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China to Pioneer Melt-Down Proof Reactors
pease1 writes "FT.com reports China is poised to develop the world's first
commercially operated "pebble bed" nuclear reactor. If successfully commercialized, the pebble bed reactor would be the first radically new reactor design for several decades. It would push China to the forefront of development of a technology that researchers claim offers a new "meltdown-proof" alternative to standard water-cooled nuclear power stations." This was mentioned in September of last year but now looks as though the plan is moving forward.
If Homer Simpson can manage to cause a meltdown in a simulator, I'd be wary of calling anything meltdown proof! :) It just seems like testing fate.
I store my recipes online (the way nature intended)
Funny how it is, generally speaking, the same group of people who berate the US for our dependence on mideast oil, while at the same time vehemently protesting any movement down any path that might actually allow us to realistically release ourselves from some of that dependence, e.g., new nuclear plants. But no: must ... be ... scared ... of ... anything ..."nuclear" (including things like Cassini...)
Face it: from a standpoint of physics, wind, water, and solar, and the mechanisms for extracted energy from them, are NOT ENOUGH to sustain any semblance of the current lifestyles, right or wrong, without drastic and dramatic changes that would have far-reaching economic and social implications. We need to REPLACE the power sources we aim to wean ourselves from. And nuclear is the answer. Yes, there can be conservation. Yes, there can be debate. Yes, there can be compact fluorescents and LEDs. But those will only affect so much. Our energy requirements, as well as those of the rest of the world, are growing, and we should be leading the fucking way on the front of nuclear power, INCLUDING fusion, building new plants, and making a lot of investments in this area.
And we're simply not doing that. Fuck it: people say Social Security is the "third rail" of American politics? Energy policy is the power plant that electrifies it.
Perhaps China's communist regime has an advantage after all: they can actually do things that will be GOOD for their country, like building nuclear power plants without endless ranting and raving from protesters, and storing waste safely in places like Yucca Mountain (because having waste at ~150 temporary, insecure facilities is certainly better than having it at one site, imperfect as it may be).
mmmm, purple....
...that WE have abandoned- Nuclear Is STILL our Future!
Biofuel (ethanol, etc.) are net negative sources of fuel: The harvesting of biomass ethanol requires more fuel for trucks, processing, etc. than the ethanol contains.
Gasoline, Natural Gas and Coal are scarce and major polutants.
Hydrogen is a great portable fuel, but is only a transfer medium, not a primary source.
Wind and Solar are too costly.
Safe nucear technology is THE ONLY serious solution to the looming crisis.
I'm one of the drones from Sector 7G.
While this is a worthy achievement, and will certainly ease a lot of fears about third world countries operating reactors.
Unfortunately these reactors will still produce quite a bit of waste, and will still need to be decomissioned. Given how poorly the western world handles these issues, i can't imagine how well it'll be done elsewhere...
is there any diffrence in the ammount of waist produced? Being assured that it wont melt down or spin out of controll is good, but to get past the anti nuke arguments it'll have to be at least a little cleaner.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
"If you don't like this nuclear facility next to your rice paddy, you can go to jail."
As China's growth continues to surge, there will be more examples of China taking the lead in things- both good AND bad. When the government can tell you what to do (or else), things get done.
Enter random Homer Simpson reference here...
I am not an alarmist and I do believe that nuclear power can be safe BUT does anyone else get that deja vu, creepy music in the background, the monster is RIGHT behind you feeling whenever any one says something is *-proof?
Just me then? OK.
I don't think, Therefore I'm not.
How do these compare in terms of radioactive waste for a given energy output? I'm not trying to say they are better or worse, I would just like to understand if there is a tradeoff.
Fusion is our best hope. But until we get it working, fission is the next best thing.
Interesting Concept, but those lil' spheres would wreak havoc if they exploded.
Get Under The Porch
-lil' jimmy
So would the worse-case scenerio in a meltdown in China be called "The America Syndrome"?
Wait, if they DID have a meltdown, would it be a US Syndrome?
Somedays I'm convinced that China will become the sole economic superpower in the world in our lifetime. The US may still have a powerful military decades from now but it really looks like the Chinese want success more than we do. The fact that they are moving ahead with nuclear power is an example. Here in the US, you just can't get any kind of nuclear power plant built. We continue to use rediculous amounts of electricity but resist any attempts at becoming self-sufficient. The Chinese are hungry to improve their country while we Americans have become complacent and feel like we will always be on top. Once our debt gets to the point that other countries will no longer invest in us, we'll sink like a stone and China will take over (economically). They just want success more than we do.
GMD
watch this
just like england pioneered the unsinkable ship?
China already imports "junk" other countries are trying to get rid off...This can't help them in anyway, especially with a dictatorial govt in place.
This is truly sad. Not to be a troll or anything, but the only reason we are not seeing a massive reduction in the amount of foreign oil we depend on, or improved air is because of the stigma attached to the world "nuclear".
So, we continue to use oil and coal.
For those of you who don't know, pebble bed reactors will allow for the increased use of the radioactive elements until they pose no significant threat. To use an analogy, the battery is almost completely drained. Also, they are inherently safer due to improved design. Their default position is one in which the reactive elements are in no position to cause any sort of melt-down.
But hey, it has the word "nuclear" in it, so it has to be bad, right?
Buncha tree-hugging softies.
I'm out.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.02/nuclear.h tml?pg=4Wired had a story on this some months back.
Seems like this guy wasn't all that far off
Joy Joy Snap together reactor!
Meltdown proof! Safe for all ages!
Let a thousand reactors bloom!
In my opinion, one of China's greatest assets is its lack of current infrastructure. Imagine being able to design roads, dams, bridges, electricity generating plants, etc with 2005 technology without having to support an existing infrastructure.
We're going to hear more stories of bullet trains, monstrous dam projects and now advancements in nuclear energy production.
Good for China - start investing in them now.
I'm a big tall mofo.
This is what happens when you have a one-party totalitarian system. Even if something did go wrong, its own people wouldn't know until the rest of the world long knew about it.
I hope the Communist Party realizes the world will be watching.
It's good to see that as the US is backing away from invention and science, other parts of the world are picking it up and running with it. The future of humanity is clearly not America, but it looks bright none the less.
You make it sound as if China invented the damned things. They didn't invent pebble bed reactors.
Either way, blame nuclear activists for us not having lots of nuclear power in the US, those damned hippies...
Seriously China is a nuclear threat to the world and we better bomb them before they bomb us. I just can't believe they only use the reactor for non-military things.
I think most currently operating reactors are technically listed as experimental or testing.
I personally have a much better design for nuclear reactors but, due to our overbearing intellectual property clauses in our employee agreements, I can't tell you about it because some big vacuous company (who'll probably never develop it) now owns full rights to it. I could get sued just for shooting the breeze about better reactor design on
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
I hope the pebble bed design gets a lot of press and becomes a comfortable term for the general public. It really is a nifty design. I would go a step further and get rid of the term "reactor" and call it a pebble bed heat generator.. or something like that to further distance it from traditional nuclear reactors in the public's mind.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
Just like the Titanic was unsinkable?
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
Bubble fusion (Newscientist) may be real, meaning local power. Apparently these pebble beds can be smaller as well. Local is good, as are all the things you mention. Let's move forward.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
Much of these same people also support firearm bans. So the group of people who demand the most change from their government shun the most powerful tool in bringing about that change.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
meltdown-proof
read: unsinkable
Actually, I think it probably has more to do with protecting themselves against some of the natural hazards associated with nuclear energy in Southest Asia.
GMD
watch this
Here is the better article from Wired all about these types of reactors.
m l
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.09/china.ht
"...and in a related story, China plans to have a much cheaper version with cheaper plastic balls instead of graphite available soon. The bulk of these reactors will be available exclusively in Wal-mart stores for use in generating power to trailer parks! While not melt-down proof, some municipalities consider the loss of these trailer parks a acceptible risk."
Burns: Then how will you get electricity? Marge: Solar! Lenny: Hydroelectric? Moe: A combination of wind and conservation
of this could be quite unfortunate. If China demonstrate that pebble-bed reactors are a good way of generating relatively cheap power, they could undermine funding for efforts between Europe and Japan to produce a fusion generator.
That could apply to so many things :)
living in smog-drenched metropolitan centers. If I could trade that for Yucca mountain, sign me up.
Won't somebody please think of the dinosuars?!!!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Wired had a fairly good article on this recently.
Burning hydrocarbons is a luxury that a planet with 6 billion energy-hungry souls can't afford. There's only one sane, practical alternative: nuclear power.
For alternative fuels this century. While the United States continues its 'fight' for fossil fuels in the middle east, they will be spending their budget to completely remove themselves from the shackles of fossil fuels.
just IMAGINE where we would be if we spent that $280 BILLION on the Iraq war funding technology to develop alternative fuels? When will we realize that fossil fuels are such an impediment and where we could get if we got real about losing the middle east (oil)?
Biofuel can be net negative, it depends on how you make use of it and how you process it.
Gasoline, etc, is the one thing you got right.
Nobody's arguing hydrogen is a source of fuel.
And Wind and Solar and other alternatives cost varying amounts depending on how you make use of them.
Nuclear is, as you know, a solution with some major down sides, not the least of which is that nobody's actually built anything that'll deal with the waste problem. For all your smug weenieness, the thing you're supporting is dumber than the alternatives. Rather than pretend it's a solution, start working on it so it can be in the future. Don't make our descendents suffer from your inability to deal with a flawed technology.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Yes, but can it be controlled via a dobson override?
/Jack Bauer
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
If we can build safe, pebble-bed nuclear reactors, GREAT! However, before we start up construction, the same problem that plagues conventional reactors exists; what are we going to do with the waste?
Even if Yucca Mountain (or some other ground storage facility) happens, it's years and years away, and it seems foolish to continue to generate nuclear waste with no place to put it.
Are you actually basing your knowledge of the safety features of a nuclear reactor on an animated cartoon?
You do realize that Homer Simpson is a fictional character, right?
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
Wow, if we had this now, the entire plotline of this year's 24 would be unbelievable.
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
Speaking as a US citizen *we* want success but some of *us* will shout down and protest any and all attempts to research and/or build Nuclear Reactors.
Europe wants success too. But they measure success as everybody gets a comfortable living, everyone is cared for and no person goes hungry.
Remember, one of the most successful countries of all time was Nazi Germany.
How are they going to test it to prove that it is "meltdown proof"?
Not just China. I know someone who has just accepted a job to help develop a pebble bed reactor in South Africa. And he is not a nuclear scientist but an electrical engineer: i.e. they are actually building something. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor
Paul Beardsell
Umm. Candu reactors shut down when they lose coolant because the coolant is what sustains the reaction. I'd say thats meltdown proof. They can crank out a heck of a lot more power than a pebble bed reactor because a pebble bed reactor creates less heat - unless thats what they are working on fixing.
What do they call it in China when one of their reactors melts down and burns a hole through the earth ... the America Syndrome ???
I lived about a mile and a half away from Three Mile Island for close to three years. Never once was I "AFRAID" of the plant.
Sure, three years isn't a whole lot of time, but people can, and do, live near nuclear power plants.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
We have gone from having the most enviable public school system in the industrialized world to having the flat-out worst.
We don't invest in infrastructure, we don't protect our borders from illegal intrusion, we don't care about pollution or graft. As long as we can have the appearance of wealth...not to be confused with legitimate wealth which is grown, not borrowed.
I agree, the US is over as the preeminent power, its just going to take time for people to realize it. Around 2030 when China and the US face off probably in the Middle East for the remaining easy oil, Americans will get a rare taste of what war is like from the losing side.
And they said the Titanic couldn't sink.
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
> net negative sources of fuel
:P
God, when will this myth stop propagating? They haven't been net negatives since the 1970s; and of the dozens of studies done since then by everyone from the DOE to various universities (essentially all except anti-ethanol crusader Pimental) have shown a 30-50% positive energy balance, and with current tech it may be able to scale up as high as 70%.
Furthermore, even if it were a net negative, this is completely irrelevant. Example: During WWII, the Germans made petroleum from coal. This was a costly process that used many times more energy to produce the oil than the oil contained (they burned much of the very coal that they were converting in order to power the conversion). And yet, it largely fuelled the Nazi war machine.
The issue is converting a *non-mobile* source of energy to a *mobile* source of energy that you can put into your gas tank. If an ethanol plant takes in grid power, it's eating mostly coal. If it doesn't use grid power, it's most likely burning ag waste or other local non-mobile sources of energy. It's not like they're burning ethanol to produce ethanol
Of course, this is all irrelevant: Ethanol *IS* a net positive.
Dear Lord: One of your creatures may be hurt tonight. Please let it be the other creature.
Someone told me his siter's best friends aunt's nephew met this girl in a bar who works for this bloke who has a gay friend that hears lots of rumours you know... https://www.pbmr.co.za/
Because things like sun and water don't exist. I wonder how some countries manage to get more than 50% of their electricity from renewable sources without even having a single nuclear reactor?
Not in my backyard and all that.
So you're saying, then, that it's better for our nation as a whole to have waste stored in unmonitored, insecure, and in some cases failing, storage containers and sites at over 150 locations randomly scattered around the country, indefinitely, than in one place that is at least quasi-permanent?
And why do I have to live within visual distance of a nuclear power plant to (correctly) say that it's a very compelling answer to our power problems? Possibly because nuclear power has been so vilified by some people that others are irrationally deathly afraid of it?
Your argument is extremely poor, because:
1.) It's based on "non in my backyard", and,
2.) You make a fallacious argument that living closer to a power plant somehow makes one more able to comment about nuclear power.
The fact is, the city where I live doesn't have a nuclear power plant. Frankly, I wish it did.
Good job using nothing more than scare tactics to frame your argument. Why, exactly, would it be bad to live close to one of the 104 operating nuclear plants in the United States?
Because of irrational fear and nothing more?
Or perhaps we should eliminate nuclear power altogether! I'm sure that would help us down the road to solving our energy problems!
In the 80s the DOE proposed building a high level waste dump right where my house, as well as the water supply for half the population of maine was locatated. If you want to store the waste in your own backyard and that of your neighbors, family and friends, then wax philosophically about how we need to build more nuclear reactors. However I can't do that and stress that instead of looking for new energy, we should be looking to use LESS. That also solves another type of global warming that is on the horizon, one that everyone who has been involved with large data centers know about, which is when the rest of the world uses the same energy per capita that we in the first world currently do, then we will need to find some way to radiate off this heat.
Should this spread from China to the increasingly energy-hungry South Asian and African nations, will it have to be as heavily controlled as conventional reactors? Is it possible to use a pebble bed reactor to create weapons grade uranium or plutonium?
when will Walmart be selling these reactors? I can't wait for these things to start popping up everywhere with "Made in China" on the side in big red letters.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Where did you get those numbers?!
;-)
Brazil runs a very successful ethanol program for many years now. It had a low a couple years ago, when engines running on gasoline had a technical edge (largely due to imported vs homegrown technology issues), but now most factories (GM, Fiat, Volkswagen) offer cars with dual fuel engines. In fact, since 1986 I only had two fossil-fuel running cars. My current one has never even tasted gasoline
True - ethanol still creates CO2, but at least you can grow it on the field and hope it absorbs a lot of CO2 before you harvest it.
I think if ethanol was that bad a fuel we would have noticed that by now.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Seriously how do you think Uranium is processed? From tons and tons and tons of rock. This is a very energy consuming process, and while it may still be better than solar and wind, it is still not an all-out solution. Uranium does not last forever, just as oil does not last forever. Lets not start making the chinese pee into our pants just to keep ourselves warm.
Let's turn this thread into another china-bashing article. it's just much more satisfying than talking about nuclear reactors.
This reactor only has 195MW power potential and the fuel can't be reprocessed? From what I remember that is incredibly low when compared to conventional reactors. At what cost? From what I remember the cost to install any nuclear asset in the US is several hundred million dollars. As much as I hate promoting a green energy source, you could install the same capacity for approximately $200 million.
China is poised to develop the world's first commercially operated "pebble bed" nuclear reactor
That should help their nuclear weapons proliferation effort a great deal. DPRK, and Iran are already lined up to buy one.
an ill wind that blows no good
I guess the first commercially operated "pebble bed" reactor is what makes this article unique. The part about being the first radically new reactor design for several decades isn't exactly correct as many others have pointed out.
That arguement makes no sense, and it never has. The current private gun ownership us only a danger to the populace, not the government. At the same time, a lack of private gun ownership does not truly hamper the idea of popular revolt.
If a populace wants to revolt, it will get weapons. Not to overdramatize the point, but taking a police station, or an armory, is relatively simple, especially when compared to the idea of overthrowing a government. And this is without accounting for defections into the revolution by the military or the police.
I really am not comfortable with the idea that I am nearly 50 times more likely to be shot to death in the U.S. than I am in any other industrialized democratic nation in the world, just because the rightwing can't think through what a revolution would really be like.
When MRI was being invented it was called NMRI. The "N" of course standing for Nuclear. What they have in the big city hospitals operates on exactly the same principles that the NMRI prototypes operated on. Now why do you think they chopped the "N" off?
Solar power may one day provide a lot of people's personal energy requirements, but Nuclear is probably the only way to provide the massive amounts of power necessary to keep industry up and humming.
You see that brine there? That's my brine.
The war on terror has been an incredibly useful device for the Republican party...they get to broaden their appeal to military types and flat-out bigots, they get free reign to pillage Alaska for a miniscule amount of oil, they get to paint criticism as "unpatriotic", and they get to defer serious debate because of course "we're at war!".
