WI: An Atomic TVA

Back in the 1950s, there was a big debate in the US over whether government or private industry should take the lead in building nuclear power plants. This was in many ways a continuation of the debates over the Tennessee Valley Authority, with Democrats and unions lobbying for a government-owned nuclear power corporation set up on the same model. IOTL, the private power advocates won the debate, led by Chairman of the AEC Lewis Strauss, who at times seemed to prefer no atomic power to publicly-owned atomic power.

So, what if the public power advocates won? I'm imagining an approach along the lines of Britain's fleet of Magnox reactors: publicly-owned reactors intended to produce both electricity and plutonium for weapons. (That's about the only way atomic power could be remotely cost-effective in the US in this time period anyway.) What would it take for this happen, and what would the consequences be?
 
Back in the 1950s, there was a big debate in the US over whether government or private industry should take the lead in building nuclear power plants. This was in many ways a continuation of the debates over the Tennessee Valley Authority, with Democrats and unions lobbying for a government-owned nuclear power corporation set up on the same model. IOTL, the private power advocates won the debate, led by Chairman of the AEC Lewis Strauss, who at times seemed to prefer no atomic power to publicly-owned atomic power.

So, what if the public power advocates won? I'm imagining an approach along the lines of Britain's fleet of Magnox reactors: publicly-owned reactors intended to produce both electricity and plutonium for weapons. (That's about the only way atomic power could be remotely cost-effective in the US in this time period anyway.) What would it take for this happen, and what would the consequences be?

TheMann mentions something like this in his "The Future is Green" thread. I'll give you the link to the specific post. It's number 76 on this page: https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=172995&page=4

And another post that describes the idea, this one is at the top of the page: https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=172995&page=7

Hope that helps.
 

Perkeo

Banned
IMHO it's an illusion that state owned reactors will be any better than private ones. Just look at Czernobyl.

If you are serious about nuclear safety, you need to seperate operator and controlling authority. You can neither have that a system like the USSR were both are state-owned and subject to more or less the same government directives, nor a system like Japan were (apperently) power company advisors gained far too much influence on the regulators. There must no common interest other than reason.

You can control the consequences of single mistakes - even severe ones - but you cannot control the consequences of a decay in safety culture.
 
IMHO it's an illusion that state owned reactors will be any better than private ones. Just look at Czernobyl.

If you are serious about nuclear safety, you need to seperate operator and controlling authority. You can neither have that a system like the USSR were both are state-owned and subject to more or less the same government directives, nor a system like Japan were (apperently) power company advisors gained far too much influence on the regulators. There must no common interest other than reason.

You can control the consequences of single mistakes - even severe ones - but you cannot control the consequences of a decay in safety culture.

Safety, in my view, could go either way, depending on the circumstances. There were definitely voices within the AEC calling for much more stringent safety requirements very early on - including, bizarrely enough, Edward Teller, who managed to get the Reactor Safeguards Committee nicknamed the Reactor Prevention Committee. Whether they are listened to or not depends on who's president and who that president appoints to the AEC.

One important question is what happens with the development of the technology and the industry. I very strongly doubt the government would prohibit development of atomic energy by private firms, but it's going to be a very different marketplace if the government has a direct stake in the game. The private power companies were very wary of a possible atomic TVA, and some of the early private projects seem more intended to head off a public power program than to generate electricity. I'm not sure how they'd react if these efforts failed - if they'd redouble their efforts or bow out.

Also, if the US is pursuing publicly-owned reactors in part to produce plutonium for weapons, then Light Water Reactors of the sort we have historically used are probably not the optimal choice. A graphite-moderated design, possibly analogous to the MAGNOX, is more likely. If both the UK and the US are focusing on gas-cooled graphite designs, then western Europe may adopt them as well rather than LWRs.
 
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Safety, in my view, could go either way, depending on the circumstances. There were definitely voices within the AEC calling for much more stringent safety requirements very early on - including, bizarrely enough, Edward Teller, who managed to get the Reactor Safeguards Committee nicknamed the Reactor Prevention Committee. Whether they are listened to or not depends on who's president and who that president appoints to the AEC.

One important question is what happens with the development of the technology and the industry. I very strongly doubt the government would prohibit development of atomic energy by private firms, but it's going to be a very different marketplace if the government has a direct stake in the game. The private power companies were very wary of a possible atomic TVA, and some of the early private projects seem more intended to head off a public power program than to generate electricity. I'm not sure how they'd react if these efforts failed - if they'd redouble their efforts or bow out.

