of Energy’s Next Generation Nuclear Plant backseat to the Bush Administration’s Nuclear Energy Partner-
program plans to put a commercial-size HTR on line . . . by the ship (GNEP) program. The political thrust of the Department of
year 2030. So far, two industry groups have received a small Energy’s GNEP is to prevent other nations (especially those un-
amount of funding for design studies, and there is a target date of favored nations) from developing the full nuclear fuel cycle, by
2021 for a demonstration reactor of a type (pebble bed or pris- controlling the enrichment and supply of nuclear fuel. In line
matic) to be determined. But even that slow timetable is not sure, with nonproliferation, GNEP’s focus is on building a fast (breed-
given the budget limits and lack of political priority. This HTR er) reactor that is “proliferation proof”—one that would burn up
project, called the Very High Temperature Reactor, is based at plutonium, preventing any diversion for bomb making. Non-
Idaho National Laboratory, and is planned for coupling with a proliferation, an obsession with both the Bush Administration
hydrogen production plant. At the slow rate it is going, the Unit- and the Democrats, in reality is just a euphemism used for years
ed States, a former nuclear pioneer, may find itself importing this by the Malthusian anti-nuclear movement to kill civilian nuclear
next-generation technology from a faster advancing nation. power.

.  For more on this topic, see “The Neo-cons Not Carter Killed Nuclear Energy,”
.  This program is discussed in “It’s Time for Next Generation Nuclear Plants” 21st Century, Spring-Summer 2006, www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/2006_
by Marsha Freeman, 21st Century, Fall 2007, www.21stcenturysciencetech. articles/ spring%202006/Wohlstetter.pdf; and “Bush Nuclear Program: Techno-
com/Articles%202007/NextGen.pdf logical Apartheid,” EIR, July 6, 2007.

30 Fall 2008 21st Century Science & Technology

 INET

Will the U.S. be left behind? PBMR and China both plan to start HTR construction in
It would make sense under the Next
2009. Above: Artist’s depiction of planned site for a commercial HTR in China.
Gen program for the United States to
Below: Artist’s illustration of the planned PBMR facility at Koeberg, South Africa, near
build a prototype GT-MHR, because the the location of two conventional nuclear reactors.
South Africans are building a PBMR, and
this would give the world working mod-
els of each type. But at the present pace
and budget, without a major commit-
ment on the level of the Manhattan Proj-
ect, a U.S. demonstation reactor is barely
on the horizon.
The problem is not with the technolo-
gy. Speaking at a press conference on the
HTR in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 1, Dr.
Regis Matzie, Senior Vice President &
Chief Technology Officer at Westinhouse,
who chaired the HTR 2008 conference,
stated flatly, “We don’t have a national
priority” on building an HTR, and other
countries which do—South Africa and
China, for example—can move faster. At
the same press conference, Linden Blue
summed up the current HTR situation
philosophically. With any new technolo-
gy he said, you have an initial period of
ridicule; then the technology is viciously PBMR
attacked; and then, finally, the technolo-
gy is adopted as self-evident. Soon after that, Blue said, every- The cost of developing the HTR is minuscule, in comparison
one will be commenting on that first HTR, “What took you so with the trillions of dollars being sunk into the unproductive and
long?” losing gamblers on Wall Street. The cost of not developing these
The nuclear power revolution is now within our grasp, here in fourth-generation reactors will be measured in lives lost, and
the United States, in South Africa, in China, in Japan, in Europe. perhaps civilizations lost.

21st Century Science & Technology Fall 2008 31

INTERVIEW: LINDEN BLUE

The Modular High-Temperature

Reactor: Its Time Has Come!
Linden Blue is vice chair- “Technology is a wonderful thing! People invent
man of General Atomics in better things to solve problems. And this is exactly
San Diego, where he is re- what’s happened here. Over this 50-year period,
sponsible for the develop- the reactor design has improved dramatically.
ment of the advanced gas- We’ve made mistakes, and we’ve cured them. And
turbine modular helium now we have something that is so safe, and so
reactor (GT-MHR). General economical, and so efficient, and so non-polluting,
Atomics, which has a wide that its time has come.”
range of high-technology
projects, has been involved amount, to say nothing of the sometimes disruptive effect of
with the development of dropping 1,000 or 1,200 megawatts into a given market.
HTRs for more than 50 years.
Marjorie Hecht
Mr. Blue was formerly CEO Question: You’re talking about the capital cost here.
of Beech Aircraft and general manager of Lear Jet, both in Wich- Yes, that’s the capital costs, construction. The operating eco-
ita, Kansas. He was interviewed by Marjorie Mazel Hecht on nomics are affected by the 50 percent greater efficiency of the
Oct. 27, 2008. gas reactor. Overall, you have an equation that’s pretty hard to
beat.
Question: Your outlook has always been visionary: You see the
need worldwide for a reliable, safe power source. What do you Question: And the GT-MHR is designed at a size to be mass pro-
think will enable us to turn the corner, and begin mass produc- duced?
tion? Yes, a good size would range from 100 to 300 megawatts for
Historically we’ve gotten our economics in nuclear by mak- the HTR, versus 1,200 megawatts for a conventional water reac-
ing the plants bigger and bigger, and getting “the econ-
omies of size scale.” But the reality is that everything
we have in life that is, let’s say, economical, has gotten
that way because it’s mass produced. Everything from
coffee cups to cars. There are no exceptions that I can
think of right now.
Cutaway view of
Well, obviously, we’re not going to produce nuclear
the GT-MHR,
reactors in the numbers that we’ve produced cars, but showing the
perhaps a better analogy would be airplanes, which are reactor vessel
produced in serial production, in relatively low num- (right) and power
bers. The learning curve get the costs down through se- conversion vessel.
rial production. I think it’s possible that if you get the The helium gas
right sized gas reactor, you can have these produced in directly drives a
quantities where you get all the benefits of mass pro- gas turbine
duction, with favorable learning curves. generator, which
Said another way, there are two ways to get econo- gives the reactor
nearly a 50
my: One is to make the reactors bigger and bigger,
percent increase
which seems to have reached the point of diminishing
in efficiency.
return, and the other way is through mass-production.
The latest projection for light water reactors, because
of the run-up of commodity prices, has been as high as
$6,000 per kilowatt, and if you have a 1,200-megawatt
reactor, you’re looking at $7 or $8 billion. That’s a huge
General Atomics

32 Fall 2008 21st Century Science & Technology

 cy—that’s tremendously signifi-
cant. That lays the foundation
for considerably greater eco-
nomics.

Question: How are we going to

gear up to get this done? What
manufacturing resources exist
already, and what would we
need to create?
I think we really have all the
resources to do it. Let’s just walk
through that.
First of all, you’ve got to have
reactor vessels. Well, that takes
heavy steel. There’s heavy steel
capability here in the U.S. The
steel needs to be rolled, and
then some of the fittings need to
be machined. There’s plenty of
machining capability here for
that purpose.
Some of the big light water re-
© Queen’s Printer for Ontario, 2008
actors require forgings, and
Serial production, as with these airplanes during World War II, will enable the fourth-generation these can only be made in Ja-
nuclear reactors to be economical. Here, an airplane assembly line at the Canadian Car and
pan. But I think if we make ours
Foundry Co., in Fort William.
the right size, we’ll be able to
tor. You’re duplicating the learning in the production process six produce them in a variety of places around the world, rather
times as frequently, and that makes a huge difference. So, the than using the tremendously expensive forgings.
modular approach has always been attractive. Now it’s mostly a
matter of doing it. Question: Right now in Japan, I think if they gear up they can
The history of how the light water reactors came about—they only do nine a year, so that’s not exactly mass production.
came out of submarines. They were the only ones
that were available at the time. They’ve served us
well, but the question is, is that what we want to
build a lot of for the future? My answer would be
no: You want to build the safest possible reactor
that you can, and the most economical. I believe
that takes you to the modular approach for econo-
my and the inherent safety approach for safety. To
do that, you need ceramic fuel and a Brayton cy-
cle. Helium as the heat transfer fluid enables
both.
When you are dealing with higher temperatures
of a gas reactor and a Brayton cycle instead of a
Rankine cycle, you get on the order of 50 percent
more thermal efficiency. That is huge in something
as basic as primary energy. You create heat and
turn it into some kind of work. Steam cycles have
been doing that very well, ever since Robert Fulton United Steelworkers
and the steamboat, but there’s a better way, if you Inside a steel rolling mill, where slabs of steel are transformed into plates,
can use a fluid like helium to directly drive a tur- sheets, and strips. Reactor vessels for the modular HTR can make use of heavy
bine. So, to go from 33 percent efficiency to 48 rolled steel, instead of the more expensive forgings needed for larger nuclear
percent—nearly a 50 percent increase in efficien- reactors.