They wouldn't get any of this out of alternative fuels research, and to boot they would lose the oil and military graft dollars that got them there in the first place.
Sorry, wouldn't work!
Even so, calling something meltdown proof doesn't seem like the smart thing to do... it would be quite a tragedy if they found out it wasn't.
:)
Wasn't the titanic supposed to be unsinkable?
(And yeah, I know he's not real)
I store my recipes online (the way nature intended)
Since this is slashdot, I know your post will probably be modded to +5.
Let me just say: is it possible that traditional energy companies don't just *adore* nuclear power (or ANYTHING that cuts into their profits)? Sure. Absolutely.
But there is no organized conspiracy by ANYONE in the industry to foster a fear of nuclear power. There didn't need to be. The anti-nuclear activists and some (not all) of the environmentalist movement have done that all by themselves.
Well, you'll be glad to know that the Chinese pebble reactors will, more than likely, not encounter any icebergs.
--- Ban humanity.
Calling pebble beds "meltdown proof" is really a stretch.
First off, meltdown aside, their moderator is *graphite*. Their emergency cooling scenario is that air will cool the reactor. Nice, except for the fact that even nuclear grade graphite will burn in extreme conditions quite fiercely (it was the burning graphite, more than anything else, that spread the radiation from Chernobyl). Hot graphite also produces explosive hydrogen gas in contact with water (in fact, many of these plants are going to be designed to produce hydrogen from water, so we know it will be present, even if in a different loop).
The very concerning thing is that they're so confident about them that they're not planning to build containment structures. Pebble beds are a nice design, mind you, but they're not *that* safe. A single graphite fire starts, and you've got another chernobyl that destroys a large swatch of land (it's not the casualties from nuclear events that are the problem, but the land rendered uninhabitable). Nuclear accidents have been, unfortunately, surprisingly frequent; it's the containment structures that have kept the danger that they pose limited.
Then, there's the problem with the pebbles themselves. Even in normal conditions, the German prototype experienced pebbles jamming. The safety against meltdown for the pebbles is that their expansion coefficient is designed to reduce the rate of reaction of the fuel; however, if the pellets jam against the sides as they expand, this safety won't help. This may or may not to prove to be an actual problem, of course.
I'd much rather see them go with a lead-bismuth breeder. It's a breeder (so you can utilize more fuel), it produces less waste, the waste is easier to handle, it's anti-proliferation, there's no graphite, there's no pellets to jam, etc.
Dear Lord: One of your creatures may be hurt tonight. Please let it be the other creature.
So it won't melt down, it will just burn in the event of an accident. That's what happened in Chernyoble.
Aren't there reactor designs that rely on passive systems for control? The idea is that if the reactor gets too hot, the neutrons become too energetic to cause fission and the reactor cools down on its own.
FreeSpeech.org
Never mistake politics and economics.
China is communist and it's a state where some basic democratic rights, such as freedom of expression, are not granted.
The US is a capitalist country governed by George W. Bush and its democracy has seen better days.
The titanic is unsinkable
...nuke waste can, for the most part, be recycled. The media, however, is too busy playing boogeyman, and leading us down the path to being a 4th world country with horse drawn wagons and biomass generators providing citizens enough electricity to light a 20W bulb.
--- Ban humanity.
...The Super Happy Funball. Do not taunt The Super Happy Funball!
I think the CANDU reactor is inherently more meltdown-proof than this design. The CANDU reactors use heavy water as both the moderator and the coolant - if you lose the coolant, you also lose the moderator, so the reaction stops. The only bad situation would be if the coolant pumps stopped moving the coolant, but then you could dump the heavy water manually, or just wait for it to flash to steam and get sucked into the vacuum building that sits beside the containment building. Either way, the reaction stops before it gets to a "meltdown" point.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
How Oracle is "Unbreakable"?
Sometimes my arms bend back.
Imagine one peb cracking, and depositing the stuff on the bottom of the bed, which reacts more strongly with a few more pebs, causing a hot spot and some convection, which can crack more, etc.
Some things that seem to be missing from the popular accounts: just what the pebs are coated with, how tough they are, and how long they are supposed to hold up to constant expansion and contraction.
Sometimes seventeen/Syllables aren't enough to/Express a complete
YOU DUMBBUTT, I live 30 miles from an airforce base that services 90% of the US STRATEGIC BOMBER FLEET! AT ANY GIVEN TIME I LIVE CLOSE TOO ENOUGH NUCLEAR FIRE POWER TO TILT THE EARTH OFF IT"S AXIS AND CAUSE DECADES WORTH OF NUCLEAR WINTER!
A simple little nuclear power plant would be no big deal. If we had enough nuclear power plants we would'nt be so tied to the mideast.
Why don't you move to France, oh wait they have a whole network of nuclear power plants.
Right now Nuclear is the ONLY alternative to gas and coal period. Nothing else will generate the amount of energy required.
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
Couldn't have done it without ya.
How are they controlled by the USgovt?
When and how often are inspections in those reactors?
It seems to me a serious threat if it gets out of hands.
The thing about nuclear fission power that no one seems to like to hear is, that it is going to be costly.
Thorium Fuel is a very promising nuclear fission fuel with very little long lived waste elements, and Sub-critical reactor designs are possible with Thorium (requires electrical power to actually make the reaction run) that cannot sustain a nuclear reaction when power is shut off. These are called Accelerator driven systems. They would be very safe, leave little waste, but they would not supply huge Gigawatts of cheap power that people seem to want. If people are willing to pay more for the electricity bill, it can be done with technology available now.
Reactor designs have come a long way. There's ways to reuse the nuclear feul to the point where the easte problem is very minimal. The OP *said* that but you ignored even that because you're a dumbass ideologue.
I'm sure this is little more than China's other great announcements--like that amazzzzing space program they've got going.
[FromTheMorning]
I should preface this by saying that I'm not opposed to nuclear power generation, and that I think that the newest generation of reactors (especially those using pebble beds) are very promising.
Still, I'm wary of these sweeping, blanket statements people tend to make about new technology. Remember how electricity would be too cheap to meter? Remember how Vioxx easily secured FDA approval? How the Space Shuttle flew for years with bad O-Rings?
I'm not a luddite, and I'm all for progress -- even when it's dangerous. But people are making sweeping statements about the safety of this new generation of reactors. What about spent fuel? What about issues that we don't fully understand yet?
We have a long track record of giving lay people the rosiest possible picture of progress. Then something goes wrong. The SL-1 Reactor, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, others. The public gets scared and recoils. And then we're surprised when they balk at a new generation of "meltdown proof" reactors!
I'd like to see the PRC try these reactors out for a decade or so before I approve the operation of one in my backyard. Remember the consequences of missteps -- entire regions of the country made uninhabitable for generations. The risk may not be great, but the consequences are.
There already has been an attempt at a commercial pebble-bed reactor in Germany. The THTR at Hamm-Uentrop started its first chain-raction in 1983. But it was a failure due to problems with the material: pebbles broke up and control rods were bent. The project was abandoned in 1988.
BTW: Cheap uranium is already gone - where does China expect to get all the necessary fuel?
This really isn't surprising since nearly all of our technlogy is made there.
I really have to wonder. If Bush gets his wish and every job in the US is outsourced. Does he really want China building all of his weapons?!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
It's funny how often the energy production appears the sole focus of a discussion like this. There are 2 sides you know: the production side, and the consumption side.
IMHO The USA could do better by looking closer at the consumption side. Why? Because SAVING 1% of energy consumption has the same or better effect than adding 1% on the supply side. It also may be EASIER to do, and reduces pressure on the power grid. Just look at the economics: to get one 1% improvement, what costs you more: save 1%, or produce 1% extra? With oil prices going through the roof, I suspect that saving energy makes more economical sense than beefing up the supply side. If you factor in hidden costs of pollution and global warming, saving energy makes even more sense.
Many energy savings can be both significant and easy: isolate your home, use energy efficient lighting, replace that stupid SUV with a hybrid car, drive with 2 people from A to B instead of on your own, use public transport where possible, use natural gas instead of electricity for cooking and heating, use a water-saving (=heat-saving) shower head, etc. etc. All measures that don't affect your lifestyle much, but your energy consumption a lot.
Then there's the investment side. Suppose a power company can improve the efficiency/environmentals of a plant with an X money investment, while at the same time you have a very poor performing/polluting plant in another country. Why not make that X investment there? Same financial effort, much bigger gain. Politics can do a lot here in terms of worldwide technology and 'pollution quota' exchange programs.
Anyway, I think it's stupid that we're still operating scores of nuclear power plants around the world that AREN'T walk-away safe. Maybe these Chinese plants use new tech, but it's been known for a long time how you can build a nuclear plant that doesn't blow up if you walk out.
I'll do ya one better: ANWR
Conservation doesn't solve the supply problem. Drilling our own does.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Genie Inside! Do NOT uncork.
Warning. Bottle is fragile.
http://www.ippnw.org/MGS/V6N1Wilson.html
"... Bombing nuclear reactors, however, would dramatically increase the area contaminated with hazardous local fallout within the attacked country. For example, the explosion of a one-megaton bomb on a one-gigawatt reactor has been estimated to cause a fallout plume delivering total external gamma-ray doses of 100 centiGray per year around 530 km long and up to 70 km wide [4]....
What's saddest is that you probably think you are well informed and smart, but the contents of your mind are just one big manifesto- A filthy tepestry of lies, partial facts and myth. I just wish there were a way to make people like you see that, even for a few moments. You'd immediately, as fast as you could, kill yourself in despair at what an utter usless fuck you were.
It doesnt seem like a bad idea, considering china has the worlds largest population, and is 2nd in pollution emissions, for china to go with an alternative fuel source. as for the dangers, every fuel source has its dangers, its a matter of minimizing them. with the exception of chernobyl, there hasnt been a full FUBAR power plant meltdown.
I'm a drunk, you incensitive clod!
put the what in the where?
That's simply not correct. It was true decades ago when the only source of biomass being used was food-grade crops - current industrial agriculture is massively inefficient. Current biomass production, primitive as it is, is net positive.
Uranium and Plutonium are both highly toxic. Supplies of U-235 are limited. Plutonium presents massive security issues.
Costs of both photovoltaic and wind are falling. When external costs are figured, they're cheaper than coal or nuclear.
So stop with the FUD already, ok?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Why yes, I believe he was.
How come when Bush proposes changing it, it's a BadThing, but when a Democrat says the same thing, it's a GoodThing?
Fortunately I just read about the term "unsinkable" as it was applied to the Titanic. The boat-maker never used the term. The dock-workers never used the term. The buyers never used the term. The only one who used it was a marketer for a travel agency booking berths aboard the Titanic. No one, the captain included, thought the ship was unsinkable. The very idea is ridiculous. Pour enough water into the ship, and it will sink.
On the other hand, pebble-bed reactors do not rely on making it difficult to meltdown, they rely on the fact that the natural state of the reactor bed is a "safe" condition. (No, that doesn't mean you can stick your head in it, just that it will not maintain a chain reaction.) So, in the case of a pebble-bed reactor, if you take away all the coolant, the reactor shuts itself down. The coolant (or more accurately the heat-transfer media, since it's used to move heat from the reactor core to the heat exchangers to make steam to turn generators) is integral to the design of the reactor.
To have a sustained reaction, there must be coolant present. If the coolant is present, then the reactor cannot melt down, because it's covered in coolant. If the coolant were to be allowed to boil off, then the reaction cannot be sustained and the reactor shuts off. So, Coolant=no meltdown, no coolant=no meltdown. Please find the way to make the reactor meltdown in the above scenario...
Give up? That's the difference between engineering and physical law. I can engineer a damn tough ship, but physical law says that if I add enough weight, it'll displace more weight than an equal volume of water, and it will sink. On the other hand, if I have a pebble and it releases X number of neutrons, nothing I can do will increase that number of neutrons or moderate them in such a way as to cause a chain-reaction, except adding a moderator, which, in-turn controls the chain-reaction. It's like claiming that I can make a light bulb that's hot get hotter and melt-down by turning off the switch.
Pebble-beds have been built and tested in the harshest ways, and no reaction can be sustained when the pebbles were "exposed" without the sustaining material. The only way to make a pebble-bed melt down is to take the pebbles, grind them down, extract the fissile material and make a regular nuclear reactor out of them.
And that's the whole point.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
China has billions of people. They tried families only having one kid and now it looks like their trying nuuclear metldowns to curb their population. Besides the media can't criticize their plan over in china with out being shot so it wouldn't matter as long as thier government liked the idea.
Just to clear up some misconceptions, the idea of pebble-bed reactors has been around since the 50's, however, due to the political environment other designs were promoted and used, as they do have higher energy potentials than pebblebed reactors do. Basically, for a nuclear reactor to "melt down", you have to have a configuration where enough nuclear material can be close enough together for the material to stay critical and generate enough heat where it will start to melt. The core idea of a pebble-bed reactor is that you encapsulate each piece of the fusion material with a protective coating that insures that even if it was let loose to react in an uncontrolled manner, the protective coating would keep the material from melting into a larger mass, which would then generate more heat even faster, etc. If you can keep the material from melting together, you can't have a complete meltdown. Materials technology has come far enough so that these protective pellets can be made safe enough that the pebblebed reactor can be created. Does this prevent people from breaking open the pebbles and inducing a failure? No. Does it prevent a bomb from exploding the reactor and releasing the material? No. Are there other ways to gain fusion material beyond attacking a commercial nuclear reactor? Yes. This is a risk vs. reward equation, we will need to get power someway, and simply dismissing nuclear as "too dangerous" is ignoring the fact that when we run out of oil, the world will be a much more dangerous place anyway as everybody fights for the limited resources. Why not AVOID the political mindset that in all likely lead to the US invading Iraq in the first place by using nuclear power?
Anyone know why no D2O like in the CANDU reactors? Is it just an expense issue?
AFAIK, use of D2O as both moderator and coolant adds an extra level of safety over graphite in that if your coolant leaks out or the reactor gets too hot & it all boils off or whatever, you lose the moderator at the same time and the reaction stops due to lack of slow neutrons.
Anyone know if it's possible to melt down a CANDU?
Seriously, the breakdown of imports and been brought up a thousand times and shot down a thousand times. Until Arabs lose control of the liquidity of the market, they control oil prices.
just 1 question. how do they test it :-)
just because I don't care doesn't mean I'm not listening
I dunno... CANDU has had some significant problems with corrosion of feeder pipes, at at least one loss of coolant incident that I'm aware of. I can't picture anything going wrong in a CANDU design however that would threaten the containment structure, so the worst you'd get is the functional loss of the plant itself.
:)
CANDU is really a good step in the right direction - I just look forward to the next-gen stuff because a low-waste low-maintenance anti-proliferation unreactive breeder really sounds like the sort of thing that could get the nuclear industry back on its feet again
Dear Lord: One of your creatures may be hurt tonight. Please let it be the other creature.
I certianly agree. I dont think something which even has a slight potential of something bad happening and which contains so much highly toxic material ought to be so trusted that the need for safety features like a shield over the reactor are ignored. It reminds me of the Titanic. Unsinkable! They would say. Oh, no, this boat is unsinkable, so we dont need enough lifeboats for everyone, we can save money by omitting them! People dont seem to learn from history. In that case, as with this one, as there was with Chernobyl, there was an over confidence in the technology, which caused safety issues to be overlooked.
I am very skeptical of more nuclear fission, Its a dangerous technology and involves highly toxic materials. I dont care how safe they say it is, they should never take it for granted that it is totally safe and always overbuild it to handle every contigency.
While the supplies of fissionable material on this planet are not infinite, there are enough proven deposits to supply the entire planet's population at American rates of consumption for a thousand years without any improvements in technology. By that time, I would like to hope that our descendants would have either figured out fusion, or gotten the infrastructure in place to harvest fissionables from the rest of the solar system (either that, or wiped themselves off the face of the planet, but I prefer to be optimistic). One way or another, it would last us a hell of a lot longer than the planet's fossil fuels.
Another argument that I completely fail to understand is people's preoccupation with nuclear waste. There are plenty of places on this planet (deserts, mountains, frozen tundra) that cover hundredds if not thousands of square miles and will never be suitable for human habitation. A single large-scale centralized repository could be used to store all the waste from all of the world's nuclear plants. Unlike the pollution from fossil fuels, nuclear waste is solid, transportable, and quite compact. Even if the facility were to fall into disrepair or suffer a terrible accident, all that would do would be to turn an uninhabitable wasteland into a radioactive uninhabitable wasteland. Compare this with the tons of harmful particles that get released into the atmosphere each second due to the burning of fossil fuels, and I cannot see how the choice would be anything less than obvious to someone who cares about the wellbeing of the global ecosystem.
How about heat it up? If you read up on the technology it is really quite simple in concept once you understand that if you keep the fuel pieces far enough apart, the reactor will come to a steady state temperature eventually, and that can be predicted and designed around.
Somebody else on an unamerican continent is working with nuclear power.... looks like the axis of evil list is going to be even longer!
You can run but you can't hide, except, apparently, along the Afghan-Pakistani border.
Peak MPG is not as clear cut as you think. After many trials I have found my truck gets 18 MPG unloaded at 55mph. I get 23 MPG while towing my boat at 70mph! (I think the sweat spot is between 65 and 70)
Your words are cutting and probably accurate... However, there is a twist:
I agree, the US is over as the preeminent power, its just going to take time for people to realize it. Around 2030 when China and the US face off probably in the Middle East for the remaining easy oil, Americans will get a rare taste of what war is like from the losing side.
