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There are better reactor designs than Generation I/II designs i.e. Generation III+ reactors. The Chinese put several units of the APR1000 design into operation recently.
http://www.world-nuclear-news....

Nobody here is blaming the average Chinese citizen

Only the Mao government for the unfortunate position at which the last war drew the Chinese border and the number of people who happen to be within that arbitrary line.

What people are doing is blaming the Chinese government for not growing their energy output using sustainable technology.

The Chinese government accounts for half of the global investment in green energy at over $120bn.
In 2017 the Chinese increased this investment by 30% over the previous year.
In 2017 the USA decreased their investment by 6% over the previous year.

Per capita China is spending more that the USA on green energy and the trend is going upwards.
The USA in the meantime seems dedicated to a policy of sticking their head deeper in the sand.

But hey, credit where credit is due. I'm Australian and our government is king of the stupid environmental policies https://www.theguardian.com/au...

Their recent rate of growth was not sustainable

Their recent rate of growth produces a fraction of the CO2 that their past rate of growth has. That's the thing with green energy investment. Speaking of growth and clean energy that never makes the "green" energy news: http://www.world-nuclear-news....

As I said, the USA needs to step up it's game. China is beating you, and investing heavily to beat you even further.

The White House wants to push advanced nuclear, and supports nuclear power legislation - unlike the previous Administration. That's all that's really needed here - Congress will actually pass nuclear power bills now there is a President who understands the benefits of nuclear power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.world-nuclear-news....
https://aris.iaea.org/PDF/BRES...

I just got these links from looking around. TBH the most economical reactors right now are Generation III reactors like the AP1000. Because the price of uranium is still cheap. The fast reactors will become important once we want to use the spent fuel from Generation II/III reactors to generate more power or to better burn up available uranium fuel.

There was a moratorium in China where work was basically stopped for 2 years after Fukushima to reevaluate the reactor designs. Then they required changes to the original designs. That's the cause of the 3 year delay. Also the Chinese first AP1000 and the first Chinese EPR reactor should become fully operational this year:
http://www.world-nuclear-news....
http://www.world-nuclear-news....

The first AP1000 reactor is delivering 100% power to the electric grid while the first EPR reactor is connected to the grid and has finished its first criticality test and will begin power up tests soon.

There was a moratorium in China where work was basically stopped for 2 years after Fukushima to reevaluate the reactor designs. Then they required changes to the original designs. That's the cause of the 3 year delay. Also the Chinese first AP1000 and the first Chinese EPR reactor should become fully operational this year:
http://www.world-nuclear-news....
http://www.world-nuclear-news....

The first AP1000 reactor is delivering 100% power to the electric grid while the first EPR reactor is connected to the grid and has finished its first criticality test and will begin power up tests soon.

Korea is even started up nukes that were scheduled to be down for maintenance to help during their heat wave.

http://www.world-nuclear-news....

That's just with current known reserves. See this article:
http://www.world-nuclear-news....

There's a lot more uranium out there than the one that's already being mined. Then there's integral fast reactors which can burn up the fuel one to two orders of magnitude better.

You need to adapt to changing power demands with a variable source.

Variable like your nuclear power plant going down for planned (or worse, unplanned) maintenance, blowing a megawatt-sized hole in your power grid? Sometimes for years at a time?

All the FUD aimed at wind and solar can easily be addressed by tech used to back up coal and nuclear power plants - like pumped storage. If a large hydrostatic battery is good enough for nuclear, it's good enough for a wind farm.

They are actually focusing on both, putting large nuclear plants near big cities, and coal plants near up-and-coming smaller cities. Shanghai is essentially all nuclear powered, but go to Xi'an or even Shengzhou and it's mainly coal. China has a really poor power grid, and so distributing reliable power plants is common. China's building out the rest of it's new 23 GW of capacity planned to deploy in 2020, and will have another 30 GW in production at that point (probably completed by 2022 or so).

Now, for solar, China has about 125 GW installed right now, but that's at a typical 17% capacity factor, so it's closer 21 GW if they're lucky. They are planning more nuclear than solar for a very simple reason - to keep their economy moving along, they MUST have reliable power. Nuclear does that - solar does not. And due to their poor grid, they cannot transmit power really long distances, meaning power plants must be located closer to the big cities in the East. A 1 GW solar plant needs about 4,000 acres of land; a 1 GW nuclear plant (like the 1.2 GW plant on Hainan Island) takes about 150 acres of land. Big difference, in a country where land near the big cities is at a premium...

Wow you are dumb. I provide facts that contradict your preconceived notions, but you are incapable of understanding or accepting them.

Your projection is noted.

I do not think you know what nuclear waste is.

It's hard to get a fan of nuclear power to understand something when his fanboyism is dependent on his not understanding it. That was an example of a industrial accident. Nuke fans want to count every windmill worker who falls off a tower as a casualty of wind power. But you don't count workers who die in uranium mining accidents as a casualty of nuclear power - another kind of industrial accident. Or if Homer runs over Lenny with a forklift - an industrial accident.

