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A New Class of Nuclear Reactors
prunedude tips this quote from a post at Freakonomics about Japan's nuclear crisis:
"The folks over at IV Insights, the blog associated with Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures, point out that it was the complete loss of power that disabled the cooling systems protecting the plant's reactors. Which raises the question: Is there nuclear technology that could withstand such a catastrophe? Possibly. TerraPower, an Intellectual Ventures spin-off that also boasts Bill Gates as an investor, is working on a new reactor design called a traveling wave reactor that uses fast reactor technology, rather than the light water technology used at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. The two biggest advantages of the fast reactor design is that it requires no spent fuel pools and uses cooling systems that require no power to function, meaning the loss of power from the tsunami might not have crippled a fast reactor plant so severely."
Does that mean he had previously dismissed it as a bad idea and then after someone else made progress he jumped aboard?
Just saying' . . .
Humor from a Genetically Molested Mind
My understanding is that breeder reactors and pebble bed reactors wouldn't have had the problem that hit the plant in Japan. That and breeder reactors have the added benefit of eating nuclear waste over and over until whatever is left might make you sneeze. Maybe I'm completely off on that, but why do we need a new design on this kind of reactor unless it's relatively simple to retrofit older reactors?
Of course any new reactors designed will have safeguards against any previous disaster - it's the ones that never happened before that fuck us.
Humor from a Genetically Molested Mind
Supposedly the pebble-bed reactor type is also resistant to the type of damage suffered at the Fukushima plants, and it has the added bonus of not being encumbered by ex-Microsoft patent trolls. I remember reading that the Germans had been experimenting with the design but dropped it for political reasons.
Once again, Thorium is ignored as a solution. Thorium is cheaper and easier than TerraPower's concept, yet it is continually ignored.
google.slashdot
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8393984/Safe-nuclear-does-exist-and-China-is-leading-the-way-with-thorium.html
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium
Some of the benefits of thorium when compared with uranium as fuel:
* Weapons-grade fissionable material (U-233) is harder to retrieve safely and clandestinely from a thorium reactor;
* Thorium produces 10 to 10,000 times less long-lived radioactive waste;
* Thorium comes out of the ground as a 100% pure, usable isotope, which does not require enrichment, whereas natural uranium contains only 0.7% fissionable U-235;
* Thorium can not sustain a nuclear chain reaction without priming, so fission stops by default.
...that we never bothered testing it!
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Since a CANDU (Heavy Water) reactor's fuel isn't naturally capable of going critical, couldn't that existing, tried and true design be used instead? We can fuel it with nuclear waste from American reactors, or use raw uranium ore, with no need for centrifuges or other tech that can be used to create nuclear weapons. If the cooling system fails, then you should have the backup of draining the heavy water from the reactor core, thus killing the reaction.
I'm not saying that's the only solution, I'm just saying that a known good solution that's been working for decades is probably better than a new one.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
I read a wired article about how using thorium instead of uranium will give you a much safer reactor, and would cause much less damage in the case of a meltdown. Also, thorium nuclear power can't be used to fuel WMD's. In the article, it was saying that its inability to be used as WMD's is why it wasn't developed back in the 50's. Our country wanted to make nukes. Anyone know anything about this, or am I just crazy?
Or there's thorium. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium#Thorium_as_a_nuclear_fuel Just because Gates is behind something doesn't mean it's a good idea. Pretty sure Gates started out liking "Clippy" too.
"Is there nuclear technology that could withstand such a catastrophe? Possibly."
Yeah, as in all other modern designs.
Passive cooling has been the hot new thing since, you know, the 80s.
Another promising reactor design is the pebble-bed reactor. Its reaction has a negative temperature coefficient, meaning that the reaction self-moderates if it gets too hot, rather than requiring an external control system to prevent meltdown. This means that if the cooling system were to fail, the reactor would just sit in a mostly-dormant state until cooling was re-established.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor/
---- I'll take you in a Hunt deathmatch any day.
If nuclear power plants are used to power cities, why can't they power their own cooling? Seems like keeping the darn thing running would be safer than watching it sit there unpowered and on the verge of blowing up. (Don't get me wrong; I'm sure there's a good reason. I'm just curious.)
"The plant's operator tried to bring in mobile generators to restore power, but the connections reportedly didn't match up."