I think this is quite well understood in the power-circles of the U.S. I believe the current military actions are being taken specifically to force a worldwide energy monopoly to be in the hands of the U.S. to offset the trade and deficit imbalances. These will probably continue during the Bush presidency.
I also believe that the U.S. will fight before it loses the ability to win, if it looks like it is slipping from it's position of power in the world.
For the sake of our children, world peace and everything holy, let us pray that the U.S. is not slipping out of world-power. It may in fact spell the end of the world as our desperate leaders lash out at the world to keep their power. America would become like Nazi Germany (who by the standards of the time had just as significant a technology and military advantage as the U.S. does today).
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
Requires a huge amount of resources to find, drill etc.... So it is an alternative to Coal, but still isn't perfect.
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
Pebble-beds have been built and tested in the harshest ways, and no reaction can be sustained when the pebbles were "exposed" without the sustaining material.
:-), can I do it in my garage? Can I make a nice little dirty bomb with this stuff? Seems like lots of folks here trust their government and corporate overlords to keep this stuff safe. Me, I don't trust them one bit.
I think if proponents of nuclear fusion power didn't have a track record of "it's safe, trust me" when it ain't so this comment would carry much more weight. I know that this reactor is supposedly intrinisically stable. BUT but government and industry types that made "too cheap to meter" and other such claims in the past have worn out their credibility.
The only way to make a pebble-bed melt down is to take the pebbles, grind them down, extract the fissile material and make a regular nuclear reactor out of them.
Doesn't sound so difficult
90% of the wealth is in 2% of the pockets. Bummer to be in the majority.
It also should be added that in many cases, in addition to the risk of catastrophic failure, a technology which involves the use of so much toxic material like this also carries a much greater risk of accidental release of toxic materials and pollution that dont require a catastrophic event, but just sloppy handling.
There is an excelent article on pebble bed reactors in wikipedia. Briefly, the idea is credited to a German physicist Rudolf Schulten. General Atomic is building one in Russia (link). Also there was a project at MIT under Andrew Kadak, but the website, gives an impression that the work did not go far.
> Please find the way to make the reactor melt down in the above scenario
Simple: Pebbles jam. It happened in Germany. If they're jammed, they can't expand properly.
Of course, the biggest risk for a pebble bed is not meltdown but a graphite fire.
Dear Lord: One of your creatures may be hurt tonight. Please let it be the other creature.
Let's hope the Chinkies pay for the pebble bed patents.
Don't think I was arguing pro or con against reforming Social Security and I'm sure now fan of Al Gore and the Dems so don't try to tar me with that Bursh. There is just a basic reality associated with privatizing social security.
... opposed to both parties.
You see Bush is going around the country declaring Social Security is going to go bankrupt to scare everyone in to "reforming" it.
His solution is to let people move their payroll taxes from Social Security to private accounts. What does that do. It reduces Social Security funding, and accelerates its demise UNLESS the government pumps huge sums, like 2 trillion dollars out of the general fund to shore up the even huger shortfall his "reform" is going to cause.
Its is a bizarre, behind the looking glass world, where the President can rant about Social Security bankruptcy and then propose a plan that will hasten its bankruptcy rather than prevent it.
Me personally I'd be overjoyed if the Government either:
A. just stopped taking 12.5% out of my income and I'll just live without the whole bloody thing.
B. or ideally just gave me back what I've paid in a lump sum.
Mostly what the Republican's are proposing is that instead of taking all that money out of our paychecks and putting it in to government debt, instead they are going to force us to invest it in carefully defined investment vehicles controlled by their friends on Wall Street and they will profit from it in a huge way.
If the Republican's were actually conservatives they would be putting an end to this particular brand of social engineering all together, instead they are just redirecting the money to their rich friends instead of to the government.
So bottomline I personally oppose both the Republican and Democratic position on Social Security which is usually where I am on most issues
@de_machina
China... ...solve China syndrome problem... ...Chinese... ...syndrome...
My head hurts.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
There is only so much natural gas and it still has its fair share of issues. By going to nukes, there is something that most ppl have not realized. At night, the power plant is still producing without an increase in waster. The smart thing to do with nukes is either produce H2 at night, or find some other form of energy storage. Once we do that, a nuke can work efficiently with alternative energy (solar, wind, hydro, etc).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
First off in a pebble bed design the graphite is encases in a ceramic, usually SiC. For a fire of the type you are describing all the ceramic coating of all the pebbles would have to fail. And I do not mean just a few small cracks but big chunks of it would have to fail.
Second the hydrogen production is not going to be from hot graphite in contact with water. The Hydrogen production will not be in any loop of the reactor but will be at the ends of power lines coming off the generator. This is not a safety factor with the reactor.
Third as far as lead-bismuth goes I only know of one production reactor that used that. The power plant for the Alpha class sub. Guess what it was a disaster. All of them have been withdrawn from service.
Should they still use a containment dome? I would say you bet. Seems like very cheap insurance to me. If nothing else it could help to protect if from terrorist attack or even milliatry action.
All of you points though are just not issues except for maybe the lead-bismuth breeder. I would have to do more research to see what the state of the art is with those.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Is what they said in the 1950s and 1960s. Then the accident and waste problems became apparent.
Still, we must have learned a few new tricks in 60 years.
So in China when a reactor melts down, is that referred to as the 'American Syndrome'? M
The reason that the U.S. is not innovating in the area of energy production has to do with politics. America controls (directly and in the case of Saudi, indirectly) world oil production and therefore world energy. Alternate energy sources, especially those that free nations from the oil addiction reduce dependence on America and therefore reduce America's power.
China, knowing this, is actively persuing alternate energy policy including nuclear, hydrogen and more novel approaches. They want to detach themselves from the oil addiction so that they have independence from the U.S. and U.S. controled energy interests.
Again, politics.
But, the results are inevitable: As a result of these politics, the Chinese will inevitably control more advanced and more important energy technologies (both economicaly and ecologically). So the conclusion to this will be exactly the opposite of that desired by the status quo (America controlled energy). However, the administration doesn't care because they will be retired, rich, fat and happy (or dead of old age) when China turns it all around on America and effectively takes control of world energy production.
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
From wikipedia: The primary advantage of pebble bed reactors is that they can be designed to be inherently safe. As they get hotter, the rate of neutron capture by U-238 increases, reducing the number of neutrons available to cause fission. This places a natural limit on the power produced by the reactor. The reactor vessel is designed so that without mechanical aids it loses more heat than the reactor can generate in this idle state. The design adapts well to safety features. In particular, most of the fuel containment resides in the pebbles, and the pebbles are designed so that a containment failure releases at most a 0.5 mm sphere of radioactive material.
Now compare that sphere of radioactive material in an accident to what is released by coal power plants every day and you'll see why many people would rather have pebble bed reactors than coal fired ones.
I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.
Wow slashdot's sense of humor really does suck.
I bet if he repeated the same old *CRAP* like "I for one welcome our meltdown proof reactor overlords"
or "I'm allergic to meltdown proof reactors you insenstive clods"
he would have gotten +5 funny
A. just stopped taking 12.5% out of my income and I'll just live without the whole bloody thing.
B. or ideally just gave me back what I've paid in a lump sum.
Given how the slow the Repubs would have to work to keep people from spending, Moving the money into private accounts is the first step in getting it away from the government (and geting the gov to reduce spending). Then, once it it in private accounts, individuals can start making the case about why they should be required to pay into it in the first place. Traditionaly (going back to when SS was implemented) the SS funds have gone into the general fund to prop up spending. Getting it out of the general fund in the first place is a good starter.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
The Pebble Bed Modular Reactor is not proliferation resistant.the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor is tailor made for the facile production of weapons grade plutonium.
As currently designed, the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor does not conform with the defense in depth regulatory philosophy of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and could not be certified.
- Dr. D. A. Powers
Trip Report HTGR Research Conference
Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards
October 10 - 12, 2001
Time for shock and awe.
Nuke plants mean weapons. That is the true use for the stuff. Ask Israel.
pebble bed reactors have a low density, so they don't overheat , even when all cooling breaks down. The Tchernobyl reactor did overheat. Then exploded. Then the air could reach the core and start a fire.
The low density approach is actually 50 years old. The first prototype was made in the fifties. The low density track was left behind by the more evolved high density approach. High density reactors got a headstart because compact reactors were needed in submarines. Freeman Dyson describes the history in one of his books.
Nuclear Energy. Good enough for Springfield. Good enough for me.
in 100+ years we will have all we need to be able to ship all of our nuclear waste towards the nearest star or our sun.
also, what happened to that other reactor that does electrolysis and power production at the same time? why not build tons of those and kill two birds with one stone?
we are filling our atmosphere with CO2 when we could be using hydrogen without any harm to our environment. one thing our race should not be tampering with is our environment. if we screw it up and render our planet inhabitable we will all die. our country is leading the way.
death to all those dumb nuclear phobic idiots who will eventually have to take full responsibility for the extinction of the human race.
to support that assertion so that you actually deserve your +informative mod?
Thanks
How about CANDU reactors, where the coolant (heavy water) is the moderator? If the coolant boils off, the moderator is gone too. It's also anti-proliferation in that it requires no uranium enrichment, so the enrichment plants can't be used to produce weapons-grade uranium.
(What? U238 turns into Pu239 when struck by fast Neutrons, which abound in a CANDU reactor, and Pu239 is orders of magnitude easier to seperate from U238 than U235? Don't tell India or Pakistan... Oh wait... Too late)
Check out The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. In 1989, Paul Kennedy documented this whole scenerio of a rising China vs. a economically and militarily over-extended USA, by documenting how the same happened to England when the US became economically strong, as so on throughout history.
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
The problem with nuclear power isn't the big scary scenarios that the mainstream anti-nuclear community put about. The problem is that economics suck, and probably always will. "Successful" national nuclear power programmes are propped up by artificial means--either direct government investment, or special-needs laws like the insurance liability cap, or both.
Sure, coal plants pump out a lot more garbage into the environment than nuclear plants, but coal plants have two big advantages: relatively small events don't wind up writing-off the whole plant; and you can take the damn things apart and fix them relatively cheaply because they aren't radioactive.
It isn't just "unreasonable regulatory burden" that makes nuclear plants expensive--it is the fact that the available energy density is extremely high, and any departure from equilibrium can result in sufficiently high energy density to result in plastic deformation of components of the core. Once that happens they're hellishly expensive to fix. Even relatively routine maintenance is extremely expensive due to the real safety requirements of doing engineering work in a radioactive environment.
"Inherently safe" design for fission reactors is an interesting area of research, and much progress has been made, but it isn't clear that any of them are really as safe as their designers would like to believe. And again, it isn't the possibility of catastrophic, world-ending melt-down that you need to prevent, but relatively minor excursions that will leave the containment intact but make a mess of the core.
Older designs, such as the CANDU (which has a negative temperature coefficient of reactivity, if memory serves, meaning a temperture spike will damp the reaction down) are already more-or-less "melt-down-proof". But they have also proven to be bloody expensive to maintain--far moreso than coal-fired plants run by the same utility.
These are all reasons I got out of the nuclear engineering business many years ago--the core physics of fission power is such that it is very hard to create reactors that are going to be economic to operate over the lifecycle of the plant.
--Tom
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
I thought it was supposed to be meltdown proof and relatively safe.
Robert Oschler - RobotsRule.com
I already addressed that entire post, so let me reiterate: One, meltdown is not the most serious risk of a pebble bed; it's a graphite fire. Two, pebbles in pebble bed reactors have been known to jam, and jammed pebbles cannot expand.
The radioactivity released by coal plants every day isn't even *remotely* close to the scale of radioactivity released in a nuclear disaster. Coal plants, from mining to burning, add about twice as much radioactivity to the atmosphere as normal operation of nuclear power from mining to fuel storage. Do I need to dig up the number of curies here for you? Comparing coal burning to a nuclear *disaster* isn't even in the same league.
Dear Lord: One of your creatures may be hurt tonight. Please let it be the other creature.
Read the article, this reactor design (the CANDU) does not rely on pebble expansion for reaction moderation. The coolant itself (heavy water) provides the moderator that makes the reaction possible. Without the heavy water, there's no reaction. The generator also runs in the 900 degree F range, which is not hot enough to flash-ignite graphite. The Chernobyl reactor didn't ignite the graphite until the core reached 2200 degrees farenheit. The pebble-bed without coolant would probably back down to only a few degrees over ambient temperature without the moderating heavy water. The reactor efficiency is so low (195MW vs 2GW for a typical U.S. reactor) exactly because the pebble-bed never gets to insanely high temperatures.
So, the only time it's hot is when it's covered in water. Difficult for the graphite to ignite without an oxygen source. When it's exposed to air, the pebbles are already cooling to near ambient temperatures and can't get to the several thousands degrees it takes to ignite graphite.
Even a graphite fire is not dangerous if contained in a containment vessel. Chernobyl was only a disaster because the Russians used a single-wall design for their containment vessels, and the initial steam explosion blew that off the building. Then the core was exposed to open air. All U.S. reactors are double-walled and would have contained a Chernobyl type meltdown.
Read the article and research the design. Meltdown is prevented in this design by physical law, not by thermal expansion. (Okay, that's a physical law, but it's not the one we're depending on.)
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
I really doubt that this has anything to do with gradually terminating it. It is just moving from Socialist Security to Fascist Security. Instead of having a big intrusive government swallowing our paychecks to fund big government, we are just trading that for a big intrusive government redirecting our paychecks to giant corproate entities who are for the most part closely allied with the party in power, that is basicly Fascist economics. It is still a massive government intervention because they will dictate how much is deducted from your paycheck and what companies will be approved to take that money, there is very little free market about it.
I really doubt either party will allow people to decide for themselves whether they save for retirement or spend as they go. The obvious problem is you have huge numbers of people living 10, 20 and 30 years after retirement, which you didn't before Social Security started, and if you don't force them to save for retirement the poverty and misery among seniors will be appalling. Only way you might be able to moderate it is you also cut off Medicare/Medicaid for the poor so they die younger which seems to be a likely Republican strategy too.
@de_machina
oops I actually meant for that to go under the grandparent post.
Average mileage on freeways cruising at 65 MPH is closer to 39 MPG. At 55 MPH, indicated mileage is only about 50-55 MPG (45-50 actual).
If we really wanted to eliminate the need for oil (and carbon-based fuels in general) we'd move as many vehicles as possible from pure internal combustion to plug-in hybrid and make it easy to get energy from the grid. Even if the vehicle gets only 25 MPG when burning fuel, if it runs 80% of its mileage on grid power the effective mileage would be a whopping 125 MPG. The extra grid power could come from nukes, wind, solar... it wouldn't matter, as long as it wasn't coal or gas.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
"The environment" regularly makes a 62% impact on surveys of "Extremely/Very Important" issues. It is consistent for someone comfortable with nuclear power not to be familiar with statistics, or misrepresent them. Being a "Democrat" is not inconsistent, but irrelevant.
--
make install -not war
The current crop of CANDUs are unreliable and expensive to maintain. Ask any Ontarian paying a whack of "stranded debt retirement" on their hydro bill, and they wouldn't wish CANDU on anyone.
Go Google it.
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
I bet you would want to live near a Uranium refinery compared to near a petroleum refinery.
If you're only thinking about the clean energy usage part of the whole energy cycle, why not use hydrogen without the radioactive pollution from tailings, depleted fuel, reactor contaminations, et cetera?
Later the argument will be made that the benefits paid by the public part of social security can be cut since the private part makes up the difference. In fact, if the private account does better than the public part (as it appears to based on historical rates of return), the benefits can be cut even more than the percentage of contribution alone would allow.
To make this argument now would be too much fodder for the anti-change crowd. "Bush plans to cut social security benefits" and so on.
The big plus I see to this is for poor people who might not have any assets to leave their children after death. With private retirement account they will now potentially have something to pass on. It isn't much but compared to nothing I think its big.
"Written on the pages is the answer to the never ending story..."
When people talk about breeder reactors as "producing more fuel than they burn", what they mean is that the reactor is run on either U-235 or Pu-239. It produces heat energy which is converted into electricity.
At the same time, excess neutrons from the reaction are reacted with an otherwise inert blanket of U-238 around the reactor, converting the U-238 into Pu-239 which can then be used to run the same reactor, or other reactors. It turns out that Pu-239 production is faster than Pu-239 or U-235 consumption.
It is relatively easy to use chemical methods to separate the produced Pu-239 from the leftover U-238 in the blanket, certainly MUCH easier than separating U-235 from natural uranium.
So it's not a perpetual motion machine because a resource is used up, i.e. the natural U-238, but that resource is plentiful and the overall process is easier than the conventional method of getting fissile fuel.
The reason that breeder reactors aren't widely used is partly technical, because they're fairly complex things to design and operate, but mostly political because the Pu-239 produced can relatively easily be used in bombs.
"Studies have shown that people who eat peanuts live longer than those who do not eat."
One that has not been answered in literature aimed at us normal folk. On /. there seems to be many people who actually know something, unlike you and me. So let's work under the assumption that my question was directed at them, not you, ok?
