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Toshiba Pushes Safe, Small Nuclear Reactor Design
core plexus writes "This article describes a proposal from a Japanese corporation that wants to thrust the Interior Alaska community of Galena into international limelight by donating a new, unconventional electricity-generating plant that would light and heat the Yukon River village pollution-free for 30 years. There's a catch, of course. It's a nuclear reactor. Not a huge, Three Mile Island-type power plant but a new generation of small nuclear reactor about the size of a big spruce tree. Designers say the technology is safe, simple and cheap enough to replace diesel-fired generators as the primary energy source for villages across rural Alaska."
"The word 'nuclear' makes me nervous," said Randy Virgin of the Alaska Center for the Environment. "But we've long seen the problems with diesel, and I'm pretty excited about the prospect of a clean source of energy," he said. "It sounds very promising, but I'd approach it with extreme skepticism."
There is soooo much less polution from nuclear reactors given the probability of worst case scenarios versus the diesel they are currently using. Why are we still burning fossel fuels!@!#@#!@!#
They arent in a location very suitable for wind/solar either, so nuclear seems like the best non-renewable solution.
Such a backwards society we live in, when technology is available and safe, and we delay in implementation.
[I can picture a world without war, without hate. I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it]
I have to say after reading the article, the reactor design does sound very safe. Here is a quick rundown of reactor advancement...
-Big hunk of uranium in a pool of water*. Water heats but is under pressure so it can't boil. The water (contaminated and radioactive) is then piped through fresh water (in sealed pipes) from a lake or river transferring heat so the fresh water will boil and turn turbines. Neutron absorbing control rods are raised or lowered into the big hunk of uranium to control the reaction. Problems can occour with pipes corroding and releasing contaminated water*, control rods can jam, leaks in the coolant water* can cause a loss of coolant leading to an overheated reactor.
-Little pellets of uranium in a pool of water*. Same principle as above, only there are no control rods. As the pellets heat up, the expand, increasing the distance between the pelets. This is much safer because there are no control rods to jam. Loss of coolant can still be a problem, but easily solved by simply moving the pellets further apart.
-And now, this reactor.. a Big Rod of Uranium is immersed in a pool of water*. The rod of uranium is sub-critical so it can't sustain a (large) heat producing reaction on its own. A sleve made of neutron reflecting material (google for nuclear bomb neutron reflector) slowly makes its way along the BRoU over the reactors 30-year lifespan. Only the uranium surrounded by the sleve can react. If the sleve moves too fast, then the reactors lifespan is simply shorted - it will never produce more heat than can be made via the reflector. If it moves too slow, the reactor simply produces less heat. Overall a very good design. If I were to have a reactor in my backyard, I definately would choose this style.
I've gotta hand it to the toshiba people.. I wouldn't have thought of this... pretty cool.
*Note: Water may not be water. Water is often used because of its high specific heat, but many other liquids have been used as coolant. In the toshiba reactor, liquid sodium is spec'd because its non-corrosive. A big plus in a maintenance-free environment.
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
There's actually some sound reasoning behind this. By putting such a nuclear reactor in a small village, they will be able to provide power to the entire surrounding area instead of just a fraction. If this was placed in a large city, you would have to somehow partition the power grid into small pieces. Not impossible, but not as easy as simply replacing the diesel generators at this small village.
They may also be trying to market this specifically as a solution for those small, remote sites. Imagine how much diesel fuel would be burned over the course of thirty years -- then realize that a small amount of nuclear fuel could do the same job. Yes, yes, I know that nuclear waste will last much longer than thirty years. The advantage, however, is that nuclear waste is much more manageable and, if taken care of properly, is not as damaging to the environment.
Cheers,
-a
Sony today announced it's latest line of personal entertainment products that, miraculously, don't need batteries, ever. Say hello to the new Sony NukeMan.
WARNING: RADIOLOGICAL HAZARD. DO NOT OPEN; NO USER-SERVICEABLE PARTS INSIDE. IF DEVICE BECOMES OVERLY WARM, IMMERSE IMMEDIATELY IN HEAVY WATER AND CALL THE U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY'S RADIOLOGICAL EMERGENCY RESPONSE TEAM. DO NOT USE WHILE PREGNANT OR NURSING AN INFANT. DOES NOT CONFER SUPER-POWERS UPON USER. KEEP AWAY FROM EASILY-MUTATED ARACHNIDS.
Available in red, purple, pink, sky blue, and glow-in-the-dark green.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
But my hometown lies 15 miles from Waste Control Services, and the plant sits right on top of the Ogalalla Aquifer from which the entire region pumps its water. The "corrosion proof containers" are metal barrels buried in a cement-lined pit. Along with the radioactive material are "non-corrosive" substances like old batteries and various forms of chemical, petroleum and medical waste. To top all this off, some "stabilized" napalm has been added to the mix as garnish.