Ref: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/03/14/6268351-clearing-up-nuclear-questions
I'd love one of these in the back of my field connected to the grid. A cool 10MW or so is all I need.
These are only the size of a shipping container and are a self contained unit. They would be a great way to bypass the NIMBYism associated with nuclear power plants. They are also much safer. If these can be bought by people with a bit of cash in the attic and installed in the countryside unknown to the neighbours we can all enjoy cheap nucular energy while everyone is blisfully oblivious to the fact that the neighbours little 'storage' container is actually a nucular power plant
no one will need more then 640W
With Bill Gates involved, we're sure to discover the joys of the Gamma Screen of Death soon.
... or maybe: "Your Microsoft Nuclear Reactor is experiencing a prompt criticality incident. Please remove all the fuel rods, reinstall them, and restart the reactor."
...design.
The problem with the reactors in japan is their age. The designs are over fifty years old and were constructed over forty years ago. You need only use a design which is slightly older than 30 to have been extremely resistant to these types of failures. In fact, passive, convective cooling is an integrel component of newer generation reactors and have been so for several generations now.
Really, the biggest problem is anti-nuke dorks have made it so difficult to migrate to newer technology, older, less safe designs are being extended rather than replaced. If you must shake a finger of blame, it largely lies with the the anti-nuke dorks rather than any other place.
Nuclear is extremely safe, clean, and can be made even moreso if only we can get anti-nuke idiots to stop forcing higher risks on the wold just because they are ignorant and/or stupid.
They've never actually built a reactor...so when they do then I'll consider them more than perpetual motion salesmen
Thorium is another great solution, especially because it is so abundant. However, the huge advantage of the TerraPower design is that it burns existing nuclear waste, making it very cheap (nobody wants the waste) and solves one of the biggest problems with all those existing reactors (what to do with the waste).
It doesn't matter how safe they are, the forces of extreme environmentalists and Luddites will say No! No! No!
Already idiots in Congress, without knowing anything more than the hyperbolic news reports, are calling for shut downs and "slow downs" and endless Congressional Investigations where people who know about Nuclear Power try to convince people that don't that you can't burn a hole in the earth straight through to China
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I'm sure there's a good reason. I'm just curious.
Long-standing rules require that cooling system pumpbs be turned by thirteen blind eunuchs running on a treadmill, backwards.
Backup systems powered by steam engined fueled by burning kittens and the tears of homeless orphans are becoming popular.
The problem with Fast Breeder reactors is that they make plutonium. Great for atomic bombs, and if you don't want to develop the technology, it's still an extremely powerful chemical poison.
Bruce Perens.
The Toshiba 4S (Super Safe, Small and Simple) reactor solves all these problems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_4S It's a mini-sized fast neutron reactor... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_neutron_reactor It can burn thorium or depleted uranium, and actually help to eliminate the current stockpile of nuclear waste. This was invented several years ago, but has yet to be deployed anywhere. It's mainly the fear of anything with the word "nuclear" that prevents use of this technology. Ironically, the failure to build more nukes means we'll be building more coal-fired power plants, with disastrous effects on climate. Yeah, I know, the anti-nuke people say that "wind and solar is all we need." And they are right - all we've got to do is reduce the world's population by 90% and move everybody to a place that is windy or very sunny. So, if you live in the Aleutian Islands, the never-ceasing howling wind can provide lights for your hut. Or if you live in Death Valley solar will keep your cell phone and laptop recharged. See, we don't need nukes.
Be it the levees that failed in New Orleans, or the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi, it isn't a lack of innovation that causes any of these disasters. It is in lack of maintenance, and just *caring* in general.
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Well, look where it got us.
I would contest innovation actually. That is how governments waste tax dollars. Stick to time tested simple solutions that multiple contractors can compete for. Innovation is for the private sector.
Worst case scenario it levels the playing field?
The Wikipedia article has been hijacked by their marketing dept, it's the closest things I've seen to an advertisement in Wikipedia.
I'm having trouble finding any details on what makes this TWR reactor safe. They mention that it uses passive liquid metal cooling to ensure safety, but even passive cooling has potential failure modes. They state that relying on the laws of physics makes for a reliable reactor, but the laws of physics that govern diesel generators are well studied, yet they still failed at Fukushima.
