New Nuclear Power Plants in the next 5 years

Guinnessy writes "As oil, coal, and gas become increasingly expensive, energy utilities take another look at nuclear power. The nuclear reactor builders are jostling for business as more than 26 plants may be ordered or constructed over the next five years in Canada, China, several European Union countries, India, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, and South Africa. Companies in the US and UK may order an additional 15 new reactors. Physics Today magazine has a global roundup of the new plants on construction, and how the builders are getting around some of the potential road blocks in their path. I'm sure many slashdot readers would be surprised to know that some new plants will be coming online so soon."

Comments

coal

[Sgt_Jake]

Here's a fun fact - who knew that coal produces more nuclear waste than a nuclear power plant? By a lot. Not to mention the mecury and other heavy metals and by-products of coal. Go NUKES! And I would like to be Mr. Burns if I may... excellent...

Re:coal

[Firethorn]

Coal byproducts aren't radioactive.

That's the thing. They are radioactive

While coal burning indeed doesn't produce radiactivity like nuclear power does, there's actually so much radioactive material in it such as uranium that we'd get more power from refining it for the radioactives and sticking it in a reactor than burning it.

There's a former power plant worker out there that's DQ'd for life from working in a nuclear power plant because he absorbed too much radioactivity from his house. The bricks were made from coal ash.

Meanwhile, when you burn the coal, radioactive materials end up not only in the ash but go up the flue.

Re:coal

[Eccles]

While coal burning indeed doesn't produce radiactivity like nuclear power does, there's actually so much radioactive material in it such as uranium that we'd get more power from refining it for the radioactives and sticking it in a reactor than burning it.

No we wouldn't, otherwise we'd be refining it from fly ash. As the ORNL article says, 99.5% of the fly ash produced by burning coal is retained by precipitators, not sent into the air, and thus could be processed and the radioactive material extracted after burning the coal. (Heck, it would be more concentrated that way.) Instead, Canada and Australia are the big uranium producers.

Pebble Bed

[putko]

This doens't have to end badly for the planet.

Pebble Bed reactors are the future: they are supposed to be safe, cheap and modular. They'll be mass-produced, and allow cities or factories to power themselves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor

What About Nuclear Recycling

[johndeerejedi]

The article was very disappointing because I didn't see any mention of the pyrometalurgical reprocessing and fast reactor design that would allow much more efficient use of the nuclear fuel. Current reactor designs and pebble bed only use about 3-5% of the Uranium (the U235 in the enriched Uranium), whereas the reprocessing method I mentioned above uses nearly all the heavy metals (actinydes) from Americium to Plutonium, including the Uranium 235 and U238.

There's a really good article (only a preview available) at Scientific American which explains the pyrometalurgical process and the fast reactors that allow this.

On the other hand, the reactors mentioned in the article won't hurt anything if the reactors I'm talking about get built later. They can supposedly burn up the nuclear waste from existing reactors.

Re:100 or 200 years isn't a long time.

[amliebsch]

That 100 year estimate is only known reserves of U-235, which is the most basic, wasteful type of reactor. By breeding U-235 from the much more plentiful U-238, and by using Thorium, there would be enough nuclear fuel on the Earth to sustain our energy needs until around the time the sun burns out. The waste fuel from one year of a thousand megawatt reactor of this type would be about 1 cubic meter. So yes, nuclear is the answer.

Re:Nuclear Waste?

[Firethorn]

Then go with breeder reactors. 99% of your problem solved. The real reason for keeping the 'waste' around is that there's still alot of usable fuel in there. By some figures, conventional reactors only burn about 3% of the fuel.

When you get all the energy you can out of the fuel, the remainder doesn't stay radioactive for that long. Most of them are short to mid half-life isotopes, so they decay quickly.

WRONG. We can produce hydrogen efficiently!

[dorkygeek]

By using green algae and sunlight, we can indeed produce hydrogen energy efficiently. See for example Hydrogen Production. Green Algae as a Source of Energy, by Melis and Happe.

Re:WRONG. We can produce hydrogen efficiently!

