by Dick Hall-Sizemore

A Virginia corporation is one of a handful of companies involved in developing an energy alternative that, if successful, will render the debates over solar, wind, and fossil fuels moot. The alternative is miniaturized nuclear power.

Not to be confused with the small modular reactors (SMRs) being explored by Dominion Energy, these reactors, as described by the Washington Post, would be “small enough to be packed in a shipping container and loaded on a truck.” The fuel for these microreactors would be uranium sealed in poppyseed-sized pellets coated with layers of heatproof material. The U.S. Dept. of Energy describes them as “meltdown-proof.” Instead of using water as a coolant, these reactors would use helium gas, molten salt, or air-cooled alkali. They can be designed to generate as little as a single megawatt of power—enough for a single manufacturing plant. One of these reactors next to every data center built in Virginia would go a long way toward resolving the Commonwealth’s future power needs.

This is not a theoretical concept being floated around in scientific circles. According to the Post, by next year, the U.S. Dept. of Energy will test as many as three different microreactors at its Idaho National Laboratory. If the tests are successful, the developers hope to get the first of them running as soon as 2018 and to be installing them widely by the early 2030s. One of the first to utilize a microreactor could be a gold mining company in Idaho. Using the microreactor to power its mining machines, the company wants to make its operation a “showcase” for the new power source.

The Virginia company that is one of the five companies vying to be the first to market the new technology is BWXT of Lynchburg. The company traces its roots to Babcock and Wilcox, which has a long history of first manufacturing industrial boilers and then nuclear facilities, especially for the U.S. Navy. (The history of corporate mergers and spinoffs that culminated in BWXT is convoluted and irrelevant here.) BWXT has partnered with Tata Chemicals, which hopes to replace its coal boilers with microreactors at a Wyoming plant that produces soda ash, which is used in toothpaste, laundry detergent, and glass.

In addition to engineering issues, the effort to develop microreactors faces some practical obstacles. Perhaps the foremost is the question of the disposal of the radioactive waste that would be generated by these facilities. Another problem would be finding the enriched uranium that would be needed to power the reactors, which is not currently manufactured in this country.

The movement has its skeptics in the scientific community, as well. “The idea that we will start trucking these all over the country, putting them in nooks and crannies in populated areas next to data centers and factories without any off-site emergency planning, is just madness. It is not justified by the science,” commented Ed Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

As for BWXT, developing a microreactor for commercial use is not the only futuristic endeavor in which it is engaged. On its campus in Lynchburg is an “airplane-hanger-size” building that houses Project Pele, a Dept. of Defense effort to build “a resilient, carbon-free energy source capable of delivering reliable 24/7 power to mission-critical DoD operations in remote and austere environments.” It will soon be sent to the Idaho facility for testing. The company is also developing a microreactor that could be used for space exploration and satellite launches. Kate Kelly, the president of that unit of BWXT, explained that it could also be used to “provide power on the surface of the moon to support human exploration or a commercial lunar company.”

The future of clean energy in Virginia may be in Lynchburg, rather than in wind turbines off the Atlantic coast.