Of course I have, but what does that have to due with nuclear energy?

That terminal cancer can take years or decades to manifest - like I said the first time. To waive your hands after a meltdown and say "hey, nobody died this morning so it's no big whoop" is nonsense. The uranium miners that die from exposure to dust or TB - many times what the CDC expected - didn't keel over their first day on the job, either.

0 people died from the plant

Wrong.

Stop me when solar and wind can work 24/7, or when storage is cheaper then Nuclear.

You think wind stops at night? Nuke fan elevators really don't go to the top floor, do they? All you do with wind and solar is space generating capacity across the grid, same as with coal or nuclear power. As for storage, there's no need for hand wringing when '70's technology will suffice - 1870's. There are water reservoirs and hydroelectric dam's still functioning today that are more than a century old. If pumped storage is good enough for nuclear power - the Ludington facility backs up nuclear power plants in Michigan - it's good enough for wind and solar.

Cost is the Achilles heel of nuclear power. When you can build more power generation in less time for less money with none of the safety or long term costs - nuclear power is unjustifiable.

I'm looking around, but I don't actually see any of today's nuclear.

Unit 2 of the Sanmen nuclear power plant in China's Zhejiang province has successfully completed pre-operational testing. Sanmen 1 is expected to be the first Westinghouse AP1000 to begin operating later this year, with Sanmen 2 also set to start up in 2018. (source)

Construction of China's 600 MWe demonstration Fast neutron reactors at Xiapu, Fujian province, has officially begun. The reactor is scheduled to begin commercial operation by 2023. The Xiapu reactor will be a demonstration of that sodium-cooled pool-type fast reactor design. (Source)

I'm looking around, but I don't actually see any of today's nuclear.

Unit 2 of the Sanmen nuclear power plant in China's Zhejiang province has successfully completed pre-operational testing. Sanmen 1 is expected to be the first Westinghouse AP1000 to begin operating later this year, with Sanmen 2 also set to start up in 2018. (source)

Construction of China's 600 MWe demonstration Fast neutron reactors at Xiapu, Fujian province, has officially begun. The reactor is scheduled to begin commercial operation by 2023. The Xiapu reactor will be a demonstration of that sodium-cooled pool-type fast reactor design. (Source)

There were also many plants built for much less, and on schedule. They have been running reliably for 40 years and have produced more clean power than solar and wind will for a long, long time. Areas of the US with a lot of nuclear have historically also had the lowest rates. Unfortunately for nuclear, natural gas has become too cheap to compete with and there is no value in the market place on the reliability and emission free characteristics of nuclear.

Our failure to build new nuclear come from a lack of commitment. Yes, huge first of a kind projects will have budget and schedule problems. But even the more expensive existing plants have paid for themselves several times over, and many are still running and can run for another 20+ years. Unfortunately the general public has been fed a steady diet of FUD from the O&G industry for so long that they have an army of followers to help spread it. Meanwhile, the average person is completely ignorant of the real risks in comparison to stuff they accept every day.

So, like Germany, we will spend a shitload of money on the partial solution of solar and wind, and our overall CO2 emissions will not be significantly reduced. we will suffer a failure of will, insight, and commitment.

This. And meanwhile China is kicking our ass and build a lot of nuclear;

http://world-nuclear-news.org/...

There is plenty of proof out there that plants can be built on time and on scedule if they are not parsed and strangled.

The outrageous costs to "clean up" after Fukushima are largely due to the insane radiation standards in place, which do cause real damage both in terms of lives lost and economics. Read Petition EPA to Establish Scientific Bases for Risk-Based Radiation Regulations for details about the nature of the problem.

Interestingly, Ukraine to increase nuclear share to 60%. It would seem that they have a different perspective on Chernobyl, probably because they witnessed firsthand just how exaggerated the threat of radiation is.

Have a bit of perspective with Fukushima; no one was killed by radiation. Do you even remember what the actual disaster was? Many people probably don't, given that the media wholeheartedly seized the opportunity to terrorize people over harmless levels of radiation. The area is almost entirely habitable today, and no one is expected to die.

Nuclear doesn't have to be expensive; a lot of people worked very hard to make it so. In fact, it isn't expensive everywhere. The predominant reactor technology doesn't help, but better designs already exist. If the political problems can be solved, serially produced molten salt reactors will make nuclear the lowest cost option of any energy source. This is a much better path than trying to drive up prices for carbon emitting sources so that expensive renewables can compete.

The are indeed planning to increase their nuclear capacity, your information is false according to the Five-Year Plan China recently approved. Provide support for your baseless assertion.

The ruling Communist Party of China's National People's Congress endorsed the draft of 13th Five-Year Plan at its annual session earlier this month. The plan will be officially implemented in the next few months. A summary of the plan lists several targets in the field of nuclear energy. ...
Under the latest Five-Year Plan, China should have some 58 GWe of nuclear generating capacity in operation by 2020, up from the current capacity of almost 27 GWe. In addition, a further 30 GWe of nuclear capacity will be under construction by 2020.

