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Thorium reactors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
There is much less nuclear waste— two orders of magnitude less with thorium. It's abundant so it's more accessible. And it's prohibitively difficult to use as a nuclear weapon so it's safe to let developing countries without mature or stable state apparatuses develop these. The reactor designs use a lithium floride container that will melt, draining out the fuel in the even of an over temperature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Uranium Nitride safety: http://www.ans.org/pubs/magazi...
They can be built small, they do NOT produce weapons-grade uranium as a by-product, and they can’t melt down due to an uncontrolled “chain reaction.”

Had the reactor containment vessel failed, the worst case was the loss of Eastern Japan. Hopefully one day we can find out what saved the country.

It's not that mysterious. For example, according to this report, the pressure release of Reactor 2 is unexplained, but they weren't close to blowing out the pressure vessel:

The containment pressure rise at first was much slower than should be expected if all the decay heat is delivered to the suppression pool, which is an indication of a leak in the containment boundary. The wetwell venting line configuration had been completed by 11:00 a.m. on March 13, but the containment pressure had not reached the rupture disk setpoint, so no venting occurred. After core damage, the containment pressure increased more rapidly, probably because of hydrogen production. At 6:00 a.m. on March 15, an impulsive sound that was initially attributed to a hydrogen explosion was confirmed near the suppression chamber of the containment. Later reviews suggested that sound was not due to hydrogen burn. In any case the containment pressure did sharply decrease. It is not clear whether the designed vent path was ever in service; however, longer term, the containment pressure has remained low, around the level of atmospheric pressure.

In particular, it's worth noting that there is a rupture disk here precisely to prevent the reactor pressure vessel from experiencing a catastrophic rupture and that the vessel was leaking enough that it might not have even reached a high enough pressure to break the rupture disk.

If by 'REALLY bad' you mean expensive TMI might belong in the list, but not a single person died or even got cancer as a result of TMI.

Praise #2: He's not satisfied with just building the thing, he wants to apply the thing. That's what I find truly commendable.

So he goes off and learns a lot of good science and engineering in how to look for special nuclear material. Dennis Slaughter, of Lawrence Livermore National Lab, was featured on the front page of the American Nuclear Society's Nuclear News magazine in November of 2007 for his "nuclear car wash." Basically the same idea: use a neutron generator (a big one, in this case) and look for signatures of delayed neutrons in response.

So, what Taylor has done isn't revolutionary, but I'm sure it's a lot cheaper than any other neutron active interrogation system out there. Good for him. And, again, awesome job for hunting for useful applications of technology.

I helped a tiny bit with the WorkHorse version a quarter century ago as a volunteer hanging out in his lab back then:
    http://www.new.ans.org/pubs/magazines/download/a_671

Time to replace existing BWRs in Japan with ESBWR reactors, with their PASSIVE safety systems, requiring no mechanical operation - loss of off-site and backup power would have much less impact.

The sad truth is that most people don't actually understand [anything] in the United States

Fixed that for you. I'm sure somebody will be along with the next iteration soon

I wouldn't be the person to cast that stone if I were you. I visited your blog and saw plenty of evidence of ignorance there. For example, there's this gem:

Nuclear power is fossil fuel based. Do you really think uranium comes from anywhere different than coal? It's a shiny rock we find in the ground, that eventually replenishes from meteors or volcanic activity drawing it out of the center of the earth; tons and tons of this shit isn't popping up all over the planet all the time, it takes something major to make more. To make matters worse, we can only derive 5% of the energy potential from nuclear fuel without breeding it into weapons grade nuclear material (and then summarily using said weapons grade nuclear material for the non-weapons purpose of generating 20 times the electricity we normally could), which of course violates a treaty or two.

There are so many things wrong with what you have written on that blog but I'll just address a few things from this quote.