21st Century Science & Technology Fall 2008 33

 Then you go to the graphite reflectors.
There’s plenty of capacity in this country
to produce nuclear-grade graphite. It’s
very pure and it can’t burn. The industry
has plenty of capability for turning that
carbon into something useful, namely re-
flector blocks for the reactor, and also the
fuel blocks. So, that’s a matter of mobiliz-
ing the resources that are already out there
to produce carbon logs. They have to be
machined, and there is plenty of machin-
ing capacity for that.
Then you get to the fuel. There are all
kinds of places that you can make fuel.
The tiny ceramic fuel particles have to be
produced in great quantity because they
are about the size of a grain of sand. But
the processes for doing that have been
© 2008 SGL Group around for many years. We produced fuel
Nuclear-grade graphite is required for the fuel blocks and reflector blocks of the GT- at our site in San Diego many years ago in
MHR, and the United States has the manufacturing capacity for this. Here, machining huge quantities. And between the nuclear
of a large cross-section graphite block for use in electrolysis cells. fuel manufacturers around and the na-
tional laboratories, there are enough plac-
No, and so you have to look at a way of avoiding those forg- es where you could produce the fuel. Obviously, the fuel needs
ings, and I think machined steel plate is the way to do that. Keep to be tested, and the quality needs to be controlled rigorously,
in mind that the characteristics of the forgings or steel plates but we have almost 50 years of experience now with ceramic-
should be different between a water reactor and a gas reactor: A coated TRISO fuel particles, and that’s a darn good base from
water reactor cannot sustain a leak, because if you lose water as which to operate.
a coolant, you can have a meltdown. But in the gas reactor you Then you go to things like control rods, which are very straight-
cannot have a meltdown, because of its inherent safety. forward. The gas reactor can shut itself down automatically even
So I think there’s a production capability for the vessels, with without the control rods, because of the negative temperature
a combination of rolled steel and steel plates that are ma- coefficient, which means that if the reactor heats up over a cer-
chined. tain point, it will shut itself down. The control rods are just a
simple mechanical device.
And then you get to the power conversion module, the tur-
bine. You can think of it as a jet engine, which instead of having
a big fan on the front, it has a generator. That turbine operates at
lower temperatures, lower speeds, and lower stresses, and far,
far fewer cycles (the things that sometimes wear out engines)
than jet engines do. And also they are not subject to weight sen-
sitivities as jet engines in airplanes are.
So it’s a relatively unchallenging use of turbine technologies
to produce turbines for high-temperature reactors. The engineer-
ing codes for designing the turbines are well established, as are
production techniques.
The exercise then is to build a turbine that takes a hot gas,
which turns the turbine, and that is attached to the generator. On
the other end of the jet engine is the compressors. These com-
press the helium gas, and then send it back on through the reac-
tor for another load of heat energy—in a continuous cycle.
When you ask the turbine manufacturers if there’s high risk in
that part of the power conversion module, they say, “No, there’s
A close-up of silicon carbide, used in coating the TRISO (tris- very low risk.” The turbine guys say that there may be risk in the
tructural-isotropic) fuel particles for the HTR. reactor design, but not in the power conversion module.” By

34 Fall 2008 21st Century Science & Technology

 HTR which operated 1976-1989], which worked
very poorly.
The Achilles’ heel at Fort St. Vrain was the water-
lubricated circulation bearings, and we simply
don’t have those problems with the magnetic bear-
ings. Magnetic bearings are a very elegant technical
solution for bearings, just like the turbine itself.
Magnetic bearings have almost no wear, because
there’s no friction.
The art in using magnetic bearings is having a
catcher system in case the electricity goes off, for
any reason. Of course, that’s extremely remote, be-
cause you have back-up batteries, and a back-up
source of electricity. But even in the case where
there was a total loss of electricity, the catcher bear-
ing solution is something that’s very
General Atomics
susceptible to good design.
Electromagnetic bearings The generator is very straightfor-
on a test rig. Because ward. There are all kinds of genera-
there is no friction, there tors everywhere in the world, so
is almost no wear on that’s not a problem.
these bearings. Inset is a The recuperators in the system
drawing of the catcher are just heat exchangers, and the
bearing used with the Radial catcher bearing
science of heat exchangers has pro-
electromagnetic bearing gressed mightily in the last 20-30
in the unlikely case of an
years, and so the plate fin recupera-
electricity outage. Axial catcher bearing
tors are very efficient and relatively
General Atomics inexpensive. They are not suscepti-
ble to the problems of the leakage
contrast, our reactor guys, who have been working with the re- in heat exchangers, because you are just leaking helium to he-
actors for almost 50 years, say, “Well, no, the reactor isn’t risky
lium, and if you have a small leak, it doesn’t go outside of the
at all, after all the work we’ve done over these 50 years, but we
system; it remains inside the pressure vessel. It only shows up in
don’t know about the power conversion module.” a small loss of efficiency.
Obviously, you have to form a team that has
all the necessary disciplines to deal not only
with the reactor, but with the power conversion
module.
And when you get into the capability to build
the turbine, there is Rolls Royce, General Elec-
tric, and other turbine manufacturers. There’s
plenty of capability out there to do the rotating
machinery.
A critical element in the power conversion
module is the bearings for the turbine. Magnetic
bearings are a state-of-the-art bearing system,
which was not available 20 years ago, but are in
common use today, particularly in gas-pumping
booster stations. Magnetic bearings are a far
better solution than the oil-lubricated bearings
that we used in Peach Bottom 1 [the high-tem-
perature reactor in Pennsylvania in the 1960s],
which worked just fine, and better than the General Atomics

water-lubricated bearings that we used in the A recuperator, the type of heat exchanger used in the GT-MHR, is highly effi-
circulation pump in Fort St. Vrain [the Colorado cient, compact, and relatively inexpensive.

21st Century Science & Technology Fall 2008 35

 So you take all these technical aspects, which some people That is a significant factor any place you put them, but particu-
might think of as challenges, and you examine them item by larly in small countries where they don’t have a grid where they
item, and you see that the industrial infrastructure is there, the can bring other power in.
technology is there, and it’s just a matter of matching the indus- It’s a far better way to handle the electricity load of a smaller
trial infrastructure and the technology to the money to get a pro- country. It’s far better because you’re not dealing with a safety
totype built. equation which absolutely demands that everything be perfect
And once a prototype is built, and it has proven its reliability, all the time, and so you can see this kind of technology being
then people will look back and say, “Gee, this is obviously a employed in Third World countries where you probably wouldn’t
much better technical solution; why didn’t we do this years want to have a large light water reactor.
ago?”
Question: Well, a large reactor would overwhelm the grid of
Question: It sounds like the manufacturing capability is there, most of those countries. . . . You mentioned at the HTR press
at least in concept, and some of it is operating already in the conference in Washington that you thought we could be pro-
U.S. and elsewhere. But we’re missing that crucial element of ducing 60,000 of these reactors, and I wasn’t shocked by that
political will here, and we need that to get this done. number, because we’ve estimated that the world will need
That’s true. But here the gas reactors have real advantages. 6,000 reactors of 1,000-megawatt equivalent by the year 2050,
First of all, I think it’s much easier politically to deal with mod- just to keep up with the growth in electricity demand. So, how
ules of 100 megawatts, rather than reactors of 1,200 mega- do we get this going?
watts. We simply have to build a demonstration reactor. And then
Number two: it is the safety characteristics that any commu- once it is demonstrated, and once people understand that it’s
nity can get their arms around and understand. A high-school real, and they see the economics of it, and see the safety of it,
physics class can do the calculations, and they can see that you then there will be just overwhelming demand for it. That’s the
simply can’t get to temperatures that can fail the fuel, so you kind of challenge or problem that every manufacturer loves to
can’t have a meltdown and you don’t need an evacuation area, see. It’s a lot easier to produce things in quantity, than it is by
as some reactors do. So, if there’s nothing to evacuate, you don’t single units.
need an evacuation zone, and they say, “That’s the kind of reac- So, getting the money matched with the technical capability
tor we would like to see. And because it assures low-cost elec- and getting the first one built is what it’s all about.
tricity to our communities and factories, and a good industrial
capability, we look at all the alternatives, and see that this is a Question: There is a demonstration reactor being built, in South
better alternative than coal or oil, or even than other nuclear.” Africa, of the PBMR pebble bed variety, so it would make sense
American people are smart, and if all the facts are laid out to if here, under the NGNP, the Next Generation Nuclear Plant,
them, and they can see that this really is a different kind of phys- we go with the GT-MHR type of high-temperature reactor. But,
ics that governs these reactors, then they say, “Yes, this is better NGNP is a very “slow boat” at the moment.
than the alternatives.” I agree. NGNP would be a very good thing to do. I think that
We all know that we need energy. Energy is what advances this technology is ripe for the private sector to take it up and do
civilization and living standards, and this looks like the best it. . . .
source of energy there is. Even horses cause a certain amount of
pollution. Question: What about Russia? You have an engineering pro-
gram going with the Russians on the GT-MHR. Can they put any
Question: Quite a lot, if that’s all you have for transporta- funding into it, in terms of building a prototype there?
tion. . . . I think other countries, especially in the developing The Russians have been collaborating with us for quite some
sector, are particularly interested in this reactor, because it can time, in work on a plutonium disposition program [burning up
accommodate to a smaller power grid, and be added onto as weapons plutonium], which everybody wants to see happen.
the grid increases. And the Russians do a superb job of designing and engineering
That’s very important, and obviously that is a much better so- and the physics. They have a good background in this technol-
lution. ogy. So I think collaboration with the Russians on this could be
Also, because of the modularity, maintenance is easier. All re- very real, and has good potential.
actors require some maintenance. Obviously if you have a The demand is great enough, so that there should be a lot of
1,200-megawatt reactor, and you shut it down for maintenance, participants in this kind of program.
you’ve got to replace it with 1,200 megawatts from something
else. In the case of a modular reactor, any place that you have a Question: The Russians seem to be moving faster in terms of
bunch of them, you can just shut them down for maintenance putting new reactors into motion. Of course, they are building
one by one, and the amount of power that you’re losing is so industrial-size conventional reactors and fast reactors.
small, that you don’t have to have a source of back-up power. That is true, and exactly what their rate of speed will be as

36 Fall 2008 21st Century Science & Technology

 Japan Atomic Energy Agency

Sintering fuel particles for Japan’s HTTR at the Nuclear Fuel In-
dustries, Ltd.