Also, if the US is pursuing publicly-owned reactors in part to produce plutonium for weapons, then Light Water Reactors of the sort we have historically used are probably not the optimal choice. A graphite-moderated design, possibly analogous to the MAGNOX, is more likely. If both the UK and the US are focusing on gas-cooled graphite designs, then western Europe may adopt them as well rather than LWRs.

How would said systems differentiate from LWR systems in operational efficiency, safety and so on if at all?
 
How would said systems differentiate from LWR systems in operational efficiency, safety and so on if at all?

Gas-cooled reactors (GCRs) are, at least potentially, safer than LWRs, particularly early-generation LWRs. The gaseous coolant of a GCR can keep the core cool after shutdown through natural convection, without any need for external electricity or diesel generators. Also, there's no risk of a steam explosion. If Fukushima had been a GCR, it would have ridden out the tsunami without any trouble.

GCRs do have one very big potential vulnerability, however: the graphite moderator can burn. How big a risk this is is not clear to me - it happened at Chernobyl, but all kinds of things had already gone wrong by the time the graphite caught fire. My gut feeling is that the tradeoff is more than worth it, but I am not a nuclear engineer. And, mind you, none of this means GCRs will be safer than OTL's LWRs, just that they can be. Bad design choices can still fuck things up beautifully.

As for cost, early GCRs like the British MAGNOX and AGR were significantly less cost-efficient than LWRs. They do have the potential to evolve into something more cost-effective than an LWR, however; the Pebble Bed Reactor (PBR) is a GCR that is currently one of the more appealing of the proposed Gen-IV advanced reactor designs. In particular, GCRs can potentially operate at a higher temperatures than LWRs, allowing for greater thermal efficiency and therefore greater power output. But this is still mostly speculative, and the history of GCRs in OTL has been loss than inspiring, cost-wise.

It's not a given that an atomic TVA would choose GCRs, either. After all, safety isn't that big a deal yet, and their other chief advantage is plutonium production, which the US already has plenty of. They might well go with LWRs instead.
 
The thing which did not helped the AGR cost efficiency wise, is the fact that procurement of the reactor parts of the building of the reactors themselves was a huge and very costly mess. Bad management and bad design of parts can add a lot to costs early on especially for prototype designs as the first AGRs were.

To illustrate my point, there are seven AGR stations in Britain and among these you have at least three "sub designs" so to speak some of which were a real pain to build.

The AGRs are more efficient than light water reactors through (42% vs 34%) and offers better possibilities for development compared to the glorified kettles that are PWRs.
 
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Look at the history of accidents in military/government reactors in the late 50s and early 60s in the US - the EBR-1 and SL-1 reactors in Idaho both had meltdowns, there were a number of accidental criticalites in Oak Ridge and elsewhere, and lots of incidents of weapons accidents all over the place. Then factor in the number of reactors required and their proximity to population centers, and you have a recipe for some "nifty" disasters waiting to happen.
 
We'll definitely have more nuclear reactors. There's a reason the private sector doesn't do much in the way of nukes -- it's too cost prohibitive. Remove the profit motive, and we'll do a lot better towards more nuclear power.
 
Look at the history of accidents in military/government reactors in the late 50s and early 60s in the US - the EBR-1 and SL-1 reactors in Idaho both had meltdowns, there were a number of accidental criticalites in Oak Ridge and elsewhere, and lots of incidents of weapons accidents all over the place. Then factor in the number of reactors required and their proximity to population centers, and you have a recipe for some "nifty" disasters waiting to happen.

It's certainly possible, but I think you're overstating the situation.

In particular, a public power program means no Lewis Strauss as Chairman of the AEC, and probably means a Democratic president. And that means Gordon Murray probably continues as Chairman of the AEC through the mid 50s. I haven't found much information yet on Murray's attitude towards reactor safety, but his views on atmospheric testing incline me to believe he would be significantly more concerned about the problem than Strauss was.

Also, just because there's a public power program doesn't mean there's more reactors being built, especially in the mid-term. One of the most likely scenarios is a public program based on GCRs and focusing on making plutonium, with electricity as a side business - like the British MAGNOX program. In which case we could well see a significantly reduced level of reactor construction in the 60s, since the atomic TVA won't be building as many as the private sector did IOTL, and the private sector ITTL would see reactors as only profitable if run by the government for the sake of plutonium. The industry would then be smaller but perhaps healthier in the long run, since they wouldn't be locked in to LWRs the way we are IOTL.

Or maybe they build LWRs just like they did IOTL, but with even fewer safety restrictions since the inspectors and the designers work in the same building, and we have Fukushima in 1965. That's possible, too.
 
There's a reason the private sector doesn't do much in the way of nukes -- it's too cost prohibitive.