From reading about other liquid metal designs, it sounds like natural convection alone is enough to keep the coolant flowing, but what happens if the earthquake or some manufacturing flaw causes a leak in the coolant pipes and the liquid coolant ends up on the floor of the reactor?
The PBR is supposed to be self regulating -- higher temperatures reduce the rate of the reaction, so even a total loss of coolant means that the fuel heats up to some steady state temperature and will stay there forever. What happens to a TWR if the coolant flow stops for any reason?
How nice of GE to provide one-off parts for a safety system.
On the other hand, you'd think the operators of an electric plant could splice a couple of 3-phase lines together.
If Bill Gates' life was to flash before his eyes, would it be a blue flash?
It can't believe nobody has mentioned this, but the reactor designs were not the problem. All of these cooling problems could have been solved by some sort of waterproof backup power, even if it had to be stored 50 miles away and delivered via an underground cable that comes up under the reactors. Some of these reactors' cooling systems failed because the battery backup power was in the farking basement for crissakes! Below sea level on an Island! Totally flooded. I'm a social science (excuse the contradiction of terms) and I know better than that.
How hard would it be to either 1) keep battery backup at a high point above a nuke plant* (I know, weight, whatever, engineer around it) or 2) the plan I mentioned above, the same redundancy that data centers have, redundant power located elsewhere. Either would have likely saved these reactors.
*Patent pending.
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"the two biggest advantages of the fast reactor design is that it requires no spent fuel pools and uses cooling systems that require no power to function"
Let's translate what this means. The core of the reactor will be VERY radioactive as it will have decay products from many more gigawatt hours---yes it will transmute quite a bit of these but do not underestimate just how hot it will be.
The cooling systems use molten sodium. It has the wee problem that it is explosive in contact with water. Say from a flood. Or if the building catches on fire. (and it's probably quite radioactive in itself simply from activation from the neutron flux). Or suppose there's a leak in the roof and it rains.
And it's right next to an extremely radioactive core. And if the explosion results in something cracking open......
One huge problem at Fukushima reactors was the unappreciated dangers of flooding, combined with the hydrogen explosions. These explosions damaged other important machinery and structures---you get a 'blunder chain reaction'.
See some other comments about the TWR
http://theenergycollective.com/barrybrook/43928/terrapower%E2%80%99s-travelling-wave-reactor-%E2%80%93-why-not-use-ifr
And they do have their own cooling, as well as battery backup for cooling. In the case of many of these failed reactors, the battery backup was in the basement, where it was flooded. If only there was some technology that could have saved the day, like not putting batteries in the basement below sea level. Someday...
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Once again, the folks at Freakonomics suggest that the solution to a problems is some new technology.
But they just won't go far enough and say "What about a "new technology" for energy that is not based upon another scarce resource?"
It's surprising to me that this "Freakonomics" movement, which prides itself on "thinking outside the box" is such a prolific purveyor of short-sighted conventional wisdom.
If they were just engaging in thought experiments it might be benign, but you've got people out there who take what these economists say as gospel. Instead of attacking the pseudo-science of Economics as the drivel that it is, they are simply supplanting it with even more banal pronouncements.
I think it's time to say to all of the post WWI economists, including the Freakshop, that you've done enough damage and put them on the shelf next to astrology and phrenology where they belong.
Which reminds me, that the Nosferatu of Economists, Alan Greenspan, showed his ugly face in public again in the past few days, demonstrating again that when you are among the economic or political elite, no matter how badly you fuck up everything that can be fucked up, no matter how much pain you cause to fellow humans, no matter how often you are catastrophically wrong, again and again, once the Media Elite believe you are one of the "Wise Old Men" you never ever have to feel the least bit of shame or remorse and there will always be a seat for you at the tables of the Sunday Morning News Shows. (See McCain, John and Lieberman, Joe for further examples).
As long as I'm at it, did anyone else notice that Colin Powell's son, who was the head of the FCC under George W Bush has now taken a job at the head of the largest and richest lobbying firms representing the Cable Television Industry? What are the chances that he was auditioning for this job when he was making cable TV policy at the FCC? These fuckers will destroy our world, utterly.
You are welcome on my lawn.
While you may have a point, that hardly works as an argument against such reactors being built in France, say, or China (both of whom have nuclear bombs, and plenty of nuclear reactors of various designs).
