By Ace Hoffman, Carlsbad, California
Editor’s note: Plans to place nuclear power reactors one mile underground are moving ahead in Parsons, Kansas. The company Deep Fission is conducting an experiment called Gravity Nuclear Reactor intending to sell electricity from a small, modular pressurized water reactor placed into a deep borehole. Ace Hoffman sees at least ten predictable problems:
1) It will have two cables, each one mile long, for placing and possibly retrieving the unit. Since reactors are extremely dense and heavy items, the possibility of a cable break should not be ignored. If one cable breaks or merely stretches a smidgen more than the other cable, the reactor will likely turn sideways and jam in the hole. This could happen near the surface or deep inside the hole. Furthermore, one dropped bolt, wrench, brick, rock, etc. could ruin everything. [A dropped wrench socket caused a nuclear-armed Titan II missile to explode inside its launch silo, Sept. 19, 1980 near Damascus, Ark., killing one and injuring 20 others.]
2) Multiple holes, if they are close together, could mean that a single reactor meltdown and steam explosion could affect nearby reactors. And the proper definition of “close” is very uncertain.
3) Mile-long drill holes can collapse at any point, making retrieval and operation impossible.
4) If a glitch blocks control rod insertion in the reactor, a meltdown could continue essentially forever.
5) It does not appear that the boreholes will be lined in any way. Natural fissures can cause large rocks to come loose, or the drilling process itself could loosen chunks of the walls. Perfect smoothness would require numerous drill bit changes, increasing the drilling cost significantly. Will dull drill bits be used to save money during construction (when no income is being made and costs mean everything)?
6) Earthquakes can destroy every borehole at once, causing as many meltdowns as there are reactors. Even a fraction of an inch misalignment could mean the reactor(s) could never be retrieved or serviced.
7) If water intrusion occurs from an unrealized already-existing deep fissure, everything goes boom and continues to spew radioactive steam essentially forever. Plugging up the hole would be extremely difficult, unlikely to be permanent, and only mean the underground area would continue becoming the most polluted place on Earth. Any warning signs above ground would not last nearly as long as the waste would be toxic, spreading, and unmanageable.
8) If either the down spout or the steam pipe breaks anywhere along the mile-deep tubing, it may be impossible to retrieve anything below the break point.
9) The only way for this to pay back the builders and operators is to run these reactors for a long, long time. Pulling any reactor up to inspect or repair it means pulling up the entire mile-long tubing, which means the whole length must be sectioned and separable. Each joint has to be 100% leak-proof. How many sections do they plan to have? (If each segment is 50 feet tall (about five stories), the full length would need over 100 segments for each reactor, with more than 100 leak-proof joints.
10) Operating reactors need electrical control cables as well as steam and water piping. These cables, dropping a mile straight down, will have to remain in perfect condition and be retrievable along with the reactor. Running right next to the hot steam and water is a very unsafe place for electrical cables.
There are undoubtedly many other problems with any deep-borehole reactor design, but these come to mind — without even requiring any deep-thought!
— The author has studied nuclear power as an independent researcher for more than 50 years.
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