Sometimes seventeen/Syllables aren't enough to/Express a complete
Americans, 5% of global population, produce over 30% of the output on 20% of the energy. We're very productive, and very efficient, compared with most of the rest of the world - vastly more efficient than any comparably sized group in either of those three measures. Of course, we're too wasteful, too - our economy hides the cost of our energy consumption. When we reduce our energy consumption, our economy will benefit, and lead the rest of the world to a more sustainable production system. But trashtalking our relative efficiency isn't the way to lead us there.
--
make install -not war
> encases in a ceramic, usually SiC
Above 1250C, SiC degrades relatively easily in a reactor environment;. it has varying degrees of instability above 900C, and remember that PBMRs are definintely not low-corrosion environments. A coolant-devoid reaction in a pebble bed maxes out typically around 1600C (sometimes lower); too low for meltdown but not too low to seriously jeapordize the graphite.
> The hydrogen production will not be in any loop of the reactor but will
> be at the ends of the power lines coming off the generator
Incorrect. The reason pebble beds are desirable for hydrogen production is direct thermolysis of water in the presence of a catalyst; pebble beds can reach sufficient temperatures, unlike conventional PWRs, to do this.
> as far as lead bismuth goes I only know of one..
I don't care if you don't know about a subject. Lead or lead-bismuth reactors have been built for experimentation and/or studied in France, Japan, the US, Italy, Russia (extensive), and other countries. Lead-bismuth has gotten a lot of attention recently in the nuclear power industry.
BREST is little like an Alpha-class sub's reactor. One of the most prominant features of BREST is that it is largely convection cooled. Secondly, thanks to data from Alpha, lead compatability issues have largely been addressed. The main corrosion issues were with steel; despite having largely resolved this through oxygenation and chromium steels (yes - a coating of rust, and/or stainless steel - the first Alpha reactors didn't even use stainless steel for many corroded parts!), the lead tank on BREST is mostly concrete (which never had compatability issues). And if you want to talk about corrosion, you don't have much to point to from US reactors - look at CANDU's recent troubles with feeder pipes, for example. Even if throuh some miracle the concrete base were destroyed, the lead would just solidify and trap its contents within.
Dear Lord: One of your creatures may be hurt tonight. Please let it be the other creature.
Doesn't canada already have melt-free plants? Also, I thought most US plants had non-melt failure modes as well.
The "too cheap to meter" comment is addressed later in the comments, and was from one guy talking to a group of science-fiction writers in the 1950's. But yes, a real nuclear scientist said it, so I'll give you that.
On the other hand, in the U.S. Nuclear Reactors have killed how many civilians? So far as I know, the number of civilians killed in nuclear accidents at power plants is... zero. Yes, there have been deaths of workers, yes, you could argue that a few plants have leaked radiation here and there, but when you consider that the CDC is claiming 30,000 deaths a year from coal plants in the U.S., it makes for a hell of a weak argument.
Besides, the "safe" claim isn't even being made by the U.S. government, it's coming from China. As for me, I think nuclear is a great idea, and I'd rather be living 10 miles from Yucca Mountain than the 10 miles I currently live away from a coal plant that's rated one of the cleanest in America.
As for your "dirty bomb" statement, yeah, give it a try. Start by walking into a nuclear power plant, past the six layers of security. Then enter the core, ignoring the fatal dose of radiation you'll be bathed in. Grab hold of a few dozen pebbles, ignoring the heat that burns the flesh off your hands and arms. Take them home. Grind them up, again, ignore the fact that the fumes of the uranium or plutonium are among the most powerful and fastest acting poisons known to man. Use fluorine (a controlled substance also instantly fatal if breathed) to create UF6 to separate the Uranium from the graphite gas. Then use a million dollars of platinum to catylize the UF6 back to uranium metal. Stick it to 100 pounds of C4 and detonate it in downtown New York. Of course, the fact that you'll set off every airborne neutron detector that homeland security and the air force (and a half-dozen spy satellites) have before you leave your house might slow you down. Not to mention the continous man-hunt looking to find you.
You may not trust the government with this stuff, but consider the alternative. If there's one thing I'm not worried about in this country, it's how well our fissile material stockpile is guarded. When you realize that it takes three semis, twenty secret-service agents, the FBI and the army to move 20 grams of *spent* material to be used as the thermal warmers for the Pathfinder rover, you realize that the government is very serious about the security of this material.
story from "Managing Martians" by Donna Shirley
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
But that is exactly what environmentalists are working for: imposing a very different, much more austere lifestyle: minimal electric power, very few possessions, eking out a vegetarian (vegan) living off of a minimal amount of land, perhaps owning a bicycle for personal transportation. Forget all those kitchen gadgets, your home won't be big enough for a kitchen to hold them, anyway. Forget about modern medicine, it depends too much on electricity and drugs which require way, way too much technology to produce, and besides, on that vegan diet everyone will be very healthy until they die in their sleep in their old age which will probably be about 60 because of the hard work you'll have to do to survive.
This is what the "sustainable, ecological lifestyle" really is. The people who want to see everyone live like that don't understand the full implications of what they want. This is a lot like our great grandparents and great great grandparents lived in the latter half of the 19th century. The environmentalists don't understand why all this nasty, modern technology was viewed as progress.
But you're wrong about solar. The US's built-up area (roofs, roads and such) already covers as much ground as Ohio. My estimate is that about 500 quads (quadrillion BTU) of solar energy falls on this area each year. If you can convert even 7% of this to electricity (35 quads/year), you'll have more electricity than the United States uses each year, plus enough energy to replace everything that goes to the wheels of all our vehicles.
The problem has been primarily cost, secondarily storage. But if the Europeans can bring the one-micron-thick silicon cells to market at 1 Euro/watt, solar PV will be cheaper than fossil-fired fuel during daytime hours across a large swath of the USA. It will be much cheaper than energy generated from oil. In 2015, will you be driving home on energy that fell on your workplace's roof that day? Don't discount the possibility - the technology is all here, and a relatively small shift in cost will start the stampede.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
The Titanic... totally unsinkable
- There's no place like 127.0.0.1
Why don't *you* RTFA? They're not building a CANDU, they're building a PBMR. Furthermore, pebble beds run in the 900C range, not 900F. Their "loss of coolent" scenario is as high as 1600C - plenty to burn graphite. I can skip all of your comments about "covered in water", because CANDU uses water as a moderator, not pebble beds (strange that you would think that CANDU uses graphite, however...)
Dear Lord: One of your creatures may be hurt tonight. Please let it be the other creature.
That doesn't change the fact that:
A. The U.S. government is dependent on the current Social Security surplus to offset its massive deficit
B. During a very long transition period the government is still going to have to pay full benefits to everyone 55 or over while payroll taxes are plunging, they are already plunging, thanks to baby boomers retiring, young workers being so out numbered by retirees who are living forever, and declining real wages thanks to pressure from outsourcing and illegal immigrants.
The government is going to have to make up the difference and its going to explode already exploding deficits no matter how you cut it, unless you raise taxes or cut benefits.
If you are a tweener like me, to young to stay with the Social Security because they are going to start axing it before I retire and to old to reap huge benefits from private accounts like a 20 year old all this might be exceptionally ugly. If I dont get back at least what I've paid in it there is going to be hell to pay. Me personally I would rather have the money now when I'm young enough to either enjoy it or do something useful with it instead of letting government rob it from and then give it back to me when my health is shot, and even that assumes:
A. I'm fortunate it enough to make it to 65 or whatever the retirement age is when I get there
B. And I live long enough to draw out what I put in
Private accounts don't help with B because I don't have kids and I have a limited appreciation for people giving an inheritence to their kids in the first place because it mostly just brings out the greed and the worst in their children as they circle like vultures waiting for you to die, and its giving people something for nothing.
No all in all I just want the 12.5% to not come out of my pay check anymore and if I'm starving when I hit retirement that is my problem. That is what personal responsibility and "ownership" is all about, not just replacing Socialist Security with Fascist Security.
@de_machina
They have a billion people! They could build a people catapult and catapult people at us and it'd eventually be enough to wear us down! Not much you can't do with a billion people. Want to go to the moon? Just have everyone stand on each other's shoulders! Trouble with global warming? Just get everyone to jump at the same time at around noon! Nothing is impossible! Nothing, I tell you!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This pebble bed design seems awfully close to the design of the defunct Thorium High Temperatue Reactor (THTR) in Hamm-Uentrop. How exactly is this "radically new"?
The THTR was supposed to be meltdown-proof, but it still had its share of problems, such as the occasional leak of radioactive coolant.
The pebbles are coated with the same graphite moderator that are used in the "standard" pressure-water reactors of today.
Takes something like 1600 degrees to ignite graphite, and that temperature will never be reached with these pebbles for the reasons that are outlined above.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Until we get either lots of electric or partially-electric vehicles or nuclear hydrogen, nuclear is going to be used to light lights and run motors; it will compete primarily with coal and natural gas. Gas-fired turbines are cheap to build and easy to site. Coal plants burn cheaper fuel but are harder to site and take longer, and the utilities stayed away from nuclear after the WPPSS bond default (stemming from cost overruns on two nuclear plants and consequent bankruptcy). The people who run utilities have a different mindset from dot-commers; they like their jobs, and they won't keep them if things stay even moderately exciting outside of things like hurricanes and ice storms. Surprises like having your multi-billion dollar plant go from 75% complete to 35% complete as a consequence of one NRC-mandated redesign, during a period of 20% interest rates (Carter administration - look it up) are things they can quite do without. The technological, financial and political risks of nuclear are much higher than fossil-fired, and are compounded by the duration of construction.
THAT's why nobody has build a new nuclear plant in the USA for the past 25 years. With luck, maybe things will change.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
Which countries?
Then China has changed its plans since the last time this article was up here (last September) because I spent hours researching it then and was quite impressed with their reactor design. Several other people have commented on this topic that they are building a CANDU variant, with graphite coated pebbles of slightly enriched uranium bathed in a heavy water moderator.
If they have moved away from that design, then they are in danger of burning the graphite shells and a dozen other problems (Uranium can react spontaneously with air after all.)
Lo and behold, the second sidebar article says they are going for an HTGR design using the packed pebble design. So much for their "innovative new design" that they screamed all over back in September.
Of course it would still be hard to ignite the graphite in a helium atmosphere, but that also assumes a containment vessel is present, something that China, along with Russia, seems to think is a luxury.
Of course, the second sidebar also points out that they have already done "absolute failure" scenarios where they've turned off all the safety systems and watched the reactor shut down.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
What's important about the president's plan, though, is that it will be americans buyingh debt instead of china and japan.
If we ( as humans ) never did anything which had a slight potential of something bad happening then we we truly would still be living in caves.
Using bones as weapons to kill animals ? No, far too dangerous. We might just antagonize the animal accidentally drop the bone then where would we be ?
Seriously though we are at a level of technological advancement now when almost every major new breakthrough is going to have the potential to do harm as well as good, what we need to do is learn how to make sensible decisions as to how to proceed.
In this case it would seem the best way to build safer nuclear reactors is to continue designing and building nuclear reactors. So far this has been a very safe course of action. Obviously we should also design for safety and consider our actions but there comes a time when you just have to jump in and bite the bullet.
A few years back, a company was testing a pebble style reactor that could go in anything that could handle a diesel. It is targeted at ships but I remember the article stated it would easily scale down to a car. They also mentioned about radiation issues and wrecks that a commercial airliner has more radioactive material (they use depleted uranium for counterbalances).
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
This is a minor point, but South Africa's involvement is not at all surprising. South Africa has some pretty high technology, due to its unique position as one of the only stable democracies on the continent, and being involved in various regional conflicts. They were the continent's only nuclear power until they voluntarily gave it up, they build some of their own military aircraft, and so being handy with reactor technology is not too surprising.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Some of the biggest NIMBY/protestors people say that we shouldn't do Yucca because we can't guarantee the integrity of the place for 100,000 years.
Completely ignoring the fact that nuclear waste is as radioactive as the ore it was mined from after about 400 years.
I figure that oughta be good enough, and 400 years is alot easier to promise that 10x the length of recorded human history.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
I see many complaints here about how this is going on in China but not the U.S. and how that will hurt the U.S. I disagree.
China's adoption of pebble bed reactors would benefit the entire world, not only China. In the simplest possible terms: The less petroleum China consumes, the more left for the rest of us.
With trade, local increases in energy supply become global increases in energy supply. Global increases in energy supply benefit energy consumers globally.
Everyone "knows" that China's rapid economic growth will increase global demand of petroleum, driving up its price. China's substitution of nuclear power for petroleum would mitigate that price increase.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Why don't *you* RTFA? They're not building a CANDU, they're building a PBMR. Furthermore, pebble beds run in the 900C range, not 900F. Their "loss of coolent" scenario is as high as 1600C - plenty to burn graphite. I can skip all of your comments about "covered in water", because CANDU uses water as a moderator, not pebble beds (strange that you would think that CANDU uses graphite, however...)
AFAIK they are building THTR-Type Devices. That are Pebble Bed Reactors which are cooled by Helium.
This type of device is inherently safe from meltdown because
which is absolutely inert
The german THTR-300 at Hamm-Uentrop has been a demonstration reactor at commercial size (300 MW). It was shutdown after proving to work well.
The reason to cancel the further development and building was completely political because there is no chance to get public acceptance for any Nuclear Powerplants all over Germany after Tchernobyl and Three Mile Island.
The reactors themselves may be safe, but the problems of the required fuel production and handling, especially the waste disposal, are nowhere in the world sufficiently solved. Thats a truth whatever the Nuclear Industry and there political gofers may say.
CU
And having many small nuclear power plants is much more safer than having one megasized nuclear power plant to power an entire city. Why? Simple, compare what happens if one huge plant fails than if one small plant fails.
And IIRC, the material to be heated with the reactor is not water, but helium.
From the sept. wired article:
I think that everything argument against these new nuclear plants is the existing FUD caused (with all reasons) by traditional nuclear plants.
I propose that nuclear reactors be able to scatter waste and radiation into the air, for all to share.
Sound stupid? That's what coal plants do. They emit easily 10000x as much pollutant as a nuclear reactor. They emit more radiation (due to Carbon 14) than a nuclear plant. We don't saddle them with finding a place to put their fuel to to condense it into smaller, more toxic fuel.
Maybe the answer for nuclear power is the same as for other power. Spread the toxins out, don't concentrate them. Then just kick them into the atmosphere.
All the chinese have to do to destroy the US is to use some weapon that all the americans will be exposed to. Or maybe even eat it. For example, they could make an instant market of fast food, so all americans will become diabetics, with high blood pressure, high cholesterol - Oh. Nevermind.
"Success" is defined subjectively. Is it the nation with the most land? Resources? Quality of life? All of the above?
Hitler turned Germany from a destitute war-torn nation into an world economic power house in ~10 years. That's "success" in a lot of people's eyes. And why what happened afterwards is even more of an abomination.
All the nuclear waste ever produced in the entire world could fit in a space the size of a basketball court.
I read somewhere that if the [tiny] amount of uranium that naturally occurs in coal were collected and fissioned, it would produce a lot more energy than burning the coal itself does.
Of course burning coal introduces this radioactivity into the environment, in addition to CO2 and pollutants of course.
One argument I have heard against nuclear power that I am curious about is that it takes more energy to build the plant than the plant will produce in its lifetime.
From the ORNL:
I first heard this fact from a professor of mine, and it made sense at the time as coal is ultimately a source for uranium as well as radium. (That's where the Curies got their uranium from, after all.) This is the first time I did a web-search to verify his statement, and I wasn't surprised to see that it agrees with other people's calculations (Google for "coal radiation").
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I do not know where to put this so I'll attach it to this post. Germany has experimented extensively with breeder-type reactors but we sunk nearly 7 bilion german marks (3.5 billion Euro) into those projects without going anywhere.
The concept of pebble-bed reactors was developed in the 1950s by a german scientist named Rudolf Schulten. The first prototype had been in use between 1966 and 1988 when the project was discontinued after the chernobyl incident. The protoype used helium as a coolant but other inert substances like nitrogen or carbon dioxide are also possible maybe even water but all sources I could find claim that these designs used inert gases as coolant and moderator. Pebble-bed reactors use either uranium, thorium or plutonium for the reaction and produce new fissionable material during the reaction.
There were also plans to build a commercial type reactor using this design but the reactor was never finished due to technical difficulties with the handling of the pebbles themselves and because of safety concerns following the destruction of the chernobyl plant.
There was also another type of breeder which used uranium as fuel and natrium as coolant but there were so many technical difficulties and safety concerns (mainly with the handling of the hot liquid natrium (300 C) that the reactor was never used at all.
Research into breeder technology was cancelled after 1986 mainly because of the chernobyl incident. The other main concern was that breeder type reactors produce fissionable materials. If you use uranium as fuel you will get plutonium as product. So some were concerened that this material might be used to build bombs. This was especially a concern with the natrium-cooled reactor since it didn't use fuel enclosed in pebbles like the other reactors did.
Jeff
Regardless wether he's entirely right or not that's not trolling. Idiot asshats shouldn't be given mod-points.
Although a new design it is hardly the "first in decades" the fact is the designs are all there. We have just been unable to BUILD reactors in decades for political reasons.
"I'd much rather see them go with a lead-bismuth breeder. It's a breeder (so you can utilize more fuel), it produces less waste, the waste is easier to handle, it's anti-proliferation, there's no graphite, there's no pellets to jam, etc."
That's the trouble with you nuclear physicists, you make out you know what you're talking about and then round the whole lot off with 'etc', as if everyone is going to fill in the gaps.
