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Uranium Pebbles May Light the Way
kristy_christie writes "According to Wired News, South Africa's state-run utility giant Eskom and its international partners want to build the world's first commercial 'pebble bed' reactor, which, instead of using fuel rods, 'is packed with tennis ball-size graphite "pebbles," each containing thousands of tiny uranium dioxide particles'. To developers, the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor promises a rebirth of nuclear energy. Proponents insist that the reactor's design features make it 'meltdown-proof' and 'walk-away safe'."
I applaud this kind of work.
Nuclear Power, despite the cries of environmentalists, is possibly the cleanest mass power source. On a scale of power generated per ton of input material it is incredibly efficient (bested only by those power sources which require no nonrenewable input, like wind/tidal/etc.), generates no effluent or air pollution, and needs only a competent staff (and, unfortunately, security), to stay running properly.
Nuclear plants may be prohibitively expensive to build these days, but if "pebble bed" reactors cost significantly less, then they may lead the way back towards what I view as our ideal energy source.
It's time to give nuclear a second chance.
It's how to handle the waste. That represents a real engineering challenge - some of that stuff is going to remain toxic for tens of thousands of years. Not only does it have to be stored safely and securely, but you have to work out some way of marking it so that should anyone stumble across it in a couple of thousand years, they understand not to touch it. The amount languages and cultures change, you can't just write on it, and even things like skull pictures could be interpreted as meaning "burial chamber - archaelogists, get digging!".
That said, I'm not against nuclear power (from fusion) per se. Of the options we have, it's one of the best at the moment. "Alternative" power sources need a lot more work, and fusion, whilst extrememly promising, just isn't practicable yet (unless I've missed a major breakthrough in the last couple of years). I'm just pointing out that there are still other problems that need to be addressed.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
I think it is important to move away from the current reliance on fossil fuels as quickly as possible and move towards nuclear power generation as the only realistic sustainable alternative power generation scheme.
Many of the world's problems exist because of the small patch of oil-soaked land out in the Middle East and the lack of trustworthy stewards of those fields. With Gulf War II over and those oil fields finally in the hands of Western democracies we may see some improvement in global stability vis a vis the opening of OPEC to its main customers. However, because we continue to rely on oil as our primary power source we will likely continue to have problems as the oil fields run drier and drier.
It is good to see Africa (of all nations!) take the lead in this new system of nuclear power generation. Older systems like the ones in Canada and France are fine, however it would be a stretch to say that they are perfect. There is plenty of room for improvement in those power plants. This usage of uranium pebbles is one such improvement, but there are more.
It is a problem that people would be willing to block the development of Africa because they object to the usage of these newer power systems. Especially so because for the most part the same protesters unwittingly reap the benefits of their own country's nuclear power generation systems.
The perennial question is one of waste disposal. It's all very well having a realtively clean source of energy right now, but if you have to guard against people getting hurt for X years, where X is a very large number...
...
They claim the graphite and silicon carbide around the pebbles will keep it sealed for ~ 1 million years, which is impressive. It'll be interesting to see if humanity is around in ~1 million years
It also produces about 19 tons of radioactive waste (in the form of these coated pebbles) every year. That's going to be some landfill site, if the technology takes off...
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Reading some of the comments in this article, I have to wonder when 'Geek' and 'Nerd' transformed into 'Reactionary Luddite'.
Ah right, decomissioning doesn't cost anything, just stick up a fence round the reactor and bury the waste in the ground.
And before you mention the lack of effluent, bathing in the irish sea or eating fish caught there is now considered a "risky activity".
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
The difference, of course, is that you're breathing in the radioactive depleted uranium dust. Radioactivitiy is much more dangerous inside your body. Human skin pretty much blocks weak alpha radiation, but such an emitter in lungs is highly dangerous.
The owls are not what they seem
No not really, the parties behind the S-African reactor are the same ones as were behind the Hamm-Uentrop fiasco, which by the way is only 13 years old. And the Germans at least have significantly scaled down their interest in the technology. By the time construction started Hamm-Uentrop drew on 20+ years of research and testing. Even so took 3 times as long to build as planned, it went way ahead of budget and due to amont other things fuel handling problems never functioned 100% reliably. So if the S-African reactor is based on German PB-reactor technology which has not evolved much since Hamm Uentrop due to lack of funding I rather think these people are trying to restart development of a troubled technology in a place where they think resistance will be weaker. They are betting the S-Africans will allow them to do something that would have the Europeans picketing by the thousands at the construction site faster that you can say "pebble bed".
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Chernobyl had a lot of things that were just wrong.
The reactor increased in efficiency as temperature increased. This is a nice little feedback loop. Most reactors lose efficiency as temperature increases, meaning that it is difficult to try and overload the reactor, even on purpose.
The reactor was designed to be cheap, and it did not have a dome. Domes contain radioactive material very well. Tests have shown that an aircraft hitting a dome would hardly scratch it.
As another cost-cutting measure, the reactor didn't have any good backup power. It may seem silly to have a power plant that needs power, but nuclear power plants do need power to start up and in case of emergencies. Western plants have batteries and generators.
As if these technological blunders weren't enough, some bonehead transfered control of the power plants from the ministry that designed and built them, where all the trained personnel are employed, to the ministry of energy. There are reports of operators sitting on the control board and people showing up to work drunk.