[dorkygeek]

From the paper:

Application of the two-stage photosynthesis and H2 production protocol to a green alga mass culture could provide a commercially viable method of renewable hydrogen generation. Table I provides preliminary estimates of maximum possible yield of H2 by green algae, based on the luminosity of the sun and the green algal photosynthesis characteristics. Calculations were based on the integrated luminosity of the sun during a cloudless spring day. In mid-latitudes at springtime, this would entail delivery of approximately 50mol photons m-2 d-1 (Table I, row 1). It is generally accepted that electron transport by the two photosystems and via the hydrogenase pathway for the production of 1mol H2 requires the absorption and utilization of a minimum of 5mol photons in the photosynthetic apparatus (Table I, row 2). On the basis of these "optimal" assumptions, it can be calculated that green algae could produce a maximum of 10mol (20g) H2 perm2culture area per day. If yields of such magnitude could be approached in mass culture, this would constitute a viable and profitable method of renewable H2 production.

However, this optimistic scenario cannot be realized with present day know-how. Three biologically "gray areas" directly impact this H2 production technology. (a) The yield of H2 production currently achieved in the laboratory corresponds to only 15% to 20% of the measured capacity of the photosynthetic apparatus for electron transport (Melis et al., 2000). (b) The optical properties of light absorption by green algae impose a limitation in terms of solar conversion efficiency in the alga chloroplast. This is because wild-type green algae are equipped with a large light-harvesting chlorophyll antenna size to absorb as much sunlight as they can. Under direct and bright sunlight, they could waste up to 60% of the absorbed irradiance (Neidhardt et al., 1998; Melis et al., 1999). This evolutionary trait may be good for survival of the organism in the wild, where light is often limiting, but it is not good for the photosynthetic productivity of a green algal mass culture. This optical property of the cells could further lower the productivity of a commercial H2 production farm. (c) The current necessity to cycle a culture between the two stages (normal photosynthesis in the presence of S alternating with H2 production upon S deprivation) introduces a "down time" as far as H2 production is concerned. It is inevitable that the "down time" would further erode the yield of the H2 production process. Thus, with current technology, it is estimated that the actual yield of H2 production would be lower than that of the theoretical maximum shown in Table I, achieving perhaps a mere 10%, or lower, than the calculated theoretical maximum. It is clear that these three specific biological challenges (a-c) need to be overcome to effect greater actual yields of green alga H2 production.

Re:Nuclear Power: The Way to Go!

[PitaBred]

1) First off, Chernobyl exploded because of idiocy in the Ukraine. You do not conduct an experiment on a nuclear power plant and turn all the safeties off. That is asking for trouble. However, NO FALLOUT WAS EVER RELEASED FROM THE FACILITY. The facility was 100% lost, but everyone was safe that was not inside the plant.
Um... NO . Not only no, but hell fucking no, you're wrong. You're probably thinking about Three Mile Island. How this shit got modded up, I'll never know. That half-assed link of yours also glossed over Chernobyl, which was actually a quite major event. I'm not saying nuke plants aren't much, much better than Chernobyl was, but we need to be continually cognizant of the dangers inherent in things like nuclear power. That being said, the greater the risk, often the greater the reward. We just need to make sure the risk is managed.

Re:Nuclear waste is scary but...

[FleaPlus]

Nuclear waste is scary, but it is very possible that the CO2 released by burning oil is more dangerous.

It's not just the CO2 from fossil fuels which is dangerous -- coal (the primary source of electrical power) contains a significant quantity of radioactive isotopes. The burning of coal is actually responsible for more radioactive waste than nuclear power, and the radioactive waste from coal goes straight into the atmosphere.

Another advantage of nukes

[K8Fan]

When I was working in 3D animation, one of my clients was Commonwealth Edison, the Chicago electric company. ComEd's plants were mostly nukes. I loved working for them, because most of the work I did was to explain concepts. Anyway...

They have a project called "Northwind". It consists of two 5 story tall buildings in downtown Chicago (eventually four) that, during the summer months, make ice all night long. During the day, the ice melts and the 33 degree water travels through pipes to subscribers to air-condition buildings. This allows client buildings to avoid wasting floors on their own chillers and avoid using electricity during the day for air-conditioning. ComEd can even out the demand for power and avoid building additional plants for a while.