75 cents per gallon; that’s really attractive. Many people who are
now paying $3 to $4 per gallon would be overjoyed to be able
to charge their cars at night for 75 cents per gallon of gas equiv-
alent.
Japan Atomic Energy Agency
Schematic of the HTTR, Japan’s 30-megawatt high-temperature Question: It’s also very convenient. But you have to have that
demonstration reactor, which has a prismatic block core. electric power grid.
Yes, and you have to have that off-peak power—that’s be-
they deal with the lower price of oil, I don’t know. The Russians tween 11 PM at night and, say, 5 AM. With nuclear plants, you
have their own economic problems right now. We have found don’t want to shut them down. It makes sense to sell off-peak
the Russians to be very good partners in the plutonium disposi- power at a lower rate, particularly to charge electric cars.
tion program, and that could very easily be converted to a devel-
opment of a civilian power reactor. Question: I think the problem we face now in this time of finan-
cial collapse is that we need a Franklin Roosevelt approach. . . .
Question: What’s the estimated cost of the first reactor, the And a critical part of this is building nuclear plants. You really
demonstration reactor, and what would the cost be when don’t have a future without nuclear.
you’re in mass production? That’s right: Modern industrial societies need power, lots of it.
I believe that the first module could be built for between $600 Solar will come along; wind can provide a little bit. But the
million and $1 billion. That’s my estimate. There are some esti- heavy lifting can only be done by hydrocarbons or nuclear.
mates that are higher, but I think that when you apply manufac-
turing disciplines to it, and keep things simple, that would prob- Question: And we want to save the hydrocarbons for other
ably be a realistic number. uses, not just burning them up. Nuclear is an optimistic way to
When you get into mass production and come down the look at how we can build ourselves out of this collapse.
learning curve, I think you’re looking at less than $2,000 per Yes. It’s basic production, not paper streams of profit. It’s add-
kilowatt, or about $200 million for a 100-megawatt reactor. ing basic energy for production. Building such plants would put
Right at the moment, that’s actually a lot better than the big light a lot of people to work. It would obviously do good things for the
water reactors. So, at that kind of a rate, you really have some- construction industry. It would have a huge effect throughout
thing that is very economical. the economy to have a major surge in building these plants, and
The other thing that the world is going to see is more electric it would save the $7 billion a day that has been going from the
vehicles, and this kind of reactor would be an ideal way of pro- industrial world to the oil producers. That was the figure at the
ducing electricity to power electric vehicles. Essentially, you time that oil was at $120 a barrel, so it’s less than that now. But
could fill your electric tank at home at night for the equivalent of even so, there’s a huge transfer of wealth to the oil-producing

21st Century Science & Technology Fall 2008 37

countries. HTRs would dramatically
change that.
I think I told you my theory for what the
potential of this is. Right now we get 20
percent of our electricity, but only 8 per-
cent of our total energy from nuclear. If
we go to the French example of produc-
ing 80 percent of power with nuclear, that
would raise us from 8 to 32 percent of our
total energy, just by itself. That would cre-
ate a huge difference in our oil consump-
tion and natural gas imports.
Then, if you assume that we could pro-
vide half of the transportation fuel by us-
ing electric vehicles, and then half of the
process heat from this kind of nuclear—
and you know because of the higher tem-
peratures, we can do most process heat
applications that the lower-temperature
nuclear reactors can’t do. So between the
French example on electricity, and half of
the transportation and half the process
General Atomics
heat, you’re up to the potential electricity
from nuclear to 62 percent. That would The dedication of the Peach Bottom HTGR Atomic Power Station in 1967. From left,
almost eliminate our balance of payments Lee Everett and R.G. Rincliffe, Philadelphia Electric Co.; Atomic Energy Commission
Chairman Glenn Seaborg; and John Kemper, Philadelphia Electric Co.
problem. To say nothing of getting the
price of oil and gas down to realistic lev-
els. It just has a huge effect. The environmental advantages way to do this?” And they said, well, in submarines you obvi-
would be another big bonus. ously need very very high power densities, greater power output
per reactor vessel size, because space is at such premium. But
Question: I think there are also the educational and cultural ef- for terrestrial applications, the primary criterion should be the
fects of going nuclear, because when you have a society mov- ultimate safety. And how do you produce the ultimate safety?
ing forward like that, it gives kids a future. Now what do they You make ceramic fuel, not metallic fuel, and you use helium
have—training to run a windmill? We’re going backwards. coolant instead of water, because helium is a noble gas and
It could give a lift everywhere. Right now we’re mortgaging doesn’t corrode.
our future, buying all that oil, and the HTR is a real alternative. Of course, back in those days we were still using a Rankine
cycle, and it wasn’t until the late ’80s or maybe early ’90s that
Question: We could be producing hydrogen too, as a fuel. we decided the technologies were mature enough to do a Bray-
Yes, that comes next, and that has significant potential. I think ton cycle. But since that period we’ve felt that the direct conver-
in the short term, the electricity for vehicular transportation sion Brayton cycle was the thing to do.
makes sense. You already have the electrical grid for distribu- So it’s been in that 50-year period that we’ve been evolving
tion. the HTR, and everything has been improved, from the fuel, to
People could see that instead of sending all that money to oil- the jet engine-like turbines.
producing countries, we could keep that money inside this We have also had a major setback with the Fort St. Vrain ca-
country. Nuclear has no pollution, as with burning hydrocar- pacity factor. It was never a safely issue; it was a hydromechani-
bons. That’s a better way of doing things. So what’s the negative cal problem, not a nuclear problem. We just screwed up in the
here? The answer is inertia! We’ve got to get it done! design of those lubricator bearings. The water could get into the
reactor, and so they would have to shut the reactor down to
Question: I have an historical question now. When did General drain it out. So magnetic bearings are a huge advance.
Atomics get involved with the high temperature reactor? Technology is a wonderful thing! People invent better things
It was about 50 years ago. First of all, General Atomics was to solve problems. And this is exactly what’s happened here.
founded for the peaceful use of nuclear energy. It was back in Over this 50-year period, the reactor design has improved dra-
the Eisenhower Atoms for Peace era, in the middle 1950s. And matically. We’ve made mistakes, and we’ve cured them. And
you had a lot of very smart people, who asked, “What is the best now we have something that is so safe, and so economical, and

38 Fall 2008 21st Century Science & Technology

 And then you need a lot of
computer-savvy people running
them, and that’s sort of every-
body in the current generation.
Because increasingly Moore’s
Law is going to govern nuclear
control, just like it does every-
thing else, where you have the
vastly greater capability to con-
trol machines electronically. You
also have much better systems
for safety.

Question: What’s Moore’s Law?

Gordon Moore, the visionary
head of Intel, many years ago
said that computing capability
would double every 18 months.
Now he said that 20 or 30 years
ago. Well, it has worked like
clockwork. When you have that
kind of a compound improving
effect, you have a dramatically
increasing capability. That’s
what’s happened in computers,
The General Atomics Reactor operating floor during fuel loading at the prototype Peach Bottom
and that’s why the world is in-
HTGR, 1966. Peach Bottom, operated by the Philadelphia Electric Co. at Peach Bottom, Penn-
creasingly driven by computers.
sylvania, successfully supplied power to the grid from 1967 to 1974.
And controlling nuclear reac-
tors is just an absolutely ideal
so efficient, and so non-polluting, that its time has come. application for automated electronic controls.

Question: Yes, it’s overdue. in fact! Question: But you still need that human element.
Well, you recognize that, and what you’re doing is drawing You still will have that human element. You enable the hu-
attention to the problem, and you’re saying, “Hey, there is an al- man beings to do a much better job. It’s like flying an airplane,
ternative, there is a solution.” All too frequently people say, which I know something about. Right now, because of the
“There’s no way to deal with this.” Well, there is a way to deal electronics that Moore’s law allows, it’s almost impossible for
with it. a pilot to lose what we call situational awareness, where they
become confused and they don’t know exactly what’s going
Question: The PBMR people proposed for Africa having region- on, or where they are. These advanced electronic systems
al centers to train engineers and technicians and perhaps a make everything dramatically easier and therefore much safer.
continent-wide regulatory agency. Have you any thoughts on And that’s one of the reasons you’re seeing such an improve-
that? ment in aircraft operations, and the same thing can be done
That could be a good solution for Africa. I think that the U.S. with reactors.
is the gold-standard for nuclear licensing, and I think that there’s
plenty of residual capability in our universities to properly train Question: I wish that there were a similar “law” about mass
people, so I don’t look at that as a major problem. One of the production of nuclear reactors. . . .
reasons, again, is that this is such a simple system. You want to Well, you don’t have Moore’s law in all areas of production,
have experienced people running them, but if you have people but you do have the benefit of it. Since there’s a lot of electronics
with less experience, they still can’t mess them up—in the way in any sophisticated power plant, you get a lot of benefits from
human beings messed up at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. the miniaturization, the redundancy, all of the advantages of
It’s just inherently not possible for human beings to cause melt- modern computing, so that’s a big reason why it makes sense to
downs in these modular reactors. So obviously, you do need to have modular reactors, because you can have a standard set of
train a lot of people, but the U.S. has a great labor force to work electrical controls, and the price of those controls further reduc-
with. es the price of reactor modules and their operation.

21st Century Science & Technology Fall 2008 39

INTERVIEW: JACO KRIEK

South Africa’s PBMR Is Moving Forward!

Jaco Kriek is CEO of the “PBMR is one of the few engineering and science
Pebble Bed Modular Reactor megaprojects South Africa has. We should not
(Pty) Ltd. in South Africa. He waste that opportunity. It’s an opportunity in a
was born in South Africa, lifetime for a developing country.”
Kwa-Zulu Natal, in a town
called Vryheid and raised on
a game farm bordering the forming South Africa—its economy, its industries, and it work-
Itala Game reserve. Before force?
joining PBMR in 2004, he I think the impact and the potential for gas reactors has been
was executive vice president kept alive by PBMR for many years, at a time when nobody
of South Africa’s Industrial wanted to touch it, and nobody was interested in nuclear. Now
Development Coporation, there is a nuclear revival, and you see a lot of others coming
Marjorie Hecht
responsible for mega-proj- along, that were in the business many years ago. We are not
ects, including the PBMR, just a small local entity. Already South Africa has created a nu-
the Mozal Aluminum Smelter, and others. He was interviewed clear industry, although it’s still young. We have the U.S. Nucle-
in Washington, D.C., by Marjorie Mazel Hecht on Sept. 29, ar Regulatory Commission coming to our regulator to learn how
2008. our regulatory licensing is coming along. There was a visit a few
weeks ago, a delegation of about 15 people from the NRC, visit-
Question: To me the PBMR represents optimism, not just for ing our test facilities. And we’ve got an ASME workshop next
South Africa but for the whole continent. I see both the PBMR week—the American Society of Mechanical Engineers—be-
and the General Atomics GT-MHR as the “workhorses” for cause our design is based on ASME standards, and we had to
what we need for the future. make some additions to the ASME codes and standards—ASME
How do you view the PBMR and its role in terms of trans- Plus. So ASME is engaged with our regulator.