The PRC State Council 2005-20 Nuclear Power Development Plan (adopted in 2007) set targets for installed nuclear capacity of 40 GW by 2020, a target that has since been raised. The plan also called for the expansion of nuclear capacity by 2 GW each year through 2010 and by 4 GW per year afterward for the duration of the plan.

It's best we keep moving away from the nuclear industry. In Finland two new nuclear power plants are currently being built. The French state is desperately trying to get rid of its state-controlled nuclear company Areva and it seems plausible that the remains of Areva - company may not even be able finalize building of the Olkiluoto 3 nuclear power plant.

Another (Russian) nuclear plant that is under construction is expected to produce more expensive MWh's than most of the competing energy sources. In practice, the some foolish buyers of Fennovoima nuclear power plant's energy have been committing into buying energy at a price of 50€/ MWh, while the other energy sources are clearly cheaper than that. Its quite likely that the Fennovoima's nuclear power plant never be producing any energy at a competitive price.

On the other hand, the price of solar keeps sinking 50% in a decade and it's already enough competitive with the prices of other energy sources. Development of high capacity solar energy storage solutions is much more needed than the new nuclear power plants.

- - - - -
7f1bb2f1a92eeda5b8d9d4e424da104bf2e74e75

http://www.world-nuclear-news....

I wish I could add a third,

3) [Naively] thinking that the small residue of radiation resulting from any kind of dirty-bomb dispersal would result in more fear than anger.

Imagine a world without irrational fear of radioactivity, where the word 'nuclear' would not ring a bell that makes the press salivate with anticipation. I'm afraid I'll have to toss in mdsolar too since 'e posts more nuke fud then solar crud these days. TEPCO has done a fine job gathering water and filtering worse contaminants to leave Tritium, for which only dilution is possible. Unit #4 fuel transfer is complete. The melted fuel in the reactors is stable, contained and cooled (by engineering foresight, not blind luck) awaiting an expensive but not impossible cleanup. Fukushima is an industrial disaster sure, but in terms of human life the evacuation was more costly. Compare it to the Bhopal body count or even Love Canal with its barbed wire fence and dioxins sleeping under a plastic liner... for some real examples of human and environmental fallout.

When you get down to it all radioactive materials are just undesired contaminants. In fact, they're the finest contaminants known to mankind because we can detect and measure their presence down past background levels. No asbestos lurking silently in a school somewhere, no lead paint in the nursery. As easy as spotting fireflies in the dark. Now there are two kinds of people in this world, those for whom spotting those fireflies is a reason to run in little circles crying "I told you so!" and that's it --- they have no other plan. Then there's folks like TEPCO and the rest of the nuclear power industry who see these as challenges of engineering to overcome. Fukushima has even resulted in a generation of new patents for processes to separate and decontaminate, something in which the rest of the world hadn't placed sufficient priority. Which horse would you rather back?

It really costs you big time to fear something. Especially when it's more productive to get mad as hell and find better ways to clean up so you can devote more effort into something productive --- appropriate responses such as revenge.

2) [Naively] thinking that someone being threatened with "help us [or] we'll kill your family" would not be able to figure out that he and his family will be dead anyway.

This is a tough one. Who's going to write off their family, especially if they have been kidnapped?

The most irresponsible and stupidly-contrived security apparatus is that which surrounds pathogen or so-called 'biological weapons' research. You're dealing with things that are not only accessible, they are undetectable at the gate and can be smuggled out on the head of a pin. The lone researcher in such a facility is worse than screwed... they're literally under a death sentence waiting to happen. At any time they may be coerced into taking something out of that facility with practically-100% chance of success and they know it. Even the morons who kidnap their families would know it.

Ironically --- the only conceivable way for stored pathogens to become 'safely' detectable at the gate might be to deliberately contaminate all water used in the lab with tiny but detectable amounts of radioactive Tritium.

But the world press is not talking about bio-labs right now, they're in total idiot radiation mode. They are trying to convince you that the radiation monitors at the gates (and garbage chutes, and sewers) of these facilities do not exist, or are ineffective or can be easily MacGyver'd. These may be true to some degree... but what is the likelihood of that researcher smuggling out anything approaching a Curie? Ra

I'm normally not this rude, but I'm feeling a little put off by you, so I will take my gloves off this time to set you straight.

A few facts for you idiot.

Sure, fucktard. I'm listening.

1) Californias water problems are house made and not solveable by desalination plants, I doubt they would ever be economical in relation to just start with 'saving water'.

Adding together all the water savings every year since the conservation programs began over 20 years ago, you get slightly less than the 5 *billion* gallons a day which are used in the Sacramento Valley *alone* for growing rice for export, to cover evaporative losses from the paddies.

Or, you know: you assholes could grow your own food, since almost all that rice is grown for export.