I doubt many people would say that the US can't build a type of reactor for fear of it allowing them to get nuclear bombs...
Holy shit, does anyone read anymore? The battery backup systems were flooded, because at last some of them were in the basement.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Thorium reactors anyone?
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/
The extreme environmentalists only have a problem with the waste disposal - the fact that it takes 10,000 years or more for it become safe. If these new reactors will actually use nuclear fuel until it's about as radioactive as any other natural source, the "extreme" environmentalists will be behind it 100%.
No they won't. Even if the radioactive materials are rendered into lead, they'll complain that:
The *Extreme* environmentalists will also complain that:
ah, wrong connectors so send the generators back and run in circles try something else? WTF, they can't cut the cables and weld or clamp the wiring together?
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Did you even bother to look at the travelling wave reactor info? Did you just hear the word "fast" or breeder and stop?
It's designed to make proliferation nearly impossible. That's a big reason why Gates is interested.
It only generates the fissile fuel in a narrow strip where the reaction is going on, and then burns it up. In front of the reaction wave, no plutonium. Behind the wave, maybe some traces left. In the wave, it's an active reaction. That's a touch difficult to turn into a bomb.
Free standing, self contained, powers it's own cooling system. At the first sign of trouble, it launches itself into space. I think it could work.
That's not entirely true.
For example. Amory Lovins, one of the notables of the anti-nuclear movement was asked in an interview what he thought of a truly cheap clean energy source. He said it would be a disaster. Why? Because he believes that whenever humans are given concentrated sources of power, they use it to destroy nature. Thus humans need to be limited to diffuse and limited sources of energy.
Quite often the waste and radiation questions are arguments used against nuclear power, when some of the motivation would have problems with any concentrated source of energy.
Needless to say, I disagree with that viewpoint, but it is one that can be argued and is not totally without merit.
Worst case scenario it levels the playing field?
That's the best case scenario. Medium case scenario: a young punk with a shiny new gun challenges the grizzled gunslinger to a duel. Almost-worst case: Chernobyl boy poops in the classroom, and it's diarrhea, and it gets all over the place! Worst case: a young punk with a shiny new gun assassinates the grizzled gunslinger by shooting him while he sleeps, then goes around shooting anyone he pleases until he's brought down by the schoolmarm with a shotgun.
You guys do read Slashdot, right?
story
Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do. (Isaac Asimov)
Wouldn't it be better to not build nuclear plants in earthquake prone areas?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Should my investments eventually allow me to live on the water. I've seen guys watercool their PCs with their swimming pool as the heat exchanger, why not the ocean?
But this tsunami thing does have me rethinking the "live right on the water" plan.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
The batteries got flooded, not damaged by the earthquake. The power cable would be yet more redundancy.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
The tsunami did. And I didn't say just remote power via cable. I said battery backup power not below sea level that can be flooded.
No solution is perfect - wind power has killed more people than nuke power - but the evidence suggests that had the power of the Japanese reactors been protected from water, NOT earthquake, these nuclear incidents might have been averted.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor
energyfromthorium.com
Educate yourself.
As long as we have Jimmy Carter around, I'm not worried bout no meltdowns.
THORIUM is the answer. You just aren't asking the right question.
"On Dec. 12, 1952, the NRX reactor at Atomic Energy of Canada’s Chalk River Laboratories suffered a partial meltdown. There was an explosion and millions of litres of radioactive water ended up in the reactor building’s basement. The crucial reactor’s core was no longer usable. With the Cold War then in full swing, and considering this was one of the first nuclear accidents in the West, the Americans took a great interest in the cleanup. Mr. Carter was a young U.S. Navy officer based in Schenectady, New York, who was working closely with Admiral Hyman Rickover on the nuclear propulsion system for the Sea Wolf submarine. He was quickly ordered to Chalk River, joining other Canadian and American service personnel. “I was in charge of building the second atomic submarine and that is why I went up there,” said Mr. Carter. “There were 23 of us and I was in charge. I took my crew up there on the train.” Once his turn came, Mr. Carter, wearing white protective clothes that probably, by today’s standards, provided little if any protection from the surging radiation levels, was lowered into the reactor core for less than 90 seconds."
http://ottawariverkeeper.ca/news/when_jimmy_carter_faced_radioactivity_head_on/
Other reactors such as the AP1000 which are planned on being built in China and the US have passive cooling. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000#Passive_Core_Cooling_System
Ignoring paranoia over weapon potential. And ignoring safety to a large degree, and even semi-ignoring nuclear waste to a degree, what is the most efficient/cheapest/most power giving nuclear reactor there is with current tech?
