Courtesy of the SMH...

Courtesy of the SMH
disallowed/world/europe/with-a-nuclear-powered-shower-russia-tests-a-climate-innovation-20211105-p596dm.html

With a nuclear-powered shower, Russia tests aclimate innovation

By Andrew E. Kramer

November6, 2021 — 2.12pm

Pevek, Russia: The water was hot, steamy and plentiful, and PavelRozhkov let it flow over his body, enjoying a shower that is not for thesqueamish: on his bare skin, he was feeling the heat produced by an atomicreaction, pumped directly from a nuclear reactor into his home.

“Personally, I’m not worried,” Rozhkov said.

His shower came courtesy of nuclear residentialheating, which remains exceedingly rare and was introduced in the remoteSiberian town of Pevek only a year ago. The source is not a typical reactorwith huge cooling towers but is the first of a new generation of smaller andpotentially more versatile nuclear plants — in this case aboard a bargefloating nearby in the Arctic Ocean.

As countries meet in Scotland this week at theCOP26 conference to try to find new ways to mitigate climate change, Russia has embraced nuclear residential heating as one potential solution, while also hoping it can bring a competitive advantage. Companies in the United States, China and France are considering builng the type of small reactors connected now to Pevek’s waterworks.

“It’s very exciting,” Jacopo Buongiorno, aprofessor of nuclear science and engineering at Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology, said in a telephone interview. These small reactors, he said, couldalso warm greenhouses or provide heat for industrial purposes. In bringing tolife the new approach, he said, “the Russians are ahead”.

Nuclear-powered residential heating is distinctfrom running space or water heaters with electricity generated from nuclearsources. Direct nuclear heating, tried in small pockets of Russia and Sweden,circulates water between a power plant and homes, transferring heat directlyfrom fissioning uranium atoms to residences.

Warming homes with nuclear power also hasenvironmental benefits, advocates of the idea say. Primarily, it avoids wastingthe heat that is typically vented as steam through the conical cooling towersof nuclear plants, and instead captures it for use in residential heating, ifcustomers are fine with it.

Still, some experts are concerned about thepotential risks, pointing to the many spills and accidents on Soviet andRussian submarines and icebreakers that used similar small reactors. Nuclearsubmarines sank in 1989 and 2000, for example.

“It is nuclear technology, and the starting pointneeds to be that it is dangerous,” said Andrei Zolotkov, a researcher withBellona, a Norwegian environmental group. “That is the only way to think aboutit.”

Rozhkov’s wife, Natalia Rozhkova, was initiallysceptical. They can see the new nuclear facility, which is about a kilometreaway, from their kitchen window. She “worried for the first two days” aftertheir apartment was connected to one of the cooling loops of the reactors. Butthe feeling passed, she said.

“Whatever is new is scary,” Rozhkova said. Still,somebody has to be first, she suggested, adding, “We were the closest, so theyhooked us up first.”

The experiment in Siberia, Buongiorno said, couldplay a vital role in convincing countries that using nuclear power to limitclimate change will require using it for more than just generating electricity,the source of about a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.

“Decarbonising the electrical grid will only getyou one quarter of the way,” he said. “The rest comes from all these otherthings.”

Yes, but a nuclear shower? Buongiorno said he wouldtake one — but conceded that “obviously this is not going to work if peopledon’t feel comfortable with the technology.”

The experiment with nuclear heating hardly makesRussia a crusader on climate change. One of the world’s heaviest polluters, ithas adopted contradictory stances on global warming, of which Pevek itself isan example. At the same time it is switching its heating to nuclear power,rather than coal, it is benefiting from climate change in the Arctic, revivingitself as a port as shipping lanes become more navigable.

Russians also have a long and chequered history ofemploying nuclear technologies for civilian applications not generally acceptedelsewhere. The Soviet Union considered detonating atomic bombs to produceopen-pit mines and dig irrigation canals. With its icebreakers, Russia operatesthe only civilian nuclear-powered surface fleet.

At several sites during the Soviet era, engineersconnected a type of reactor used to create plutonium for bombs to nearby homesfor heating. The reactors continued operating that way for years, even when notneeded to make weapons.

The nuclear facility in Pevek is aboard theAkademik Lomonosov, a barge about the size of a city block. The idea of smallreactors is not new. In the 1960s, before the anti-nuclear movement gainedtraction, they were seen as a promising technology. The United States operateda barge-based reactor to electrify the Panama Canal Zone from 1968 to 1976, andSweden used nuclear heating in a suburb of Stockholm from 1963 to 1974.

Two other sites in Russia besides Pevek use nuclearresidential heating; however, there it is a byproduct of large electricalplants.

Soon, in Pevek, the town’s community steam bath, orbanya, will also be nuclear-powered. The state nuclear company, Rosatom,connected the reactors to the heating pipes in one neighbourhood in June 2020.It is now expanding the hot water service to the whole town, which has apopulation of about 4500.

The plant’s two cores are cooled by a series ofwater loops. In each reactor, the first loop is contaminated with radioactiveparticles. But this water never leaves the plant. Through heat exchangers, ittransfers heat — but not contaminated water — to other loops.

In Pevek, one of these loops is the system of pipesthat leave the plant, branch out and supply hot water to homes.

The company promotes a number of safety features.The plant can withstand a crash by a small aeroplane. The vessel that holds itdoubles as a containment structure. And the water circulating through buildingsis at a higher pressure than the cooling loop from which it derives heat withinthe plant, in theory preventing a radiation leak from spreading into town.

Residents cannot opt out of getting nuclear-poweredheat, but they have mostly welcomed the new plant. Deputy Mayor Maxim Zhurbinsaid nobody complained at public hearings before the barge arrived.

“We explained to the population what would happen,and there were no objections,” he said. “We are using the peaceful atom.”

Irina Buriyeva, a librarian, said she appreciatedthe plentiful heat and electricity. Of the risks of a radiation leak orexplosion, she said, “We try not to think about it, honestly.”

Russia is first, but hardly an outlier, indeveloping small civilian reactors. This month, French President EmmanuelMacron proposed an expansion of his country’s extensive nuclear sector withsmall reactors as part of the solution to climate change. China is buildingsmall floating reactors modelled on the Russian design.

Companies in the US, including General Electric andWestinghouse, have about a dozen designs ready for testing from 2023. In anextreme example of miniaturisation, the US military has ordered a reactor smallenough to fit in a shipping container; two companies, BWXT and X-energy, arecompeting to deliver the air-cooled device.

Germany, however, has taken a different path: itdecided to close all of its nuclear plants after the Fukushima disaster inJapan in 2011.

Kirill Toropov, deputy director of the floatingnuclear plant in Pevek, said its benefits were already visible locally, citingsnow that is less sullied with coal soot. “We need to note this positiveecological moment,” he said.

Rozhkov, 41, an accountant, who has been showeringand bathing three children in nuclear-warmed water for a year now, saidRussia’s use of small reactors in icebreakers gave him confidence in thetechnology.

“We aren’t worried,” he said, “that the details arestill being worked out.”His wife said they were “believers” and added, “Thereare things we cannot control. I can only pray for our safety, for the safety ofour town. I say, ‘God, it is in your hands.’“