Or you could build some reservoirs, but well, that would involve the government, needs tax money, god forbid the government actually doing something for the people.

Reservoirs interfere with the mating cycles of fish, and in particular, Pacific Salmon, but also with a number of endangered species.

While I think it would be great for the people in Los Angeles to get off their collective Hollywood asses, and build some cisterns, instead of directing all their rainwater runoff into the ocean, that would only make a small dent in the problem, since the primary problem is that California grows about 1/5th the food eaten in, and *exported from*, the U.S., and uses a lot of agricultural water to do it.

By the way: it's the same people who care so much about the fish that they are actually tearing down reservoirs and dams to save their habitat, who are violently anti-nuclear power.

2) Germany is a net exporter of energy, allways was and likely allways will be. That includes for most of the time France, there are only a few months in a row in 2013 or 2014 where we where a net importer versus France. Germany is exporting 30% - 50% of its energy production to the EU, you idiot.

See, that used to be true when you were running nuclear plants, but according to this Bloomberg article, that stopped right after you idiots shut things down after the Fukushima disaster because, you know, all your plants are in coastal areas subject to tsunamis, and you stupidly did what TEPCO did, and failed to upgrade sea walls and safety systems.

Oh wait. Your plants aren't actually in any danger from this.

Why did you idiots shut them down again? It's hard to believe that a country that birthed nuclear physicists of the like of Einstein and Heisenberg would be quaking in their boots over a problem in Japan caused by greedy middle management.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

3) look on a damn map. How retarded can one be and claim that Parkistan is using 'thermal waste to desalinate water' ... and why should they? Again, look on a damn map where Parkistan actually lies.

"Pakistan has a 1,046-kilometre (650 mi) coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south"

I thought Germans were supposed to be good engineers. You are also aware that desalination is a generic term for water purification from various impurities, and can be applied not only to sea water, but also to well water, and waste water from other sources, right? Not that Karachi isn't on the freaking Arabian Sea anyway, as opposed to being land-locked, like you are trying to imply.

http://www.world-nuclear-news....

P.S.: Yes, that desalination plant was subsequently built at the Karachi nuclear facility.

4) The efficiency of pumped storage and lithium ion batteries is more or less the same, no idea why you disagree about stuff

I was reading an article about how the closing of reactors in California has lead to coal based power plants, and not wind or solar, stepping in to fill the breach.

Link to the article you read? From all sources I have seen the replacement power for the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station shutdown was from natural gas power plants. The lifecycle carbon emissions for gas is about half that of coal, and other pollutants far less than that.

Currently (2014) wind and solar provide 11.8% of California's (in state) electricity (12.3% if you include energy import across state lines). They were only 3.7% and 5% in 2010, thus increasing 3 times and 2.5 times in just four years (this is all actual production, not "capacity"). The added production in those 4 years is more than the output of San Onofre, so although they were not the source of the drop-in power replacement for San Onofre, over 4 years they did replace its net annual production and more, and are continuing to grow quickly. If they add the same capacity over the next four years they will produce more power for California than nuclear power ever did.

The regular nuclear power industry, using enriched uranium fuel and light water moderator/coolant, but presumably with advanced designs, will recover 20 years before any commercial thorium reactors are built. If you ever want to see an operating LFTR you should be rooting for the construction of existing designs.

The worrying thing is that, as you say, there are several competing consortia which is good for competition but it will probably mean the UK will end up with a range of different reactor designs rather than one or two standard models. This will cause problems for fuel manufacture, operations, staff training, ancillary equipment procurement and so on.

The existing French reactor fleet is mostly a standardised M910 design with some tweaks here and there -- they're in the process of replacing a lot of steam generators in a fleet-wide mid-life maintenance operation and they've been able to pre-order more than forty identical steam generators to be manufactured in a rolling contract, meaning big savings and some flexibility in the replacement tempo.

In contrast the UK is planning to build a couple of EPRs, some first-of-their-kind ESBWRs, a couple of AP-1400s and maybe even some Hualong-1s, the Chinese home-sourced reactors (based on the ACPR-1000 design which has its roots in the French M910 design). That means mid-life kickers in thirty or forty years will be a dog's breakfast of replacement hardware, different for each class of reactor.

they may be able to reduce the amount they generate once the Chinese Government get done building the six nuclear reactors along the South coast of England. I shit you not, they have got the no-bid contract. http://www.world-nuclear-news.... (and yes, the plants we have now are owned by the French).

"Nobody has EVER found that radioactive fly ash despite looking since the 1970s."

http://www.world-nuclear-news....

Nobody has EVER found what the Chinese are developing the capability to MINE?

Honestly, this is the worst defeatist attitude I can imagine. "We are bad at building stuff, so we shouldn't build stuff." How come the Chinese are building these very same reactors on-time and on-budget? We in the west need to get off our collective lazy asses and start making stuff with our hands again.

http://www.world-nuclear-news....
http://www.world-nuclear-news....

