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China Goes Nuclear
Rei writes "Wired reports that the People's Republic of China has announced plans to build 30 new nuclear reactors by the year 2020, and by 2050 have almost as much nuclear power as the entire world produces today. The reactors are to be pebble bed reactors, in which helium replaces radioactive, pressurized water. A Chinese research institution demonstrated the safety of their test reactor against meltdown by shutting off the coolant."
I hope that China can help show the world what a viable source of clean energy nuclear power really is. The "danger" stigmatism that is attached to it is rediculous. The worst nuclear disaster in history, Cherynobl, killed a total of 3,000 people. That includes long term deaths attributed to radiation poisoning and increased cancer rates. Coal mining on the other hand kills around 30,000 people every year in mining accidents alone. Not to mention the pollution and enviromental damage that coal power plants generate. As for the nuclear waste generated aftewards there are a number of clever idea's about how to deal with it including one which disposes of it in the giant fusion reaction that is our Sun.
;-)
Que unfounded paranoia
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"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
Yes, pebble bed reactors are very safe.
I just wish nuclear power wasn't politically dead in the USA. It's really the only way to replace all the coal and oil we burn to produce the huge amount of electricity we use.
I'm all for nuclear power, but overregulation is the only way I'll let it happen. I'd rather have more expensive pwower and a regulator for every employee then risk a disaster related to negligence or other preventable failures.
.. the econo-nuts would let the US build more nuclear reactors within the United States in order to reduce our dependency on foreign oil...
Nah, that would never happen!
Instead, their socialist buddies claim the Bush administration liberated Iraq for oil, althought Bush-Chenery energy policy has been, since the 2000 election campaign, to increase the number of nuclear reactors.
We had Helium cooling here in Colorado, USA. It was down more often than it was up. Problem was that Helium does a lot of leaking unless everything is absolutely right on.
Though, I do wish them luck. I hope that USA will re-examine nuclear power combined with energy storage.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Or, is this just a means of generating nuclear material for creating nuclear weapons?
On the topic of growth, I have spent a total of 10 days in China in the last two years. Last year there were more bikes than cars in Shekou in the Shenzhen area, but now I swear there are an equal number of cars to bikes. The real kicker is that these cars are BIG and expensive. We are talking about full-sized Volkswagens, Buicks, minivans, and wagons. Yes, there are Mercedes too. You'd think that they'd be looking at little Euro-boxes given money and space constraints, but status and face (mianzi) are too important I guess.
For a full report, I suggest you take a look at my trip notes:
China Observations
(How many guanxi points do I get for this posting?)
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China is certainly learning lessons on development from the failings of her neighbour, North Korea. Back in the day, NK went through a rash of development, building new capital goods and buildings. They intended to pay for the new capital goods/buildings with the profits the machinery, etc would earn. However, oil prices spiked and NK was left unable to keep their machinery running, making it impossible to pay for their expensive infrastructure upgrades.
China is in the middle of an enormous boom, and it's excellent to see that they have learned from the mistakes of their neighbours, and aren't heading down the path that the rest of us seem intent on going down.
Just a couple of more months, I'll bet.
Man. I'm glad I saw you spell it that way, but you surprised me by not writing 'nucular'. 3,000 killed? In case you didn't noticed there's a large dead zone and tens of thousands more, including downriver and downwind areas have been affected.
Ok, blame it on the people who ran the plant, their practices, the old graphite reactor, etc, but don't play the tune that nuclear power is safe. These are among the most toxic substances on earth and half-lives are in decades if not centuries. All it takes is an accident.
Storage of waste is also a serious issue, probably easier for the Beijing governement to handle as they have a way of handling protesters that US administrations can only fantasize about. The Hanford site, in Washinton state is a damn mess and we still don't have Yucca mountain or anything else permanent. All waste in the US is 'temporarily housed' and piling up. Touchy stuff to transport, too.
Better hope the chinese do an excellent job on those, all it takes is one Oops and another thousand square miles is dead land for centuries.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
With news like this and China's tremendous GNP growth & population is China set on the course to displace the USA as the major superpower in the 21st century?