Design for a
PBMR with four
nuclear modules.
Because of the modular
design, nuclear reactors
can be added to the complex
as needed, making use of the
same non-nuclear facilities.
PBMR

40 Fall 2008 21st Century Science & Technology

 In South Africa, we’ve kept the nuclear
idea alive—in public opinion—and there-
fore when the state utility Eskom just an-
nounced that they were going to build a
number of large reactors, there was no
outcry. The country’s citizens almost have
an attitude of “We knew it was coming.”
When you talk about local industry: we
are now busy with about five local com-
panies, to get them ASME accreditation,
so that they can manufacture nuclear-
grade components for us. We have agree-
ments now with six universities, and we’re
increasing the number, to include nuclear
engineering as a subject. Last year was
the first year that two nuclear engineers
qualified for PBMR bursaries. In addition,
we have research projects with those six PBMR
universities. The PBMR Helium Test Facility at Pelindaba is testing many of the plant components
And we have created the Nuclear In- in a helium environment. The non-nuclear facility is designed to test helium at the
dustry Association of South Africa. Areva, high temperatures and pressures that will be experienced in the Pebble Bed Modular
Westinghouse, Mitsubishi Heavy Indus- Reactor.
tries, and others—Eskom, Uranium One,
Necsa—are members now. It’s grown tremendously, and all the they have no discipline. They go wild, and they actually attack
big local companies have joined. Its purpose is really to con- rhinos, and cars. The matriarch is the one who imposes and
solidate all the initiatives—education, regulatory issues, manu- keeps discipline. So we were without a “matriarch”! And there-
facturing, licensing, industrial capacity, government liaison, fore, we made mistakes with our regulator—lack of respect, let’s
policy issues. say for the nuclear safety culture, for the regulatory require-
So PBMR is a substantial local industry. We have over 800 ments, for the customer.
people locally employed, and worldwide we probably have But I think that the “matriarchs” that we got involved, for ex-
1,800 people involved in the PBMR program—suppliers, uni- ample, Westinghouse, IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agen-
versities, and in departments of government. cy], INPO [Institute of Nuclear Power Operations], to help us,
and a lot of work inside PBMR, helped us to understand and to
Question: You are producing the first of a planned series of a really get a nuclear culture. We were a company that was put
new kind of reactor. What stage are you at now? together by people from the arms industry, utilities, and some
We have basically had to handle a number of challenges. This from the old Atomic Energy Corporation of South Africa (cur-
is the first time South Africa is licensing a nuclear reactor. It’s a rently Necsa). So, in the arms industry, you build a cannon and
first-of-a-kind reactor. We’ve got the issues of conventional PWR you test it. It’s a different culture.
[pressurized water reactor] safety philosophies, and we measure With nuclear, the knowledge and expertise are there, but it’s
accordingly. This is a new concept, with new characteristics— how you do it, the paperwork, the procedures to follow, So
inherent safe characteristics, meltdown proof. It’s different, and those were challenges. And I think in hindsight, the disadvan-
for us, we have to justify on paper that it’s different, and that the tage was that we were not part, for example, of Areva or West-
regulator should accept what you say on behalf of the public inghouse. We were not part of a “mothership” that looks after
that it’s safe, without having a reactor built. Obviously there you—people, processes, funding. We were created from
have been other similar reactors. But the regulator wants to see scratch. Now the benefit is, we’ve got a unique culture, a young
what you’re going to do, how you’re going to operate it safely. company. . ..
That was the challenge for us.
Because South Africa didn’t have a nuclear industry or a Question: New ideas. . .
nuclear policy, the government didn’t really know how to han- Exactly. So that’s the benefit. But it was a rough grinding to get
dle this. Remember, it was originally Eskom that started this to where we are. And sometimes people say, “Why did it take so
initiative. long?”
So, we at PBMR were a bit like a young elephant bull. We’ve First of all, we had to create a company, and build two proj-
got a lot of elephants in South Africa, and they relocate them. ects. Even for Areva, building the conventional Olkiluoto re-
But what they found is that if you relocate only the youngsters, actor in Finland, this is challenging—with their stop work or-

21st Century Science & Technology Fall 2008 41

 PBMR
Wildebeest and zebra grazing near the Koeberg nuclear site, where Eskom, the state utility, operates two 900-megawatt pressurized-
water nuclear reactors, the only nuclear reactors on the continent. The PBMR demonstration reactor will be built near here. Koeberg
is on the coast, near Cape Town.

ders, etc. So, on the long-lead items there’s been a lot of progress, but
So now, when you say PBMR, they assume there’s a company, it’s been a long process.
an order department, a licensing department, risk management,
finance—that all those things are in place, at the same time that Question: When will you start to build the demonstration reac-
you’re running with the technical aspects. tor?
And now the latest status: We will start to produce graphite at We want to go on site by early next year, for the early work,
SGL Carbon in Germany in the next month or so. This is for the the non-nuclear construction. And then in 2010, we want to
core structure, the ceramics. start the nuclear construction. This is subject to our getting a
That was a breakthrough for us, because there was no bench- nuclear construction license and a successful regulatory deci-
mark for the quality of graphite required, no ASME standards. So sion on the EIA, Environmental Impact Assessment.
we had to develop our own criteria and specifications that the We are starting public meetings now in the next few weeks,
regulator would accept. This was tough. But now that has been and hope to conclude those by the end of the year.
accepted, and we have a machining facility ready where these We hope, and we are confident—but it’s not in our hands—
big one-ton blocks of graphite will be cut and machined for the that we will get a positive decision in the EIA by the second
core structure. quarter of 2009. Then we’ve allowed time for appeals and legal
We also got approval from the regulator to start the welding processes to conclude, and we hope by the end of next year that
for the pressure vessel; we’ve got the big shells, about 900 tons we have a decision from an environmental point of view that
of big shells. will allow us to go to site.
Then on the forgings for the core barrel. Some of the pieces Now we also have to still convince the nuclear regulator that
have been forged, and we’re now racing to get the welding for we can go to site, because there are certain issues in the Nucle-
that done. ar Act—One thing I should mention is that our Nuclear Act was
For the turbine: We want to start forgings for the turbine cas- not designed for new builds. It was put in place after the Koeberg
ings and we want to start to make the blades. Nuclear Plant was built, so it was designed to maintain nuclear

42 Fall 2008 21st Century Science & Technology

facilities, not to build new ones. If there is an issue at Koeberg,
the regulator does not shut it down; they will say, “I want you to
improve on this or that.” But we can’t start to build until all the
issues are resolved to the regulator’s satisfaction.
It’s a different philosophy.

Question: How is your regulatory agency put together? Is it ap-

pointed by the Parliament?
Yes, it reports to the Department of Minerals and Energy, more
or less the same as the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It’s
a board that’s appointed by the Minister, so it is an organ of state.
And also a lot of work has been done by our self capacity for co-
operation, like the NRC. The National Nuclear Regulator, or
NNR is part of MDEP, the Multilateral Design Evaluation Panel
for regulators. When there is a new design, like PBMR, the regu-
lators cooperate. So the NRC and the NNR cooperate on
PBMR.

Question: What will be the effect of the change in government

for the PBMR? Do you anticipate a lot of changes?
I don’t think so. I don’t want to sound arrogant or blasé about
it, but we’ve done a lot of work for the transition. It’s still the
ANC [Africa National Congress] that is in power, not a new par-
ty, so the policies on nuclear, on the PBMR, should stay the
same. The next ANC conference will be only in 2012. This satellite view of the African continent at night gives a strik-
ing picture of the lack of electricity. Although the continent has
From the work that we’ve done, PBMR is one of the few engi-
12 percent of the world’s population, Africa accounts for only 2
neering and science megaprojects South Africa has. We should
percent of the world’s energy consumption. More than half of
not waste that opportunity. It’s an opportunity in a lifetime for a Africa’s electricity is produced and consumed by South Africa.
developing country. SASOL [South African oil from coal com-
pany] was another example, and there are very few of those
companies in South Africa that can play on the global stage. accurately predict and analyze the impact of the strains and
As a country, South Africa is way above its weight division in stresses the demonstration plant will be subjected to when it
terms of what we’re doing. But the circumstances were just goes into operation in the real world. This is totally different from
there—we were in the right place at the right time to get this nuclear—it’s a different field, but the university can now have
technology and take it further. students and train them in it. Materials, measuring temperature
So, I don’t think we’ll see changes. Obviously for a develop- in the core, these are not nuclear, but all these technologies and
ing country there are lots of requirements on funding: infrastruc- research are around our technology. And there are many appli-
ture, social welfare, job creation. But what we’re saying is that cations. Flownex, for example, is a code that was designed for
there’s a very direct link between science and engineering proj- PBMR, and is now being used by SASOL in other areas.
ects and anti-poverty measures. Science helps with antipoverty. And companies were established because of PBMR that are
It helps raise the standard of living for people. now servicing the economy in other areas.
It’s an educational process, that we now spend a lot of time
Question: Traditionally, you need a science driver, if your on. We have to continue this with the public, because those
economy is going to grow. A lot of people don’t understand people who can’t see the link, will claim that we are a “white
that. elephant.” That’s the last thing we are. We’re an asset to the
Exactly. I’ve gone around to all the universities, to talk to the country, a pool of expertise and skills.
vice chancellors, to get them to cooperate with us, saying, “You
need to help us to make this link more visible, and clarify it, and Question: The country really has no future without nuclear. You
explain it. This is something that you should add into your com- have blackouts now with the power supply. You have enormous
munication and education about science and engineering.” unemployment.
PBMR is a good example because of the spin-offs. For exam- And if you think there’s a magic way of getting out of that,
ple, we have the fastest computer in the Southern Hemisphere without development, without research—nothing comes for
to work with our modeling and to test PBMR systems and equip- free. You have to invest, if you want to get something out for the
ment. These computers produce models in the virtual world that economy.

21st Century Science & Technology Fall 2008 43

Question: But it has to be real, produc-
tive investment, not paper.
Yes—the taxpayer gets a third of that
money back that is invested in these proj-
ects; it’s spent on the people.
So, really, in my mind, one thing that
has happened that I think is really posi-
tive, and maybe not noticed yet by the in-
ternational community (maybe it has
been, but I really don’t see it) is that here
in an African country: the President is
asked to resign, and constitutional pro-
cesses are followed, legal processes, and
there is no violence. The next President is
appointed three days later. The cabinet is
reshuffled, new cabinet ministers are ap-
pointed, and life goes on.
It’s interesting, I think we’re in good
company, because your President is about
to change!
But unfortunately, because of the Afri-
can connotation, people think that if
there’s a change, it’s going to be another
Kenya or Zimbabwe. I think South Africa,
the South African market, the South Afri-
can economy is just too strong, and I think
PBMR
it’s been demonstrated that we’ve started
South African pioneers of the pebble bed technology. From left, Dave Nicholls, first
to mature as a democracy, which is very CEO of the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (Pty) Ltd. (now with Eskom), Dr. Johan Slab-
positive. ber, and Dieter Matzner.