The article claims it is expected to start operating this year. Construction started in 2009. So if they can do it it will begin operations 5 years after construction start which is quite good time for a novel design.

http://www.world-nuclear-news....
http://www.world-nuclear-news....

The article claims it is expected to start operating this year. Construction started in 2009. So if they can do it it will begin operations 5 years after construction start which is quite good time for a novel design.

Seems China does a much better job. Both Sanmen 1 and Haiyang 1 (both AP1000s) are expected to come online this year, on budget and on schedule. Taishan 1 and Taishan 2 (Areva EPRs) are also reported on schedule for startup this/next year (depending on how well their testing is gonna go). The EPRs are an especially impressive accomplishment, since those are the most powerful reactors ever built (1650 MWe). This seems to support OP's assertion that if you go into the project determined for success, push hard and don't let NIMBYs distract you, things can happen as planned. Seriously, if you want to see the state of the art in nuclear, look at China, they are moving fast. My guess is they're wanna accumulate as much experience running those reactors as possible and going forward standardize on a winner and pump them out like crazy to reduce their air pollution and GHG emissions. They're also running a few modern Russian VVER-1000s, which the IAEA referred to as the world's "safest" (I guess this remains to be seen, but from a technology perspective I gotta admit, they've done an excellent job).

Well sure. It was an incredible find for the opponents, and an incredibly sloppy move on behalf of USGS. But the science was redone by Sandia Laboratories and it, not the prior science, was submitted to the NRC during the licensing process.

The POLITICS of Yucca was that Harry Reid did not want it, Obama had a Nobel prize winner (Chu) illegally cancel the project by pulling the license. The two had the NRC deliberately disobey a law, passed by Congress and signed by the prior President. A Federal court has so ruled that to be the case - http://www.world-nuclear-news.....

But again, the POLITICS of Yucca, left a site and Congressional mandate unable to move because there is no funding.

Nuclear power's time has past.

Then you'll be surprised to know that China is now building a 1,750 MWe nuclear reactor that will be the post powerful in the world. The Taishan nuclear plant will have two such Areva EPR units, slated to begin operation in 2014 and 2015.

Moreover, China has 17 nuclear power reactors in operation, 28 under construction, and more about to start construction. Additional reactors are planned, including some of the world's most advanced, to give a four-fold increase in nuclear capacity to at least 58 GWe by 2020, then possibly 200 GWe by 2030, and 400 GWe by 2050. And China's policy is for closed fuel cycle.

I'm not surprised that we are closing the smaller, less efficient, and probably less safe old plants in the US, but it is unfortunate there are only a handful of newer, larger, more safe nuclear plants being built in the West.

I saw an announcement recently about thorium fuel elements being loaded into a reactor for long-term engineering research to see how they perform physically. There's not a great demand for thorium fuel cycle operations at the moment though when uranium is so cheap and plentiful.

That Bloomberg story is about the reactor pressure vessel or RPV, the part the contains the reactor core. These authors write poorly and got it wrong calling it the "containment vessel."

This Slashdot story is about the AP-1000 containment vessel, not the RPV. The vessel is 36 meters wide and 65 meters tall. Nothing on Earth can make a single piece of forged steel that large.

The RPVs specified for the AP-1000 are unusual. RPVs are traditionally welded.

Reactor pressure vessels, which contain the nuclear fuel in nuclear power plants, are made of thick steel plates that are welded together.

RPVs for other common reactor designs such as CANDU or VVER are welded assemblies. Often forged steel steel rings are stacked and welded. Some RPVs use large forged plates and are axially welded.

Note that although the bottom of the AP-1000 RPV is a single piece it still has a separate head; the top of the RPV is gasketed and bolted to the vessel like every other PWR or BWR. It has to be to (re)fuel the reactor.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
http://www.iaea.org/

Union of Concerned Scientists
http://www.ucsusa.org/
The NRC and Nuclear Power Plant Safety
2012 Report.

World Nuclear News
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/

NPUA.org: Nuclear Professionals Union of America
http://www.npua.org/

Canada Nuclear Power Industry Safety
http://nuclearsafety.gc.ca/

Consistently bad policy, and it is costing them both economically and environmentally. They are ramping coal generating capacity to fill the gap, and largely dumping the hard part of the renewable problem on neighboring countries. Until Germany is self-sufficient, it is highly disingenuous to tout them as an example of the success of renewables. At the very least, one should also consider the tremendous cost of electricity from these sources, and the Danes have the honor of paying the highest household electricity prices in the world, with the Germans not far behind.

Also noteworthy is that €1.5 billion of German nuclear profits have been siphoned off to subsidize renewables. Gutting a profitable, clean, and carbon-free source of energy to prop up one which has no hope to stand on its own is insane.

And Uranium has been done too. Uranium is also easier to acquire, we already have stockpiles of it. It does not require fast neutron reactors to work, but it could use fast neutron reactors too - you know, most of the "waste" problem goes away using fast neutron reactors.