The US seems to be getting mired in reactionary legislation which is restricting technological creativity (eg. ban on stem cell research).
the antinuclear crowd doesn't seem to understand how advanced nuclear technology is today
these pebble bed reactors just can not melt down, the design is such that their no possibility of a run away self-sustaining chain reaction taking hold
do antinuclear types like the alternative? middle east conflicts fueled by oil prices? air pollution and smog?
and proponents of green energy do not seem to understand their science: you can't scale up geothermal, wind, solar, tidal, ocean thermal gradient, etc, to meet one tenth of the modern world's energy needs
the much vaunted vaporware hydrogen promise: where do hydrogen proponents think the hydrogen comes from? i don't know why people don't understand such a simple concept: you need to spend more energy freeing hydrogen from water or hydrocarbons than anything you gain from using it as an energy medium
biodiesel sounds interesting to me, and fusion is always the holy grail, but these are unproven technoogies today... if you are a true green energy believer, then get to work here, and roll up your sleeves working on fusion or biodiesel: this is where the most promise lies for your efforts
and of course, the "just use less energy" crowd: when you figure out how to tell people to stop using gas and nuclear and start riding bikes, get back to me
meanwhile, i applaud the chinese, they see the writing on the wall: an overactive economy, demanding more and more gas and coal, and skyhigh oil prices and a volatile middle east... for the chinese, a pebble bed reactor commitment is a no-brainer
now if only the nimby types in the us could understand the wisdom of embracing pebble bed nuclear energy to combat reliance on middle east oil
but of course, simple fear of the unknown and ignorance of simple tech means the us will be left dependent on volatile undependable oil and gas and coal, while the chinese enjoy a safe, stable, cheap energy source
apparently, the nimby crowd in the us sees less risk in sending their sons and daughters to iraq than building a nuclear reactor of new design without any chernobyl or 3 mile island implications
this is not silkwood or the china syndrome folks, the stakes are accutely high in today's world: adjust your antinuclear opinion appropriately please
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I think this is a much much better solution for them, both economically and especially environmentally. There were stories that they could only ramp up the turbines from stop(a process that took about 6 hours) at night, because the resulting ploom of yellow sulfur smoke couldn't be seen. Once the burner was at full temperature by dawn, no more yellow smoke, and thus no more concerned citizens.
The place which falsified QA records for years and dumped waste into the Irish Sea?
I keep hearing stories about the Japanese working on some type of orbital projectile launcher, same type of thing Gerald Bull was working on before his untimely death. I don't know if they are true, but this would provide a safe way of getting non-human cargo to orbit without the risk of explosion. Encased blocks of radioactive waste could be shot to orbit, then nudged towards the sun by an orbiting sat.
How about the space elevator I keep hearing about here on Slashdot?... No explosive danger there either! Small/medium sized containers could be hoisted to orbit, then directed towards the sun with just a little force. Could make the containers or lift cars with some type of balistic parachute too, so if the cord breaks, the containers land safely in the sea where they can be recovered without exposure.
I'm not too fond of the idea of exploding radioactive bottle-rockets, but the way things are going, we may not have to think like that for too much longer. There are lots of new technologies that could help us safely get our waste to the sun. Best part about that...it's not on earth anymore! No need to worry about theft from the terrorists now and no need to worry about warning the the rabbit-people 50,000 years from now. Yucca mountain may just become a "low-level" waste type site for materials that just don't need to be hoisted to the sun, like all those slightly used Tyvec suits and minimally contaminated whatnot.
The idea of putting our nuclear waste on the sun isn't so far fetched. We just need to come up with a safe way of handling it until it gets there.
We can't live without it at this time.
REALITY 2:
All the plants in this country have run past their intended design lives, AND are 30-40 years out of date with modern technology.
REALITY 3:
Modern bead reactors of the type the chinese are building are VASTLY less likely to meltdown than any reactor currently running in the US. The coolant in a bead reactor actually catalyses the reaction, so without coolant, there is no reaction.
People in this country are totally irrational when it comes to nuclear power. We need this stuff, if only to replace the seriously aging reactors we already have. This is one place where I want to beat the snot out of all the left-wingers who won't be happy with anything that doesn't run on fairy dust and pot.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
OT, but China is not so much communism as authoritarianism. Yes, the communist party is in control and yes the propoganda is alive. But communism implies more than simply a government - it's a social structure.