What does 'etc' signify? Certain death? Mild itching? What?! For God's sake man! Tell us!!
Try to find information on Atomic Energy Canada Limited, Slowpoke Reactor. Might be interesting reading.
Despite all that you mentioned, my nuke plant is in a deregulated market, selling electricity to anyone who will buy. And we're raking in the dough hand over fist.
I don't believe I can give specifics out, but for my 1,206 MWe plant- Seabrook station- the economics are quite attractive. What it cost for Florida Power & Light to buy the place will be made back in profits in a time frame short enough for any investor with a little bit of patience.
You're absolutely right, the day to day operation and maintence of the nuke plant is very expensive. On the other hand, the fuel is dirt cheap per million BTU's. Actually, if you want to call 'coal' dirt, then we're far cheaper than dirt.
We also pay into a fund to securely store our used nuclear fuel, and have a fund set up for the eventual decommisioning of the plant. As far as I'm aware ( I could be wrong), no government subsidies were paid to Westinghouse to develop and pre-license the AP600/1000 nuke plants they're eager to build.
My 2 cents.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Unfortunately we seem to be missing the China troll.
So here goes...
Do we really want to trust a totalitarian dictatorship such as China with such deadly technology. They have already demonstrated their untrustworthiness with despicable acts of torture. And Taiwan isn't much better because they are evil China sympathisers.
Sincerely,
the Substitute China Troll
You might have a point, except that the basic design came from Germany (then West Germany) in the 1980s. I know I saw a special about the reactor that used "golfball sized ceramic fuel pellets" on some science show in the 1980s. So far the only reference I can find is this but I'm quite confident that the basic idea came from the Germans, not the Chinese.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
You are confused. Americans are buying that debt now. Thats where ALL of the rather large Social Security surplus is going. That was my point. Privatizing Socialist Security is going to dramaticly reduce the amount of money going from payroll taxes in to government debt and someone is going to have to make up the new shortfall.
The President's plan is going to move a significant percentage, if not all of the payroll taxes going to private accounts, that moves the money from subsidizing government debt to subsidizing corprate debt and equity. It remains to be seen what kind of investment vehicles they mandate for private accounts but its almost a given that stocks are going to be the preferred high return vehicle, that is going to be money going to corporations not government debt subsidy. Bush said the accounts may include bonds too so its possible those might be government bonds, but they could just as easily be corporate bonds. I'm at a loss as to why Social Security can't get the same return as private accounts if they are just going in to T bills so I really doubt much money in private accounts will go to government debt. Its an issue I need to study but I assume the government is screwing people on Social Security investment. They should at a minimum be putting out money in long term T bills which I think would yield substantially better returns than the 1-2% return they keep quoting for Social Security so I assume they are intentionally screwing working by giving them an artificially low return, because they want the money to spend or to fund tax cuts.
The privatization plan almost certainly will lead to a surge in stock prices because there will be a big influx in new money going in to the stock market, and maybe that will be a boon the economy. It might also be a boon to unscrupulous banks and investment companies who will let private account money run up the stocks they own, dump them and let the private accounts take the losses.
But it is pretty much inevitable that there will be one less big buyer for government debt when the Social Security surplus dissapears. It was going to disappear by 2018 anyway but I think Bush and Co. are going to wipe it out much sooner than that and put even more pressure on financing the deficits.
@de_machina
1) The reaction rate isn't the problem; latent heat in the graphite if the core is exposed to air is the problem.
:)
2) The "safety" mode of cooling is air cooling - i.e., if the reactor is ruptured, air can come in and cool it. In such an event, though, the graphite can burn.
3) The pressire is quite high in PBMRs; one that I read about was 69 bars for the core (a bar is roughly 1 atm). If it's not high, it won't run a turbine very well, now will it?
4) The German reactor was shut down due to a variety of reasons, but when it was shut down it had just gotten over a problem with a pebble jamming the retrieval system and causing big complications, including a minor radiation release and a shutdown that would be unacceptable for a commercial plant.
Dear Lord: One of your creatures may be hurt tonight. Please let it be the other creature.
This is truly truly sad. The only reason we are not seeing a massive reduction in the amount of foreign oil we depend on, or improved air quality is because of the stigma attached to the words "renewable energy".
e t/
8 30.html
/
So, we continue to use oil, coal, and nuclear.
For those of you who don't know, millions and millions of tons of uranium tailings pollute the land and water where millions and millions live. To use an analogy, it's like when the Chinese dumped western junk computers into local rivers after they've "recycled" them. Also, the uranium mining companies tend to abandon their mines after they're done. Their default position is one in which it's cheaper to dump uranium tailings upon the land and abandon decommissioned mines.
But hey, it has the words "birth defects" and "dying locals" in it, so it has to be bad, right?
Buncha arrogant bastards.
Get out of here.
http://bridget.jatol.com/pipermail/sacw_insaf.n
1999/000189.html
http://newsfromrussia.com/world/2003/06/30/
48
http://www.rri.kyoto-u.ac.jp/NSRG/genpatu/india
JADFINAL.pdf
Ya shouldn't have responded to the pinhead. It'll just encourage more of the same.
I thought you stated things in a concise and accurate manner. But then, I'm convinced you're right. As opposed to that COWARD, who's carrying a psychotic illness he tries to infect others with.
As I mentioned previously, meltdown is not the serious risk; it's only a risk if pebbles get jammed. The serious risk is fire from a rupture, and especially the intake of water due to a hydrogen-generation explosion for hydrogen-producing reactors.
So, if you want to claim that it has been "tested" against failure, point to where they:
* Jammed the pebbles and then shut it down
* Ruptured the containment vessel while it was operating
* Detonated hydrogen gas in the hydrogen production loop to see if any water posed a threat to the core.
> the material to be heated with the reactor is not water, but helium
Sigh, how many times do I have to go over this? Apart from a significant containment failure when it is raining (no containment structure for chinese PBMRs), water is a secondary loop for hydrogen-generating reactors. They don't make the hydrogen through electrolysis; they run the helium (via as short of a distance as possible so as to not lose much heat) up to a tank of water and a catalyst (for example graphite), which creates hydrogen through thermal decomposition of the water. A rupture of the helium lines risks getting water vapor or outright water into them, in addition to other potentially serious problems involving the hydrogen itself.
Dear Lord: One of your creatures may be hurt tonight. Please let it be the other creature.
FGI.
e /b rest.html
First, here's what's on the horizon: Generation IV Reactors: UIC Briefing Paper #77, Aug. 2003.
http://www.uic.com.au/nip77.htm
Here's BREST in particular:
http://www.nikiet.ru/eng/structure/mr-innovativ
Dear Lord: One of your creatures may be hurt tonight. Please let it be the other creature.
Electric rail transportation is the future to energy conseration.Oil should only be used in making plastic toys for the kids.
It's funny how "cheap" means expensive containment equipment and truly incredible capital costs, while "clean" means something that will kill in proximity. No-one pretends that sewers are "clean", no matter how well everything is contained - pretending with radioactive materials is counterproductive, something useful could have been done about waste disposal other than the token reasearch efforts since you don't have to worry about something that is "clean".
You can adapt a coal fired plant to burn gas. It has been done here in NZ, partly as a result of a take or pay agreement. (You get to pay for the gas whether or not you use it)
It is not without its difficulties, there was a gas explosion once due to an ignition problem...but I wonder if it is really a wise use of gas?
Liquid metal is hard stuff to contain for long periods of time - it works it's way into cracks and attacks the metal at the crack tip.
So it looks like you are describing the wrong mechanism and the wrong material - so why should your assertions based on this be correct?
Face it - these are not a mature technologies. Pebble bed at least is furthur along, and is going into production for the first time after a series of prototypes.
One of the reasons it would be difficult/messy to extract the fuel from the pebbles is that the pebbles are not entirely fuel. The pebbles are made up of thousands of "microspheres" in a graphite matrix, each about a millimeter in diameter. Each microsphere is composed of a sphere of low-enriched uranium dioxide surrounded by a layer of graphite buffer, a layer of pyrocarbon, a layer of silicon carbide, and another layer of pyrocarbon. The idea is that these are the first barrier to prevent the escape of fission gases. The pebbles are really a second fission gas barrier, and they have been tested to very high temperatures without failure. For a description of the pebble geometry, visit the link below.
/ v3_document.htm/
http://web.mit.edu/pebble-bed/presentation1_files
those aren't CANDU (bruce, darlington, etc)
I'm not making that up: see Coal mine accidents kill 6,027 in China.
So it's not surprising China wants to end this slaughter by switching to a much safer source of energy.
In its 50 year history, the nuclear power industry has killed only 24 people (all at Chernobyl).
Compare that to about 375,000 deaths in the coal mining industry over the past 50 years.
These statistics have been very effectively suppressed by the anti-nukes media. But anyone who really thinks about them would become a huge supporter of nuclear power -- which also happens to be the only viable source of energy that doesn't emit greenhouse gases.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Good point.
By the way, I live underground. They put in a sewer line next to my house and I thought it would be inconvenient to move. Please stop using your toilet. It's starting to stink down here. Thanks in advance.
The question is not now of perfect security but one of risk comparison to other forms of electrical power generation, but even your supposed risk is not one. You mention repeatedly in effort that your comment be basis for the ending of all discussion on this matter. That is childish. The pebbles being jammed or not are irrelevant, the generative capacity of the uncooled spheres is not adequate to exceed the cooling capacity of the hold itself and even if all of the ceramic were burned off the uranium exposed would not be adequate to set off any sort of significant reaction. I personally witnessed the shutdown test, the plant works and is what I would say is the single method that can be widely applied to satisfy increasing demand for electrical power in China and meet the expanding world demand. There is genuinely no real alternative, and there is genuinely no risk from what you have described. This will be posted only once and anonymously to avoid illusions of authority beyond what is obvious from this post and to avoid appearing to use the same methods you are fond of with your trolling.
Wow, I cannot thank you enough - you just saved me hours of googling looking for that information!
;-)
Now, where can I get my hands on that platinum...?
No, I assure you that I stated exactly what I meant, calling you nuanced with sarcastic sneer quotes. The statement was intended to mock you for establishing different rules for yourself and your argumentative opponents. Pulling out the dictionary and trying to define what 'is' is won't erase your contradiction.
It's obvious that you're literate, I wouldn't go bragging about it. Everyone who posts on slashdot is capable of reading.
Now, in your case, what I question is the quality of what you've been reading, the logical or illogical steps that lead you to your position, and your tendancy to attack people when you perceive the same dogmatism in them that you harbor.
Beyond that, you've posted little of value to the discussion, mostly calling out people on the way they decide to argue. I've done the same for you. You've posted nothing of substance to discuss further.
Oh, and it's rather fanciful to think Only the protests, and the sensible chord they strike in most Americans, hold the politicians back from throwing us back fullscale into the bad old days of unquestioned nuclear development.
More often than not, the people who get out there with poorly spelled signs, cute rhyming chants, effigies, and nothing really constructive to add to the debate are detested. They're activists for activism's sake, and their protests are merely circle-jerks so they can congratulate themselves for 'speaking truth to power.' Nuclear energy is a convienent topic for these 'cranks.' I know very few people who think that any of today's protesters are worth a damn. Perhaps they were useful at one point, but that point is long past.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
As for your "dirty bomb" statement, yeah, give it a try. Start by walking into a nuclear power plant, past the six layers of security. Then enter the core, ignoring the fatal dose of radiation you'll be bathed in. Grab hold of a few dozen pebbles, ignoring the heat that burns the flesh off your hands and arms. Take them home. Grind them up, again, ignore the fact that the fumes of the uranium or plutonium are among the most powerful and fastest acting poisons known to man. Use fluorine (a controlled substance also instantly fatal if breathed) to create UF6 to separate the Uranium from the graphite gas...... blah blah blah...
Yeah, way to go cowboy - tell everyone how to do it!
(Note to moderators: the above comment is meant in jest. Okay? Good!)
The problem with nuclear power is not safety, terrorism or enabling fissile/fusion weapons development. The problem with nuclear power is storage and disposal of the solid waste polution produced by the power plant.
The nuclear reactors are not 100% efficient and all designs have slightly to highly radioactive solid waste outputs. Displosal of the waste products is the problem.
And yes I have an answer to our energy needs, not just Cassandra style screaming about the Evil of nuclear power. We can use solar radiant heat powered Stirling engines for energy production!
Stirling engines are mechanically simple, highly efficient, safer than all other power production mechanisms and 100% air/water/solid waste polution free. Using lenses and reflectors to gather light to heat a Stirling engine to drive a conventional generator, gives us polution free solar-electric energy production without the nastiness of Solar panel manufacturing.
Stirling engines are so damn safe, local power production is possible too, which would cut power distribution losses, reducing our total energy need without lifestyle changes.
Yes, Solar power isn't as reliable as other power production mechanisms, but if we overbuild the power plants and divert surplus energy into energy storage for lean times, this is not a problem. If a portable energy storage mechanism is used, this can be used to break our oil dependency too.
If someone sees a flaw in my arguments, please point it out. I just don't see the downside and I don't understand why the hell we haven't done this years ago.
> the generative capacity of the uncooled spheres is not adequate to
> exceed the cooling capacity of the old itself
That is not true. The generative capacity of spheres when hot being reduced to where the reaction rate won't increase further is dependant on the *EXPANSION* of the spheres. Objects cannot expand when they get jammed.
> will not set off any sort of significant reaction
Hot graphite + water = H2 (likely exploding because of the temperature)
Hot graphite + air = fire (not guaranteed, but a solid possibility)
> I personally witness the shutdown test
Which, as I mentioned, doesn't cover any of the *Real* safety risks. That's like me demonstrating the safety of gunpowder by disolving it in water and saying, "look, I can make it as wet as I want without it exploding!"
> (snipped out personal attack)
When you address how you expect jammed pebbles to expand to reduce the reaction rate, or why a ruptured core wouldn't be a risk for a graphite fire, let me know. Until then, go bother someone else.
Dear Lord: One of your creatures may be hurt tonight. Please let it be the other creature.
> Liquid metal embrittlement is not corrosion
1 &q =%22lead+bismuth%22+corrosion+steel&btnG=Google+Se arch
Complain to all of the people who wrote papers on the subject:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-
> iron based alloys have been developed for use in the nuclear industry
I am well aware of that. That doesn't change the fact of what I just said: that the Russians solved the problem by oxygenating the lead/bismuth and by using nuclear grade stainless steel. If you have a problem with that, complain to the Russians - don't use personal attacks against me for citing how they solved the problem for the Alpha's reactor.
> Face it - these are not mature technologies
Both PBMRs and BREST are Generation IV reactors with about the same amount of experience in them (lead-bismuth actually has more work behind it), and is generally regarded as high potential in the nuclear industry. The Russians are betting a lot on it, and it looks like it will pay off.
Dear Lord: One of your creatures may be hurt tonight. Please let it be the other creature.
The reaction rate is dependent on the proximity of the uranium flakes, assuming graphite is intact at first, the uranium flakes are not sufficiently close to begin reaction between them on a significant level-there is not significant radiation beyond passive cooling capacity. Melting of graphite from external flame? You may as well discuss the risk posed by several million pounds of TNT on any power plant for a similar risk possibility. The pebbles require expansion to bring the flakes into adequate proximity to produce a significant radioactive reaction-and it is this same expansion that allows operation that is its own safety measure as lack of cooling with bring the flakes outside of the necessary range of proximity and reaction will cease. Understand the idea of a range of temperature for operation. The personal attack of sorts was simply to snap you out of your conceited state, nothing else. A ruptured core will only allow displacement of the pebbles or simply be a radiation leak that if overly large, will cause the shutdown ranges to be reached. A bother still?
"Most of Europe has proven this. And America is supposed to be better, right?"
;-)
Not according to most europeans.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Burning coal releases radioactivity? That's news to me.
According to the oft quoted ORNL report, there is 0.00427 millicuries/ton of coal, and each ton releases 6150 kilowatt-hours(kWh)/ton. This is therefore 6.9431e-7 mCi/kWh. The DOE's Energy Information Agency gives the world total of energy production for 2002 as 4.0512e17 BTU or 1.18699e14 kWh. Since only 9.756e16 BTU or 24.08% of the world energy production is coal for 2002, we can come to a total of 19.85 MCi/yr. Some estimates for Chernobyl put the radiation released at 1.2e19 Bq or 320 MCi. It would take coal plants at the 2002 rate of production 16 years to equal the release from Chernobyl. On the 26th of April, it will be the 19th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident! Is it really that intelligent to put the noose around the neck of our nuclear industry because a near bankrupt Cold War enemy with a poorly designed reactor had an accident that almost certainly could not happen with US reactors?
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
Why bother? Get to the step before platinum comes in. Stick to C4; detonate. That'll be dirty.
Maybe we can use this to design new power solutions for notebooks. Instead of using a Li-Ion battery, why not have your computer run off of a smaller version of this?
Dang, I reviewed my math. I'm 1000 fold off. That shoots a hole in my argument, eh? Order of magnitude indeed.
No, I'm not really suggesting that you do the above. I'm merely making the point that at least one of the grandparent's 'obstacles' is not so. One decent hit on a jewellery shop, or an organised sequence of personal robberies, would probably net $1m worth of platinum.
Circumventing 'obstacles' sometimes involves ignoring acceptable behaviour or thinking in a different way. At times the experts are set in their ways (by experience) and can be shown up by a newbie who doesn't know any better.