Question: It’s positive for the whole continent, and perhaps grids are 900 megawatts, 1,000 megawatts. To give you an ex-
you can say something about that—the role of the PBMR in ample: I was involved in Mozambique with an aluminum smelt-
transforming all of Africa. er. It’s a 1,000-megawatt plant. It uses four times the electricity
Yes, we’re talking to our regulator in fact, we’re putting a few of Mozambique, just that one project. So these small 165-mega-
people at the University of Pretoria to study nuclear law and spe- watt PBMR reactors are ideal for these countries.
cifically to set up regulatory frameworks in other countries.
Question: It’s a start that can grow with their power grids.
Question: Many African countries are interested in going nu- Yes. As somebody said in Mozambique, they use diesel fuel to
clear—about 20 of them. generate electricity, so cost is not an issue. Even if you think that
Probably initially we will need an African-wide regulator. It’s nuclear will get more expensive, it will never reach the cost of
too expensive, too complex, and probably too risky to allow ev- diesel. And then there’s the logistics of the diesel fuel.
ery country to have its own regulator. I don’t want to sound like So it’s a challenge for Africa. But South Africa is serious about
the U.S., or that we need to control it, but I think Africa needs to this. We have a visit to Tunisia next week; they want to under-
do that. stand how they can cooperate with us. Algeria, Morocco, and
Then you have to make sure that the operators are qualified Libya are also interested in the technology.
internationally, that waste issues are handled. But I think the
fastest way for Africa to get nuclear is to have a very credible Question: These are places with nuclear research reactors,
regulator—an African regulator with international operators. where there already is training of students.
If you look at the African grid, South Africa produces and con- Exactly. So, you’ll probably find that we’ll cooperate from the
sumes more than 50 percent of the electric power. South with the North, Northern Africa, and we’ll try and see
what we can do. Some of these countries want to establish nu-
Question: You see that in the satellite map of Africa at night, a clear training schools with South Africa, and invest with PBMR
dark continent, with just a few spots of light. . . . potentially. So I think that there’s a lot of potential. And that’s just
Exactly. So if you look at other countries in Africa, some of the on the extrinsic side.

44 Fall 2008 21st Century Science & Technology

 And we are not just talking about producing energy. We are
heavily dependent on imported oil, but we’ve got all that coal.
However, 60 percent of our coal is burned, just to make oil from
the coal. SASOL, for example, claims that they can extend our
coal reserves by 25 years if they don’t have to burn 60 percent of
the coal to get the oil out of the other 40 percent.
So I think that combination makes so much sense for us to go
with the PBMR.
Now if you look at the energy situation in the world, the oil
price, CO2—and we’re not saying anything on the CO2 situa-
tion—but we can see in areas of South Africa where there
are coal-fired power stations, it has an effect on the health of
people.

Question: The emissions.

Yes. Worldwide, climate change, we’re not saying we need
PBMR for that. We’re saying: Let’s get clean energy. Let’s get
security of energy supply, because coal is not going to last for-
ever. Oil is not going to last forever. So let’s use all the energy
available to us with as little impact as possible on the envi-
ronment. That gets us to nuclear. I’m not saying only nuclear,
because it’s not realistic. We will have to continue to use
coal.
We need to build 40,000 megawatts in the next 20 years. It’s
impossible to just build nuclear stations. We’ll just run into trou-
ble. Not just because of cost, but because of time, the schedule
required to get licensing, to complete construction. So these are
the issues.

Question: Once you get

the licensing for the first
PBMR
PBMR, do you have to re-
Inside the PBMR license to mass produce
Helium Test Facility at the rest?
Pelindaba. Well, obviously then
you’ve got a carbon copy
of the technology, and the
PBMR’s Helium Testing
EIA studies, but you still
Facility at Pelindaba is
testing fuel handling, have to license each site.
control rods, and
secondary shutdown Question: But you can
systems. put up six or eight plants
at the same site?
Yes, sure. The footprint
PBMR is very small, so you can
add a lot of reactors.
When a person is inside, it’s a very interesting development. If Again, at this stage, it depends on the customer. For process
you think about South Africa: We’ve got gold, we’ve got iron ore, heat, you’re probably talking about two or four units. For elec-
we’ve got uranium, we’ve got thorium, we’ve got PBMR tech- tricity, maybe you need more. But maybe you don’t, because of
nology, we’ve got companies like SASOL—with the technology the decentralized distribution; maybe a city or an area needs
of producing oil from coal. We don’t have much water to gener- two units.
ate hydro-electric power. But you put all that together, and you The distribution has now become an issue—right of way. The
don’t have to study too much to say it makes sense for South Af- transmission lines from the coal-fired power stations in the
rica to go with PBMR. northern parts of South Africa to the coast in the south are very

21st Century Science & Technology Fall 2008 45

long (about 1,500 kilometers to Cape Town), and you lose en- can, BHP Billiton, big international companies. So I think may-
ergy on your transmission lines—up to 20 percent of your ener- be the space for the Chinese is less. In other countries, like Zim-
gy on long transmission distances. At the moment, Cape Town is babwe, the international companies pulled out so there is more
dependent on the Koeberg nuclear plants, plus the transmission access for China. Same with Mozambique.
lines. You know with agriculture in Mozambique and Zimbabwe,
And the loss of 20 percent during transmission, means that they have the potential to feed the whole African continent!
out of every 100 megawatts, only 80 arrive at the end of the
line. Question: Yes, they could. And Sudan has huge agricultural po-
tential too.
Question: So you really need an upgrade of your transmission Yes, if they could just get their act together. But one of the is-
lines. sues is distribution, logistics. Another issue is that they are not
It’s happening already. allowed to export their goods. The duties on their exports are
Now, obviously with the big nuclear stations, you’re limited to high. The domestic market is small—they have too much for that
the coast. So location is an issue. We don’t have big rivers that area. So that’s always an issue for small economies.
we can locate nuclear stations on. It also applies to South Africa. If we have a big project like a
There is hydro—the Congo’s Inga project, but it is 4,000 kilo- steel plant or an aluminum smelter, we have to export. Our local
meters away. So we can’t rely too much on that. Coal is in the consumption is too small. But you have to build a big plant; oth-
north of the country, and your industrialization is on the coast. erwise it doesn’t make economic sense.
So that’s where the new big nuclear stations will assist.
But the areas where you’ve got mining activities are far from Question: My interest for many years has been with nuclear,
everything—far from the coal, far from the coast. So there is a and with developing the world. And we—the Lyndon LaRouche
good case for the PBMR, [which doesn’t need water for cool- movement—have proposed the Eurasian Land-Bridge, which
ant]. would extend from the east coast of China all the way to Rot-
I don’t think there will be many big changes from the new terdam, to open up the interior of Eurasia for development,
government on this. Affordability will be an issue—it’s always an new cities and industries. We see the PBMR and GT-MHR as the
issue. And we’re going to have to make as much progress as we work-horse reactors for that. We would start with nuclear
can. there, and there is a lot of support for this program.
I think one thing that is not yet taking place is international
Question: I think the government really can’t afford not to do cooperation. Commercially you’re trying to protect your IP [in-
it. . . . tellectual property] and your lead in the market, but I think that
What about your relationship with the Chinese? China has is why it is difficult for companies to cooperate. But countries
built a demonstration pebble bed reactor. Are you working should cooperate.
with them? And now there’s a draft agreement between South Africa and
Yes, they have basically taken over the German design, with a the United States on research on new advanced technologies,
10-megawatt reactor. It’s not a commercial size. We are in dis- like PBMR, and with the NGNP, Next Generation Nuclear Plant,
cussions with them, and I think where we could cooperate is on we’re participating in that program, and with the NRC, ASME.
the issue of licensing and process heat—they have a lot of coal. With the U.S., there is a lot of cooperation. But we’re not at the
One of our local companies, SASOL, is extremely involved in point yet where we can share the funding of these projects, to
China. The Chinese HTR also uses pebble fuel. We will have to make it easier.
establish where we are each in our program, and what the com- Unfortunately, it looks like there’s going to be duplication. In
mon areas are for cooperation. Fuel, principles of licensing and the U.S., they want to build their reactor; we are going to build
safety—those are areas we can cooperate in. our reactor; China is going to build its reactor. Japan, etc. And
We signed a memorandum of understanding with China in the first-of-a-kind costs involved in building these first ones is so
2005; we’re actually meeting them tomorrow to explore poten- expensive. If we could share that, then it would make it much
tial cooperation. . . . easier to build the reactor. Then it would be just the materials.
Test facilities—we spent $100 million on test facilities, which
Question: China has invested a lot in Africa—they are building I think in hindsight was good. We’ve learned a lot, and gained a
dams and various other big projects. So it seems that they un- lot of experience from our test facilities. And the U.S. NRC is
derstand the value of getting infrastructure built in the conti- now saying that they want to do some of their tests in our facili-
nent. ties.
But they are not as much in South Africa yet. They are in Mo-
zambique, Zimbabwe, Sudan, and some other West African Question: Of course the U.S. shut down its test facility—the
countries. I think in South Africa, because of the economy, most fully operational Fast Flux Test Facility. That was really stupid.
of the reserves are owned by different companies: Anglo-Ameri- So, in this case, you are providing leadership to the United

46 Fall 2008 21st Century Science & Technology

 damage they are doing.

Question: In some cases, I think these

groups intend to damage, because they
don’t want to see the world go nuclear,
for population reasons.
But why don’t they do it here [in the
U.S.]?

Question: Well, they do! They do fund

anti-nuclear groups here, and there is an
opposition to nuclear here. . . .
But they’re not very successful here.