• Fossil fuels come from...fossils! They are produced from carbon, hydrogen, and other trace elements that came from decaying organic matter.
• Nuclear power, or more precisely nuclear fission, is performed through the use of much heavier elements, generally isotopes with a higher atomic mass than iron. The most common materials are uranium, plutonium, and thorium - none of which are present in great quantities in organic material.
• There are vast reserves of fissile materials, far greater than the reserves of fossil fuels. For example here is a report on uranium. Note that with fast breeder reactors there is enough uranium for approximately 2,500 years of energy production. The situation is even better with thorium which is three to four times as abundant than uranium.
• The thorium cycle is very proliferation-resistant due to the fact that the products of the reaction are very undesirable for making weapons and are difficult to separate out. Thus the boogieman of nuclear proliferation can be dealt with by using technologies which do not promote using reactors and fuels which are readily used in weapons.

I could go on but I think I've made my point. Ignorance abounds in many places and you shouldn't have the hubris to paint an entire nation with a broad brush when you exhibit a heady measure of it yourself.

In fact you'll find that CT/CAT scans expose you to a comparable amount of radiation as flying: http://www2.ans.org/pi/raddosechart/pdfs/raddosechart.pdf 1 full body CAT scan is about the same as 220 hours of flying (10 long haul flights) 1 Thyroid scan about the same as 28 hours of flying (just over 1 long haul flight) There's lots of sources of radiation, not only that but studies have started to show that constant low level exposure to radiation may in fact reduce you susceptibility to cancer.

I was obsessed with the NS Savannah recently because she is such a beautiful ship - I love ships and this cargo ship looks like a yacht. Whilst I am not a fan of the Nuclear Industry in it's current form her reactor appeared to be reasonably well constructed and whilst designed to cruise at 21 knots, she outperformed her design spec by steadily cruising at 24 knots - pretty fast for a cargo ship. Check page 16 of the MARAD documentation (warning - pdf).

There is significant historical information about her operation. Until 9/11 she was part of the National Defense Reserve Fleet (NDRF) but her reactor was permanently disabled due to concerns she could be used as quite a convenient weapon of terror. Sadly, her hybrid design condemned her to a short operational life (10 years) and she is now a ghost ship. There are plans to make her a museum ship whilst waiting for her decommissioned reactor to cool down for eventual disassembly, but no one seems interested in the project. Despite that the seafarers Union have been working to maintain the ship by improving her general appearance.

NS Savannah's crew dispute was because the executive officers traditionally got paid more than the engineering crew on board the ship, this dispute, high running costs, low oil costs all contributed to her eventual demise. An interest group (with mailing list) is looking for photos and artefacts whist she was in operation.

lots more photos, her community organisation, glory days, historical landmark program, service history and specifications, floorplan and schematics, current status, passenger lounge, reactor control room, dry docked , and finally a flickr photo stream and a rather excellent photo essay of the NS Savannah. A little bit of history for you to enjoy.

Secondly, reprocessing. The US's main focus for reprocessing is wrapped up in the Bush Administration's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP). This is a freaking scam, and the National Academy of Sciences backs me up. Basically, the types of reactors envisioned require materials science that just isn't there yet, requires funding that just isn't there yet, and requires an infrastructure that Just Isn't There Yet.

The solution is to turn Yucca Mountain into a medium-term repository. Bury it, safely, for 100 to 200 years, let the exceptionally hot stuff decay away, and I'm pretty darned sure civilization will be able to find some use for the energy stored in there in 100 years. But until then, let the technology mature. The commercial industry (and, by extension, every person in the U.S. who pays for electricity) has been paying into the Yucca fund for too long not to see any return on that investment.

Oh, one more snarky comment. Please provide support via links for your assertions; it's not hard. I would like to see evidence that after 30 years, the spent fuel coming out of a burner like envisioned for GNEP is actually less radioactive than the original ore.

Hence, it is a metric only of direct importance to people estimating failure rates for RAID arrays and the like.

Exactly. Which is why any MTBF statistic that is unaccompanied by a service life statistic should be dismissed as handwaving. People don't really believe that the coolant containment on an ESBWR nuke plant (expected to see 3*10^-8 common mode accidents per year) is going to last 33 million years, do they?