You ask who cares?
Well, China is playing a game of accepting limited market economy while still controling many economic things, including some prices, as it sees fit. China is accepted by business interests because it has made committments to the WTO and other institutions. However, it is still classified as a developing country and therefore gets a lot of slack from the WTO. This also means it gets a lot of development loans at great rates and other things. If all it did was preach communism, it would not be in this position. There have been real changes in China, some incomplete, but many progressive.
Regardless, Lenin, Mao, Marx, etc. would probably not consider current China (PRC) communist. If communism to you means a socialist state controlled by one party of elites and the military interactive in the market economy, then yes it is. Otherwise, I wouldn't so easily label it.
these soldiers are much more of a threat to US citizens on US soil than either the chinese military or the rest of the axis of evil's militaries.
yea it's really sad how we've let eco freaks control the technological curve in this country. We used to lead in this kind of technology only now we just follow well after everyone else makes it safe. Same situation with medical treatments. It's getting really sad how easily the stupid people in society can play to the media and other people just eat it up with no idea what really happened. Whenever I hear three mile island compaired to chernobyl I want to smack someone. Nuclear power IS the future. Period. The sooner the idiot masses get over their hystarical fear of somthing they don't understand the better. It sickens me when I see "an expert" (ie someone who is really a business major and giving a psudoscience speech on nuclear power) trying to argue with someone who's spent their entire lives working with and designing nuclear rectors. And of course the media will side with the eco freaks because they love to create panic and anger so you'll watch their channel more.
You can bury it in the Canadian Shield. They've studied it and 10,000 years is miniscule compared to how stable that is. Solid granite for thousands of meters. Drill, Drop, fill it in. It won't go anywhere for eons.
My point: GA really do know how to design safe reactors.
(Background: nuclear reactors operate in a so-called "critical" state, where exactly enough neutrons are produced by nuclear reactions to balance those lost by escape or absorption. In a working reactor, about 0.7% of those neutrons come from spontaneous decay of fission products; they're called "delayed" neutrons, because you have to wait for the fission product to decay over the next few seconds before the neutron comes out. Those few delayed neutrons make all the difference, because the time scale for fission-and-moderation is measured in microseconds. The other 99.3% of the neutrons are called "prompt", and you usually want to make sure you don't make a prompt-critical assembly, unless you're in the business of making nuclear weapons. Blowing the rods instantaneously out of a reactor core is one of the more dangerous things you can do with it, unless the core was designed specifically for that use.)
China, with these reactors, will now have a decided technological advantage over Europe, US, everyone for one simple reason.. it's safe, efficient and most importantly *cheaper* than anything we've got.
No nuke plants have been built in the US, not only because of the NIMBY factor but because their cost runs into the *billions*. So, China engineers a design that has the laws of physics working *for* them instead of against, gets tons of cheap reactors and laughs all the way to the bank when everyone else is fighting over the last scraps of fossil fuels in 20 years.
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Risks! I say, Risks! This new thing is RISKY! We'd be all for it if it didn't make insects get real huge and glow and stuff. But since atomic energy is so RISKY we'd better stay with fossil fuels, shall we?
After all, burning coal and oil is perfectly safe!
-- MarkusQ
Don`t forget the progress of technology. We don`t need to build containers to last 10000 years or whatever ridiculous amount of years proposed.
If they last 100 years, that`d be good enough. 100 years ago, we didn`t have manned flight, or the internet, or *insert favorite technological invention*. But we did have pollution, from the coal and oil that powered the Industrial Revolution.
100 years from now, I expect elevators to space, deep-bore mines in the Earth crust, and oceanic hydroculture. Dealing with nuclear waste should be relatively trivial.
The choice is between more pollution through fossil fuels, or nuclear power, which generates a limited amount of very dangerous waste. If you were alive 100 years from now, which would you prefer - global climate change, or radioactive waste, stored in a large underground warehouse?
What about dropping the nodules into a mid-ocean subduction zone? They would be sucked into the mantle (which is pretty radioactive itself) to be recycled into new land long after the radiation has minimized. This seems less risky than a launch.