ENERGY PRODUCERS TO LOSE A LOT OF VALUE IN NORTH AMERICA

Yesterday, I made a prediction that should scare a lot of investors.

I predicted a massive loss in market valuation for some of North America’s largest energy producers. You might own some of these names yourself.

I’ll share some specific names with you in a moment… But before we cover them, it’s important you know the dynamics that will drive them lower.

I covered the first dynamic yesterday. It’s called “reserve write-downs.”

As you probably know, the price of natural gas has collapsed more than 60% over the past 12 months. Energy firms that carry billions of dollars of reserves on their books based on the “old” prices (around $4 per MMBtu) will have to “write-down” the value of those reserves to reflect the new prices (below $2 per MMBtu).

Natural gas reserves that were “economically recoverable” – and thus, extremely valuable – when natural gas traded for more than $4 per MMBtu back in 2010 are going to be worth much, much less… now that natural gas is below $2 per MMBtu.

The second dynamic involves “hedging.”

Hedging is when one party agrees to sell a commodity to another party at a particular price in the future. This strategy helps commodity producers and consumers know in advance what their price of a given commodity will be. It gives both parties a greater ability to plan for the future.

For example, a farmer might agree to sell his corn for $6 per bushel before he even harvests it. Or an oil producer might agree to sell his production for $100 per barrel. This gives the farmer and the oilman the certainty they need to run their budgets. Even if the prices of their given commodities fall, both the farmer and the oilman are protected from price declines. They’ve “hedged” their production.

Hedged natural gas contracts have protected many producers from the full wrath of today’s rock-bottom prices. They’ve been able to sell their production at relatively high prices… even while the spot price collapsed.

But… for a lot of producers, these higher-priced hedges are about to expire.

Encana, Canada’s largest natural gas company, is a good example. The company had prudently hedged lots of the gas it sold over the last six months. This means it was still realizing $4 or $5 per MMBtu on its sales. Now, those hedges are expiring… and the new hedges are at much lower prices. Encana’s cash flow and its economically recoverable reserves are going to plunge.

Encana isn’t the only natural gas company in this situation.

In recent months, the second-largest natural gas producer in the U.S., Chesapeake Energy, removed most of its gas hedges for 2012 and 2013 based on the belief that prices are at or near a bottom.

Such a move, known as going “naked to the strip,” marks a major turnaround for a company that was one of the best and most active hedgers in the sector. Now, Chesapeake has no protection if gas prices continue to slide. It’s a risky scenario seeing as prices are currently below production costs in most U.S. gas basins.

For investors, the fact that many North American gas producers are seeing their high-priced hedges expire makes it more important than ever to understand a company’s cash flow picture going forward.

An investor must ask the following questions…

• What percentage of production remains hedged and at what price?

• How much will a company have to sell at or near the spot price?

• What is the company’s average cost of production?

• Is the loss of high hedges about to send the company into the red?

These are the questions you need to ask… But be warned: you won’t find very many producers with pretty short- and medium-term cash flow pictures.I expect natural gas prices to remain between $1.50 and $2 per MMBtu for the next 12 months.

Those prices will render a lot of production uneconomic. They will force companies to massively write down the value of their reserves. Cash flows will plummet. Shares in gas producers, while down a lot over the past year, will fall more than 25%.

The bloodbath in natural gas stocks is about to get worse.

Marin Katusa

 Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

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Designers and scientists at the University of Cambridge have been collaborating on a project that demonstrates a potential future application of Biophotovoltaic (BPV) technology. Dubbed the Moss Table, the concept furniture piece was exhibited at this year’s Salone Satellite – a parallel exhibition of young designers that took place during the Milan Design Week last month. The idea behind the table is that energy generated from the moss during the day could be stored in a battery and later used to power the adjoining lamp in the evening. The research is led by Dr. James Moultrie of Cambridge University’s Institute for Manufacturing, who hopes to further develop the application for new BPV technologies.

The BPV technology is able to generate electricity by tapping into the photosynthesis of living organisms such as cyanobacteria, moss, algae and vascular plants. As the name suggests, the Moss Table incorporates an array of BPV devices which generate electricity from a cluster of moss plants. While the present amount of energy generated by the table is not enough to power the featured table-lamp, it is the envisioned goal of the project. However, the research group was able to illustrate how the same BPV technology is able to power small devices like a digital clock, by applying some of the units that operate inside the Moss Table.

How does it work?

During the process of photosynthesis, the moss releases organic compounds into the soil, which contains bacteria. The bacteria then break down these organic compounds, which they need to survive, liberating a bi-product that includes electrons. These electrons are captured by conductive fibers inside the Moss Table and put to use. The technology therefore harnesses energy which would otherwise be wasted.

At present the moss application can generate about 50 milliwatts per square meter (10.8 sq ft) and scientists anticipate that future devices may be able to generate up to 3 watts per square meter. With the development of low-energy consumption laptops that could operate at as little as 1 watt (such as the XO-1 by Quanta Computer), it is anticipated that the future Moss Table could power a laptop for over 14 hours. Down the road, the BPV technology could also give rise to a range of self-sustaining organic-synthetic hybrid objects that would meet our daily needs in a clean and environmentally-friendly way.

