A Fata Morgana 4

Wednesday, 03 August 2011
I was a little bit thrilled when I realize that I have something to develop in my imaginary workshop of Fata Morgana. As usual I often start doing something and after that I just let it be like that or change to start doing something else. I have to stop it and do something different. I determined to keep writing every day no matter it is a good idea or not; or good English or not.
Any way, this morning I have sent three emails to my colleagues asking for some information regarding Small Medium Sized Reactors (SMR) Assessment. The small size reactor is defined as the reactor with nominal power of less than 300 MW electric, where as the medium size reactor has nominal power within 300 to 700 MW electric.
This reactor was designed to fulfill the demand of energy of small countries which have a limited in economics, energy need s and electric grid network. For Indonesia itself, we have a lot of small islands that are still lack of electricity. Right now I am in charge in assessing the technology to select which ones of them are the most appropriate for Indonesia’s remote island.

First of all the team of Assessment has set up the national criteria to select the technology. The criteria was derived from a document of common user consideration (CUC) published by International atomic nuclear energy and some detail information from EUR Standard. The criteria cover the requirement for site, reactor size, reactor technology, proven technology, environmental aspect, proliferation resistance, physical protection, infrastructure, constructability, maintainability, availability.
The second is to study the available technology of SMR in all over the world. Luckily there are a lot of studies that provide information on the status of SMR. I know someone who is intensively working on SMR technology in international Agency. He is Mr. Vladimir Kuznetsov, a scientist from Russia. He left Agency at the end of 2010. And this is something that we should be proud of; his successor is Dr. Subki from Indonesia. He is a talented and hardworking man and taking care of his friends so much. I work with him during my service as CFE in 2010 in International Atomic Energy Agency. The available SMRs include KLT-40S, VBER-300, ABV, SVBR-100 (Russia) CAREM-25 (Argentina), SMART (Korea), NuScale, mPower, IRIS, New Hyperion (USA), HTR-PM (China), AHWR (India) and $S (Japan) and other SMR type.
The third is to assess the appropriateness of available technology to the national criteria and do weighting and score the satisfaction level. Finally we found six types of SMR to further investigation for future Feasibility Study assessment. Of course I do not have intention to list them here for securing the information.
What I really like from this SMR is its potential to reduce capital cost due its small size, suitability of use in smaller grid, the stated intention to use more passive safety and developing non-electrical application such as desalination, gasification, hydrogen production and etc. By using passive safety system, the SMR become safer since it allows some grace period to handling itself when an accident occurs.
I keep repeating mentioning that as the fourth rank population and developing country, Indonesia will consume so much energy in the future. The fact that now Indonesia had resigned from OPEC and became a net importer oil country should have warned us that our energy has been started to be diminished. Alternative resources should be provided as soon as possible before we come to the situation of energy chaos that makes us be far away from nation welfare like the Fata Morgana.