PUC Chief Puts Gas-Cooled Reactors on the Back Burner

High-temperature, gas-cooled nuclear reactors now under development might one day be safe and cost-competitive, but California won’t license the new electrical generating plants until after the nation solves its existing nuclear-waste disposal problem, state Public Utilities Commission President Stanley Hulett said Monday.

The new plants that are being promoted largely by La Jolla-based General Atomics “might be easier to license and build . . . (but) there will be no new nuclear plants in the state until we’ve a permanent solution to the problem of nuclear waste,” Hulett said in a speech delivered to the 10th International Conference on High-Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactors, or HTGR in industry parlance.

Proponents of the technology believe that HTGR plants, which use inert gas instead of water as a coolant, will be safer and easier to operate than the next generation of more traditional water-cooled reactors.

Hulett, who delivered his address by telephone from San Francisco, predicted that California regulators would welcome a safe and economical HTGR technology as a needed addition to existing electrical generating technologies.

However, HTGR industry will have to convince a largely skeptical public that the gas-cooled plants are safer than water-cooled reactors, according to Kenneth Rogers, a member of the U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

HTGR proponents believe that the technology does not require the massive cement containment buildings that house traditional nuclear plants. That thinking goes “against the core of the philosophy we’ve been operating under for the last 30 years,” according to Rogers, who suggested that the public might find the lack of containment buildings disconcerting.

Monday’s meeting was sponsored by Gas-Cooled Reactor Associates, a San Diego-based trade association that includes systems manufacturers and utilities that hope to use HTGR plants to meet electrical demand.

Proponents argue that gas-cooled reactors would not be susceptible to the severe problems that can occur if the coolant system at a water-cooled nuclear plant fails.

The GCRA has been pressing Congress and the U. S. Department of Energy to partially fund construction of a commercial HTGR plant. Proponents are competing against mainstream nuclear-industry proponents who want federal assistance to develop a new generation of water-cooled nuclear plants.

In August, HTGR technology received a largely unexpected boost when the Department of Energy proposed that the Department of Defense construct an experimental gas-cooled nuclear plant to provide materials used to make nuclear weapons. However, it is uncertain that Congress will fund both the experimental plant in Idaho and a more traditional nuclear plant at Savannah River in South Carolina. General Atomics, formerly GA Technologies, is the leading HTGR proponent in the United States. The La Jolla-based company hopes to build modular systems that, because of their simplicity, safety and dependability, will be attractive in both developed and undeveloped countries.