By mid-century, 200 or more new nuclear power plants could be deployed in the U.S. to meet the growing demand for electricity. The conventional approach would be to site these new reactors at the earth's surface. An alternate approach would be to site them underground. Past studies of underground siting indicated a number of safety and security advantages, and no insurmountable engineering problems, but an almost certain cost increase resulting from underground construction. However, a new concept for underground reactor siting—the underground nuclear park—has the potential to actually reduce cost relative to surface siting. Massive salt deposits, both bedded and domal, are a potentially favorable rock type for hosting underground nuclear parks. The shallow piercement salt domes in the Gulf Coast sedimentary basin should be examined for this application. The idea would be to site an array of nuclear reactors, each within its own sealed and isolated chamber, hundreds of feet deep inside one or more salt domes. Nuclear waste management facilities supporting the reactors would be collocated nearby and connected to the reactors by tunnels. Energy conversion equipment could be either underground or at the earth's surface. The heat transfer fluids that move through the reactor cores would be isolated from the earth's surface using heat exchangers. If underground nuclear parks in Gulf Coast salt domes should prove feasible, then they could be used to supply baseload and peaking electricity, and possibly hydrogen, to the region and nation analogous to oil and gas today.

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