It was reported a while back that the Philippines was pondering on reviving its nuclear energy program in partnership with a Japanese Energy Company. The issue however is very delicate as a past program which was to deliver to the Philippines its first nuclear power plant resulted in a graft ridden project that gave birth to a mothballed power plant that was never run due to safety concerns.
New technology developed by General Electric could afford the Philippines and other developing countries access to cheaper and safer nuclear power with their creation of the next generation of nuclear reactors. Their design incorporates improvements in the cooling systems which take away excess heat and convert the heat energy to electricity via gas turbines.
The [new reactor design] replaces previous reactors’ complex systems for residual heat removal with a design that uses no pumps or emergency generators–in fact, it possesses no moving parts at all, except for the neutron-absorbing control rods that are pulled partway out from its core so that nuclear fission can proceed. That fission reaction boils the water in the [reactors] core, which becomes steam that gets carried away to large tubes in which it rises, releases its energy to turbines, and then condenses so that gravity causes it to flow back down to the core as water again.
General Electric’s Gen-III designs has 75% less piping, 80% less control cabling, 60% less valves, 35% less pumps and consume 50% less building space than their predecessors. Meaning that the complexity to run these beasts is reduced which will make them more safer to run. With the high costs of energy right now due to increased prices of fossil fuels, the promise of cheap energy could do well to boost the development of third world countries economy by making them more competitive in terms of reducing the price of energy for businesses and their people.
Ironically, it was General Electric that the Philippines was dealing with on it’s first Nuclear Power Plant Project.
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Category: Nuclear