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
Do you often fantasize about extreme environmentalists? Could you share more of what happens in those fantasies? I mean, get to the good stuff, this part's boring.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
If I were a nuclear engineer, I would start thinking about an exit strategy from the field. If I were a nuclear engineering student or a wanna-be, I'd switch majors. If I were investing in a nuclear reactor, I'd sell my shares.
Why? The truth is, a minor dose of radiation doesn't increase your risk of dying any worse than a bad sunburn. Ever had your skin burned so bad you had some blisters and/or peeling? Congrats, you just may die from melanoma. The UV radiation is not significantly different than gamma rays in the ultimate effect it has on living tissue.
And perhaps a few hundred people will die at most in the long, long term from this disaster. No more than killed by coal pollution and coal mining accidents.
But none of that matters. The Japanese have a sterling reputation for good engineering and adherence to standards : if they can't keep the nuclear demon under control, who can? Just like 3 mile island put a halt to new generators in the U.S. for 30 years, this disaster will stop new plant worldwide for the next 30 years.
It's time to stop wasting money on nuclear and spend it on something the public will accept - massive amounts of solar and wind, backed up with massive amounts of storage. Truth is, in the long term it'll probably cost more to do it this way - but it's still better than throwing more money down the nuclear rathole when public pressure will stop almost all new plants from ever being built
The BATTERIES failed because they were flooded by the tsunami. Not because of the earthquake.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Is put the damn batteries on the roof, instead of in the basement. That's 1 hull, not 1000.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
From what information is available it appears that the Fukushima plant changed to Mox (partial plutonium, "as a way to get rid of "surplus" weapons grade Pu) rods last year( and according to the EE times it was amidst protests from locals including the Mayor.. http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4214120/Plutonium--fuel-rod-reactions-stoke-nuclear-tensions?pageNumber=0 ), I am curious if anyone here knows if the plant was sufficiently upgraded to handle the higher neutron absorption and lower thermal conductivity of using plutonium in a reactor that was designed for uranium. At the least one would figure that it would need more control rods. Given the massive plume of Xe-133 ( a neutron absorber ) released 3-20/21-2011( http://tinyurl.com/4s4z6uz , go the bottom of the page) one has to wonder if part of the problem stemmed from all the cascading disasters and then a dearth of control rods ... It may explain why the boric acid had utility at teh beginning
Perhaps simply not putting "surplus" weapons grade plutoniun mox into older reactor cores located on fault lines and then crossing ones fingers is something that could be considered forward thinking technology
The Physicians for Social Responsibility has a tagline of "United States Affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War". Which raises serious questions about their credibility.
Yes indeed. Any person or group opposed to nuclear war has enormous credibility; at least regarding nuclear war. Anyone who favors or is neutral to nuclear war has serious credibility problems.
Isn't Nathan Myhrvold the guy who wrote the latest food pornstravaganza, Modernist Cuisine?
Thorium energy amplifiers? Turn off the proton beam and the thing shuts down because it's subcritical.
So far all the comments from the pro nuclear crowd have been something along these lines of: Step1: Build safer reactor Step2: ??? Step3: Profit I used to be in-favor of nuclear power. But seeing how big this screw up is I am not so sure. here are some ideas that may help: 1:all current designs should be phased out in 5 to 10 years 2.All new plants should be lead cooled. 3.There should be no radioactive or toxic materials at high pressure. 4:All heat exchangers should be robust and the less radioactive side should be at higher pressure 5. use thorium 6. The backup scram system should be foolproof by using melt plugs. (If the reactor gets hot enough a structural component fails and inserts emergency control rods or perhaps the core structure melts and fuel components are no longer in a critical configuration.) 7. To dissipate heat from the delayed reaction after scramming, another melt plug is used that allows some of the coolant do drain onto an emergency heat exchanger attached to a pool of water outside. These two safety features are so robust the only way of sabotaging them is to go scuba diving in molten irradiated lead. 8.The entire contraption should be able to be transported on a barge to be encased in concrete and dumped in the middle of the pacific ocean if anything goes wrong.