The Chernobyl Forum (IAEA, OMS...) did publish the ''4000'' figure. Please access to those documents: OMS and IAEA, then let's read:

-=-=-=-=-=
20 Years Later a UN Report Provides Definitive Answers and Ways to Repair Lives

5 SEPTEMBER 2005 | GENEVA -- A total of up to 4000 people could eventually die of radiation exposure from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (NPP) accident nearly 20 years ago, an international team of more than 100 scientists has concluded.
=-=-=-=-=-

It was not UN-approved, it was not definitive (it was a draft, the definite one was published a few days ago, read below), the names of the scientists endorsing the ''A total of 4000 people could eventually die'' was not published, this very information (''total 4000 people'') was not in the draft report... In a word this abstract was pure BS.

Moreover they had a big press conference in order to announce this ''4000...'' thesis.

The the press relayed this ''4000, total'' thesis, and they did not publish a corrective document (from Sept, 2005 to April, 2006)

And now they discreetly publish the real definitive ONU-approved report, with a totally different info (''9000 in a small subset of the concerned population, and for a single illness'')

I know that the press is not always efficient but on this particular matter, well.. you decide. If you are a taxpayer don't forget that those IAEA/OMS/... people eat thanks to you in order to ''inform'' us, in order to decide.

Here is another funny excerpt (from the sharp'n good Nature):
-=-=-=-=-=
Melissa Fleming, a press officer working at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, who helped coordinate the report's publicity, says [ ... ] a decision was made to focus on the lower 4,000 figure [ ... ] "It was a bold action to put out a new figure that was much less than conventional wisdom." The figure has been removed from the final summary, however, published this month.
-=-=-=-=-=

Therefore, in a nutshell, "it is not true (this 4000 figure is not anymore a grand total in the definitive report) but we published it in order to lower other estimates, and it was a bold action. Is there a way to lie boldly?

--

Nat, rants

> Kyoto mandates a reduction of CO2 emissions below the level of 1990
> In 1990 the French nukes were already operating for more than a decade.
> How could they further reduce emissions when their effect is included in the baseline?

My point is that nuclear power plants are not sufficient to solve the greenhouse-gas emission problem, nor they are the sole solution for grid-electricity producing devices. My point is to ask people saying that "nuke plants will solve the problem" to have some reality check in France (where, as a sidenote, the nuclear-produced part of the electricity produced in France regularly climbed for the last 30 years).

>> crap ("nuke is the solution for greenhouse gas reduction")

> What's wrong here?

Writing the solution is wrong. It is, at best, a partial solution. Please check my previous comment.

And even on this field (grid-power) nuclear plants are not the best way because one has to extract then ship the nuclear fuel. And to do that one needs to burn gasoline, therefore emit CO2...

> Could you be missing the difference between "reduction" and "elimination"?

Nope, and this is not the point.

> Would you care to explain how a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is a bad thing

It's not a bad thing, but the "nuclear plants solve the problem" stance is bullshit.

> or how nuke plants emit greenhouse gases anyway?

One has to extract then ship the nuclear fuel. And to do that one needs to burn gasoline. But this is only a side-effect, I'm OK to say that nuclear plants use do nearly not emit greenhouse gas. Other, less dangerous, approaches can do it (please read the already referenced comment).

>> "the Chernobyl disaster killed 4000 persons"

> Another 4000 are estimated to die from cancer

I disagree. Your data came from a pro-nuke (UIC) comment on a flawed communiqué from pro-nuke agencies (IAEA...) which is not signed by anyone and is presented as an excerpt from a scientific report which is, in turn, only in draft stage and without any peer review nor clearly stated authors (i.e. this is not a scientific result). In fact this is plain BS. Please take a look at this analysis and let me know. This is an abstract, the complete document is in French (sorry about that) but some non-French speaking people found it somewhat easy to grasp as it often quotes English documents.