Question: On the other hand, we haven’t

built any new nuclear plants since the
1970s.
I believe that there are now signs that
companies will get combined operating
Courtesy of Emerson Process Management
licenses to build new plants.
Solvent blending at a Sasol plant in South Africa. Sasol produces oil from coal, a pro-
cess that requires burning 60 percent of the coal to get oil out of the remainign 40 per- Question: Yes, but it’s very slow. And
cent. Using the high-temperature process heat of the PBMR would be far more effi- there was a lot of damage done by this
cient. funding going into the anti-nuclear
groups.
States. Because you’re moving ahead, and so far you’ve had But because you have 104 active plants, you’re a lot stronger
government support. I don’t think that situation exists in the on the nuclear front. South Africa is really at the beginning, so
U.S. in the same way. the damage to us is much bigger. They are planting doubts in the
We have a least a three-year window of predictable funding, mind of the public and the government. They say it’s too expen-
whereas the DOE programs are funded annually. sive; they call us a “white elephant.”
You find some people listening to that. They need to balance
Question: The DOE is really a dinosaur. the books on the funding, and they ask, “Should we do this for
But if you call them dinosaur, ours is older! the PBMR?” And now someone from the U.S. is saying it’s “stu-
pid.” Or “why not build windmills from Denmark.”
Question: What about the George Soros-funded opposition to
nuclear in South Africa? Question: Well, the Danish are putting funds into the anti-nu-
It is sad that foreign companies or rich people try to dictate or clear movement in South Africa.
influence policy decisions in developing countries, when in And why? Because they want to see windmills?
their own country, they are going to go nuclear. It’s sad that they
don’t want to allow us to do it, I don’t know what makes them Question: They haven’t been able to replace any conventional
feel they should spend money on this. Maybe the trust or foun- power plants in Denmark, even though they have all those al-
dation doesn’t even know that the money is spent on this. Their ternative windmills. Because the windmills don’t produce
money is so big, and spent all over the world. The funder doesn’t enough reliable energy. . . .
always realize the damage they are doing to South Africa, or to On a different subject: What do you plan to do with the used
other developing countries. nuclear fuel. Will you reprocess it?
Because what do you want us to do? Do you want us to con- As far as waste is concerned, so far there is just a low-level
tinue to import nuclear technology and fuel from the U.S., or waste site called Vaalputs, in an area called Namakwaland.
from wherever else? Why can China, Japan, France, go ahead There already is a policy approved that the utility, at the time
with nuclear—but foreign money is used in South Africa for anti- when they want to store their waste, and empty the pools, they
nuclear campaigns? It doesn’t make sense to me. But unfortu- will have to justify whether they want reprocessing, or long-term
nately, that’s how life works. storage. So the final decision hasn’t been taken yet. And it is in
If somebody has got a conscience, they’re going to spend the hands of the utility that will do the economic and technical
their money combatting malaria in Mozambique, for exam- presentations to the government.
ple. I think the anti-nuclear funders don’t really appreciate the

21st Century Science & Technology Fall 2008 47

Question: The utility being Eskom? They claim that the blackouts we had in January of this year
Yes. Now, there’s a bit of waste from Pelindaba, at Necsa, the cost the economy 50 billion rand.
Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa, at the moment, is
the custodian of the low-level waste. So Vaalputs is the site, but Question: And what you could have done with that. . . .
it’s only for very low-level waste. None of the spent fuel from Exactly. We could have built lots of reactors with that. . . . And
Koeberg has been moved there. Eskom now has to make a decision on its big reactors, between
I don’t think South Africa will ever put up a reprocessing facil- Westinghouse and Areva. The issue is cost. The nuclear renais-
ity; it’s too expensive. France, Japan, and eventually the U.S., are sance, in my view, has selected the wrong time to start. Capital
going to go in that direction. But we’ll always have to send out investment is high. The penalty is a lot more now.
our spent fuel for reprocessing. I know the French have already The question is, will electricity get cheaper? And I don’t know
made a proposal to Eskom, because the Koeberg station’s sister for the foreseeable future, because if you look at how many re-
station in France, is already operating on MOX fuel [mixed ox- actors are being built or planned, the demand is going to be
ide made from recycled fuel]. So Koeberg, with some adjust- there, but the supply chain might not keep up with it.
ments, can also operate on MOX fuel.
And what’s interesting on the NGNP, is that there is now re- Question: At the press conference this morning, I raised the
search that high temperature reactor fuel can utilize plutonium question that we’re in a complete financial collapse. And what
from the waste of nuclear weapons. we need is 6,000 nuclear reactors to meet demand—the equiv-
alent of 6,000 at 1,000 megawatts; they don’t all have to be
Question: That’s what the General Atomics GT-MHR is doing. 1,000 megawatts.
Yes, with Russia. I think if the industry is convinced that it’s sustainable, the ca-
And we are also looking at waste minimization. We want to pacity will come. But even now, Finland [the Olkiluoto reactor]
recycle the graphite. This is a program we’re doing with research is late. The cost is enormous. In South Africa, the decision has
at one of the universities, and with the European Union, with been postponed. Europe is moving slower than people thought.
SGL Carbon, a German company that is producing our graphite It’s slower everywhere. So, I think industry is sitting back and say-
for the core structure and for the fuel spheres. ing, “OK, I’ll enjoy this wave of high prices, but I’m not going to
So that’s the picture on waste. expand. I’m going to wait.” They were bleeding three years ago.

Question: How did you get involved in the PBMR? Question: What they did is increase the capacity of the existing
By accident! I am a chartered accountant. In my previous plants, instead of investing in new ones, because it’s cheaper
life I was with the IDC, the Industrial Development Corpora- for them—in the short term. They are not looking ahead. They
tion, as the vice president for mega-projects. Steel plants, alu- need to be investing now.
minum plants, all the big projects were under me, and the The other question I raised at the press conference is that we
PBMR was one of them. And then, when Eskom pulled out really need a new policy, of the sort that Franklin Roosevelt in-
from the project as the lead investor, the ex-Minister [of Public stituted in the Great Depression. The U.S. banking system is
Enterprises] Alec Erwin, and my chairman, Dr. Alistair Ruiters, collapsing—the $700 billion bailout is not going to do anything
asked me if I’d be on a task team to discuss with the Cabinet for it. It can’t—it’s a bottomless pit. We have to put these banks
ministers how we were going to move the project forward. That into bankruptcy proceedings and start again in an orderly fash-
was in February 2004, and on May 27, 2004, they asked me to ion with a New Bretton Woods. I don’t see a nuclear renais-
head the company. sance being able to take place unless we have that kind of reor-
It’s been fascinating. The big mega-projects experience was ganization.
very useful to me, because thinking big, was not new to me. But I think everywhere this is a problem. In South Africa, we’ve ne-
nuclear was totally new to me. Now I know it superficially. I like glected infrastructure—roads, railways, ports, electricity, water.
the industry. And the timing was good, because of the nuclear The problem for us now is in prioritizing funding. You’ve got
renaissance. In 2004, it was totally quiet. In 2005, also. But in real poverty, unemployment, and the unions: When you say,
2006, we had an HTR conference in South Africa, and you could you’re going to build a new port, they say, “What for? We need
feel that the nuclear industry was coming back. jobs.” And this short-term mentality and inability to plan will al-
So PBMR’s timing was good. It was a little ahead of its time for ways try to make this new port look bad. It’s big infrastructure,
this renaissance. Let’s say five years or more. But in the last two it doesn’t create jobs.
or three years, that has changed, and there’s a lot more interest But that’s absolutely wrong. It’s that link, the link between
now. good roads, ports, railway lines, water. . . .
We’re in a unique situation in South Africa. We desperately So it’s an interesting debate. You also have the element of the
need energy. government that will try to say to the public, these guys are cre-
ating white elephants. “It doesn’t create jobs for me so therefore
Question: Yes, you’ve had blackouts and brownouts. it can’t be good.”

48 Fall 2008 21st Century Science & Technology

 PBMR

The Pelindaba site of the Helium Test Facility, with the Hartebeespoort Dam in the background. The 43-meter-high facility was built
to test the helium blower, valves, heaters, coolers, recuperator, and other components at pressures up to 95 bar and 1,200°C

Question: Where do they think the new jobs are going to come “If you build an aluminum smelter, we’ll build you a port.” They
from, if not from advanced technology? are not interested. Take, for example, the Coega harbour project
Unfortunately those who think only in terms of the short term, near Port Elizabeth on our east coast, which I was involved with
do not see the long-term picture. For South Africa to continue to on the IDC. “If you build a zinc plant there,” we said, “we’ll
import and export, we need new ports. Our ports are full. Mean- build a port.” And the industry said, “No, no, no, show us you’re
while, our railway lines are bad or not well maintained, so they going to build the port first.” So, what happened? The zinc plant
are using trucks to haul manganese and coal, so that messes up was cancelled.
the roads. And we lose lives too. And today there is a port, and now everybody’s saying “It’s a
white elephant, it’s not used.” But Richards Bay is a port that was
Question: We had better railways in the early 20th Century built 40 years ago. And people were saying then, “It’s crazy,
than we have now. We need to look at this worldwide, and we there’s nothing there.” But today it’s the busiest port in the South-
need to do what Roosevelt wanted to do, which is to decolo- ern Hemisphere.
nize Africa and all the other colonies, and go with the most ad-
vanced technologies, like maglev trains. . . . Question: You need to have vision. You need to think 50 years
The South African rand is one of the most traded currencies of ahead.
developing countries, and you have to be very careful with your And energy is even longer. For a nuclear plant, you have to
policies, statements, fiscal policies, because things happen fast, look ahead 60 or 80 years. So if we look back, to 1928, you had
and it does constrain you. Because if an analyst somewhere to make a decision on the nuclear stations we need now! If you
doesn’t like what you’re doing, then your currency goes. We are make an investment decision, it’s a long, long time you’re talking
vulnerable. I’m not an economist, so I don’t understand. . . . about. If you make a wrong decision—that’s where we are now.
And I’m concerned that because of the cost issues with nuclear,
Question: But you do understand that you need a science driv- that we’re going to continue with coal. And we’re going to get
er. and that you need to produce real things—you need a phys- sanctions against us. Whether it’s right or wrong, that’s the real-
ical economy, and not a paper economy. ity. It’s again one of those things that developed economies will
What a lot of people don’t appreciate, is that it’s a chicken and say, “Look what I’m doing for carbon emissions and reduction.
egg situation with infrastructure. You need to put the infrastruc- I’m putting sanctions against South Africa’s aluminum, because
ture there before industry will develop. You can’t say to industry, they use too much coal.”