Basically, in 1986, the Chernobyl reactor demonstrated a bunch of "don'ts" to a world that should have already known.
There will always be technology out there that can be misused. The amount of that technology will only increase. Do we ban knives because people get stabbed? Do we ban nuclear power because a couple of Russians cut costs?
The 'ball' nuclear reactors are basically foolproof. You put a bunch of balls next to each other and you get heat. This is not weapons grade Uranium.
I only see one problem with nuclear -- the small amount of waste that is generated needs to be handled properly. It can be done, but it just has to be done right.
disposing of nuclear waste really isn't that difficult.
Landfill or that Mountain Place? What if it seeps? Breaks/chips/breaksdown and leeches into the soil substrate? Three eye fish, as cool as they are, will not be the worst of our concerns.
Sig it.
South Africa, the country where Eskom resides, is a country in Africa (easily confused with South America by Americans. South America is a continent south of North America, the continent with three different countries on it, including the USA).
Er, so it isn't ignorant to confuse a Slashdot story poster with "Americans"?
I've never confused South America with South Africa, nor has anybody I know.
Is any form of nuclear power renewable? Can we recycle any waste? No? Let's skip this one then. We already have plenty of non-renewable, non-recyclable power generators. Maybe we should ask the politicians to stop taking bribes from people whose hands are filthy with oil and politely request more effort in the area of renewable energy. How about not using so much energy in the first place? I remember my last visit to Vegas, seeing a casino front wide open to the outside with a veritable wall of air-conditioning blasting from the ceiling above the opening. Never have I seen such wasteful energy consumption. Without doubt, nuclear power has a major waste management problem. I don't think the same thing applies to PhotoVoltaics or wind turbines. If this really is news for nerds about stuff that matters, well this matters and yet I have read far too much from some nerds who are willing to endanger their chilrens-childrens-childrens-childrens... lives to the half-life of stuff that anti-matters. http://www.homepower.com Get on the right track.
Nuclear power is not renewable. We are using up some of the rarest resources in the world, in the Universe, in an extremely ineffecient 1st generation reactor. A century from now, we'll have technology to more safely process the waste. When they're mining the basements of the poorest ghettoes in the world for those last remaining fissionable materials, they'll curse us for wasting the cheaply available high-quality uranium and plutonium, just like we're just burning the oil, the best source of plastic and organic building blocks. Think ahead, the future will be your home for a long time.
--
make install -not war
The Advanced Fast Reactor, an improved Integral Fast Reactor/Advanced Liquid Metal Reactor is a modern design that:
- burns it's own waste as fuel.
- is safe (The reactor core will cease to function when it gets to hot).
- could be use current 'nuclear waste' as fuel.
- could use current weapons grade plutonium (think decomissioned warheads).
- the final by products 'nuclear waste' will be as radio-active as normal uranium ore.
I really with the nuclear energy phobic would learn a little bit about modern reactor technology.
IFR - http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA378.html
AFR - http://www.rae.anl.gov/research/ardt/afr/
True, if you only consider what is legally released into the environment while the nuclear plant is operating. If you consider the fission byproducts and their "disposal" (e.g. long term storage) then this isn't true. Yucca Mountain nonwithstanding, the problems associated with nuclear waste may not be worth the benefit (and I'm a nuclear-trained engineer).
We should all welcome a new and (even safer?) design strategy, but all designs have trade-offs.
...but the tradeoff is all that heavy water runs up the price of the thing.
Canada is justly proud of its very safe CANDU design, some good links at:
http://www.nucleartourist.com/type/candu.htm
They've got a new design out that's, yes, even safer, and (they hope) cheaper to run. They've got a good business going overseas, but you can't sell the things in North America at all.
So far.
One can only hope the interest in reducing carbon emissions will bring people to their senses. I'm all for green renewable technologies, too, but hydro, wind, and solar are just not yet up to being more than 20% or so of the generation mix. The other 80% has to be fossil or nuclear. Nukes are way cleaner.
Salon magazine recently has some hair-raising stories about environmental devastation from coal; and that's what "greens" are guaranteeing to continue by opposing nuclear.
"...who are really anti-industry, as a side-effect of being anti-capitalist..." At what point does "Anti-industry" make you "anti-capitalist"? Generally, if someone does not like polluting, unclean industry it is largely because they a) like being able to breathe clean air, b) realize that there is nothing in history that should dictate trusting businesses to regulate themselves and c) understand that the only way you can get a & b is to enpower the state to regulate it as pollution prevention is inherently non-profitable. That being said, nuclear energy is probably our best hope for the future. Take a look at the Cold Fusion research program at CalTach & Cal Poly Pomona or at the UC Berkley Fusion research project. For that matter, there is nothing that says an anti-nuclear group is anti-industry. They are against what they see as an unsafe technology that has only been reinforced by events at home and abroad. Whether or not they are Luddites is another question... but they have as much right to their beliefs as anyone else. Thats what Democracy is about.
North America, the continent with three different countries on it, including the USA).
When you're done correcting the original poster's grotesque ignorance of geography, you might spend a little time correcting your own. There are ten nations on the North American continent. The seven you forgot are: Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
The US seems to have a pretty good plan for disposing of our nuclear waste. We take all these spent fuel rods, pull out the most radioactive bits, take the remaining depleted uranium and fasion armor piercing shells out of it. Then the next time we go to war, we spread our nuclear waste all over thier country. It works really well.
DU Education project.