Music from plants

The Moss Table wasn’t the only exhibit at the Salone Satellite that featured organic plant life. Maltese designer Noel Zahra featured his Koishi concept, which enables users to listen to the music of a plant. “Something that I have always hated was the fact we look at plants and treat them as if they’re objects, pieces of furniture almost,” Zahra told Gizmag. “This product proves that even if most of the time plants are stationary, it doesn’t mean there isn’t any activity [...] within them.”

Koishi works by observing the photochemical variances and impulses that are present within the plant, which are then in real time transformed into musical notes. Higher notes are used for stronger impulses and lower notes for weaker ones. Therefore the music played through the plant is produced instantaneously and no two plants can ever sound the same. “It’s more than just a pot, it’s an instrument; controlled by your plant,” says Zahra. “Imagine cooking to the sound of your basil plant in your kitchen.”

When asked what he would love to create a design for in the future, Zahra simply replied “telepathy” … and there is no doubt that Gizmag will be the first to let you know if he does!

You can hear what the Koishi plant sounds like in the video below

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Grid-powered street lighting is something that many of us take for granted, but there are parts of the world where electricity is a scarce resource and when the sun goes down, local pedestrian traffic in areas where public lighting is not abundant can all-but cease due to safety concerns. In searching for an inexpensive off-grid solution for places like the Colombian city of Cartagena, designer Alberto Vasquez looked to the wind for help. His Flow concept makes use of readily-available bamboo for the construction of a vertical wind turbine in a similar vein to the Power Flowers concept, but with LED light modules at the end of each blade. As the wind catches the blades, the LEDs light up the walkway beneath.

Vasquez – who has also designed a cardboard desklamp and a walking light as well as my personal favorite, a cigarette packet shaped like a coffin – says that although Colombian coastal walkways can be bustling by day, they’re virtually abandoned at night due to sparse public lighting. He says that the year-round winds in places Cartagena could be put to good use. Colombia is also said to have the second highest woody bamboo diversity in Latin America, boasting some 70 species.

The Flow concept has been designed to address a specific problem in a specific region, but may well be a good fit for eco-parks, energy-efficient business developments or a university campus looking to cut energy costs. It features bamboo blades that spiral around a vertical axis, which Vasquez says can hold the wind from every direction. A low-energy LED module sits at either end of each bamboo wind blade, lighting up as the structure spins in the wind and appearing to give off rows of unbroken bands of light – at least, that’s the theory.

Flow hasn’t actually made it beyond the scale model stage as yet, so there’s no way of knowing whether the current design will capture enough wind to generate sufficient light for it to be of practical use. Such questions will doubtless be answered if the concept gets to prototyping, but perhaps the design would benefit from having a PV panel installed atop the structure to capture the sun’s rays during the day and guarantee light provision in the event of low wind.

Such additions, however, would likely push production costs up and put Flow beyond the reach of the folks it was designed to help, and also add complication to street lighting meant to be assembled by an unskilled local workforce.

The following video shows Vasquez building a scale model of his concept, using battery-powered LED lights to show off its lighting potential:

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“Using today’s technology, it’s possible to make big sails, and to control them automatically,” UT professor Kiyoshi Uzawa told DigInfo. “Also, navigation technology includes networked maritime information and weather forecasting, so ships like this can travel safely. Using wind energy, as in old-fashioned sailing ships, is actually feasible.”

Each five-segment collapsible sail, estimated to cost about US$2.5 million, will be hollow and constructed of durable, lightweight aluminum and fiber-reinforced plastic. Similar in shape to an aircraft wing in cross section, the sails can be positioned independently of one another to maximize thrust and, while at anchor or in bad weather, can telescope down in what is known as “vertical reefing.”

Uzawa anticipates that, with basic research completed, the Wind Challenger Project (WCP) group will be able to consider construction of a reduced-size prototype in the next few years to fully prove the concept. If all goes as planned, sea trials could begin as soon as 2016. If results from scale model wind tunnel tests and computer simulations bear out in the real world, he believes the sails could pay ultimately for themselves in five to ten years.

Due to the varying nature of cargo vessels, it seems likely that the WCP technology will be better suited for low-slung bulk material ships (ore, grain, oil) than for sea container ships, say, which stack freight high above deck. The group is not short on innovation, however, so it’ll be interesting to see how that issue is approached.

It appears that a new era of tall, greener ships could be just over the horizon.

Source: DigInfo via Akihabara News

Check out the DigInfo video below to learn more about the new sails.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

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Aeolus, a fascinating acoustic wind sculpture made by prolific Bristol artist Luke Jerram, is as much a feast for the ears as it is for the eyes. Named after the mythical Greek ruler of the four winds and built in conjunction with the University of Southampton’s Institute of Sound and Vibration Research and the University of Salford’s Acoustics Research Center, the giant aeolian wind harp is intended to inspire the public to learn more about the amazing things that can happen when engineering, acoustics and aerodynamics are blended together.

“The Aeolian harp is a quite mysterious sound, really,” said Jerram. “I think the Victorians were very excited by it just because it sounds quite unearthly – it almost sounds like the aliens landing. It’s quite mysterious and quite beautiful. And it’s also quite hard to predict – it’s hard to predict the sound that’s going to be produced from our string. It’s just created by the string vibrating in the wind.”