Anyway, thorium is only useful if you have lots of thorium and little uranium. Like India. That is the only reason to use thorium over uranium.

Thorium is no safer than uranium. You can use the same reactor design for uranium as you do for thorium. You can just as easily cause a meltdown in thorium reactor. You can just as easily temporarily pollute large areas of land with daughter nuclei with a thorium reactor as you do with uranium. Thorium is no safer than uranium. It is the same process!! Heck, some current uranium reactors can burn thorium too.

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/ENF-Thorium_use_in_Candu_units_to_be_assessed-1507095.html

More research is needed for fast neutron reactors, but that is irrespective of using thorium as fuel.

I found it odd that this little blip state that Plutonium is in short supply. The reason we don't have a lot of it is because the US is actively destroying it's Plutonium reserves. There are countless patents for machines that destroy Plutonium. Here is an article about how the DOE is considering alternatives to destroying Plutonium, like using it for something constructive instead of making bombs. http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/ENF_Alternative_route_for_plutonium_destruction_1507091.html

If Europe had been at all serious about CO2 reduction they would have leaned on Germany not to close down nuclear plants.

Germany has committed to reducing CO2 emissions; they can accomplish that any way they choose.

At the moment they are doing fine, in part due to heavy investment in renewable energy sources.

Indeed; I've had people point out 'Japan's running just fine having shut down ALL their nuclear plants!'. Just recently I read an article* that pointed out that the cost of the oil and natural gas to replace their nuclear plants pushed Japan into a trade deficit for the first time in decades. Now, it didn't have a mention of cost, and the global downturn probably plays a factor, but I found an estimate of $100M/day, 4.5M barrels of oil. Since Oil is pretty price-inflexible, that 4.5M barrels of oil is coming out of the rest of the world - raising the price of our gasoline, diesel, and other petroleum products.

LNG imports: increased 18% in volume, 52% in value, to $67B. Cost to the Japanese: $23B USD equivalent.

Not the most impartial site, but it quotes $55B in additional fossil fuel imports. It actually says the shutdowns were a bigger cause than all the damage from the Earthquake & Tsunami.

For those worried about global warming - Green energy isn't ramping up to replace the nuclear power lost anytime soon, and it's led to a substantial increase in Japan's CO2 emissions. Right now Japanese consumers oppose turning the plants back on; but last I heard they're also not seeing an increase in their electric bill yet.

Finally, to DMJC - How well do you think SST Plants will do during an Alaskan Winter? Beware the 'one true power' fallacy. My goal is 40% nuclear, 20% solar, 20% wind, 20% other(hydro, geothermal, tidal, biomass, etc...)

*Dead tree publication, Stars & Stripes, Aug 13,2012, 'Fukushima disaster studies call for regulatory reform'.

I think it has arisen now because the "plan A" Yucca Mountain in Nevada have been abandoned, states are suing the NRC over on-site waste storage and nuclear power plants are reaching maximum capacity in storing of waste. The solution the NRC has is for power plants to use above ground dry cask storage.

[...]There are no economically viable nuclear plants without heavy taxpayer subsidies.[...]

What you say is a candid mistake, and you should know it. what nuclear plants need from governments are taxpayer guarantees, meaning that for example they are not saddled with overruns because a political side "conveniently" drags on the authorization process, and so on and so forth.
think about it; if what you said was true, no nuclear plant would be in operation today, because it's impossible to hide for a long time a big and continous level of subsidies, especially to an industry so much under the lens as nuclear power production. They operate because they're cheap to operate, and the electricity produced is cheap.
Want proof? Angela Merkel exchanged an extension of useful life on nuclear reactors with a tax, evidently accepting the fact that without further taxation the gap between nuclear energy and the second cheapest energy source was too much to handle. When she did an about turn after Fukushima, she retained the tax, and already lost a preliminary ruling in court.
Another article here., but the story can be found in more generalistic sources, go ahead and look.

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/ENF-Thorium_use_in_Candu_units_to_be_assessed-1507095.html

The company has signed an agreement with the Third Qinshan Nuclear Power Co (TQNPC), the Nuclear Power Institute of China and China North Nuclear Fuel Corp to jointly develop and demonstrate the use of thorium fuel and to study the commercial and technical feasibility of its full-scale use in Candu units. ....
AECL said it had investigated the use of thorium as fuel for nuclear power reactors for over 50 years, including tests in a prototype Candu power reactor in Canada, with promising results.

Which parts of CANDU are flammable or have graphite?? Exactly.

Thorium is not used for economic reasons. Uranium is TOO CHEAP to matter and processes are known.

mdsolar is always reliable to bring in flamewar via FUD, as expected. Too bad for him, PV solar has been around longer than nuclear, yet, PV solar seems to be lagging behind nuclear as a viable energy source. In 20 years, PV solar will remain as it is today, a tiny fraction of total energy mix while there will 600-1000 operational nuclear power reactors around the world and growing fast as natural gas becomes scarce. Nations and jurisdictions that waste hundreds of billions on PV solar will basically bankrupt themselves out of their economies.