No matter what kind of failsave systems you design into it, something unexpected will always go wrong.
Just think of it. The type of reactor advertised here is meant to be put into residential areas. Imagine some idiot trying to cut it open or running his oversized SUV into it. Imagine the truck transporting the spent fuel having an accident.
The point is, of course you could potentially find ways to deal with those problems, but doing so is expensive and will probably move the cost beyond solar/wind plus storage. In Germany for example even though nuclear plants really aren't on top notch security, the businesses are already heavily subsidized. For example they don't need to pay for spent fuel disposal.
their reactors have less errors than their website. Broken links, video with sound so low you can't hear it... Where is the QA??? Oh that's right they are associated with Microsloth.
WTF, they can't cut the cables and weld or clamp the wiring together?
Good point. I'm sure they didn't think of that. Pity Locutus wasn't there to explain it to them.
We're talking about tens of megawatts of thermal cooling required. This isn't exactly off-the-shelf hardware.
Hands up all those that want a nuclear breeder reactor in, say, Iran, or Afghanistan, or ... get the picture?
So don't build one there. Or build one of the ones that breeds Pu-240 which will "contaminate" any Pu-239 and prevent it from being used in a weapon.
Candu reactors still have the spent fuel problem, but they have two passive systems that shut down the reactor in the event of a power failure.
The first is a bunch of control rods positioned above the reactor and held in place by an electromagnet. If the power fails, the magnet stops working and gravity drops the rods into the core.
The second measure also relies on electromagnets. Nitrogen is kept under pressure behind magnetically controlled valves. If power fails, the valves let go and the nitrogen forces neutron-hungry gadolinium into the core.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Jimmy carter was an Engineer,
Presidents have been lawers ever since
See the wikipedia on fast breeder reactors, and note that the sodium exchange concept appears to result that Thorium can indeed result in Plutonium if so desired. The designs they are communicating leave out a lot of details. I hope they don't use Windows. Somebody will write a virus, Blue Screen of Meltdown. How is this design moderated and or shut-down ? ...heh, otherwise...
Me: vegan, no car, mid-40's, computer geek, Buddhist, atheist, totally love nuke power, still hoping for better but realistic. Seriously, why assume the lowest common denominator has any bearing on what will actually happen? Or are you trying to demonstrate that straw men make better fuel?
-- thinkyhead software and media
Unfortunately the "environmentalist holding up the progress" of Nuclear power isn't true.
It is disingenuous to reduce the very sophisticated web of VERY serious issues that nuclear power must deal with to be some type of environmentalist conspiracy. There are very REAL technical, political, social, environmental, proliferation and logistical problems that nuclear power has - no other power source comes close to having these issues.
Fundamentally, nuclear is impossible to make safe. It is a reliability problem. How many 9's can you build into trying to make it fail safe, and at what cost? You can't make it to 100% safe, no system can. Yet the risks of failure are enormous. A wind turbine fails, its not a big problem... No other power facility has 100MW-1GW of heat being generated, that when you turn it off, essentially stays-on for weeks still producing heat. It is a huge fail-safe problem. It is easy to think after the fact, that they shouldn't have had generators in a basement - fact is there are millions of interdependent issues that can cause it fail, and they all can't be planned for.
RIght now the statistics are very bad, 500 plants in the world, 4-5 major disasters in 50 years, and dozens of near misses, 100s of serious mishaps. You can come up with better systems, but the inherent problems are fundamental and aren't going away.
Weld the cables? Are you insane? Those things must cost thousands of dollars.
It's pretty clear they didn't have people with the right skills on scene and nobody was willing to take the initiative and improvise.
To paraphrase: If you make breeder reactors illegal only the terrorists will have a steady supply of weapons grade plutonium
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
Thank you. That was my feeling as well, but I like the way you voiced it :-)
Insert
Engineering get better through failure. This is why cars, airplanes, household electricity, etc. are safe. Engineers do the best they can with the existing experience base, and then see what happens. Over a long enough period of time, and enough failures, safe and cost effective results can be produced.
How many Level 5 nuclear events will it take to achieve an acceptable level of safety? The only way to answer this question is to keep on building real world nuclear reactors and see what happens. After this event I am not very comfortable with that answer.