Jerram got the idea for the wind harp after speaking with desert well (qanat) diggers while on a visit to Iran several years ago. “They basically go out into the desert with an axe and they draw a circle in the sand and then they dig straight down into the sand and into the rock,” he said. “When they hit the water table, they then dig across and create these incredibly long tunnels transferring the water out of the desert into the town. They might then dig air vents sort of maybe every 50 meters.

The diggers described how when conditions are just right, the wind can make those vents “sing” and make noises. This gave Jerram the impetus to explore other structures that might use the wind in a similar manner, and eventually, his version of this ancient musical instrument was born.

The Aeolus and other wind harps make their music through a phenomenon known as the von Kármán Vortex Street effect in which wind blowing across a string or other thin, rigid object creates an alternating series of vortices downstream that sets up a vibration in the object. The pitch and volume of the sound generated by the effect is random and is determined by the strength and speed of the wind as well as the length and thickness of the string.

Jerram’s harp is composed of 310 stainless steel tubes that terminate in a double-curved arch (picture a section taken from a sphere) which visitors can enter for a unique audio-visual experience. Polished to a mirror finish internally that reflects the changing weather conditions, in musical mode, many of the tubes are connected to strings attached to a membrane or “skin” on their outer end that transmits wind-generated sound into the arch and to listening posts situated nearby. Even on windless days, the tubes without strings hum at low frequencies, enhanced by an acoustic lens effect that focuses the sound directly at observers in a specific point under the arch.

Until May 10, 2012, the Aeolus, which has been traveling about the UK since its completion last year, can be experienced at its location in Canary Wharf, London. Eventually, Jerram hopes to sell Aeolus and find it a permanent home where it can continue to delight the public for many years to come.

Source: Luke Jerram

Check out the videos below to learn how the Aeolus’ tubes were made and see an interview with the artist:

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

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August 21, 2008 A student from the University of Portsmouth in the UK has created a wind turbine made totally from recycled materials Aimed at servicing the renewable energy needs of some of the word’s poorest countries, the low cost wind turbine is designed to be built by unskilled workers in less than a day anywhere in the world, using locally sourced scrap materials.

Product design student Max Robson’s turbine is designed to be affordable, sustainable and help those in the poorest nations. His prototype was built using scrap found on roadsides and in front gardens. It cost the 22 year old student just £20 (around USD$37) to build the prototype, but he says it would cost must less to construct in the developing world.

Robson can’t take all the credit for his ingenious idea as his dad Ashley, who studied mechanical engineering at the University of Portsmouth 20 years ago, actually came up with the concept first. “My dad wanted to do something like this but I beat him to it,” said Max. “He had the idea of designing a scrap wind turbine but it was my idea to use it in the developing world.” Max’s motivation for creating the turbine was to build something worthwhile that is also environmentally friendly.

At just 1.8m wide, the turbine doesn’t take up a lot of space and the prototype can generate 11.3 watts. That power supply can charge a battery, which when fully charged can run lighting for 63 hours or a radio for around 30 hours. According to Max, “this isn’t going to change lives in the developing world dramatically but a device like this could make their lives a lot easier.” The nearest alternative wind turbine on the market costs £2,000 (around US$3700), which is a significant jump from his low-cost prototype. Max hopes to take his idea to aid organizations which help throughout the Third World to develop it further, and to travel and see first-hand conditions in some of the nations which would benefit from the design most.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

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Come along to this free community meeting to learn four great ways to help reduce your electricity bill.
We will have experts at the meeting who will be on hand to explain:
> How solar power systems work and whether solar power is right for you.
> How to access the federal and state government incentives.
> Ten common mistakes to avoid when going solar.
> How you can go solar without large upfront costs.

5 reasons to come along:
The knowledge you gain from this free community meeting could help you save energy and money

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1. Protect yourself from rising electricity bills.
By generating your own electricity, you could reduce your electricity usage charges and help protect yourself from rising electricity prices.
2. Go solar now and make the most of the government incentive
The federal government’s solar incentive is set to drop by 33% from 1 July and to qualify for the current incentive, solar power systems must be fully installed before then.
But you need to act now, because to ensure installation in time, we need to receive deposits before 12 May 2012.1
3. Learn the advantages of going solar with a trusted company.
AGL has been a trusted energy company for 175 years, so you can be confident that we will support you from inquiry to installation.
4. We make solar affordable.
With our payment plan, you can go solar by paying only $199 upfront for installation of a 1 kW system, then pay your system off from $2.45 a day over 2 years (total minimum cost of $1,990 or from $1,699 without a payment plan).2
5. Maximise the return for any electricity you feed into the grid.
As a retailer, AGL offers an 8 cent premium on top of the amount payable under the Solar Bonus Scheme, giving you a great return on the electricity you feed into the grid.3

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Launch location When Where

Hervey Bay

Sunday, 22 April 2012
2–3pm.
Hervey Bay RSL
11 Torquay Road, Pialba.

Bundaberg

Monday, 23 April 2012
1.30–2.30pm and 6.30–7.30pm.
Bundaberg Civic Centre
Supper Room, 190 Bourbong Street, Bundaberg.