Monstrous dams are generally a terrible idea. The total power output is less, and the ecological damage vastly greater, than a grid of many smaller dams on a given river.
One might make the same criticisms of nuclear reactors: a geometrically larger plant is an exponentially greater hazard in case of meltdown.
Even your ATF .sig is a stupid joke
And yours is better? Again, blind to your own faults whilst you criticise the same in others.
In this sub-thread, neither of us have said anything of any substance. Difference is, I admit it & am upfront about it. You've chosen the pompous academic route.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Like the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River? I'll grant you that the nuclear debate in the US long ago degenerated into shouting. However, the Chinese committees that make these decisions accept so little outside input, and what input there is even today confined by self censorship, that the "advantage" you speak of can quickly show itself an illusion.
Luke, help me take this mask off
"fumes of the uranium or plutonium are among the most powerful and fastest acting poisons known to man"
Nope. They are poisnous, but nowhere near being the most powerful or fastest acting. The radioactivity from breathed in particles would kill you before you died from heavy metal poisoning. However if you ate it, the reverse is true, and then mercury or even lead are much worse as heavy metal poisons.
See, there you go, you cum-guzzling pillow-biter. You have realized that in this anonymous forum full of nobodies, where no meaningfull decision is ever made, you can say things that would get your ass kicked in real life.
So, getting back to my point of nothing here matters, drop the pretentious pointing out of argument fallacies. It's boring to read.
Besides, I just think you're taking your anger out on me because you got owned by benhocking, blugill, and atzanteol. Pointing out argument fallacies is so smug it's begging for a beat down from those with contrary information.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Fortunately I just read about the term "unsinkable" as it was applied to the Titanic. The boat-maker never used the term.
I can understand that. I remember reading that a piece of hull plate retrieved from the wreck turned out to to be very brittle. The ship might have survived the collision if constructed from the proper material. I know there have been rebuttals to the suggestion, but there were also hull fracture problems with the so-called "Liberty" ships using similar materials.
"Above 1250C, SiC degrades relatively easily in a reactor environment;. it has varying degrees of instability above 900C, and remember that PBMRs are definintely not low-corrosion environments. A coolant-devoid reaction in a pebble bed maxes out typically around 1600C (sometimes lower); too low for meltdown but not too low to seriously jeapordize the graphite."
Notice you said degrades not disintegrates. The idea is that you never let it get to 1600c. Combine it with He as the coolant the chance of a graphite fire is extremely, extremely, low.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Chernobyl was a steam explosion. When you use water - liquid water, that is - to cool a reactor you run the risk of having a steam explosion if the nuclear reaction runs away. The beauty of the pebble bed is that it uses helium as a coolant. Since helium is already a gas, it can't boil, build up pressure and explode the way Chernobyl did. As for the graphite catching fire, you need oxygen for something to burn. Even if the graphite in the reactor did catch fire, all they'd have to do is shut all the windows, and presto! No more fire.
Not to split hairs, but wasn't it Columbia that was lost on re-entry?
The only reason I can see to keep useless safety systems in is graft.
That said, the claim that the pebbles could be reprocessed to obtain plutonium which could be worked into a bomb it's totally implausible. Nearly, but not quite. Perhaps China just feels as if it has fewer people fanatically angry with it? Perhaps it's just less paranoid?
More likely it feels it has more to gain and less to lose than the US govt. does. (As to public opinion...I've seen how that gets manipulated, so I don't accept that as an argument. If the powers-that-be wanted support for nuclear reactors, they'd get it, or at bare minimum we'd see obvious signs that they were trying to get it.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
You'd figure if there was a problem with the 5500 people who work and live on the U.S.S. Enterprise and it's eight (8) nuclear reactors, that we'd certainly know about it?
I for one refuse to invest in china. I do not wish my hard earned dollars aiding in the propping up of such tyrany and despotism.
For every dollar that you make profit off of investment in china, six or more are going to come out of yours or your children's pockets in lost wages due to competition in a place where you cannot legally strike for higher wages, higher margins local companies who are not WalMart are going to have to charge to survive onslaught by walmart. For every dollar that you make profit off investment in china, remember that dollar might also carry the cost of your family's blood spilled down the line when china becomes powerful enough to invade your country. Don't think for a second they wouldn't invade a soverign nation.
If you must invest, invest in any resistance you can find against china.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
It's called purchasing power parity.
Well I, for one, welcome our new accidentally mis-posting overlords, you insensitive clod. Now WHERE ARE MY HOT GRITS?
That cover it all?
Formerly GNU/Anonymous Coward. This message has been determined to cause cancer in laboratory animals.
On the other hand, in the U.S. Nuclear Reactors have killed how many civilians? So far as I know, the number of civilians killed in nuclear accidents at power plants is... zero.
Define U.S. Nuclear Reactors. I'd define that as any reactor operated by the USA. Reasonable? In that case, there indeed have been deaths and rather horrible accidents.
The 1961 SL-1 BWR experimental reactor accident in Utah comes to mind. Three fatalities, one was by control rod impalement and/or irradiation, the other two were from irradiation.
Some info about it here: http://www.radiationworks.com/sl1reactor.htm
The History channel has a documentary on this accident. Truly gruesome.
Sig for hire.
Not a chance.
Perhaps if you look at the really highly radioactive stuff, but they are scraping tons of earth up from a decomissioned nuke factory near me. That's all nuclear waste, even if it's fairly low hazard.
spent fuel? have a UN run Reprocessing plant in every country. then we can reduce the waste and reuse the usable materials.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Let's buy one for Iran so they have no more excuses. (I don't pretend to fully understand the issues, however...)
Note for Americans: Natrium=Na=Sodium
> The reaction rate is dependent on the proximity of the uranium flakes ... (etc)
No. The pebbles (not "flakes"; they're like billiard balls) *are* in contact with each other at all times. It's like a big bin of marbles. The rate of reaction is determined by the rate of cooling provided to the core. The reaction rate is dependant on the density of fissile isotopes in a given area. The 'safety' for PBMRs that give them a negative void coefficient is that the pebbles expand when they get hotter, separating the U235 and reducing the effect of the neutron flux; U238 begins absorbing more neutrons than the U235. If jammed, you don't have that negative void coefficient, and you lose the safety.
What you said about needing expansion to make the "flakes" (hehe) come into contact is just nonsense. Expansion *slows* the rate of reaction. If expansion accelerated the reaction, that would be a runaway reaction in the event of core containment failure; nobody would ever design a reactor of that sort.
> Melting of graphite from an external flame
Where did I *ever* mention an external flame? I have consistently mentioned two risks associated with hot graphite: flammability in air, and hydrogen gas generation in exposure to water. Please quit putting words into my mouth. Core ruptures on reactors are nothing unusual; they tend to be very high corrosion environments because they not only operate at high temperatures, but also are bombarded by radiation (which weakens crystal lattices) and exposed to often corrosive decay products. Even if you don't have a core rupture there is risk of things like water or oxygen penetration of the helium loop which threatens the core.
> That personal attack of sorts was simply to snap you out of your concieted state
1) That's still no ground for personal attacks
2) If you're going to argue with someone about a subject, at least learn the very basis of what you're talking about.
Dear Lord: One of your creatures may be hurt tonight. Please let it be the other creature.
The US government on the other hand is now running a deficit. To fund the deficit it issues bonds. Lots of people, corporations, and countries buy these bonds. Whoever buys them the US government is obligated to pay them back once the bonds mature.
Now Social Security, by law, can only invest by buying US government bonds. So it gets in line like everyone else who want to buy bonds. The government pays them back just like anyone else as well.
When people talk about the US government "raiding" Social Security to fund the deficit or even your softer version, that's just political rhetoric. Social Security wants to invest the money as best it can given the laws it must follow. The US government wants people and groups to buy bonds. There is nothing special about the relationship of the US government and Social Security in this regard.
Everything else you said is reasonable though I wouldn't characterize inheritence as bringing out greed in more than a trivial number of cases. Just a difference of opinion.
"Written on the pages is the answer to the never ending story..."
So stop with the FUD already, ok?
Get a new word! FUD is way too overused on slashdot.
Besides, what does anything the parent poster said have to do with fear, undertainty, or doubt?
Maybe it was technically incorrect, but spreading fear?
FUD (the word) needs to be banned from slashdot, at least for a cooling period.
>I'd much rather see them go with a lead-bismuth breeder. Yup, had one under the stairs for years - no problems so far.
"Research into breeder technology was cancelled after 1986 mainly because of the chernobyl incident"
Thanks for your post, it was interesting to read.
pebble bed
From the linked site:
5. & 6. There was a pebble bed reactor accident at Hamm-Uentrop West Germany nine days after the Chernobyl accident. On May 4 1986, a pebble became lodged in a feeder tube. Operators subsequently caused damage to the fuel during attempts to free the pebble. Radiation was released to the environs. The West German government closed down the research program because they found the reactor design unsafe.
The accident at Chernobyl probably had a BIG impact on the desicion for closing down, but the main reason was the design had flaws. The German program would still be going if it hadn't of had this accident. (And the reactor would still be operating). I think it was intelligent of the German Government to do what they did for two reasons.
1. They learned from Chernobyl. (Something a lot of the humans in the world don't do. An accident occurs, and they think it won't happen to them, so they continue.)
2. They realised if they continued with the design they had, and more accidents occurred (which was most likely), the bad PR would sink them.
Like most of us I think in the future a design might come into being which is meltdown proof. I'm still waiting for it. Another link on the Pebble Bed reactor - this one showing that they chose to close it down in 1988. Two years after Chernobyl:
Factsheet
Just my two cents. Cheers.
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
The middle of nowhere is in Australia not the US. Australia has one reactor, it is used mainly for producing medical isotopes. It was built in the middle of nowhere and has been in the same spot for decades. Sydney started sprawling out and now it is in a suburb. Strange thing is that the people who moved there think the reactor should now be moved (the same thing sometimes happens to animal shelters because of the noise). The main hassles I see in Australia is that our Uranium mines have had some real environmental problems and most people of my generation and our adult kids want nothing to do with reactors or the waste (I think we ship our reactor waste to france). If you understand Aussie humour there is a very funny movie called "The Castle" about a "twit" who refuses to move and fights the Government all the way to top.
I don't know a great deal about different reactors but did grow up with "duck & cover" in the 60's, the oil crisis in the 70's, watched Chernobal[sic] and The mile island live on the news, etc. By the time I was an adult I towed the greenie line on nuclear power because I basically agreed that the "China Syndrome" type problems were insurmountable.
Reactors have come along way since then and even if the "pebble reators" are not 100% safe they certainly seem a vast improvement to the old behemoths. I would like to see a heap more research and effort(read $$$) put into the idea of small, safe, modular reators before the industrial crap pumped into the air kills off the civilisation it has built.
Once you have spent a long time making up your mind on something like this it is not that simple to just go "hey great idea" and let the power companies get on with it, even more so when you know just enough about old technology to out debate 95% of the population. The ironic part is that it was a "green icon" James Lovelock that introduced me to the idea. More power to him (pun intended).
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
If you want a 'dirty bomb' the processing you need stops at getting the raw materials and strapping some quantity of explosive to it. It goes bang, there is radioactivity, therefore there is mass
hysteria.
Getting fatal doses (or dying) while preparing the bomb is also not a consideration given that people are willing to strap a bomb on themselves and scatter themselves over public places in the name of some deiety.
Never mind the issue that uranium and/or plutonium make really bad ingredients for a dirty bomb (in terms of inflicting actual harm) because they are very hard to dispurse and settle quickly.
As for the pathfinder??? material (pathfinder didnt have a RTG or RHU), i doubt it was *spent* material, but rather highly purified Pu238. This stuff gets hot all on its own. No use in a nukalar explosion (and actually a bad contaminant to have). Although it does put out a lot of radioactivity in itself, so it would be slightly more effective over reactor uranium in a dirty bomb.
from the my adopted homeland: http://www.eskom.co.za/live/content.php?Item_ID=22 2&Revision=en/0
South Africa is also developing a test pebble bed reactor, to be build at the currently operational reactor site at Koeberg in the Western Cape (north of cape town)
This seems a good time to mention that I've put an MP3 copy of tape recordings made at the time of the Three Mile Island near disaster by Dr Richard Webb (who was involved in developing the first US submarine and commercial reactors) on the net here:
http://www.freewebtown.com/threemileisland/
It's a cautionary tale. The TMI reactor was thought "safe" too.
Seemingly, Stoiber, the erstwhile candidate for German chancellor in the last election, just advocated an "ideology free" view (read: reassessment) of nuclear power. That he was that much pro atomic energy was new to me... But it's clear: there is no wind or oil in Bavaria, so the indigenous sources of energy are not quite plentiful. What he overlooks, is the 50.000 jobs being created in wind energy in the last years (how many people were there working in Siemens KWU, the nuclear branch that merged recently with Framatome?).
Hurricane Application Group, Dept of Meteorology Control, Ministry of Proactive Defense
"Never mind the issue that uranium and/or plutonium make really bad ingredients for a dirty bomb (in terms of inflicting actual harm) because they are very hard to dispurse and settle quickly." The idea that those aren't good ingredients for a dirty bomb is even further argument that pebble bed reactors aren't some pit of a thousand billiard ball sized dirty elements waiting to be strapped to bombs.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
Derailing Nuclear power due to the nuclear waste issue has always been non-sensical.
) state "The net waste produced by a 1000 Megawatt nuclear plant, with the waste reprocessed via a breeder reactor, is on the order of 1 cubic meter per year. Now, this is a cubic meter of some really nasty stuff - but it is only a cubic meter. The waste can be vitrified (that is, made into a glass-like material), and a small 10x10x10 meter underground chamber would hold a thousand years of waste."
Many websites (e.g. http://users.frii.com/davejen/nuclear/nuke_qa.htm
Compare this to a standard 1000Mw Coal recator: "A year's worth of running a 1000 Megawatt coal plant creates about 1.5 million tons of ash, which contains a variety of known carcinogens and can be strongly acidic or alkaline, depending on the original content of the coal. And that's just the solid waste - there's also about 600 pounds of CO2 produced every second, along with a significant amound of sulphur dioxide and various kinds of nitrogen oxides (to be fair, great progress is being made at reducing gaseous release of these latter two)."
In terms of the health effects, Bernard L. Cohen, Sc.D. Professor at the University of Pittsburghstates (http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/np-risk.htm) states: "If the waste behaves like other rock, it is easily shown that the waste generated by one nuclear power plant will eventually, over millions of years (if there is no cure found for cancer), cause one death from 50 years of operation. By comparison, the wastes from coal burning plants that end up in the ground will eventually cause several thousand deaths from generating the same amount of electricity."
Based on these sorts of figures it is surprising to me that the developed world doesn't totally switch to nuclear power (over coal, ignoring other power sources) purely on the basis of waste disposal and the wastes enviromental/health effects.
The west has been very good at pointing out instances of Soviet and Eastern covering up of true enviromental/health statistics from the public. But in the case of power generation, the widespread myth that nuclear power plant waste is more dangerous than coal power plant waste is so absurd that political and commerical organisations covering up of the facts can be the only explanation.
Yes, but this doesn't fall under his usage of "civilians".
Note that he says
Yes, there have been deaths of workers, yes, you could argue that a few plants have leaked radiation here and there, but when you consider that the CDC is claiming 30,000 deaths a year from coal plants in the U.S., it makes for a hell of a weak argument.
(not to belittle the deaths in that accident, just saying he covered that)
The pebbles are, on a structural level, uranium flakes embedded in graphite. Also, understand the safety feature evident from the design of pebbles such that several are required to bring the required quantity of the above embedded flakes into proximity. I assumed you knew of the Tsinghua design and did not think it necessary to specify, I was wrong in that it seems. An external flame is the only method by which to melt the graphite. Any physical change disturbing the pebbles would disturb the alignment such that the reaction terminates. As to your ending remarks, I can not assume on this site that I am discussing with any one with intelligence, it is only possible to decide if it is one who can type well or not. Now, before you mention manufacturing of pebble problems or waste disposal problems, visit the Tsinghua University website and read of the varied achievements.
That loss of coolant incident was only a spill onto the containment floor, the reactor was still cooled as normal.
An optimist believes we live in the best world possible; a pessimist fears this is true.
Define "civilians"? You first.
You want to add operators too? Fine. We'll add these 3 deaths in from 30 years ago and then compare to the 30 or so people who die every year just in coal mine accidents. Do you still want to pursue this line?
Umm, yes it is, given our hypothetical jihadist would never get out of the plower plant alive. The kind of radiation levels in the core are fatal within MINUTES, not days or months. And the physical burns from the radiation will incapacitate them anyway.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
The engine is only one part of the system; the demand (aerodynamic drag, rolling resistance and drivetrain losses) is the other half, and the matching between them (transmission gear ratios, open vs. lock-up torque converters) can cause substantial changes between otherwise-identical vehicles. If you look back you may notice that that the matter under discussion was the variation of fuel economy with speed, so any analysis which omits a crucial factor isn't worth the energy expended to press the keys.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
.. and I use that term, "3rd World", cautiously, because I fear that it is a product of imperialist culture .. but anyway, what you miss about this is:
.. there are fantastic parts of the world to live in, which aren't on the American continent, if only there were reliable power around to support industry, agriculture and production .. and I for one am all for it.
...
Once affordable power is available in so-called "3rd World" regions, they will develop fairly rapidly. Its the US' management and USE of its energy infrastructure which puts it in such high 'standards of living'.
