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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.
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).
...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.
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...
"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.
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.
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.
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)?
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.
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.
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!
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!
The U.S. wont be able to sustain its current military excess if the rest of its economy craters, or if it does it will suck the life out of everything else as it did in the Soviet Union and when American economy starts looking like the Soviet Union's support for the government will collapse just as it did in the Soviet Union.
The only other option for maintaining a huge military without a robust economy is to use it to dominate the economy and resources of the rest of the world though blackmail or outright intervention.
In many respects the Chinese, and the Japanese, are already funding the U.S. military because they are the primary purchasers of the U.S. governments debt which is necessary to support the huge deficits, and a big chunk of those deficits are going in to exploding defense and homeland security spending.
If the Chinese were to stop buying that debt they can place substantial pressure on the U.S. government unless someone else picks up the slack and that is likely to get worse not better. I'm not sure of the exact mechanics but I think if the chinese stop pegging their currency to the dollar, something the U.S. is pushing hard, that may also lead them to stop buying U.S. dollars and debt.
If the Republican's were so foolish as to actualize start privatizing Social Security in the near term that is going to place even more pressure on the U.S. deficits because:
A. the government will have to make up the shortfall it will create in paying out benefits to everyone over 55
B. The current large Social Security surplus that is funding U.S. government debt will disappear meaning there will be even less money going to support the excess of the U.S. government.
Based on the recent budget it appears the Bush administration plan is to continue inflating defense and homeland security spending, continue cutting taxes for the wealthy and slashing everything else(unless it benefits big corporations that support the Republicans (i.e. the Medicare reform sham for drug and health companies, Energy bill for big oil, coal and nuke, Social Security privitization for the big banks and investment firms, CEV and missile defense for Lockheed and Boeing).
@de_machina
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.
The titanic is unsinkable
It's true that China seems to be starting to take the torch from USA as a superpower, but their eventual reign may not last long.
Through history, every subsequent "empire" was shorter than the last.
Case in point Roman Empire(~1000years) -> French(~100years) -> US(>100years) ~~> China(???years). Obviously I've left some empires out, and I've done some estimating, but the trend is each Empire is shorter and not as far reaching.
I'm not sure whether it can be attributed to China wanting more success than the US, but perhaps just an evolution of power?
Live forever, or die trying.
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.
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
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?
Who cares what the price is. It doesn't matter one bit. The middle east hasn't been our dominant Oil supplier since the Arab oil embargo.
If you want to make a comparison with the Titanic, you should carry it all the way. This reactor is meltdown proof, the way the titanic would be unsinkable had it been placed in a desert. That is to say, it is possible it could sink beneath the sand and vanish, but there is not any scientific support for a theory as to how it could happen.
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
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
You think just the same way that Timothy McVeigh used to on Usenet. I thought he was a dangerous nut before he murdered close to 300 people in his attempt to do exactly what you suggest. Try a google search and look for his posts on Usenet.
Bin Laden and McVeigh are both cut from the same cloth. The most powerful tool you have for changing your government is the Web.
Bin Laden has changed nothing, achieved nothing. The IRA achieved nothing. Mao and Stalin ultimately achieved nothing.
Ghandi won India's freedom without a shot being fired. Lech Walensa in Poland, the Velvet, Rose revolutions, far more is achieved with the power of speech than has ever been achieved with guns.
The East Germans I met in the 1980s never asked for guns, they wanted photocopiers and type writers. They knew what they needed.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
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.
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
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!
This analysis is amazingly stupid. I'm used to a poor understanding of history, but that takes the fucking cake.
"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.
"Even if we go nuclear, we don't have enough warheads to destroy China."
That is pretty silly rhetoric. No, the U.S. cant wipe every Chinese peasant off the face of the earth. The U.S. could really easily wipe out every major and not so major city and most of its military and industrial capacity. There is simply no way China would provoke the U.S. to that point, why would they, everything is going their way already if they just let America transfer all its wealth and IP to them through peaceful economic means. Risky a nuclear war is a no win situation for either side your scare tactics are silly. And of course if Little George's missile defense works as great as they keep claiming the Chinese wouldn't be able to reciprocate. It must work great because we are squandering $8 billion a year on it.
All in all this is the same kind of rhetoric the U.S. has used almost non stop since World War II to justify never ending massive military spending and militarization of our economy. This rhetoric always works in the U.S. because most Americans are either dumb, easy to scare, or reaping the benefits of being a part of the military industrial complex.
Country X is going to outspend us and we are vulnerable so we have to spend more, more, more. If Country X stops being a threat then you are just going to switch to country Y. You are NEVER going to stop dredging up some mortal danger that we have to keep spending ever more on weapons to save us from.
The U.S. currently spends more on defense than the other top 15 nations in the world combined, (though obviously China gets a lot more bang for the buck thanks to cheap labor and they don't have companies like Boeing and Lockheed in the sucking money out of taxpayers pocket). The Chinese also don't have to work as hard to develop technology or capitalize factories since Americans are giving it to them for basicly free and shipping machine tools wholesale from the U.S. to China. We better hope we don't have a war with China in 10-20 years because the U.S. will have NO manufacturing base left to sustain a prolonged war.
In the end I think the hawks were in fact royally pissed when the Soviet Union cratered because the rational for the massive defense spending cratered with them. After a few years of the U.S. scaling back bases and cutting defense spending to something approaching reasonable levels they were desperate for a new enemy, and 9/11 gave them one. Unfortunately shadowy terrorists don't make a good case for massive conventional military spending because they rarely present themselves as a target for precision bombing, so they have to build up two bit third world dictatorships like Iraq, Iran, Syria and North Korea. If that doesn't work then they can start ranting like you are about China being an imminent threat, and China is going to win the arms race unless we spend a trillion a year on defense. It is an insane argument as long as the U.S. is spending the massive sums its spending on weapons. The U.S. Air Force and Navy completely dominate every other force on the planet. The only thing the U.S. lack is the boots on the ground because its politicians are afraid, very afraid, of the consequences of reinstating the draft which is not a problem the Chinese have.
@de_machina
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!!
Good luck with that plan.
If OPEC begins to trade in Euro, shifting oil trade away from USDollar it will flush out international reserves.
If China doesnt revalue its dollar, and continues the present fixed-peg. Your dollar sinks.
If your dollar makes a mad dash southward, look out. Some of these other nations might just find a Fire-Sale on America quite attractive. Remember, rampant military spending only bankrupt the USSR *first*... I wont hold my breath for the USA learning the lesson.
Its one hell of a risky prospect your betting on.