Among other information (read the complete anlysis) please check this "Nuclear News" (very serious and pro-nuke publication) article about it (page 46). Among numerous critics you will find that the main responsible for the "health" report (WHO's Dr Repacholi), said "The scientists did not want to include numbers for predicted deaths, but public relations officials had wanted them in the summary". Isn't it clear enough?

The "4000 deaths" commnuiqué is not science but plain disinformation.

An official ONU report from 1995 (the real United Nations "General Assembly", not another IAEA document posing at it) states:

-=-=-=- SNIP -=-=-=-=-

[ LIQUIDATORS, who cleaned the disaster zone ]

20. These men, drawn mainly from the then Soviet army [ ... ] In the time since, these people have dispersed across the former Soviet Union. Much of the registering and tracing of their whereabouts is highly inaccurate, in part because of the break-up of the Soviet Union and subsequent socio- economic changes. There is even uncertainty as to ho

• does not precisely define the population concerned (by those 4000 deaths). The official conclusion is "premature deaths of around 4000 people from the 600 000 affected by the higher radiation doses", but "higher radiation doses" and the 600000 group composition, are not defined. The group may only have nearly not-exposed people!
• this is not a scientific work, even if it is presented as such because nobody signed this conclusion. The WHO guys (Dr Repacholi), in charge of the pertinent study, even said that this "conclusion" was made by PR people... Read about it in Nuclear News (which is NOT a frenzy anti-nuke paper but a verious serious pro-nuke publication)
• this conclusion was 'drawn' from a report which only exists in draft stage and was not scientifically published. No peer review... no scientific value
• this conclusion is not expressed in the drafts reports
• the conclusion is presented as global, albeit the reports only covers 3 countries
• the 'health' report only studies cancers and leukemias, but many other problems arise (mutagen, teratogenesis...)
• the 'health' report states major limits for his model and data:
  • radio-induced cancers appear at last 10 years after exposition, and on average after 20 years... but the data used were collected between 1992-1998 (less than 12 years after the accident)
  • bad data quality (as already stated in 1995 in a real ONU report)
  • the model used is far from perfect
• low radiations were neglected albeit many experts think that they are dangerous, especially over long period and/or when ingested
• a model used came from observations done in another context (Hiroshima and Nagasaki: brief major and external exposition, instead of the "long, minor and often internal" after Chernobyl)

Here is a critic of those "conclusions" (French).

http://www.nei.org/index.asp?catnum=4&catid=318
http://www.ans.org/pi/ps/docs/ps54-bi.pdf

Read those for a better view than the often politicized and sometimes misleading wikipedia. A max of $400 million per plant per incident as stated by the parent's author in discussion was not correct. The PAAA supplies a pool of funds paid into by nearly every site containing DOE fuel, excluding accelerator operations. The current pot is up to around $11 billion. This isn't car insurance that you pay $600 bucks into every 6 months, because if you don't make a claim that would recover those funds, they're just being thrown down a hole. As you quoted, the sites would need to pay more than $3 billion annually to fully insure their operations. Should every site be required to pay a cost of $3 billion per year, that's more than the site. That in mind, it would negate the financial benefit of operating a plant, and thus the cost of energy would skyrocket since nuclear power produces the baseload of energy in many parts of the country. The idea behind the act is for each site to pay a certain amount per year to create an overly large pool of funds for cleanup/compensation in case of an accident. The chances of multiple sites requiring those funds at the same time is miniscule given nuclear power's track record, so the fund just grows each year since every site pays into the pot. The real question to ask is $11 billion a good amount to cover cleanup. To that I say, yes it is. The site with the worst reputation for mismanagement and contamination issues was Rocky Flats in Colorado, the DOD site that manufactured plutonium and bomb materials for defense purposes. The site was cleaned up for a contract of $11 billion. The site doesn't exist anymore since it was truly a success from the standpoint of cleanup of waste. The PAAA's fund of $11 billion would cover a cleanup of that magnitude for a commercial or DOE site quite easily

Oil is a significant power source, yes, but not in the US, at least not for electrical generation. Check out this article for some truly detailed information. I was frankly amazed to see how little of the US power generation comes from oil! I've known for a while now how much comes from nuclear & hydro power (one of my clients is a nuclear power station, and another is a nuclear fuel manufacturer), but I didn't know the rest of the mix.