The summary is misleading, and it seems that there is much confusion and emotion regarding this issue.

Let's look at the facts, shall we?

54,79% of Italians voted. Of those, 94,05% voted against nuclear energy.

I can't undertand why, but some slashdotters, despite overwhelming evidence, seem to believe that nuclear power is the only way to solve global warming, that it actually provides a considerable amount of relatively safe and clean energy, and that's it's the future. All of these propositions are wrong, based on the scientific data available.

Nuclear power provides about 6% of the world's energy, whereas about 19% of global final energy consumption comes from renewables.

A study published in July 2010 by John O. Blackburn and Sam Cunningham from Duke University details how electricity from new solar installations is now cheaper than electricity from proposed new nuclear plants.

An analysis published in Energy Policy by researchers from Stanford University and the University of California-Davis and authored by Mark Z. Jacobson and UC-Davis researcher Mark A. Delucchi states: "There are no technological or economic barriers to converting the entire world to clean, renewable energy sources", and to power 100 percent of the world for all purposes from wind, water and solar resources, the footprint needed is about 0.4 percent of the world's land (mostly solar footprint) and the spacing between installations is another 0.6 percent of the world's land (mostly wind-turbine spacing). And we can do it before 2050, Jacobson said.

Another analysis shows how solar will become the cheapest source of energy of all, even chapter than coal, in justa a few years, while nuclear costs will keep rising.

From TFA:

Notice in the first chart how steadily manufacturing costs have come down, from $60 a watt in the mid-1970’s to $1.50 today. People often point to a “Moore’s Law” in solar – meaning that for every cumulative doubling of manufacturing capacity, costs fall 20%. In solar PV manufacturing, costs have fallen about 18% for every doubling of production. “It holds up very closely,” says Solaria’s Shugar.

The “Moore’s Law” analogy doesn’t necessarily work on the installation side, as you have all kinds of variables in permitting, financing and hardware costs. But with incredible advances in web-based tools to make sales and permitting easier; new sophisticated racking, wiring and inverter technologies to make installation faster and cheaper; and all kinds of innovative businesses providing point-of-sale financing (think auto sales), costs on the installation side have fallen steadily as well. The Rocky Mountain Institute projects that these costs will fall by 50% in the next five years.

And here's the paper from The Rocky Mountain Institute.

So, if you are still blinded by your emotional attachment to nuclear and can't seem to reason straight, think about this:

That 17 GW installed in 2010 is the equivalent of 17 nuclear power plants – manufactured, shipped and installed in one year. It can take decades just to install a nuclear plant. Think about that. I heard Bill Gates recently call solar “cute.” Well, that’s 17 GW of “cute” ad

Nobody has died from radiation at Fukushima Daiichi.

Congratulations. You hit on why the INES scale is deeply flawed.

I'm going to point to this news article which explains far more in depth as to why the Level 7 was chosen. After reading it, you should realize that Fukushima is not as bad as Chernobyl. Here's some summary facts.

The Level 7 was chosen solely based on the total cumulative release of radioactive isotopes over the course of a month. Chernobyl's release was mostly due to the radioactive plume that was ejected during a one time event.

The Level 7 covers seven locations. Units 1-4 at Daiichi and three Units at Daiini. Each of these doesn't class over a Level 5 on the INES scale.

It's rather interesting to read about that Level 7. It's been raised to that solely based on releases rather than death or radiation induced sickness or even anticipated death and illness. Further, it covers both the Daiichi and Daiini plants.

Covering both the Fukushima Daiichi and Daiini plants, these concerned the overall effect on the nuclear plants (Level 3), two losses of cooling function (Level 5), one covering radiological release (Level 5), one on loss of cooling to a fuel pond (Level 3) and three more on loss of reactor cooling (Level 3).

The first two losses of cooling are Units 1 & 3 at Daiichi. The radiological release is Unit 2 at Daiichi. The fuel pond is Unit 4 at Daiichi. The last three are Daiini reactors. So this level 7 is covering 6 reactors and a fuel pond. Indeed, this is on par with Chernobyl. Fukushima has over the course of a month discharged as much radioactive material as Chernobyl discharged in a matter of hours. I think these details will probably get lost in reporting among the various news outlets.

Add to this that it was first reported more than a week ago (25th March) and nothing more has been mentioned.

Once again the media trawling for best scare stories for their readers.

I stopped reading mainstream tabloid stories and instead tend to visit, World Nuclear News that seem to filter out the hysteria and present the known facts, including actual reading instead of meaningless 'x' times.