Most of the pro-nuclear support here is really a form of Technocracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy. The short version is "if you just let the technical types make all the important decisions then we wouldn't have all these problems, and things would run well."
Talking about the Fukushima situation, this takes the form "if they just had a better emergency backup" or "use a pebble bed reactor" or "thorium" or some other technical solution. Those are simplistic answers to complex system problems. If it was that easy then the Fukushima system would not have failed, because a cost effective backup power system able to withstand the actual tsunami could have been build.
Japan is the one place in the world a tsunami should not have had this consequence. They have earthquakes and tsunamis, they have a very sophisticated technical society, and a great fear of the bad effects of nuclear radiation. But they failed.
The failure was not a technical problem, it was a system problem. With all the planning and prevention measures, they did not see the result of a combination of failures at the system level. This is exactly the kind of problem that is easy to see after it happens, but is hard to predict before it occurs. You cannot plan your way out of a problem you cannot see. This is where hard lessons are learned through painful real world experience.
At this point, we might be a lot better off putting resources towards other power sources then nuclear. If we build wind farms, harvest ocean power, or build large solar power plants we will also experience serious failures, but we won't be faced with problems that will last for tens of thousands of years. We will just take our bad experiences and make things better one failure at a time.
Why is Snark Required?
Because you're not the guy that gets to influence politicians and be quoted in the media... that all happens to the other guy...
Right, because a reactor designed by GE will include control systems from their fiercest competitor, Siemens.
GE management would probably rather have a fuel rod for breakfast and wash it down with coffee brewed with reactor coolant before that happens.
Got any other good jokes?
I am sorry, but I don't buy this, and have not bought this since I first heard it, at least as the complete story. Nobody could hot wire this ? Different generators could not be found ? Different plugs could not be found or made, anywhere on the planet ? The only solution is to bring in a 1 km + extension cord from the grid a week later?
There is something here that we are not being told. We'll find it out, and it will probably be pretty embarrassing for someone, in 6 months to a year or so.
ah, wrong connectors so send the generators back and run in circles try something else? WTF, they can't cut the cables and weld or clamp the wiring together?
LoB
That part of the story stinks, no absolutely reeks, of journalistic simplification and talking down to the audience. I'm fairly certain when the whole story comes out, it'll be that they shipped a gen waaaay too small, or a single phase gen to run a three phase motor, or a 60 Hz gen to run a 50 Hz motor, etc.
VFDs are a whole nother exciting topic, if the motor had one, where theoretically you could have a situation where the supply cannot run the VFD safely (voltage too high, whatever) even if the motor could be trivially rewired to handle it. I'm guessing not an issue at a nuke site, but....
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Another reason to move forward in the world and go from old to newer tech., I hate people that do not want to change over from older models....you get stuck with these situations....the US powergrid is in the same boat too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalk_River_Laboratories#2008_radioactive_leakage
Happened again more recently. I remember the world was all pissed off because of an isotope shortage for medical scanners.
My first reaction was, "holy crap that nuclear plant is HOW old?"
If these isotopes are so vital and valuable why don't we (or somebody) build another one? The only thing I can think of is its being subsidized below cost, so there is no incentive for any country to make another.
Well, what about Cold Fusion reactors??
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/mar/17/nuclear-future-beyond-japan/
http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_miljo/energi/article3108242.ece
Rossi and Defcalion Technologies are currently constructing 1MW fusion reactor in Greece.
They say it will be ready in October this year and production of 20kW market ready devices should start in 2012.
New factory in Xanthi (100mln euros investment) is expected to manufacture 300.000 such devices per year:
http://translate.google.pl/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=pl&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=el&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.energypress.gr%2Fportal%2Fresource%2FcontentObject%2Fid%2Fe7cf318d-06b8-414a-8183-54af3baf5897
Cost of 1kWh energy production is expected to be within US cent range.
Canada uses a Heavy Water reactor that seems to be fairly fail safe as the Heavy Water is required to sustain the reaction. If the reactor overheats, the Heavy Water in theory would boil off and that would effectively stop the reaction. Last I recall thou, the biggest problem was that the CANDU reactors are very expensive but they are very safe.