Maryborough

Tuesday, 24 April
1.30–2.30pm and 6.30–7.30pm.
Maryborough RSL, Heritage Function Room,
163–175 Lennox Street, Maryborough.

To register your attendance,

Call Michelle Hislop on 0447 776 379.

PDF doc of this notice available here

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This year is memorable for nuclear power, with the first reactors winning U.S. government approval for construction since 1978. Some have seen the green lighting of two Westinghouse AP1000 reactors to be built in Georgia as the start of a revival of nuclear power in the West, but this may be a false dawn because of the problems besetting conventional reactors. It may be that when a new boom in nuclear power comes, it won’t be driven forward by giant gigawatt installations, but by a number of batteries in small modular reactors (SMRs) with very radically different principles from those of previous generations. But though a technology of great diversity and potential, many obstacles stand in its path. One takes an in-depth look at the many forms of SMRs, their advantages, and the challenges they have to face and hurdle over

Globally, there is a growing demand for electric power that is cheap, reliable and abundant. There’s also an increasing need to find sources of energy that do not rely on doing business with hostile or unstable nations. At the same time, recent concerns over global warming have resulted in many governments pledging their nations to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide they generate and new, stricter environmental regulations threaten to close coal-powered plants across Europe and the United States. The hope was that massive investments in alternative technologies such as solar and wind power would make up for this cut in generating capacity, but the inefficiencies and intermittent nature of these technologies made it clear that something with the capacity and reliability of coal and natural gas plants was needed. Nuclear, in other words.

The problem is that nuclear energy is the proverbial political hot potato – even in early days when the new energy source exploded onto the world scene. The tremendous amount of energy locked in the atom held the promise of a future like something out of a technological Arabian Nights. It would be a world where electricity was too cheap to meter, deserts would bloom, marine vessels would circle the Earth on a lump of fuel the size of a baseball, planes would fly for months at a time without landing, the sick would be healed and even cars would be  powered by the atom. But though nuclear power did bring about incredible changes in our lifestyles, in its primary role, generating electricity for homes and industry, it ended up as less of a miracle and more of a very complicated way of boiling water.

Not only complicated, but expensive and potentially dangerous. Though hundreds of reactors were built all over the world and some countries, such as France, generate most of their electricity from it, nuclear power has faced continuing questions over cost, safety, waste disposal and proliferation. One hundred and four nuclear plants provide the United States with 20 percent of the nation’s power, but a building permit hadn’t been issued since 1978 with no new reactors coming on line since 1996 and after the uproar from the environmental movement after nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, it seemed unlikely that any more would ever be approved – until now. This fierce domestic opposition to nuclear power has caused many governments to take an almost schizophrenic stance regarding the atom.

Germany, for one, made the decision to abandon nuclear power completely in favor of alternative energy systems but then the severe winter of 2011-12 got so frigidly cold that the Danube was freezing and Berlin had to put some of the mothballed reactors back into service. This opposition also means that many Western countries have a shortage of nuclear engineers because many see it as a dying industry not worth getting into. This is acutely apparent in the United States and Britain, neither of which have retained the capacity for building the huge reactor vessels and must contract this out to overseas manufacturers.

Worse, nuclear power suffers from the natural gas boom brought on by new drilling techniques and fracking that opened up vast new gas fields in the West and dropped the price of gas to the point where coal and nuclear have a hard time matching it.

Money is one of the key problems facing a revival of nuclear power. Up until now, the sort of reactors used for generating electricity have tended toward the gigantic with reactors reaching gigawatt levels of output. With reactor plants that huge, little wonder that the cost of construction combined with obtaining permits, securing insurance and meeting legal challenges from environmentalist groups can push the cost of a conventional nuclear plant toward as much as US$9 billion. It also means very long construction times of ten or fifteen years. This isn’t helped by the fact that nuclear plants are custom designed from scratch in multi-billion dollar exercises like re-inventing the wheel. With so much time and money involved, an unforeseen change in regulations or discovery of something like a geological fault under the reactor site can make this a case of putting a lot of very expensive eggs in a very insecure basket.

Then there are safety issues. Reactor design is safer today than ever before. The Fukushima accident in Japan happened because Fukushima’s reactors are a very old design – as old as the oldest active American reactors. If the earthquake and tsunami that hit Fukushima had hit a modern reactor, the disaster probably would never have happened. However, large conventional reactors still have safety issues because they require very fast reaction times to prevent damage in the event of an accident. Accidents can progress so swiftly in a reactor that the operators must take action within hours, perhaps even minutes. If a meltdown accident does occur, the large amount of fuel in the reactor means that a great deal of radioactive material may escape into the atmosphere. That makes time an essential element.

The enriched uranium fuel used in conventional reactions also poses a tricky problem for nuclear weapons proliferation. Contrary to popular belief, the uranium used in reactors and even the plutonium that some reactors produce are useless for building nuclear bombs (the isotope ratios are all wrong), but the processes needed to produce nuclear fuel and bomb materials are almost exactly the same. So, though conventional reactors may not be a proliferation threat, the enrichment plants that service them are.