Codeposition fusion might not only relieve a significant portion of our dependence on foreign oil (and we all know how important that is), but it might also be a natural way to retrofit our dangerous, dirty fission nuclear plants. Codeposition fusion produces nearly zero ionizing radiation of any kind, and no nuclear waste products.

Here are three good references:

"Calorimetry of the Pd + D Codeposition," by S. Szpak, P. Boss, and M.H. Miles, in Fusion Technology, volume 36 (Sept. 1999), pp. 234-241. search near the end of this page for the abstract ("...excellent reproducibility, high power outputs....")

"On the behavior of the cathodically polarized Pd/D system: Search for emanating radiation," by S. Szpak, P.A. Mosier-Boss, and J.J. Smith, in Physics Letters A, volume 210 (1996) pp. 382-390. (Phys Lett A is much easier to find than Fusion [Science and] Technol.)

"Calorimetry of Pd+D Codeposition in a Fleischmann-Pons Dewar Cell," by M.H. Miles, S. Szpak, P. Boss, and Martin Fleischmann (March 2001) abstract on web only

In short, codeposition fusion reliably produces a 500% power gain without fast neutrons, high-energy radiation, or radioactive waste. The peak of the energy produced is in the infrared, with x-ray production just 9% above the baseline in a lead cave, and gamma-ray production only 2% above a lead cave's background levels. There is a very high likelihood that codeposition fusion will soon be commercialized to drive electrical generation turbines, helping to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and, given sufficient electric vehicles, foreign oil. The cost of codeposition fusion electricity is likely to be less than one cent per kilowatt hour.

You may have heard that cold fusion was discredited. Early experiments used smooth, solid palladium cathodes, which did not produce reliable results. Some such smooth, solid cathodes would run for weeks without producing excess heat, and then would do so for perhaps a few days, and often would never do so again. Over 400 studies in the peer-reviewed scientific literature -- see: the Dieter Britz bibliography [about a megabyte] -- have confirmed that the effect is certainly real, but is only reproduceable in less than one out of ten attempts. Those who have studied codeposition fusion get 99+% reproducibility, and precise control of the effect. The crucial difference is that codeposition cathodes are mossy and dendritic, instead of smooth and solid. Any kind of mossy, high surface area cathodes produce much better results than any smooth cathodes, but they were not in common use until a couple years after the poor early results had discredited the entire field.

Of the six laboratories in the U.S. publishing cold fusion research, three are in California, one is in Mountain View (First Gate Energies), and one is in Menlo Park (SRI International.) Szpak et al's lab is in San Diego. The governments of Italy, France, Russia, Japan, and China all sponsor cold fusion research in their own national laboratories. However, the budget for cold fusion here in the U.S. is very small, because the entrenched plasma fusion "big science" community (whose most optimistic estimates indicate that plasma fusion will not be viable for another thirty years -- and even then it will produce nuclear waste; perhaps more than fission does) keeps funding away from cold fusion (which does not produce nuclear waste or dangerous radiation) through continued, unfair ridicule.

Cheers,
James

While saftey questions, many of which are unfounded, still abound, its apparent that fission energy will be the cheapest, safest, and and cleanest energy that mankind can harness until solar collectors are dramatically improved, or fusion energy passes 'breakeven' levels on a sustained basis.

Codeposition fusion already produces sustained power gains of 300-500% without any nuclear waste or radiation (only 2% gamma- and 9% x-ray over baseline lead cave levels; no fast nutrons.) Try searching for Szpak (principal investigator) and codeposition on Google or Google Groups.

Cheers,
James

Hmm. Not right off. I put all that stuff away when I put away the nuclear advocacy in favor of actually getting a job in computers.

ANL has quite a bit of old info on the IFR project. A search scores about 120 hits. Then there's always the American Nuclear Society.

Argonne National Lab
ANL History-Reactors

American Nuclear Society