21st Century Science & Technology Fall 2008 49

HIGH TEMPERATURE REACTORS 2008

Who’s Trying to Strangle the PBMR?

by Gregory Murphy

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers held a confer- Chairman of General Atomics, Linden Blue, in his keynote ad-
ence in Washington, D.C., this Fall to highlight current research dress. Blue said that the high-temperature gas-cooled reactor’s
on high-temperature gas-cooled nuclear reactors. These are the “time has come”; the new reactor will revolutionize the nuclear
new generation of supersafe nuclear reactors using tiny fuel par- industry and all other industries as well.
ticles which each carry its own containment structure. It was a welcome change compared with the current small
The Sept. 29-Oct. 1 conference focussed on the positive ben- and narrow thinking of the nuclear industry, which attempts to
efits of nuclear power, and in particular the many advantages for sell the nuclear renaissance as the best solution to the non-prob-
lem of global warming.
The optimism that Linden Blue brought to his
keynote carried over throughout the conference,
as evidenced in the animated discussions after
the conference presentations, in the hallways
and the exhibit center (where nuclear companies
have display booths). There has been a shift
among some of the people in the nuclear indus-
try, away from the “kicked dog” mentality of the
past, to a fresh sense of hope, as was shown by
the normally reserved German nuclear vendors.
They were expressing true happiness at the pros-
pect of Germany returning to a pro-nuclear pow-
er stance, as in the past, which they expect to
happen some time after the next election.

The Soros/Thomas Factor

Haunting the 2008 conference was the specter of the lat-
est attack on the South African PBMR, part of a negative
campaign which has been going on for the past decade.
The current attack was launched by a Soros-linked so-
called “professor of energy policy” at Britain’s Greenwich
University, Stephen Thomas. In July 2008, Thomas wrote a
white paper titled, “Safety Issues with the South African
Pebble Bed Modular Reactor: When Were the Issues Ap-
Behind the attacks on the PBMR are funds from George So- parent?” in which he cites a July 2008 report from Dr. Rain-
ros (top right) and the Heinrich Böll Foundation (the foun- er Moormann of the Jülich Research Center. Jülich is the
dation of the Green Party), and the hired pen of Greenwich site of the first pebble bed test reactor on which the current
University’s Steve Thomas (top left). Above, green terrorists design is based.
in the 1980s attacking a German nuclear plant. Moormann’s report, titled “A Safety Re-Evaluation of the
AVR Pebble Bed Reactor Operation and Its Consequences
industry and agriculture from the high-temperature process heat for Future HTR Concepts,” was played up by Thomas as a major
that can be produced by these new generation reactors, which work of evaluation from the famed Jülich Research Center,
include both the pebble bed design, PBMR, and the General which built and operated the AVR pebble bed reactor. In reality,
Atomics prismatic design, GT-MHR. as the conference discussion made clear, the report originated
This focus was driven home with real optimism by the Vice from one disgruntled employee of the institution, Rainer Moor-
mann, who describes himself as a “risk assessment” guy.
.  The 4th International Topical Meeting on High Temperature Reactor Technol-
In a discussion with this reporter, Thomas gave arguments
ogy (“HTR 2008: Beyond the Grid”). against the South African PBMR which seemed to be little more

50 Fall 2008 21st Century Science & Technology

The decade-long attack by George set up in the 1980s to be the South Afri-
Soros on the PBMR has been front- can Greenpeace, which attached itself
ed by green fascist and so-called to the anti-apartheid movement to gain
Professor of Energy Policy, Steve
support and legitimacy. Earth Life Africa
Thomas, of the University of
runs a large anti-nuclear campaign,
Greenwich’s School of Business. In
July, Thomas sent his recent white called “Nuclear Power Costs the Earth.”
paper, titled, “Safety issues with This is funded by the Heinrich Böll
the South African Pebble Bed Mod- Foundation in South Africa and the Wal-
ular Reactor: When Were the Is- lace Global Fund. After the presiding
sues Apparent?” to anti-nuclear judge read Thomas’s report, he ruled
groups and the European and that the environmental impact study
South African media. had to be redone. This has caused PBMR
undue delays in building the demon-
stration plant that was set to begin con-
struction in 2004.
When Thomas was asked by this au-
thor why he objected to the South Afri-
can government being the largest stake-
holder in the PBMR, Ltd. project, he
said that it was because “public money”
was being used on a project that has not
gotten off the ground, and there are oth-
er uses for that same public money, like
“health care and water projects.” Of
course, Thomas doesn’t mention that
his “reports” are the reason for the delay
“No probative value,” was the verdict of a
in building the pebble bed.
South African court on one of Steve Thom-
as’s reports on nuclear energy. Here, the ti-
tle page from his December 2005 report. Privatization and Transparency?
Let’s now look at where Thomas
University of Greenwich Public Services works: His office is in London, at the
International Research Unit
than a thinly dis- University of Greenwich’s Public Services International Re-
guised racism of search Unit. This outfit is funded by Public Services Internation-
the British imperial type. Asked to explain why he opposed the al, a confederation of international trade unions, which includes,
pebble bed reactor, Thomas argued first: Why does South Africa in the United States, Andy Stern’s Service Employees Interna-
believe that it could operate a high-temperature reactor, given tional (SEIU) and the Teamsters. Yet, Public Services Internation-
the fact that the major nuclear powers have given up on operat- al is a grouping of rabid privatizers. According to its website, the
ing them? (Doesn’t Thomas know that it was a South African who group was very active in the former Soviet bloc during the “shock
did the first-ever heart transplant? Or that Japan and China are therapy” era of Jeffery Sachs and George Soros’s Open Society
both operating demonstration HTRs?) Foundation.
Thomas continued by saying that the pebble bed and other Every year, the Public Services International Research Unit re-
high temperature reactors have not been proven to be economi- leases a resistance-to-privatization index, similar to the corrup-
cal. Even if they were, he said, countries around the world would tion index of that nation-state destroyer, Transparency Interna-
not buy them from a new or novel vendor like the South African tional. With this background, it is laughable for Thomas to claim
PBMR, Ltd., because countries tend to be very conservative and that public money is being misspent on the pebble bed, and not
usually go with known vendors.
Is Thomas really saying that because South Africa is a black
nation, no one will trust them? .  The Böll Foundation is Germany’s premier greenie funder.
This attack by Thomas is not his first. Back in 2005, Thomas The Wallace Global Fund is part of the Wallace Genetic Fund that was set up
by FDR’s Vice President Henry Wallace in 1959. When first established, its mis-
was hired to pen a report attacking the pebble bed for the Soros- sion was to further the legacy of Henry Wallace by helping to develop the world
funded Legal Resource Center in South Africa. Thomas’s report and increase the food supply. But current operations of the Wallace Fund really
spit on Wallace’s legacy by funding groups that attack modern agriculture and
was a key part of the case against PBMR in the legal challenge the development of nuclear power, and promote depopulation of the world.
against the environmental impact study. .  For further details on this story, see Dean Andromidas, “Who’s Sabotaging
The legal challenge was joined by Earth Life Africa, a group the PBMR?” 21st Century Science & Technology, Spring-Summer 2006.

21st Century Science & Technology Fall 2008 51

 This is what the PBMR spokesmen wrote:

While containment is an appropriate concept for reac-

tors which use water as a coolant, we believe the best
concept for gas-cooled reactors such as the PBMR is to
filter the helium (i.e. remove the radioactivity). The ra-
dioactivity will therefore be contained, not the cool-
ant. . . . The PBMR confinement concept is by no means
inferior to that of a containment structure. It is our view
that confinement is the best solution for a gas-cooled
reactor, both from a technical and safety point of view.
Analyses have shown that confinement will reduce—
rather than increase—the risk of radiation releases to the
public. It is therefore a safer concept. The PBMR con-
finement concept allows for the release of extremely
well-filtered coolant (helium).

PBMR, Ltd. knew that the specter of the Moormann contro-

very could have cast a pall over the conference, and their scien-
tists and engineers came prepared to intervene with a prepared
safety briefing, both in printed and CD format. PBMR also pro-
Stuart Lewis/EIRNS duced a CD of their presentations countering the Moormann
Mega-speculator George Soros funds the South African environ- report, which was distributed to the conference.
mentalist groups to further the aims of the British in splintering
the continent and cutting its population. What’s Wrong with Moormann’s Argument?
Let us now take a look at the source report for Thomas’s latest
given to health care and water projects, which he and his group- attack, the report by Rainer Moormann. When his paper was is-
ing are looking to steal. sued in July of this year, there was an immediate uproar in the
The South African Cape Times newspaper picked up Thom- high-temperature reactor community working at the Jülich Re-
as’s white paper and promoted its deceptions. Cape Times green search Center, including many internal e-mails attacking the re-
correspondent Melanie Gosling wrote an article titled “New port. In fact, the report is one person’s opinion on the data that
PBMR Will Fail U.S. Standards,” which argued, entirely falsely, were accumulated from the 21 years of successful operation of
that the PBMR would not be certified by the U.S. Nuclear Regu- the AVR reactor in Jülich, Germany.
latory Commission because it does not include a secondary Moormann describes himself as a risk assessment person, and
containment structure in its design. In fact, the self-containing his report shows him to be a person devoted to the precaution-
design of the multilayered fuel particles and the reactor charac- ary principle: Everything must be shown to be without risk in
teristics render a secondary containment structure unnecessary order for a program or new technology to be brought into use.
for this type of reactor. Moormann’s report, however, is based on the 40-year-old design
Second, Gosling’s claim that the PBMR does not meet U.S. of the AVR. The main concerns he raises are the release of the
safety standards is entirely bogus. The Nuclear Regulatory Com- radioactive isotopes strontium-90 and cesium-137 into the pri-
mission has not been formally given the request for a design li- mary coolant loop. Moormann claims in his report that this was
cense by PBMR, and currently the NRC is working in close co- caused by the unusually high temperatures at which the AVR
operation with the South African nuclear regulatory group to core operated. Based on this assumption of these unusually high
work out what the safety regulations will be. temperatures, Moormann states that the ability to produce high-
The argument for secondary containment was the main alarm- temperature process heat, which is a main advantage of the peb-
ist point in the Moormann report, and was also played up by ble bed, should not have been demonstrated.
Steve Thomas in his white paper. Sources from PBMR Ltd. whom Moormann’s report is not anti-nuclear, as Thomas and the
I questioned at the recent conference, said that they had replied Greens in the media have presented it. His report contains some
to e-mail questions from Ms. Gosling, but that none of their re- conclusions that are worth looking at in designing future high-
sponses was used, even in part. Gosling’s question shows that temperature reactors. But his main conclusion, that the pebble
she doesn’t understand the principles behind the pebble bed. bed reactor needs an airtight containment, is just pure alarmism
Moormann, who understands the basic principle, still maintains and shows a real failure in his interpretation of the lessons
that a gas-tight containment is needed for pebble bed reactors. learned at the AVR.
How was this rebutted? It is to their credit that the organizers of the HTR 2008 confer-