Taken separately, these things are not harmful. Properly encased by well-trained robots in impervious material, these things are not harmful. But... packaged by overworked, underpaid, undereducated laborers in the cheapest material available with security checks run by firms hired out by the company to be yes-men, dumped together en masse in a cement pit, I'd say these things have the possibility for a big ka-boom.
So... to answer your question -- avoid West Texas at all costs.
IAALS.
I googled for "bomb neutron deflector"... should I just ignore the black helecopters that just landed outside my house?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Yeah, but SL-1 had control rods. With the control rods sticking all the time, the fault was found to be that the crew had to manually pull out a control rod to fix the control rod drive mechanism when it stuck. Well, some guy ended up pulling the control rod out too much, and the core went prompt critical (same thing that happened in the 1999 Japan accident when their mixture of uranium achieved critical mass). The coolant flashed to steam and shot the control rod out with the guy pinned to the ceiling. Because of SL-1, the navy changed all their reactor designs so that they could be shut down even with the most critical rod fully withdrawn, meaning that prompt criticality with one rod could never occur again. Obviously, Toshiba's reactor won't have the same problem since they're not even going to have control rods nor will they have any reactor coolant pumps. I'd be more worried about their new idea of using the reflector to control the power, not having any pumps, or using liquid sodium as the primary coolant.
I used to work at a US reactor in IT. At the time I was both amazed and stunned by the 1960's erz technology in use in the plant.
Because it had to be "certified" and documented, the cost was outrageous. Each section of pipe had to come from a certified company built by a certified company and using materials (ore, etc) from a certified place, all documented of course. Makes you feel better about the construction, but costs a lot and requires lots of maintenance.
At the time I saw some specs for a new, simple design to be used in Asia and submitted to the NRC. It used less people, more gravity fed pumps and flows, and should have lowered the cost of plants from billions to hundreds or even tens of millions.
Nothing came of it and it was a larger scale than this, but it was a good idea. Nuclear has a place when built well and conservatively, which it seems this design is.
What's the other major accident? Everyone knows about Chernobyl, of course. And everyone talks about TMI, but the fact is that there is not a single death traceable to TMI, and there was basically no release of anything harmful.
The actual proportion in France is 75% of electric power generation from nuclear. Another 15% is other "clean" power, such as hydro. The remaining 10% is evil dirty "burning stuff" electricity. I live pretty close to about five reactors here, and I feel pretty safe. It's preferable to having a bunch of coal plants dumping crap (including a fair amount of uranium!) into the air.
Nuclear really is the way to go. The only major accident, Chernobyl, was only possible due to the collusion of a horribly unsafe plant design, and moronic operators who decided to run an experiment (i.e. try something out that was way beyond the design specs) and turn off all of the safety systems while they were doing it. So, surprise surprise, the thing made a big KABOOM.
If coal plants had to live under the same radiation emission guidelines as nuclear power, they would never be able to operate. So I agree completely, get rid of nuclear phobias (in other countries, there doesn't seem to be a lot of it here!) and get rid of heavy pollution in electrical generation.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
FUD ALERT! Check your facts please...Google is my friend. MOD THE PARENT DOWN!
.01 seconds, causing the plate-type fule to melt. The molten fuel interacted with the water in the vessel, producing an explosive formation of steam that caused the water above the core to rise with such force that when it hit the lid of the pressure vessel, the vessel itself rose 3m in the air before dropping back down (Derived from DOE and US Army records)"
http://www.radiationworks.com/sl1reactor.htm
"A small, 3MW experimental BWR called SL-1 (Stationary Low-Power Plant No. 1) in Idaho was destroyed on January 3, 1961, when a control rod was removed manually."
snip
"A careful examination of the remains of the core and the vessel concluded that the control rod was manually withdrawn by about 50cm (40cm would have been enough to make the reactor critical), largely increasing the reactivity. The resulting power surge caused the reactor power to reach 20,000MW in about
1) 3MW not 200kW - Makes a difference
2) It did "melt down" - effectivly anyway
3) It did contain water (presurized or not I dunno)
4) It was caused by human error
5) It was probably a lot larger fuel block
Silly FUD's, google will always win!
Apple free since 1990!
The town is only about 700 odd people. One possibility is that if this gets near fielding, there will be a call by the anti-nuke groups for people to move there and basicly take over the town in order to stop it. There will also, of course, be lawsuit after lawsuit to delay it.
It's a must win for the antinuclear movement.
They'll view with alarm the small size, and especially the very low installation cost which makes it hard for long delays to bankrupt by increasing the cost of working capital.
That no plant has been ordered in the US for decades is a huge political point for them, and they'd see this as the camel getting a nose into the tent. I expect a bitter fight by them.