That's a bit of myth; at least in the US, the reason is that (before last week) no new designs had been approved since the Carter Administration, removing the ability of commercial reactors to adapt as quickly as coal. If the new designs weren't competitive, there wouldn't be such a long list of reactors pending approval.

Also, experimental military reactors (which Chernobyl technically was) are not a good comparison for safety records, as they can (and did) use the excuse of being classified to avoid being safe. The excellant safety record of modern military ship/submarine reactors is a much better comparison.

Back to the PoD, I could imagine an Eisenhower-era program (part of Atoms-for-Peace) to build lots of Federally-owned reactors all across the country (similar to the Interstate Highways). Heck, maybe you could have a situation (like France) where high-speed electric rail is developed to use all that nuclear power. Imagine most Interstates with a high-speed rail running parallel...

Also in such a situation, I can imagine that a lot of the reactors would be Thorium powered, thus conserving the Uranium for "other uses".
 
Back to the PoD, I could imagine an Eisenhower-era program (part of Atoms-for-Peace) to build lots of Federally-owned reactors all across the country (similar to the Interstate Highways). Heck, maybe you could have a situation (like France) where high-speed electric rail is developed to use all that nuclear power. Imagine most Interstates with a high-speed rail running parallel...

I don't think the cost of reactors can be justified in the late 50s except as a plutonium factory. By the 60s, it's a different story. (Although, at least according to Alvin Weinberg, that was mostly because GE and Westinghouse sold at a loss to dominate what they believed would ultimately be a lucrative market).

A thought: maybe Brien McMahon doesn't get cancer and is elected president in 1960. (He definitely had the ambition - he ran in 1952 but had to bow out for health reasons.) He strikes me as very likely to support a public power program, and by then the cost is a little less imposing.

Also in such a situation, I can imagine that a lot of the reactors would be Thorium powered, thus conserving the Uranium for "other uses".

As fond as I am of the LFTR, that's a longer-term prospect. Breeders, even thermal breeders, are tricky...
 
The thing which did not helped the AGR cost efficiency wise, is the fact that procurement of the reactor parts of the building of the reactors themselves was a huge and very costly mess. Bad management and bad design of parts can add a lot to costs early on especially for prototype designs as the first AGRs were.

To illustrate my point, there are seven AGR stations in Britain and among these you have at least three "sub designs" so to speak some of which were a real pain to build.

Do you think better-managed American or British program could have produced GCRs that were competitive with light water reactors by the 60s? I don't know much about the British side of things, and the US doesn't seem to have paid much attention to GCR power reactors in the 50s, at least compared to LWRs and metal-cooled designs.
 

Perkeo

Banned
Safety, in my view, could go either way, depending on the circumstances. There were definitely voices within the AEC calling for much more stringent safety requirements very early on - including, bizarrely enough, Edward Teller, who managed to get the Reactor Safeguards Committee nicknamed the Reactor Prevention Committee. Whether they are listened to or not depends on who's president and who that president appoints to the AEC.

That's a matter of conflict of interest: You cannot leave decisions about safety requirements to anyone who directly or indirectly suffers from the expenses for safety systems - especially since safety is by far the dominant expense factor in nuclear power. Conflict of interest will always lead to sloppy safety standards due to economic reasons, and for obvious reasons, you cannot allow sloppyness in nuclear safety.

How would said systems differentiate from LWR systems in operational efficiency, safety and so on if at all?

Gas cooled reactors tend to have a low power density, which is bad for operational efficiency, but good for safety, since a larger core can absorp a lot more heat before it melts. The Pebble-Bed Reactor uses that advantage to make a core melt completely impossible, since even a complete loss of cooling doesn't heat the core above the melting point of graphite, which is the shell material of the pebbles. But don't think that all gas cooled reactors are passively save: In Chapelcross nuclear power station, there was a partial core melt in 1967. In addition, graphite may not melt, but it can burn. You need a RPV design that prevents large amounts of air in the core under all circumstances, to ensure a Czernobyl-like release of radioactivity from a burning core.

LWR - as we all know - so melt if not cooled, but there is a relatively simple solution to the problem: A huge reservoir of water. Modern designs like the AP1000 and Kerena claim passive safety due to a huge reservoir of water that sustains even when all active systems fail like in Fukushima.

So the conclusion is that all reactor systems have their respective advantages that you need to make use of and disadvantages that you need to take care about. Safety depends on how well you did both of that, not what general approach you choose. As for operational efficiency, LWR's appear to be the most cost-effective design, but it's hard to tell if things like higher power efficiency in high temperature reactors could have reversed that if someone had dared more R & D.
 
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