Here we go again

[dbIII]

If that article that keeps getting quoted on ORNL was so good it would be cited in scientific literature and there would be more than one article along these lines. Here's how I see this article:

1/ Take the coal with the most heavy elements you can find anywhere, imply this is the normal situation whithout actually saying so.

2/ Forget to mention that of these traces of heavy elements only a small proportion are radioactive (you have to enrich uranium before you can use it as a fuel due to this).

3/ Assume pollution controls are a black box that catches a certain percentage of everything - a big assumption to make when you are talking about airbourne pollution. For those that can't be bothered to find out, pollution controls are designed among other things to remove GASSES like NOx and SOx. Now, consider if you are getting the gas out with water or other methods, what do you think is happening to the heavy metal oxides? Remember that they are heavy.

4/ The divide by zero problem. People are using this paper and the idea that there are zero radioactive emissions from a well run nuclear power plant to make background levels of radiation look bad.

Now here's where some advertising agency for the AEC has won the propaganda war from an earlier poster:

there's actually so much radioactive material in it such as uranium that we'd get more power from refining it for the radioactives and sticking it in a reactor than burning it

We really need better science education today. Here's another:

because he absorbed too much radioactivity from his house. The bricks were made from coal ash.

First - how would this have been measured if the urban myth was true? Would he have been wearing a dosimeter at home - otherwise how could you tell? Second - ash is generally similar to sand in elemental composition which is why there is no problem using it in a lot of situations.

Coal has enough problems without making things up. Paticularly in the USA sulphur oxides are a problem, and NOx are a problem everywhere (which is why we have pollution controls to stop acid rain and lesser problems) - and even after the pollution controls coal has the CO2 problem.

It's time for nuclear to talk about how good it is instead of bashing the opposition or comparing to purely portable or remote area solutions like solar cells that don't scale up. Push the new technology instead of regurgitating propaganda that doesn't stand up to minor scrutiny.

Re:Here we go again

[dbIII]

If you can't do that, do a mass spectromoscopy on a sample of fly ash

I can and have done better than that, so I know that your statements are misinformed. Looking at backscatter radiation in a scanning electron microscope with quite a few fly ash samples gave me nothing heavier than iron above the noise. All fly ash is (obviously to me but not to the authors of the ornl paper or people who don't look furthur) not created equal, so some will have heavy metals somewhere. The funny thing about heavy metals is that they are heavy, and the oxides are mechanically stronger than coal so don't get broken up much in the crushers. They also have a high melting point. Big heavy stuff is unlikely to end up in the light fly ash - it's likely to come out of the bottom of the boiler, especially since fly ash is usually solidified droplets of previously molten material.

Now you've read this, please consider reading something from a credible source on the issue (Chemistry journals, or something from EPRI who are as pro nuclear as they come since they are a power industry body but not are not nuclear propagandists) instead of spreading urban myths.

It isn't that they want to propagandize things. Rather, it's saying that ... cognitive dissonance isn't intended to make coal look dangerous

The Micheal Moore defence - they're bad so we can blow irrelevant insignificant details out of proportion - interesting but I don't see it as a good enough excuse.

I disagree with the paper on ORNL and consider it junk science for the reasons pointed out in an earlier post. If others who are more credible than me considered it valid science they would cite it in scientific publications instead of it only being cited in newpapers and advertising, and there would be furthur papers expanding on it in the decades since it's publication. It stands alone, an example of bespoke research for the purposes of advertising.

Nuclear can be safe

[rben]

It depends on the design. The classic designs that have been used in the U.S. have a serious problem. If coolent flow fails, the reactor can melt down.

Pebble bed reactors are designed to fail safely. If the flow of coolent stops, so does the reaction. The fuel is safely encased in tennis ball-sized graphite "pebbles" which are dropped in the top of the reactor and retrieved at the bottom. For there to be a release of the radioactive material, the pebble has to be broken open. Even if that happens, the amount that's released is very tiny.

There is a problem with fire, since the pebbles are graphite, but fire is a lot easier to deal with than a melt-down.

The point is that we need nuclear power in order to ween ourselves off of oil, but we also need to demand that safe reactor designs are used.