I think it's been handled pretty well. Nobody has been killed by DEADLY ATOMS, and the only radiological injuries have been skin burns to two workers who ignored their dosimeter alarms. The release of radionuclides into the air has been minimal, and the amounts found in food and water have dropped back below minimum levels in all but the immediate locality to the reactor complex (and the levels there are only above the 'constant yearly exposure' maximums). Reactor core and storage pool temperatures are again under control, and coolant water containment in all but two reactors is unbreached. In one of those, the leak of irradiated coolant is within the reactor complex.
The 'crack' mentioned in this case is not in the reactor containment itself as the summary and article imply, but in a water storage pool next to the sea, with the crack being between the pool and the sea.

Not that lessons can't be learnt from this: gravity-feed coolant reservoirs would be a good idea, as well as separate backups for the storage pools and cores, but it's far from "getting steadily worse".

IAEA Incident page
MIT NSE hub
WNN

and your suggestion that they used the seawater as soon as necessary is also incorrect. obviously. whether days or hours late, they turned to that last resort after the fuel rods were well exposed and beginning to melt.

And you're quite sure that they had the capability to begin injecting seawater the very moment that they decided it was necessary?

In the HOURS following a devastating earthquake and tsunami, when communications and electricity were out, monitoring systems were offline, and chain of command were still likely struggling simply to make sense of the situation at all, and understand what the extent of the damage was? Do you know how long it takes to put the pumps and seawater delivery mechanisms in place? Do you know how long it took them to get generators to the plant in order to begin that pumping? Do you know how quickly the water boils off, versus how fast they were able to pump the water in in this emergency? Do you realize that cooling a near-meltdown nuclear reactor doesn't simply involve someone standing there with a garden hose? And of course, you're sure they had large stores of boronated seawater just hanging around, I'm sure it took no time to prepare enough of the mixture to begin injecting it?

No, of course not. Because you're such an expert on earthquakes, tsunamis, and nuclear accidents - I mean, I have to assume that you've got some technical basis for these arguments other than PHB syndrome, which says that anything you don't understand must be simple - that you've already determined that it's because TEPCO simply was hoping to save their investment, and didn't give a shit about how many people died as a result, and that's the ONLY possible explanation for why they had to struggle to keep the reactors from melting down. And of course, given the fact that they're struggling to avert a meltdown, it's only reasonable to expect that they should also waste a bunch of time explaining the technical problems they're having to some random armchair quarterback on the internet, to avoid a public relations black eye... right?

And, B-T-W, they were injecting seawater into parts of some of the reactors by ~8 pm on March 12. That's *Saturday* - the day after the quake, less than 36 hours after the quake itself, 34-35 hours after the tsunami actually came in and did all the damage, and in the midst of numerous fairly powerful aftershocks. Only counting aftershocks of magnitude 6 or greater, there were 15 of them on Friday after the large quake, and 10 of them on Saturday - all in the same area as the original magnitude 9 quake.

Enough hydrogen was also produced within the reactor vessel by the interaction between water and hot fuel to cause an explosion at each unit when this was vented to the secondary containment. For units 1 and 3 this removed the top part of the reactor building. At unit 2 this may have taken place in the torus, causing damage there.

They've been suspecting they have a containment breach in reactor #2 for about two weeks now, in or near the torus / suppression pool which is connected to but sits beneath the main containment vessel. So the presence of highly radioactive water underneath it isn't really a surprise. No need for the core to melt through the steel containment vessel for that to happen.

The mystery right now is the burns the three workers suffered a few days back. They were working on reactor #3, not #2. #3 was also suspected to have a leak in containment, but their latest readings say that the containment vessel is not losing pressure, which would seem to imply there is no leak. So where did that radioactive water come from?

>Actually, 6 reactors with fuel, and 5 have been operating at that time.

Ok, so I went back and checked on this, because I couldn't remember for sure. According to World Nuclear News there were 3 reactors in operation at the time the quake and tsunami hit.

"Uhm, no. It could have been worse, and it might get worse."

You seem to be very challenged with understanding the words "probably" and "likely".

Just because something theoretically could get worse, I still stand by my assertion that watching what happened in Japan, this looks like it's PROBABLY representative of the worst that is LIKELY to happen. Unless you can point out some way in which the reactor operators in Japan were extraordinarily lucky, I think it's a reasonable statement that what happened is likely to be close to what happens with similar reactor designs if similar circumstances occur.

Do you figure we've been extraordinarly lucky for the past 50 years that, before Fukushima, the only large release of fuel material from a nuclear plant was Chernobyl, that we've gone 25 years since Chernobyl and now we have Fukushima, which while it has released enough materials to be a concern, doesn't appear to have released anywhere near the levels that Chernobyl did?

I don't think luck can really run that long. I think that history shows that the nuclear industry has done a lot of things right that strongly limits the likelyhood of a scenario which you describe in which $2000 Billion of damage can occur.

I also think that a lot of the problem is that people are more afraid of radiation than they should be. Radiation presents some risks, some hazards, but in terms of dangers, low levels of radioactive exposure is the least obnoxious form of risk you can be exposed to - there's a substantially large chance it'll do nothing at all to you bad, and a small risk it might cause a cancer.

But, people freak out anyhow.