Point is, with small, safe reactors around like this, "3rd World" countries won't be that way for long. And I say, bring it on
Bundle that with the general despisement of "Western Management" and smart new 'developing nation brainpools', maybe the waste management issue won't be as poorly represented as it has been by "the Americans", so far
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
suppose coolant circulation is blocked and coolant remains present. Then the coolant loses its cooling function. Now, coolant can be easier to drain than bars, so it would be more safe, relatively.
The main safety factor(i think it is present here, but i'm not sure) is the low density of nuclear material that keeps an uncontrolled reaction from getting out of control.
The DOE has a "magic wand" (called Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle) which effectively converts coal-fired plants to (synthetic) gas plants at about 3x the output and 20% greater efficiency. If we got an economical source of non-fossil hydrogen (like the "green algae" trick) gas-fired plants could be converted to burn it at minimal cost. And oil's share of electric power generation is minimal. It's about half the share of hydroelectric, and "other renewables" are going to overtake it shortly (they are already 20% ahead of oil's 1995 minimum)
If I wanted to do something personally and I had a plug-in hybrid, I could just put solar on my roof to offset the electricity used by the car. At 250 Wh/mile, a 20-mile commute would use about 5 kWH/day. A 1 kW solar system would feed this with some extra, and cost around $5000 at today's retail, uninstalled. Today's panels have 25-year warranties, so they'd be expiring about the time I replaced my current car... for the third time.
Yeah, if America sent its Excursions, Durangos, Escalades and Hummers to the crusher and commuted in Priuses, Neons and Focuses instead, we'd all die.
Oh wait, no we wouldn't.
Today's PWR's were built in the 1970's or earlier, but I don't see you comparing them to Windows 95. Strange... or maybe not.
3.6 megawatt wind turbines are in production. The prototype of a 5 megawatt turbine is on the grid.
Your evidence for this assertion is? Are you repeating the fallacy of associating the waste from chip-making processes with the roll-to-roll process used to make thin-film silicon cells? How about titanium dioxide cells, are you going to argue that TiO2 (used in paint, don't forget that) is an environmental hazard?
You're funny.
The first step in moving away from oil is just to avoid wasting it, but I don't seem to see anyone holding a "sledgehammer the Hummer for charity" affair. Plenty of Hummers on the road around me (overgrown things, nobody ever parks one right), and I'd be happy to pay a couple bucks a swing with a ten-pounder, but nobody's volunteering their guzzler for the honors. I guess there are some people who just don't want to.
I bet another $2/gallon in gas taxes would get most of them to want to, though. It would barely affect me; the difference between today's $2/gallon and a hypothetical $4/gallon is about $100 for a fairly serious road trip. I couldn't get a hybrid this time around, but if I had the difference would have been even smaller.
They're called plug-in hybrids, and they are al
Sustainability and energy independence essay
Yes, the surface area would have to be HUGE. Looked at how much area in the USA is beneath roofs? That's HUGE. Roadways and parking lots? Even HUGER. And all of it is potentially available when the price becomes right, at near-zero ecological impact.
Solar is limited by the physics, and the limits of the physics are a long way off. Even at 10% efficiency, sunlight falling on area that's already built up could replace all electricity used in the USA and then some. At 30% (which the plastic-cell folks think they can get to by adding quantum dots) it would generate about 150 quads of electricity per year, or 1.5 times the USA's total energy consumption for 2002 (and all of it electricity, none lost to waste heat). At 60%, which seems to be the limit for quantum dots, that would be 300 quads. Needless to say, this potential dwarfs what we're currently using from all sources combined.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
The 30 fatalities from coal mine accidents are just the tip of the iceberg. There's risk in any industrial activity. We're very safety-conscious in the U.S., but there were still over 5000 work related fatalities in 2003 (and plenty more stats here. Trucking is probably the most deadly to civilians because of traffic accidents, but no one would ever suggest stopping food deliveries to the supermarkets.
I am very interested in the possibility of any new energy source. This one carries with it the baggage of all Nukes, waste. France and Japan are 100% Nuke powered, does anyone know what they do with their waste, or for that matter what China intends on doing? There is little doubt this nation faces a stark energy dilemma. Middle East oil has become to this nation like dope to a junkie.
> on a structural level, uranium flakes embedded in graphite
No. They're uranium oxide microspheres coated in SiC and embedded in graphite. The only "bringing into proximity" that you need to do is adding them into the reactor; you don't need to heat them first; *they* produce the heat, and the hotter they get, the more they expand, reducing the rate of U235 burning.
> An external flame is the only method by which to melt graphite
First off, where on earth are you getting "melting graphite" from? I'm talking about burning graphite, and burning graphite does *not* take an external flame, as we saw with Chernobyl. It needs to be hot and exposed to air, preferably in a corrosive environment. In a way, the graphite from a pebble bed will be more hazardous than the chernobyl graphite since some radioisotopes are designed to leech into it.
> visit the Tsinghua University website
I suggest that you read about how pebble beds work, period, before we continue this discussion. You are completely mistaken in your belief that expansion ever speeds up the reaction. Expansion slows the reaction; that's the safety. If expansion sped the reaction, containment failure would always be catastrophic.
Dear Lord: One of your creatures may be hurt tonight. Please let it be the other creature.
You forgot Thorium. Thorium, which is plentiful, can be bred into U233. Also, there are "proliferation resistant designs" that propose using such http://www.thoriumpower.com/ technology.
This document explains structure specifically:
tauon.nuc.berkeley.edu/asia/1999/T
Actual design diagrams are the sort of document that should have been included with the announcement of production line that you provided in article brief but were not for some reason; that reason seems overwhelmingly that you oppose it for some vested interest and used slashdot in attempt to further that interest by providig the article brief and link to only announcement but posted unfounded technical objections that would not be caught, much less understood, by the majority of readers.
the cost of energy from nuclear is only slightly higher than from coal, taking into account all capital, repair, and fuel costs.
That depends on what you assume for the effective cost of capital, and the estimates for capital cost itself - nuclear advocates paint pictures as low as $1500/kW, but it's not clear that's really achievable in a modern western nation. All the nuclear plants in the US were built at least 30 years ago, so we don't really have good numbers for the modern cost of building a plant.
And what people are talking about now are completely new designs, so you have to factor in prorated R&D costs as well, for proper comparison.
In any case, if you really want nuclear to replace fossil fuels (not just for electric production, but for transportation as well) we're not just doubling or tripling the number of plants in the world - we'd have to go to a world with tens of thousands of power-plant-scale fission reactors. Why do you suppose nuclear advocates never mention that actual scale that would be needed?
Energy: time to change the picture.
but the US ia not a Democracy.
If we wanted to emphasize GHG reductions instead, the program would change a bit. I didn't propose any nuclear development because I'm still not certain that the political will is there to break the logjam, but it would certainly fit into the mix.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
When you die your personal account goes back into social security... You or your family get no benefit from it!
Intersting that for all your knowledge of the pressure of a PBMR, you assume (completely incorrectly) that the primary coolant loop is used to turn the generators. There is no reactor design that I know of where this is true. The primary loop carries radiation, and the idea of pumping radioactive material through a turbine from high to low pressure (because that's how turbines work after all) would mean all of the equipment in the generator house would quickly become radioactive. Not very conducive to generator maintenence.
On the other hand, in the real world, the heated primary loop runs to a heat exchanger where it heats the secondary loop, usually water from a river or lake, that is flashed to steam, run through the turbine and then used to pre-heat the incoming water in those big concrete cooling towers that everyone associates with nuclear reactors (even though most coal and gas fired plants have them as well.) The water is then either recycled (rare) or returned to the water source (river or lake) at slightly elevated temperatures. This means that the secondary loop is only "exposed" to a minor dose of radiation (through radiation leakage through the heat exchanger) before it is dumped. The overall radiation level is usually barely higher than background on release of the secondary coolant.
Thus, the primary coolant (in this case Helium) is locked in a closed cycle at a fixed pressure and exchanges heat to the secondary coolant loop. It never sees a turbine and is probably driven by high-speed impeller pumps in a closed loop. No turbines. The gas is kept at high pressure because helium is such a rotten carrier of heat. Liquid sodium is much better, but poses all kinds of other problems. The U.S. uses a lot of water steam, but high-temp steam is extremely corrosive.
Again, surprising that you would think that the primary loop is used for turning the turbines.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
There are real pollution issues with coal, but the radiation thing is just a distraction to try to put up a "coal is nuclear too" argument by advertising agencies paid for by the nuclear industry. It just doen't make sense, paticularly since you could make the same case for wooden furnature and a variety of things - it's just a tactic to exploit the gullible.
Hopefully with improvements like pebble bed the nuclear lobby will be able to argue things on their own merits, instead of making up silly stories like this.
yes and no... anything with the word nukalar in it will cause hysteria. so it dosent really matter if causes harm or not if a dirty bomb goes off and spreads nukalar material in a small area of a city we will have people behaving irrationally and there will be "bear patrols". So terror will be imparted and the terror-ist's job is done.
But i am not against nuclear power. The pebble bed reactor does look like a sound idea.
No. No one said the amounts were large, but they are there. Whereas an NPP doesn't release any radiation at all. The truth of the statement still stands. If you're arguing that its an exaggeration, then I only have to point to all the crap the anti-nuclear crowd puts out as a counterexample.
It's like claiming that I can make a light bulb that's hot get hotter and melt-down by turning off the switch
Aha! You can by hooking the bulb in parallel to a big inductive load like a big electric motor. The switch is in series with the power source and this series is in parallel to the bulb and motor. When you turn off the switch, the motor's magnetic field collapses big time and the voltage across the bulb spikes.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
"Properly distributed" is a sort of whacky thing to say.
:p
That could be applied to anything. Here's an example: Four inches of high quality sharpened steel, properly distributed (amongst the ribcages of the world), would kill EVERY LAST PERSON. Now imagine what the blade from a wind turbine could do.
Utter lunacy. Cassini probe protesters should probably try smoking -less- than eight blunts at a time.
Somehow I don't think this is what I had in mind when I made the comparison... Realize that in your comparison the collapse of the motor's field converts it from a motor to a generator, thus you haven't actually "turned off the switch." A better argument would be that as I turned off the switch, resistance becomes infinite, and since we know that E=IR, as R goes infinite, so must E (voltage), thus running infinite voltage through the bulb and vaporizing it. (In reality of course, R just becomes very large while I [amperage] drops to zero and any big number times zero is still...zero. That's why lights rarely blow up with accompanying thunderbolt when the switch is turned off.)
Of course, now this whole discussion is just in the realm of "silly".
Quick! Mod me off-topic!
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
I read your entire paper; it says nothing of the sort like what you are claiming. You are claiming that the *expansion* of the spheres gets the reaction going; this is completely false, and completely unsupported by the document you provided.
The reaction rate is proportional to how hot the pebbles are. *All* PBMRs - Tsinghua's design as well - rely on the pebbles not being very hot in order to facilitate the reaction. Heat reduces the chance of U235 neutron capture in favor of U238 due to an effect called "Doppler Broadening".
Different isotopes have different energies of neutrons that they can absorb. A released high energy neutron, consequently, often has to be slowed due to interactions with the medium that it passes through until it reaches an energy level that an isotope that it encounters can capture; it can then cause splits of the nuclei of fissile materials.
Due to doppler broadening, the energy that the various isotopes need to capture neutrons of various energies changes, to provide much wider capture windows for neutrons. This benefits U238 a lot more than U235, so U238 starts capturing neutrons that U235 would have otherwise, and thus, you get less fission. Of course, the U238 capture creates neptunium (which shortly becomes plutonium), but that's beside the point.
The problem with a potential jamming is compression; compression causes just the opposite effect - reaction rates increase. That's why fission weapons involve the compressing of the U235 by explosives. The pebbles want to expand when they get hot; if they are jammed, they cannot, and the microspheres get compressed.
As I've mentioned before, and I would like you to respond to, your concept is physically intractable. Apart from violating the laws of physics, your suggestion leads to the following problem which I'm forced to reiterate: containment failure runaway. If the expansion of the pebbles somehow magically was able to make the reaction go faster, if the containment vessel failed, the reaction rate would have no limits. The pebbles could expand to the point of literal explosion.
It's obviously unrealistic: it is physically impossible given the pebbles, and nobody would dream of designing such a ticking time bomb.
Hmm... perhaps since English isn't your native language, you're confusing the word "expand", or something like that?
Your "vested interest" comments are laughable; I'm a computer programmer in the healthcare industry in the US. I have no personal interest, apart from "being interested", in Chinese PBMRs or Russian lead/bismuth breeders and following papers on the subject.
Dear Lord: One of your creatures may be hurt tonight. Please let it be the other creature.
I must be direct. Single spheres are incapable of achieving the reaction and to do so specific positioning of the body must be at set proximity to the other spheres. A change to this positioning, changing proximity, changes rate and the negative temperature coefficient inexorably ends reaction in the near spheres. Apart from physical movement the spheres are not vulnerable to supposed jamming due the transition system, nor subject to temperatures beyond 1600C as the cooling path of the containing steel is cooled by separate close device and not subject to air for that cooling. What is objection of yours? Jamming in transit system that is incapable of causing such problems in the Tsinghua design unlike the German design because of that separate device. Your objection is unfounded. Information was on the test reactor from 1999. Its design has now includes the IHX system. Tsinghua professors involved are specialists in nuclear engineering, and know more on it than untrained individuals. The system is only destructible through structural modification to the sphere design, and that is a matter of security as spheres are manufactured to approved standard.
> Single spheres are incapable of achieving the reaction
;)
... the spheres are not vulnerable to supposed jamming
Correct. As with all fuel rods/fuel spheres/etc used in nuclear power.
> specific positioning of the body must be at set proximity to the other spheres
Incorrect. The very shape of a sphere has no orientation, and they only fit together in one natural alignment: tetrahedral.
Wherever you dump the "pebbles", they will always align in a tetraherdral shape (excluding surface discontinuities) and begin reacting. The safety is that even if you dumped them in a bucket (let alone the reactor), they couldn't meltdown, because of the aforementioned doppler broadening effects. Of course, they'd melt your average bucket - just not themselves
> Apart from physical movement
The spheres are moving frequently; have you never read anything about how a pebble bed reactor works? It's a continuous fueling process; pebbles are removed from the bottom of the reactor, analyzed for depletion, and either moved into waste or added back to the top (where they naturally realign in the standard sphere tetrahedral arrangement).
>
Amusing, that you call something that's already happened once "suppossed". That would be like me referring to the "supposed flammability of hydrogen airships".
> cooling path of the containing steel is cooled by separate close device
> and not subject to air for that cooling
The reactor is completely surrounded by air; any rupture in the frame would allow air in. Not only the core - any of the helium feeder pipes are equally limited. And surrounding that air, something is missing: a *containment structure*.
> Jamming in transit system that is incapable of causing such problems in
> the Tsinghua design
And your evidence is.... ? And while you're at it, explain how the feeder pipes and reactor vessel are impervious to cracking - and in hydrogen-generating plants, why there's no risk of steam contamination (our outright hydrogen contaminiation) of the helium circuit, especially given the risks of hydrogen embrittlement of metals.
> Tsinghua professors involved are specialists in nuclear engineering
So were the people at the ill-fated German reactor.
> and know more on it than untrained individuals
There are many nuclear professionals who have objected to the lack of a containment structure and pointed out precisely what I have pointed out to you. Need references?
> The system is only destructible through structural modification to the sphere design
I've presented several objections to this, to which you have not responded. I will enumerate them; you better respond to them:
1) The reactor core is surrounded by air (inside the core is helium; outside, though, is just a normal building). Graphite is known to burn at the temperatures in question when exposed to air. Consequently, a rupture in the core would result in a graphite fire. Ruptures are, unfortunately, too frequent whenever dealing with nuclear reactors because the high neutron flux tends to weaken metal lattices. In the case of a pebble bed, the graphite is in contact with the fuel elements themselves, making a graphite fire especially adept at spreading radioisotopes.
2) The entire helium loop leads directly into the core. Any air contamination of the helium circuit (i.e., if there is a leak at any point) will funnel air directly into the core. Feeder pipes of all kinds have probably been the most prone elements of nuclear reactors to fail.
3) Compression increases the rate of reaction. The German design showed a very real case of jamming; it is hard to picture almost any mechanical device (of which all PBMR pebble processing units have) operating for long periods without mechanical error of this sort, no matter how well designed. The German incident caused a small radiation release, but would have b
Dear Lord: One of your creatures may be hurt tonight. Please let it be the other creature.
it is necessary to divide the post. Three sections. References to pages are to pages of initial document on HTR-10 test reactor from 1999. Additional references are to materials properties data. There were no assertions, you simply failed to understand the meaning of many sentences of the document I provided. Your reading comprehension needs repair. You continue with faults on the concept and past failure of the PBR, rather than discussing the realities of Tsinghua HTR-10 and its progeny. Reference Pg1 of the document. Tsinghua core uses a non-fueled centre that prevents the maximal temperature of SiC (1650C - http://www.matweb.com/search/SpecificMaterial.asp? bassnum=CDC002) from being reached, handily precluding ever reaching the 3650C temperature melting of Graphite (http://www.matweb.com/search/SpecificMaterial.asp ?bassnum=BGRAP1) and the risk of generation of temperatures above what can be dissipated even in failure situations by the Tsinghua reactor. This prevents fire from air contact..