52 Fall 2008 21st Century Science & Technology

 Nukem Technologies Nukem Technologies
Sample fuel pebbles for the PBMR. Each fuel sphere Fuel spheres in production at Nukem Technologies. After the fuel particles
contains about 15,000 fission fuel kernels. About are pressed into the core of the fuel spheres, a layer of graphite material is
450,000 of these pebbles will be loaded into each added and the sphere is machined and then carbonized and annealed at
reactor vessel. 2,000°C. The spheres then go though several quality control tests, including
X-rays to check the centricity of the fuel core.

ence invited Dr. Moormann to present his paper

there in person, and face his peers. This was the first
time, in fact, that this author has seen a real discus-
sion on a controversial paper like Moormann’s at a
conference. Most often, the author, if invited, gives
such a presentation and leaves. To his credit, Moor-
mann took several questions after his presentation
and stayed around to discuss his paper with attend-
ees and answer some tough questions about his con-
clusions.
It was exciting to see a real fight about ideas tak-
ing place in a nuclear conference, where usually
conference attendees just complain and get en-
raged, but never confront the issue. It is also a good
sign for the nuclear industry to show that it is not
afraid to confront controversial reports—something
the industry has failed to do in the past 30 years.
As part of the general discussion of issues in the
Moormann report, there were several other presen-
tations on the data from the experimental AVR. Most
of them showed that the majority of the strontium-
90 releases happened in the early years of the reac-
tor operation, when poor quality fuel was intro-
Nukem Technologies
duced into the core, and stayed in the core for longer
time periods. But, as noted in a presentation by Karl The first core loading of the Thorium High Temperature Reactor in Germany,
which was constructed in 1983. Both the THTR and the AVR were shut
Verfondern, et al. from the Jülich Research Center,
down in 1988 as part of the political reaction in Germany that followed the
titled “Fuel and Fission Products in the Jülich AVR
Chernobyl accident.
Pebble Bed Reactor,” the early fuel was of poor qual-
ity and used highly enriched uranium, which was the source of mid-1970s, the release of strontium and cesium went down.
the release of strontium. Most of the strontium activity monitored came from the earlier
In his presentation, Dr. Vernfondern shows that as a better fuel, as could be demonstated from the 30-year half-life for
quality of fuel was introduced into the core of the AVR in the strontium-90.

21st Century Science & Technology Fall 2008 53

 The best rebuttal of Moormann’s report
came from the scientists and engineers
who work with the PBMR. It was masterful
in that it judoed the report by showing
that, using the exact same AVR data set
which Moormann used, their “Dust and
Activity Migration and Distribution
(DAMD) model” demonstrated (as did
most of the other studies) that it was the
poor quality of fuel in the beginning of op-
erations of the AVR which was largely re-
sponsible for the problem. They also
showed that certain core design problems,
since recognized, created voids and by-
passes in the coolant flows around the
pebbles.
One has to remember that the Jülich
AVR was a first-of-a-kind reactor; it was
the first pebble bed reactor ever built, and
operated for 21 years with only minor in-
cidents. In those 21 years of operation, the
AVR generated a very valuable data base
and there were many engineering lessons
learned, which have already had their im-
Arbeitsgemeinschaft Versuchsreaktor GmbH
pact on future design specifications.
Cutaway view of the AVR experimental high-temperature reactor at Jülich, Germany.
One recent development is that with
This was the first HTR to use a pebble bed core, and it operated successfully for more
the use of high-temperature fiber optics, it
than 20 years, from 1966 to 1988. The AVR demonstrated the high-temperature capa-
bility and its safety features, including a safe shutdown with total loss of coolant and may be possible to monitor the core tem-
no control rods. peratures of pebble bed reactors. Because
of its moving fuel—with pebbles intro-
duced at the top, flowing through, and re-
introduced at the top again—it is difficult
to precisely monitor the internal tempera-
tures. But that may be solved with the ap-
plication of engineering principles and
some human creativity, the real answer to
any design problem.

AVR: A Pebble Bed Success Story

I have discussed the criticisms of the
AVR reactor in the Moormann report, and
the unscrupulous use of this report by
Steve Thomas to attack the South African
pebble bed reactor program, which holds
such promise for developing Africa. Now
let’s look at what a success story the AVR
and its sister pebble bed reactor, the
THTR, really were.
In 1959, the agreement on the con-
struction of a pebble-bed reactor was
Arbeitsgemeinschaft Versuchsreaktor GmbH signed by BBC/Krupp and Arbeitsgemein-
Dr. Rudolf Schulten (left) developed the pebble bed concept and built the first proto- schaft Versuchsreaktor GmbH (AVR Ex-
type, the AVR at Jülich, Germany. Here he is consulting with Dr. Werner Cautius in the perimental Reactor Group). Construction
AVR control room. of the AVR, a 15-megawatt-electric dem-

54 Fall 2008 21st Century Science & Technology

onstration reactor was the first high-temperature reac-
tor to use a pebble bed core, as developed by scientist
Rudolf Schulten, the director of the Jülich Nuclear Re-
search Center.
Construction began in 1961, and the AVR went criti-
cal in 1966. A year later, the AVR was supplying elec-
tricity to the grid. The AVR was originally designed to
breed uranium-233 from thorium-232. Thorium-232 is
about 400 times as abundant in the Earth’s crust as the
fissionable uranium-235, and an effective thorium
breeder reactor would be considered valuable technol-
ogy. However, the fuel design of the AVR contained the
fuel so well that the transmuted fuels were uneconomi-
cal to extract at the time. As a result, the AVR became a
test-bed for different formulations of reactor fuel with
different coatings. During the 21 years that the AVR op-
erated successfully, 18 different types of pebble fuel
were tested. Until the AVR was shut down in 1988, new
types of fuel pebbles were loaded into the core.
The AVR tested the pebble bed’s main safety fea-
tures. In one test, during the 1980s, the AVR reactor
was brought to full power and the coolant flow was
stopped, to demonstrate a loss-of-coolant accident. It
was found that one of the main design safety features,
the negative coefficient of reactivity (as the reactor fuel
gets hotter, it becomes less reactive), responded beau-
tifully as planned. With all coolant lost, the reactor
temperature increased but the reactor shut itself General Atomics
down. The 300-megawatt THTR was unique, having a pressure vessel made of
After the operating success of the AVR, another, larg- prestressed concrete, instead of the usual steel.
er HTR was was constructed in 1983, the Thorium
High-Temperature Reactor, THTR-300. Like the AVR, the THTR great benefit to industry, which right now burns large amounts of
had a pebble bed design core. The core contained about 670,000 natural gas just to produce the needed process heat.
spherical fuel balls, each 6 centimeters in diameter. This reactor All of the possible uses of the pebble bed or the General Atom-
was unique, in that the pressure vessel that housed the pebble ics prismatic block HTRs are limited only by man’s imagination!
bed was formed of pre-stressed concrete—the first time this ma- References ______________________________________________________
terial had been used instead of a steel pressure vessel. R. Bäumer, 1990. “AVR: Experimental High-temperature Reactor: 21 Years of
Successful Operation for a Future Energy,” VDI-Gesellschaft Energietechnik,
The THTR operated successfully for five years, with only a mi- Vereins Deutscher Ingenieure.
nor water ingress accident, where water from a burst tube in the K. Verfondern and H. Nabielek, 2008. “Fuel and Fission Products in the Jülich
steam generator leaked into the reactor core. Nevertheless, both AVR Pebble-Bed Reactor,” Institute of Energy Research, Saftey Research
and Reactor Technology Forschungszentrum Jülich, Jülich, Germany, pre-
the AVR and the THTR were shut down in 1988, because of the sentation HTR2008-58337.
anti-nuclear hysteria that surrounded the aftermath of the Cher- K. Verfondern and H. Nabielek, 2008. “Fission Product Release from HTGR
Fuel Under Core Heatup Accident Conditions,” Institute of Energy Research,
nobyl reactor accident in April of 1986. Safety Research and Reactor Technology Forschungszentrum Jülich, Jülich,
Germany, presentation HTR2008-58160.
The Beauty of Modular HTRs B. Boer, J.L. Kloosterman, D. Lathouwers, T.H.J.J. van der Hagen, H. van Dam,
2008. “Optimization of a Radially Cooled Pebble Bed Reactor,” Delft Univer-
High-temperature reactors are the keystone to development sity of Technology, the Netherlands, presentation HTR2008-58117.
because they are modular, and can be built in remote areas like R. Moormann, 2008. “A Safety Re-Evaluation of the AVR Pebble Bed Reactor
Operation and its Consequences for Future HTR Concepts,” Forschungszen-
rural areas in India or small city areas in Africa. These reactors trum Juelich Zentralbibliothek, Verlag http://juwel.fz-juelich.de:8080/dspace/
can provide electricity and at the same time, provide high-tem- handle/ 2128/3136
perature process heat for water desalination where needed, or C. Stoker, L. Stassen , F. Reitsma, H. vd Merwe, 2008. “PBMR Radionuclide
Source Term Analysis Validation Based on AVR Operating Experience,”
for producing hydrogen. The fact that these reactors are modu- PBMR Ltd, Centurion, South Africa, and D. Olivier, Independent Nuclear Con-
lar, means that they could be built on site of industrial compa- sultants, Grahamstown, South Africa, presentation HTR2008-58338.
Steve Thomas, 2008. “Safety Issues with the South African Pebble Bed Modular
nies, for example, petrochemical plants, to provide high-tem- Reactor: When Were the Issues Apparent?, A Briefing Paper,” London: Uni-
perature process heat to make better plastics. This would be a versity of Greenwich, PSIRU (July).

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