Europe Warms to Nuclear Power

FleaPlus writes "The CS Monitor reports that for the first time in 15 years a European nation has started building a nuclear reactor, with six more likely to be built in the next decade. France is also planning to develop a safer and more efficient "fourth generation" reactor by 2020. This is in light of rising fossil fuel prices and a desire to reduce CO2 emissions. Still, a majority of EU citizens are opposed to nuclear energy, primarily for environmental reasons, even though nuclear power releases less radioactive material than burning coal."

Comments

Re:About the article

[Mark Hood]

Yes, but that wasn't revealed in TFA until paragraph 3, and so no-one read that far...

Mark

On the Feasibility of Coal-Driven Power Stations

[alanxyzzy]

My old boss Otto Frisch wrote a satirical technical report On the Feasibility of Coal-Driven Power Stations

Introduction
The recent discovery of coal (black, fossilized plant remains) in a number of places offers an interesting alternative to the production of power from fission. Some of the places where coal has been found show indeed signs of previous exploitation by prehistoric men, who, however, probably used it for jewels and to blacken their faces at religious ceremonies.

The power potentials depend on the fact that coal can be readily oxidized, with the production of a high temperature and an energy of about 0.0000001 megawatt days per gram. That is, of course, very little, but large amounts of coal (perhaps millions of tons) appear to be available.

The chief advantage is that the critical amount is very much smaller for coal than for any fissile material. Fission plants become, as is well known, uneconomical below 50 megawatts, and a coal-driven plant may be competitive for small communities (such as small islands) with small power requirements.

Design of a Coal Reactor
The main problem is to achieve free, yet controlled, access of oxygen to the fuel elements. The kinetics of the coal-oxygen reaction are much more complicated than fission kinetics, and not yet completely understood. A differential equation which approximates the behaviour of the reaction has been set up, but its solution is possible only in the simplest cases. It is therefore proposed to make the reaction vessel in the form of a cylinder, with perforated walls to allow the combustion gases to escape. A concentric inner cylinder, also perforated, serves to introduce the oxygen while the fuel elements are placed between the two cylinders. The necessary presence of end plates poses a difficult but not insoluble mathematical problem.

Fuel Elements
It is likely that these will be easier to manufacture than in the case of fission reactors. Canning is unnecessary and indeed undesirable since it would make it impossible for the oxygen to gain access to the fuel. Various lattices have been calculated and it appears that the simplest of all, a close packing of equal spheres, is likely to be satisfactory. Computations are in progress to determine the optimum size of the spheres and the required tolerances. Coal is soft and easy to machine, so the manufacture of the spheres should present no major problem.

Oxydant
Pure oxygen is of course ideal but costly; it is therefore proposed to use air in the first place. However, it must be remembered that air contains 78% nitrogen. If even a fraction of that combined with the carbon of the coal to form the highly-toxic gas cyanogen, this would constitute a grave health hazard (see below).

Operation and Control
To start the reaction one requires a fairly high temperature of about 988oC. This is most conveniently achieved by passing an electrical current between the inner and outer cylinder (the end plates being made of insulating ceramic). A current of several thousand amps. is needed., at some thirty volts, and the required large storage battery will add substantially to the cost of the installation.

There is the possibility of starting the reaction by some auxiliary self-starting reaction, such as that between phosphine and hydrogen peroxide. This is being looked into. Once the reaction is started its rate can be controlled by adjusting the rate at which oxygen is admitted. This is almost as simple as the use of control rods in a conventional fission reactor.

Corrosion
The walls of the reactor must withstand a temperature of well over a 1000oF in the presence of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon monoxide and dioxide, as well as