Oxygen does not ignite in a quantity adequate to generate temperatures above what the Tsinghua design can remove from the reactor core even in a coolant failure situation. Helium at core by return from IHX and first devices is chilled. Chilling removes risk from foreign element exposure as potential temperature rise afterwards in reactor is limited by it so long as reactor functions, and is null otherwise. Water contact, if inlet, and phase change does not reach necessary magnitude as it passes through chilling device for helium through the inlet from the device. The temperatures is not reached where adequate force to is made to alter the arrangement of the bodies in the reactor core provided by the graphite structures. Specific empirical testing of Tsinghua pneumatic fuel body transit system for replacement of fuel bodies and separation of damaged bodies has resulted in no damage to the fuel bodies, reference Pg 3.
As to hydrogen explosion risk, the inlet is not directly to hydrogen source, but through device similar to HT-ST one that then interacts with hydrogen source (unfortunately not shown in public test document).
As to the failure of the German project, political reasons and censorship of records make it, as much as the differences in the design of the reactors, inapplicable. The supposed is to invalidity of your commented faults to the Tsinghua reactor. It will likely be that the thread will close before you acknowledge your error, or your actual interests; if it is, I will contact you through other posts with infromation required to bring discussion around and to its end in E-mail discussion.
For God's sake, you know very well this isn't a discussion about whether the graphite will melt: it's a discussion about whether the graphite will *burn*. That's the worst straw man argument that you've used yet.
:)
Graphite burned at Windscale and Chernobyl. Even most graphite-favorable study that I've seen showed that it lost a few percent at 1650 degrees. Their graphite had not been previously irradiated (which damages chemical structure), and even a few percent loss of graphite translates to a huge radiation dose.
> You failed to undertstand the meaning of many sentences of the document I provided
Name one. Go on.
While you're at it, point to where in the document it claims that the pebbles need to expand to start the reaction, or that there's some special arrangement needed for the reaction. I'd love to see this, since it's physically impossible
I'll repeat: Do not respond again without pointing to where in the document - or in *any* document - it states that the pebbles have to expand to start reacting or that there's a special arrangement that makes them react.
Dear Lord: One of your creatures may be hurt tonight. Please let it be the other creature.
> Oxygen does not ignite in a quantity
c to rs.htm
... no damage to the fuel bodies
I believe you meant "graphite does not ignite...". Even the most graphite-favorable papers acknowlege that you'll lose a few percent of your graphite at ~1600 degrees; less favorable reports show it outright burning at both Windscale and Chernobyl. One of the main sources of discrepancy may be the graphite corroding or weakening in the hostile environment inside a nuclear reactor. The greater the surface area of the graphite (i.e., which gets increased by corrosion), the easier it burns. Submicron-sized pieces of graphite are so flammable that they'll ignite spontaneously in air (if you don't believe me, look at the MSDS for graphite).
Even if you believe the most optimistic assessments, losing a few percent of your graphite in a fire would be catastrophic - far worse than a Chernobyl graphite fire (proportionally) because the graphite is so close to the fuel microspheres.
> Helium at code by return from IHX and first devices is chilled. Chilling
> removes risk from foreign element exposure
No. The IHX is not a chiller; it is a heat exchanger with the secondary generation loop. The helium is still 500 degrees celcius when it reenters the reactor:
http://www.pharmaciaretirees.com/pebble_bed_rea
Chilling the helium to the point where you can condense out impurities would devastate your performance; do you know how cold you need to precipitate out *hydrogen*, for example?
> The temperature is not reached where adequate force to is made to alter
> the arrangement of bodies in the reactor core
PBMRs, including HTR-10, are *Continuously Fuelled*. The core is *Continuously Moving*. It is *Always Changing*. This is the most basic aspect of all PBMRs; how can you possibly claim you know anything about PBMRs when you don't even realize that they're continually fuelled? Essentially *every* paper on PBMRs discusses this, *including* the one that you yourself cited:
"Spherical fuel elements go through the reactor core in a multi-pass" pattern. Pulse pneumatic fuel handling system is used for continually charging and discharging fuel elements"
The fuel *continuously* moves in and out of the core. There is no single core arrangement, apart from the natural tendancy of spheres to form a tetrahedral arrangement.
> Specific empirical testing of Tsinghua pneumatic fuel body
> transit system for replacement
Yes. And it took Germany a decade before the first problem occurred. Your point?
Dear Lord: One of your creatures may be hurt tonight. Please let it be the other creature.
> not directly to hydrogen source, but through device similar to HT-ST
;)
:P
... says the person who doesn't even know that PBMRs are fuelled in a continuous cycle (i.e., the materials in the core are constantly moving); doesn't know that helium enters the core *hot*, not cold; and thinks that the pebbles have to be expanded before they react.
/ co ntact_list.htm
Are you familiar with hydrogen handing? I'll operate on the assumption that you're not. Hydrogen has a tendancy to "get into things"; it has such a low molecular mass that it can seep through almost anything. Have you ever had a helium balloon, and noticed how the helium escaped? Hydrogen has half the molecular mass of helium. To make matters worse, hydrogen has a tendency to react with and embrittle metals.
The net consequence is that hydrogen is somewhat hard to deal with. If hydrogen leaks out of underground lines, it almost invariably ends up in any nearby water pipes and sewer lines. If hydrogen leaks in an enclosed space, it collects at the ceiling (posing an explosion risk) and tends to work its way into any pipes that pass along the ceiling. That's why it's generally recommended that hydrogen should always be the topmost pipe in any configuration
That doesn't mean that issues with hydrogen can't be dealt with; it just means that they *are* a risk factor that must be considered in a decision on whether or not to have a containment structure.
> poltiical reasons and censorship of records make it
Yeah, I'm sure that releasing radiation into the environment and about 1% of their fuel elements having defects had absolutely nothing to do with it.
I notice that you omitted all discussion of any cracks in the containment vessel leading to direct oxygen exposure of the core, or the damage that would be caused by water getting into the core, either through a core crack or feeder line crack, especially since water factors into the HTR-10 design more than most other PBMRs.
> acknowlege your error
> or your actual interests
I told you my interests; why are you so insistant on viewing me as having some sort of ulterior motive? My name is Karen Pease:
http://iowa-mhcrc.psychiatry.uiowa.edu/IPLpages
Dear Lord: One of your creatures may be hurt tonight. Please let it be the other creature.
Necessary to divide post. Three sections. There is no god, there are government and state concretely and culture and society generally. Perhaps in correction accuracy in English is provided but you made many foolish declarations of no merit also. The bodies do not expand for reaction situation, that was neither intent nor literal meaning of any comments. Meaning of comments terribly misinterpreted is that arrangement is essential for reaction, that positioning of fuel spheres in bodies requires particular arrangement of bodies for proximity of spheres, mimimal nearness, to achieve reaction of multiple bodies simultaneously that is only achieved by means of the arrangement, due to design used of fuel bodies and reactor core, in the Tsinghua reactor. You now sink to commonly mentioned "straw-man" claims rather than attempts at understanding or discussion.
On supossed deliberate avoidment, read it again and understand comments on those exact areas. As to Chernobyl, single mention found in English is from president of institute "Accidents like the 1986 Chernobyl disaster could never be repeated with the new breed of nuclear reactor " (reference: http://news.tsinghua.edu.cn/eng__news.php?id=357) who has magnitudes of authority greater than an untrained one. You have continuously misinterpreted comments that the Tsinghua reactor is designed to never reach that maximal 1650C and invented in your mind that such is normal operating temperature-your intent is doubly doubtful now despite claims of particular identity. Your objections have no merit in this design, and the single flaw possible through melting of graphite that itself requires fuel bodies not only out of alignment but physically and fundamentally modified due to design you continuously refuse understanding of.
Simple burning is not possible due to refrigeration, plain from both diagram and description of operation in Tsinghua reactor from document, of intake and negative temperature coefficient of reactor-but that no less was the basis of the first two and final four of your seven specific objections. Such as in your objections are summarily prevented by temperature differentials of large degrees adequate to prevent significant occurrence of those events. The remaining objections: on other projects, and question on test proofs against flaws in transit system were also answered. Material component references and design explanations so far as permitted were provided supporting those comments as you demanded impetuously, but provided for the record. On your failure of understanding, you ignored mention of tests, plainly described design characteristics, and similarly described temperature regulation methods. As before described, if in 6 hours when available it is necessary to E-mail, you will be contacted.
You continue to misinterpret for your purposes my comments. Comments on not moving concern operation, comments on transit system acknowledge movement aspect of refueling-but that is not continuous. The quote directly from document page 3 "The HTR-10 design represents the features of Modular HTGR design. The reactor core and the steam generator are housed in two steel pressure vessels which are arranged in a side-by-side way. These two vessels are connected to each other by a connecting vessel in which the hot gas duct is designed. All these steel pressure vessels are in touch with the cold helium of about 250C coming out from the circulator which sits over the steam generator tubes in the same vessel. (Figure. 1) " is meaning of comment on refrigeration. That process does not remove all quantities, only the significant quantities. 6 hours until next time for reply.
> You continue to misinterpret for your purposes my comments.
. pd f
Once again, you continue with the "for your purposes" insinuation. If I'm misinterpretting you, it's not because I'm out to smear you or something: it's because you're not speaking English very well.
I know it's hard to learn foreign languages; I speak some Japanese and a little bit of Spanish. But if you don't speak it well, don't get mad at people for misinterpreting you!
> movement aspect of refueling-but that is not continuous.
http://tauon.nuc.berkeley.edu/asia/1999/TPE99Xu
Under "Main Design Parameters" for the HTR-10:
Refueling mode: Continous.
Besides, the thing has a bloody 27,000 fuelling elements; if it weren't continuous, they'd never get cycled through.
> All these steel pressure vessels are in touch with the cold helium of about
> 250C coming out from the circulator which sits over the steam generator
> tubes in the same vessel. (Figure. 1) " is meaning of comment on refrigeration.
That's not refrigeration; that's heat exchange. Refrigeration is active cooling (i.e., energy supplied).
> That process does not remove all quantities, only the significant quantities.
Of the dangers that I discussed:
* Hydrogen
* Water
* Oxygen
Name which ones are in a liquid or solid state at 250C.
As I'm sure you're aware, none are even close. Even water will be what is normally called "superheated steam" at those temperatures. *None* would be condensed out. This should be quite obvious to you.
Dear Lord: One of your creatures may be hurt tonight. Please let it be the other creature.
First off, I find your attempt to get me mad at you by talking about God amusing; I'm an atheist. There is no God, I agree completely. :) In English, there is a common phrase "For God's sake". It is an expression of frustration. There's another one that you may have heard, "Dear god" - it means the same thing. A more crude expression is "God damn it!" (or "Goddamn it", or "goddamnit!")
It's just like how even secular arabs use phrases like "inshallah" ("God willing")
> The bodies do not expand for reaction situation, that was neither
> intent nor literal meaning of any comments
Then you must have misspoken when you stated:
"The pebbles require expansion to bring the flakes into adequate proximity to produce a significant radioactive reaction"
> requires particular arrangement of bodies for proximity of spheres,
> minimal nearness, to achieve reaction
No. "Minimal nearness" is not a requirement. As I've mentioned three now: separating the balls will always slow the reaction because it increases the odds of neutron escape and increase the speed of time between chain reactions. This is a fundamental aspect of *all* nuclear reactors: density increases rate of reaction (excluding moderator effects - but helium is not a moderator!)
Furthermore, the balls in the reactor have no choice but to form a tetrahedral arrangement:
http://cavendishscience.org/bks/nuc/pebbs.gif
It is the natural alignment for bulk spheres, barring surface discontinuities.
You keep claiming that they have to be separated, which is completely illogical, as I've repeatedly demonstrated, as well as incorrect. I insist that you reference your claim or shut up on the subject.
> you now sink to commonly mentioned "straw-man" claims
Name one.
Dear Lord: One of your creatures may be hurt tonight. Please let it be the other creature.
> As to Chernobyl, single mention found in English is from president
3 82 _4.pdf
b 7. asp
> of institute "Accidents like the 1986 Chernobyl disaster could
> never be repeated with the new breed of nuclear reactor "
Indeed, it could not. Accidents can (and do) happen, but the one like at Chernobyl is impossible in modern reactors. Chernobyl's accident was due to something called a "positive void coefficient". This means that as the reaction sped up, the forces slowing the reaction *decreased* instead of increasing. This is, as you might guess, a runaway disaster situation. All modern reactors - PBMRs included - have negative void coefficients.
However, not all accidents are related to whether a reactor has a positive or negative void coefficient; in fact, essentially none are nowadays. Modern nuclear accidents are typically due to the use of reactive chemicals and corrosion; PBMRs are distinctly not immune to this, especially at hydrogen-generating plants, but even at normal plants.
Nuclear accidents happen, and fairly regularly. And do you know what keeps things safe when they occur? The containment structure. My biggest problem with PBMRs is their lack of a containment structure; if they'd simply add one, I'd hail it as a big step forward.
> who has magnitudes of authority greater than an untrained one.
Says the person completely misunderstanding the comment. Don't try and deal with the debate by referring to people who aren't here to discuss the points I've raised which you have not addressed.
> is designed to never reach that maximal 1650C and invented in your mind that such is normal operating temperature
Cite where you believe I've said that. I never said any such thing. We're discussing accident conditions here - core or feeder pipe rupture. In such a situation, loss of helium coolant is pretty much a given.
> your intent is doubly doubtful now despite claims of particular identity.
Excuse me? I apparently have a nefarious intent because I work in the medical industry?
> the single flaw possible through melting of graphite
I listed seven potential accident situations, not one. And, not a single one of them had anything to do with melting of graphite. If you put false words in my mouth one more time, this conversation will be ended; do you understand? You've done it about half a dozen times already - insisting that I'm talking about external flame, melting graphite, and all sorts of things that I never mentioned.
> that itself requires fuel bodies not only out of alignment
There Is No Special Alignment. I've mentioned this about 4 times now, and given reasons why each time, and you keep insisting it without a reference. If you do this again, this too will be more than just cause to terminate this conversation.
I'm tired of this. READ. This is from the International Atomic Energy Association.
http://www.iaea.org/inis/aws/htgr/fulltext/te_1
Volumetric filling fraction of the balls in the core: 0.61 (page 9)
The tightest physical packing of spheres uses 64% of available space; this is the tetrahedral arrangement which I have been forced to repeatedly tell you about; it's called face-centered cubic packing.:
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040214/fo
We have 61%, vs. a maximum of 64% (and that 6% is reduced when you factor in surface discontinuities). In short, The Pebbles Are Packed In As Tightly As They Physically Can Be. In conclusion: Don't you dare make this claim again without evidence!
Dear Lord: One of your creatures may be hurt tonight. Please let it be the other creature.
> refrigeration
Already covered above. 250 degrees celcius isn't cold enough to condense either hydrogen, oxygen, or water (the three risk chemicals) at all; in fact, it is quite hot for all of them. I mean, seriously - do you not know even the boiling point of water? The bloody celcius scale is *based* on the boiling point of water vs. its freezing point.
Plus, there is no "refrigeration" step as I covered above; refrigeration requires active cooling (i.e., taking in energy); this is passive, and is simply known as "cooling" or "heat exchange".
> test proofs against flaws in transit system were also answered
No, they were not. The German machine took a decade for a breakdown to occur. What evidence do you provide that a machine - all mechanical being prone to break at some point or another in their lifespan - is immune to breakdown? Note the key word: what EVIDENCE do you provide?
Dear Lord: One of your creatures may be hurt tonight. Please let it be the other creature.
Clarification on not but still continuous: continuous is not constant refueling (former assumed meaning in your use) but is done for different bodies on different passes ("multi-pass" in document on page 2); in this my assumption of meaning differed from actual but it is corrected now by your recognition of its actual characteristics. On refrigeration, thought applicable word as helium is not passively allowed to drift, but accelerated by circulator and had a function in cooling. Inaccurate word again, but simple heat exchange did not encapsulate idea that was communicated-"propelled for cooling from heat exchange device" is more accurate. As to the 0removal of significant quantities, the meaning is that a large quantity is delayed in those devices and the rate of deposit on the reactor core such that it is incapable of causing damage to the Tsinghua core at a rate faster than the fail-safe triggers the cessation of reaction. Fuel bodies: http://wwwsoc.nii.ac.jp/aesj/publication/JNST2004/ No.9/41_943-948.pdf and page 3 of: apt.lanl.gov/tr0702pres/Williams-TRISOfuels.pdf).
I was not familiar with the term used and gave response directly for ending such side comments according to principle against such and not to anger you. In response to all current level posts, rates and abundant data supporting safety of Tsinghua design against all potential risks to general idea of HTPBR are found at: http://www.iaea.org/inis/aws/htgr/fulltext/te_1382 _4.pdf and in general on http://www.iaea.org/inis/aws/htgr/abstracts/abst_t e_1382_web.html where are provided records of the evidence you seek and rather damning evidence of the inviability of all of your claims against the reactor-and managing beyond this forum the end to the discussion and potential for complaints on improper English. I must return to work related duties now and can give no more time to this for the next 30 hours nearly certainly.
Lets watch china build these, increase their power supply, do it while reducing their dependence on DIRTY coal fired plants, clean up their air, not need oil, escape the middle east turmoil, and REALLY start kicking ass on the world socio-eco-political scene.
Thats something a strong centralized government can do that we (the "democratically" run US) cannot.
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