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

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.

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.

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.