Advocates tout small nuclear reactors for Military Installations.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew

MI In 1960--about 800 miles south of the North Pole--the Army assembled a small, nuclear reactor from modules built in Buffalo, N.Y., to provide power to one of its most remote and inhospitable bases, Camp Century in Greenland.

The Portable Medium Power-2 reactor was part of the Army nuclear energy program, which lasted from 1954 to 1977, and was intended to supply power to bases where shipping carbon-based fuel was difficult or connecting to a local electrical grid impossible.

The program ultimately fielded six small nuclear reactors before its demise more than three decades ago.

The Department of Energy is now pushing the once dormant small modular nuclear reactor concept for civilian applications. The Tennessee Valley Authority and an energy company recently inked a deal to take advantage of some of the $452 million in federal money available to build scaled-down reactors.

The idea to revive nuclear power on military installations--and even in forward-operating bases in battle zones--is being promoted in some quarters.

Advocates say the military could reduce its dependence on domestic local power grids, which are seen as vulnerable, and it could take fuel convoys off the roads overseas, said a 2011 National Defense University paper, "Small Nuclear Reactors for Military Installations: Capabilities, Costs and Technological Implications," written by NDU professor Richard B. Andres and Massachusetts Institute of Technology doctoral candidate Hanna L. Breetz.

"There are numerous companies with designs that they can build right now," Andres said in a recent interview. "We just have to give them the specifications for what the military is looking for and to tell them to build it. And they can do it," he said.

The Navy has been fielding small nuclear reactors on its submarines and ships for decades, and has a perfect safety record, he said. He believed the Army or Air Force could match it.

Small modular nuclear reactors operate in the 25 to 300 megawatt range. Larger reactors in typical full-scale nuclear power plants can go up to 1,350 megawatts per unit. A Los Angeles-class submarine by comparison has a 165-megawatt reactor.

The problem is that there are a lot of emotional reactions when it comes to nuclear energy, Andres said.

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Accidents at Three Mile Island, Pa., Chernobyl in Russia, and more recently, Fukushima, Japan, have given the industry a bad name in the eyes of the public.

The Union of Concerned Scientists said...