Small Modular Reactors

Another way of getting around many of these problems is through the development of small modular reactors (SMR). These are reactors capable of generating about 300 megawatts of power or less, which is enough to run 45,000 US homes. Though small, SMRs are proper reactors. They are quite different from the radio-thermal generators (RTG) used in spacecraft and remote lighthouses in Siberia. Nuclear reactors such as SMRs use controlled nuclear fission to generate power while RTGs use natural radioactive decay to power a relatively simple thermoelectric generator that can only produce, at most, about two kilowatts.

In terms of power, RTGs are the equivalent of batteries while small nuclear reactors are only “small” when compared to conventional reactors. They are hardly the sort that you would keep in the garage. In reality, SMR power plants would cover the area of a small shopping mall. Still, such an installation is not very large as power plants go and a reactor that only produces 300 megawatts may not seem to be worth the investment, but the US Department of Energy is offering US$452 million in matching grants to develop SMRs and private investors like the Bill Gates Foundation and the company of Babcock and Wilcox are putting up the dollars for their own modular reactor projects.

The 60-year old breakthrough

Another reason for government and private industry to take an interest in SMRs is that they’ve been successfully employed for much longer than most people realize. In fact, hundreds have been steaming around the world inside the bowells of nuclear submarines and other warships for sixty years. They’ve also been used in merchant ships, icebreakers and as research and medical isotope reactors at universities. There was even one installed in the Antarctic at McMurdo Station from 1962 to 1972. Now they’re being considered for domestic residential use.

The case for SMRs

SMRs have a number of distinct advantages over conventional reactors. For one thing, SMRs are cheaper to construct and run. This makes them very attractive to poorer, energy-starved nations; small, growing communities that don’t require a full-scale plant; and remote locations such as mines or desalination plants. Part of the reason for this is simply that the reactors are smaller. Another is that, not needing to be individually custom designed in each case, the reactors can be standardized and some types built in factories that are able to employ economies of scale. The factory-built aspect is also important because a factory is more efficient than on-site construction by as much as eight to one in terms of building time. Factory construction also allows SMRs to be built, delivered to the site, and then later returned to the factory for dismantling at the end of their service lives – eliminating a major problem with old conventional reactors, i.e. how to dispose of them.

SMRs also enjoy a good deal of design flexibility. Conventional reactors are usually cooled by water – a huge amount of water – which means that the reactors need to be situated near rivers or coastlines. SMRs, on the other hand, can be cooled by air, gas, low-melting point metals or salt. This means that SMRs can be placed in remote, inland areas where it isn’t possible to position conventional reactors.

Safety

This cooling system is often passive. In other words, it relies more on the natural circulation of the cooling medium within the reactor’s containment flask than on pumps. This passive cooling is one of the ways that SMRs can improve safety. Because modular reactors are smaller than conventional ones, they contain less fuel. This means that there’s less of a mass to be affected if an accident occurs. If one does happen, there’s less radioactive material that can be released into the environment and makes it easier to design emergency systems. Since they are smaller and use less fuel, they are easier to cool effectively, which greatly reduces the likelihood of a catastrophic accident or meltdown in the first place.

This also means that accidents proceed much slower in modular reactors than in conventional ones. Where the latter need accident responses in a matter of hours or minutes, SMRs can be responded to in hours or days, which reduces the chances of an accident resulting in major damage to the reactor elements.

The SMR designs that reject water cooling in favor of gas, metal or salt have their own safety advantages. Unlike water-cooled reactors, these media operate at a lower pressure. One of the hazards of water cooling is that a cracked pipe or a damaged seal can blow radioactive gases out like anti-freeze out of an overheated car radiator. With low-pressure media, there’s less force to push gases out and there’s less stress placed on the containment vessel. It also eliminates one of the frightening episodes of the Fukushima accident where the water in the vessel broke down into hydrogen and oxygen and then exploded.

Another advantage of modular design is that some SMRs are small enough to be installed below ground. That is cheaper, faster to construct and less invasive than building a reinforced concrete containment dome. There is also the point that putting a reactor in the ground makes it less vulnerable to earthquakes. Underground installations make modular reactors easier to secure and install in a much smaller footprint. This makes SMRs particularly attractive to military customers who need to build power plants for bases quickly. Underground installation also enhances security with fewer sophisticated systems needed, which also helps bring down costs.

SMRs can help with proliferation, nuclear waste and fuel supply issues because, while some modular reactors are based on conventional pressurized water reactors and burn enhanced uranium, others use less conventional fuels. Some, for example, can generate power from what is now regarded as “waste”, burning depleted uranium and plutonium left over from conventional reactors. Depleted uranium is basically U-238 from which the fissible U-235 has been consumed. It’s also much more abundant in nature than U-235, which has the potential of providing the world with energy for thousands of years. Other reactor designs don’t even use uranium. Instead, they use thorium. This fuel is also incredibly abundant, is easy to process for use as fuel and has the added bonus of being utterly useless for making weapons, so it can provide power even to areas where security concerns have been raised.

But there’s still the sticking point that modular reactors are, by definition, small. That may be fine for a submarine or the South Pole, but what about places that need more? Is the alternative conventional nuclear plants? It turns out that the answer is no. Modular reactors don’t need to be used singly. They can be set up in batteries of five or six or even more, providing as much power as an area needs. And if one unit needs to be taken off line for repairs or even replacement, it needn’t interfere with the operation of the others.

Types of modular reactors

Let’s take a look now at some of the major types of modular reactors under development. There are, in fact, many more than are presented here, but this should give a good cross section of what is in the pipeline.

Light-water reactors

A modular light-water reactor is basically a scaled-down version of a conventional reactor. Like conventional reactors, it uses water as a coolant and a neutron moderator (that is, the water slows down the neutrons produced by the nuclear fuel so that the uranium atoms have a better chance of absorbing them and inducing nuclear fission. The trick of fission is simply to have enough nuclear fuel in one place with a moderator so that the reaction becomes self-sustaining). Engineers already have decades of experience with light-water SMRs because these are the type used on submarines and icebreakers, so the technology is already advanced and has had lots of field testing under very hard conditions. Imagine a nuclear power plant that has to be able to operate safely as it’s being tossed about in the ocean while sealed inside a submarine hull and you can see the daunting challenges that have been overcome.

Small light-water reactors aren’t as efficient as their larger cousins, but they have a number of advantages. Steam is produced in a nuclear plant by passing a loop of cooling water from the reactor through the steam generator, which is a separate vessel filled with coiling pipes. The hot cooling water enters the generator and as it runs through the pipes a second coil filled with water is heated by the water from the reactor. This changes to steam, which turns the turbines that turns the dynamos. On a conventional reactor, most types have the steam generator outside the reactor vessel. With light-water SMRs, the steam generator can be placed inside the vessel. This not only makes the reactor more compact and self-contained, but it also makes it much safer. One common problem in reactors is radioactive water leaking as it travels from the reactor to the steam generator. With the steam generator inside the reactor vessel, it’s the much safer situation of only non-radioactive water/steam going into and out of the reactor vessel.

Westinghouse SMR

The Westinghouse SMR is a miniature version of their AP1000 reactor. But where the AP1000 produces 1,154 megawatts and requires a plant covering 50 acres (20 ha), the Westinghouse SMR needs only 15 (6 ha), puts out 225 megawatts and can be built in 18 months as opposed to several years. The reactor and containment vessel stand 89 feet (27 m) high and 32 feet (9.8 m) in diameter, which makes it compact enough to be factory-built and shipped by rail to the site. Its fuel is standard enriched uranium that needs servicing every two years, but the reactor’s passive cooling system relies on the natural circulation of water rather than pumps, which means that even in the event of a complete power loss, as Fukushima suffered, the Westinghouse SMR can go for up to a week without needing any operator intervention to prevent damage.

mPower

Backed by Babcock and Wilcox, mPower is based on US Navy reactor designs and produces 160 megawatts when the system’s condensers are cooled by water, but it can be air-cooled as well, though with a lower power output. Seventy-five feet (23 m) high and 14 feet (4.3 m) in diameter, mPower is designed to be factory built, rail-shipped and installed below ground. Like the Westinghouse SMR, the mPower uses a passive cooling system and the steam generator is integral with the reactor. Unlike the Westinghouse SMR, the mPower needs refueling only every four years and the process involves simply replacing the entire core, which is inserted like a cartridge. The reactor has a 60-year service life and is designed to store its spent fuel on site for the duration.

NuScale

NuScale seems impractically small with its output of only 45 megawatts, but it’s intended to be installed twelve at a time to provide up to 540 megawatts. These are each placed in an underground pool of water and each unit is cooled by natural circulation. Because of this, there are no pumps and the only moving parts in the reactor are those used to operate the control rods. When it is time for refueling, the reactor is removed from its pool by an overhead crane and taken to another section of the facility.

High-temperature gas cooled reactors

As the term implies, gas-cooled reactors use a gas instead of water as a reactor cooling medium. In modern reactors this gas is usually helium because it’s an inert element that doesn’t react with other materials, yet is an excellent coolant (just ask any mixed-gas deep sea diver and he’ll tell you why they have a heating tube in their suit while breathing helium). This is important because, not using water, the moderator for the nuclear reaction is a graphite core, which is flammable. These operate at relatively low pressures and high gas temperatures of up to 1,800 degrees F (1,000 degrees C) and the gas either drives the turbines directly or via a steam generator. This reactor type has safety advantages because the way the design makes the nuclear reaction self-regulating. As the reactor gets hotter, the reaction slows down and the reactor cools. It also lends itself to smaller scales to allow for factory building and underground installation.

GT-MHR

Built by a partnership led by General Atomics, the GT-MHR reactor has a capacity of 285 megawatts and can also be used to produce 100,000 tons of hydrogen gas per year. It has the interesting distinction of being able to run on weapons-grade plutonium. The reason for this was that the GT-MHR was originally designed to help dispose of Soviet nuclear warheads after the end of the Cold War. It also serves to highlight the practical applications of the SMRs’ ability to burn alternative nuclear fuels.

Fast neutron reactors

In conventional reactors, neutrons are slowed down by a moderator such as water, carbon or helium so that the uranium atoms have a better chance of absorbing them and initiating fission. A fast neutron reactor manages the same fission reaction except it does so by reflecting fast-moving neutrons back into the uranium in large quantities and thereby increasing the odds of fission. This has the advantage of allowing reactors to be very simple in design (and hence smaller) and to use enriched fuels, thorium or even nuclear waste as fuel.

There are two types of fast neutron systems used in current SMR designs. The first are candle, breed-burn or traveling-wave reactors. The second, standing wave reactors.

The “candle” name for the first variety stems from the fact that that’s what the fuel resembles. Put simply, it’s a big slab of depleted uranium with a plug of enriched uranium stuck in one end. When the nuclear reaction starts, the enriched uranium “ignites” the slab by initiating a reaction that turns the U-238 into Pu-239, an isotope of plutonium that can fission and generate power. This reaction burns along the slab at roughly one centimeter per year, creating and burning plutonium as it goes. It’s a process that can take years, even decades, as the reactor burbles away at a temperature of about 1,000 degrees F (550 degrees C) while cooled by liquid sodium, lead or lead-bismuth alloy.

The other version is called a “standing wave,” and the principle is the same, except instead of a great slab, the reactor is made up of fuel rods of U-238 and the reaction is started in the center. As the reaction proceeds outwards, the spent rods are reshuffled by the operators until all the fuel is consumed. The upshot of this is that a traveling wave reactor uses it fuel more efficiently and can run for 60 years without refueling. Theoretically, it could go for 200 years.

With either type, they are also unusual in that they have no moderator, rely on passive cooling, can be built in factories and have no moving parts. They are as close to plug-and-play as nuclear reactors can get.

Hyperion

Hyperion is another very small modular reactor that produces only 25 megawatts, but what it lacks in power it makes up for in portability. The reactor vessel is only 8 feet (2.5 m) tall and 5 feet (1.5 m) in diameter, has no moving parts and can go for ten years without refueling. When refueling is needed, the reactor is returned to the factory and replaced rather in the manner of a gas bottle. This configuration not only makes it possible to build multi-reactor power plants, but the individual reactors can also be used for applications like providing heat to extract oil from shale beds, steam for industrial uses and running desalination plants.

PRISM

Power Reactor Innovative Small Module (PRISM) is a GE-Hitachi design. It’s sodium cooled, installed underground and generates 311 megawatts with refueling every six years. Its ability to burn plutonium and depleted uranium makes it of great interest to the UK, which is negotiating to have two installed at the Sellafield nuclear facility where they would be used to burn nuclear waste stockpiles. This is more than just a waste disposal solution. It’s estimated that if this works, the waste could provide power to Britain for 500 years.

Molten salt reactors

In this type of SMR, the coolant and the fuel are one in the same. The coolant is a mixture of lithium and beryllium fluoride salts. In this is dissolved a fuel, which can be enriched uranium, thorium or U-233. This molten salt solution passes at relatively low pressure and a temperature of 1,300 degrees F (700 degrees C) through a graphite moderator core. As the fuel burns, the waste products are removed from the solution and fresh fuel is added.

Flibe

Flibe (Fluoride salt of Lithium and Beryllium) is a sort of reactor in a box. The US military wants to develop small reactors that can be easily set up at remote bases. Toward this end, the Flibe is designed around a power plant that packs into a set of cargo containers. The idea is to stick the reactor in the ground, set up the generating machinery and cover the lot with a building. The last doesn’t need to be anything like the containment building of a conventional reactor because the reactor is not only passively heated, but also features a salt plug that needs to be actively cooled at all times. If the reactor suffers a breakdown and the reactor starts to overheat, the plug melts and the molten salt/fuel mixture pours out into a drain tank. Power output is rated at 20 to 50 megawatts and it uses U-233 and thorium for fuel. This not only eliminates proliferation issues (neither U-233 nor thorium is completely unsuitable for weapons), but it also opens up a cheap, easily obtained energy source.

Challenges remain

As impressive as many of these reactors sound, most of them are still in one stage or another of development or approval. It is a long way from there to flipping a switch and watching the lights go on. Most of these designs have roots that go back over half a century.

In the 1950s, Admiral Hyman Rickover, the architect of the US nuclear fleet, pointed out that the small research reactors, the precursors of SMRs, had a lot of advantages. They were simple, small, cheap, lightweight, easy to build, very flexible in design and needed very little development. On the other hand, practical reactors must be built on schedule, need a huge amount of development spent on “apparently trivial matters”, are expensive, large, heavy and complicated. In other words, there’s a large gap between what is promised by a technology in the design phase and what it ends up as once it’s built.

So it is with the current stable of SMRs. Many hold great promise, but they have yet to prove themselves. Also, they raise many questions. Will an SMR need fewer people to run it? What are its safety parameters? Will they fulfill current regulations? Will the regulations need to be changed to suit the nature of SMRs? Will evacuation zones, insurance coverage or security standards need to be altered? What about regulations regarding earthquakes?

Indeed, it is in government regulations that the modular reactors face their greatest challenges. Whatever the facts about nuclear accidents from Windscale to Fukushima, a large fraction of the public, especially in the West, is very nervous about nuclear energy in any form. There are powerful lobbies opposed to any nuclear reactors operating and the regulations written up by governments reflect these circumstances. Much of the cost of building nuclear plants is due to meeting all regulations, providing safety and security systems, and just dealing with all the legal barriers and paperwork that can take years and millions of dollars to overcome. Modular reactors have the advantage of being built quickly and cheaply, which makes them less of a financial risk, and factory manufacturing means that a reactor intended for a plant that missed approval can be sold to another customer elsewhere. And some SMRs are similar enough to conventional reactors that they don’t face the burden of being a “new” technology under skeptical scrutiny. However, red tape is still a very real thing.

Only time will tell if the small reactor becomes a common sight on our power grids, if it falls by the wayside like other technological dreams, or if it falls victim to the sometimes over the top bureaucrats’ rule book.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

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From huge kites to sea-bound flywheels and roof-top installations to tree-like art creations, we’ve seen many different approaches to capturing energy from the wind. One design, though, reigns supreme – the tri-blade turbine tower. It’s not exactly a trouble-free life at the top and there are those who do not look upon these monsters favorably, most often complaining about the noise and the not so picturesque view. With support from Nottingham Trent University’s Future Factory project, Heath Evdemon is currently building a new type of wind turbine called the Wind Harvester that’s claimed to be virtually silent, doesn’t need to loom high over the landscape and can operate in a variety of wind conditions.

Evdemon first came up with the idea for the Wind Harvester over six years ago but has only recently developed the idea further. The Wind Harvester has horizontal airfoil blades that need only measure one meter (3.28 feet) across and can operate at half a meter (1.64 feet) off the ground on hillsides or outcrops, or can be placed atop domestic, commercial and agricultural buildings.

“The Wind Harvester can be used in locations where it is difficult to install current wind turbine farms,” said project supporter Dr Amin Al-Habaibeh from Nottingham Trent University’s School of Architecture, Design and the Built Environment.

The system is based on reciprocating motion – as the wind catches a horizontal airfoil (like the ones you might find on aircraft), it’s raised until it reaches a certain point, then the angle of the blade alters and it’s forced downward, and the process repeats. Unlike the more familiar wind turbine designs where the tip of the blade moves at a different speed to a more central point, all the points on the airfoils of the Wind Harvester would move at the same velocity. This is said to make the unit capable of generating power at low wind speed, as well as continuing through to the kind of higher wind speeds that may result in other systems ceasing operation to prevent damage.

The system is scalable up to blades of about 15 meters (49 feet), and its components can be broken down into bite-sized pieces for ease of installation without the need for heavy machinery.

The frame, rotating base, swinging arms, airfoils, generator and the outer housing of the system are currently being upscaled into a fully working prototype model thanks to funding from Future Factory, the Peak District National Park’s Sustainable Development Fund and the Live & Work Rural program.

“We’re looking for potential sites within the Peak District National Park at the moment and then we’ll turn our attention to industry, but it’s a product which could one day be rolled out to farms working towards becoming carbon neutral and homeowners looking for a cheap and sustainable source of power,” says Evdemon.

At the time of writing, there’s no word on exactly how efficient this new device is expected to be, we’ll doubtless have to wait for real world data to be collected at the full-size prototyping stage.

Sources: Nottingham Trent University and Wind Power Innovations

Published by Henry Sapiecha

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As regular readers will know, we cover more than our fair share of breakthroughs promising next-generation super-efficient solar cells. Everything from growing photovoltaic crystals, applying special coatings or using carbon nanotubes teases us with cheaper, more efficient solar energy – eventually. In this latest news, scientists are using current technology in a new type of concentrating array which they say is four times more efficient and three times cheaper than current solar cells.

The technology was originally developed at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) and will be commercially produced by a spinoff company called Technique Solar. Each solar module consists of nine “troughs” that feature a concentrating acrylic lens and reflective walls to focus the sun’s rays onto a strip of photovoltaic (PV) cells, which enables the number of PV cells to be cut by 75 percent. The PV cells are used to generate electricity, while a heat exchanger located under them is used to generate heat for circulating water and storage tanks for a hot water system. Additionally, to maximize the sun’s rays the array has a motor drive mechanism with tracking sensor to follow the sun.

The company says its Concentrated Universal Energy Solar System (CUESS) makes it possible to deliver solar energy more economically and more efficiently than other current forms of solar energy generation. Each 3.5 square meter array apparently produces a total of around 2.1-kW of power, while a standard PV panel would need to be around 12-14 square meters to produce around the same amount. Technique Solar says its panels can supply heat load (hot water) and electrical energy at one quarter of the energy costs of conventional solar energy systems.

It must be highlighted however that these figures refer to total energy output – which combines both the electrical and heat power – not just electrical output, as is the case with standard solar cells. The standard CUESS panel produces 400 watts of electrical power and 1700 watts of heat power for a total of 2100 watts. It is this combination of heat and electrical energy output that allows the developers of the CUESS technology that allows them to claim a lifting of efficiency from around 18 percent for standard solar panels to over 50 percent.

Technique Solar has teamed with Magna Cosma, one of the world’s largest car component manufacturers boasting 242 manufacturing facilities spread over 25 countries. It will build 10 pre-production models in North America for testing and demonstrations at various sites around the world from June 2010 to obtain the final commercial accreditation and rating.

Technique Solar doesn’t plan to sell its system as an off the shelf purchase to consumers. Rather it intends the modules to be rolled out as infrastructure complementing existing energy supplies from the grid. The modules will be owned/leased by a Power Utility (or in some instances/countries by local councils, government or large corporations) who will then arrange for installation onto residential, commercial, industrial as well as school premises to complement or substitute existing energy supply

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

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