How will Idaho lab build NGNP?

Answer - two heads may be better than one

The Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is facing a formidable challenge with the release of a request for information (RFI) earlier this month by the Department of Energy (DOE). The government wants to hear from firms that think they can build the Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP) which is most likely going to be a high temperature gas cooled reactor, possibly a pebble bed design. The reactor is expected to produce electricity, but also process heat for industry, e.g., oil refining, and even hydrogen depending on design.

The current setup at the INL is the a prime contractor on the lab side is responsible for nuclear energy R&D. However, the contractor has never built a nuclear reactor and from an organizational perspective isn't positioned to manage the construction of a project of this magnitude and do everything else.

On the government side the DOE Idaho field office is also concerned with meeting the enforceable milestones of a federal consent decree governing the cleanup of Cold War legacy radioactive waste. Again, from an organizational perspective, with one $2.9 billion cleanup contract its plate, the current staff doesn't have the ability to also manage and complete a $2 billion nuclear reactor demonstration project.

So how is the work going to get done? Here are my two cents on how two heads will help the Idaho lab build NGNP and still do everything else.

First - split the management of the DOE Idaho field office into two domains. Keep one for the cleanup program, and create a second field office management structure and executive solely for the purpose of managing the nuclear energy programs including the R&D work, but especially to manage the reactor build. This move would put management horse power in both places and end the situation of having competing demands hit the desk of a single executive.

Second, have DOE's nuclear energy program office in Washington, DC, let a prime contract solely for the design, construction, licensing, and operation of NGNP. This makes the reactor a project a tenant on the INL desert and retains the R&D mission as an integral part of the demonstration nuclear reactor project without bogging down a science outfit with a multi-billion dollar construction operation.

The contract would be developed along the lines of a commercial nuclear reactor Engineering & Procurement Contract (EPC), but with a complete life cycle program from design to operation. Licensing the new design with the NRC is an essential step on the road to commercial success.

Third, get help. The South Africans are developing a pebble bed modular reactor (PBMR). Why reinvent the wheel? At a minimum if INL is not already having these discussions, explore the possibility of a joint effort. The PBMR folks have already committed to building a demonstration 200 Mw reactor. INL's reactor is expected to be about 300 Mw. Unless the engineering approaches are radically different, it looks like an interesting opportunity.

Fourth, get DOE's Office of Science in the picture. Nuclear science is a hard discipline and it takes a lot of brainpower to advance the state of the art. NGNP isn't just a reactor project. There are a host of science disciplines, hard and soft, involved in a radical departure from PWR/BWR designs. They include material science, human factors, fuel fabrication, and so on.

If NGNP on the R&D side is to succeed, DOE will need to mobilize scientists at labs like Oak Ridge, Argonne, and the other non-defense labs to get the job done. International collaboration would be a good idea because it would build capacity globally to support this technology once it reaches the commercial stage.

At the start of this blog post I said that "two heads are better than one." I pointed out that the lab contractor needs an EPC firm to design, build, license, and operate the reactor. That's the first set of two heads. The second set is on the DOE field offices side where conceivably two executives could manage their respective multi-billion dollars programs and staff needed to succeed in both cleanup and reactor build. This does mean more feds, but there is a lot more work to do.

Frankly, with the release of the NGNP RFI the work of the INL has just doubled so two heads would be a good idea.

Comments are welcome.