Yo dawg, I heard you like reactors, so I put a reactor in your reactor so you can react while you react to your reactor!
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Eleventy dozen messages on the first page, NOT A ONE talking about the subject at hand, to whit - the proposed traveling wave reactor design. But plenty of kibitzing about situation in Japan, and detailed misnalysis of various other reactor designs and plain non-nuclear power generation solutions. I guess it was my mistake to not read with a +3 threshold and expect meaningful discourse.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Loss of power is a solved problem. The Westinghouse AP1000 reactor is a current design that is passively cooled, no external power necessary. I'm not sure about the spent fuel pools, but the reactor itself is entirely passively cooled and there are several of them already in existence.
A "traveling wave reactor" sounds like a neat idea, but the summary makes it sound like nobody's ever thought about a loss of external power event. We have to remember that the Fukushima plants were built in the 70's, they are old designs. Newer designs take that into account. The only point I'm trying to make here is that current generation designs have already taken loss of external power into account.
CANDU's leak 1% of their tritium, most of the 7 bq/L contamination in Lake Ontario is from CANDU reactors. In accidents and incidents, they leak even more.
no thanks, CAN"T DU
The Japan nuclear accident was a combination of a VERY old reactor with an EXTREME EARTHQUAKE.
All reactors dating back to 1960/70s designs are much less safe than today's reactors.
Modern Advanced Heavy Water reactors are essentially immune from such accidents, since they use sub-critical fission fuel, that depends on heavy water (deuterium) to actually produce fission. In an emergency, just releasing the heavy water and inserting regular water into the reactor stops fission and prevents overheating.
The reason is regular water absorbs neutrons, while heavy water don't, by not absorbing neutrons, heavy water reactors can sustain fission with much less radioactive nuclear fuel.
What should happen is a worldwide ban on old reactors on earthquake prone regions. But even heavy water reactor designs from the last 1990/early 2000s in Fukushima would not have caused the radioactivity release that happened there.
No, they're not at all immune to meltdown from decay heat.
Stopping the fission reaction worked just fine in Japan, but doing that alone does nothing about all the MW of decay heat that cannot be shut off by any process known to man - the fuel rods have to be cooled for days or weeks.
Any modern design should be designed with the question of "What happens if you cut the main coolant feed line and turn off all power (including emergency power) to the reactor?" in mind. Even in this scenario, the radioactive mess should be confined to the interior of the reactor building.
Taking orders for delivery in 2013 http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/
I'm sure there's just a little hyperbole here. The 'connectors didn't match' probably because the voltages / amps / phase didn't match.
If the generator is 480 / 3 phase, but the industrial input is (say) 380 / 3 phase, all bets are off.
Please make more sense. The same what?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Jimmy carter was an Engineer,
Presidents have been lawers ever since
I am pretty sure that only Clinton and Obama were Lawyers while Reagan, Bush and George W. were not.
No matter where you go, there you are.
that would make more sense.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
but wouldn't they know what was required to connect up external power? I know there's probably no sticker/label but it sounds like there were not people there who know what to do and what was required. Probably just people who knew what knobs to turn when the dial went to position X so it then moved to position Y. They are very old reactors and from what I heard, the company running it even falsified testing and maintenance records so I wouldn't doubt they skimped on keeping properly skilled Sr Engineers around who knew many of the systems. sad and I doubt I would have been much help.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Reagan wasn't a lawyer.
Do you often fantasize about extreme environmentalists? Could you share more of what happens in those fantasies? I mean, get to the good stuff, this part's boring.
Sure, here's one of my favorites:
...awesome!
Mother Gaea is lounging by the pool, reading a smutty novel. The camera pans over a few mountains and valleys in slow-motion, then focuses on her face. The doorbell rings, and her eyes flash in alarm. She hurriedly dresses herself (oh, yeah, she was naked), and rushes to the door. It's the pizza guy.
"Extra Sausage, right?", the delivery boy said.
"It should be cheese."
"Well, yeah, it's cheese, but.."
"Here's a twenty, keep the change.", Mother Gaea said as she closed the door on a surprised pizza guy.
Cut to outside the door. "What kind of porno fantasy is this?"
Did I mention he was a robot? 'Cuz that's kinda important. Yeah, a robot
You sound just like my fave web comic, Dinosaur Comics. Sexy times!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton