NRC Approves New Nuclear Reactor Design

hrvatska writes "The NY Times has an article about the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval of the design of Westinghouse's AP1000 reactor for the U.S., clearing the way for two American utilities to continue the construction of projects in South Carolina and Georgia. The last time a nuclear power plant in the U.S. entered service was 1996. The AP1000 was discussed on Slashdot a few years ago."

Comments

but

[masternerdguy]

And ignorant noobs will still think that nuclear power is unsafe.

Re:but

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear power is just as safe as any other electricity.

It's the heat source that is the problem.

Re:but

[MightyYar]

It only needs to be as safe as automobiles, and it far exceeds that.

Good, good.

[CnlPepper]

Good. Glad to see a the US pushing ahead with a new generation of nuclear reactors. I hope we remain committed in the UK.

Re:Good, good.

[thermopile]

Very glad to see the US NRC, despite all of its recent antics, was still able to approve a new reactor design.

If you haven't seen, the scale of construction on these projects is mind-bogglingly large. See here for some juicy pictures of the site under construction. It's just astounding.

Re:Good, good.

[Oakey]

Did you know Westinghouse was a British owned company sold by Gordon Brown for £2.9billion? Another spectacular own goal there.

Re:Good, good.

[CnlPepper]

Great pictures, they remind me of the ITER construction site. I love heavy engineering.

Re:Good, good.

[The Askylist]

But Gordon saved the world!

He told us so when he pissed all our taxes away on bailing out his favourite Scottish bankers, so it must be true.

And he got us out of gold when the going was good, too.

Still, the Lesser Spotted Moron hasn't been seen much in Parliament lately, what with all his charity work...

Re:Good, good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Electrifying

Re:Good, good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Westinghouse's assets were initially valued at $1.8 billion and eventually sold a year later for $5.4 billion by BNFL. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

As for the rest, piss off to the Daily Fail comments sections to troll. You'll feel more at home there.

Re:Good, good.

[Amtrak]

It was a United States company first but when Westinghouse bought CBS they decided that making media instead of building things was more profitable and sold off all there industrial divisions. No wonder us Americans are in decline! Why build things like power plants, roads, bridges, buildings, or even tvs when we can just make media content and make the our government indefinably extend copy write? No large scale investment in infrastructure and endless profit looks like a win. Now let me go finish ordering that steel from China so I can replace that bridge that just fell.

Re:Good, good.

[Oakey]

But they were also on the verge of closing a £60billion deal. From what I understand they've been in profit about £3billion each year since.

Ah china, the new stimulator

[Anonymous Coward]

First you guys had to beat russia to the table in space. Now is it beating china in energy? God i hope so.

Progress

[2.7182]

What we've seen since the technological advances after Chernobyl is that nuclear power is 100% safe. Anyone who thinks otherwise must be a Jane Fonda fan. I dare you to name just a single nuclear accident in the last few years.

Re:Progress

[CnlPepper]

Ignoring the massive earthquake, tsunami and the ancient reactor design of course...

Re:Progress

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a spill at the local TVA nuclear plant.

Of course, it was dwarfed by the Ash spill by the same company, so...

Re:Progress

[Anonymous Coward]

Is an even older plant than Chernobyl.

Re:Progress

[0WaitState]

In other words, ignoring things that happen in the real world, and that even a first-world country like Japan can't get around human nature (laziness) and business imperatives to cut corners and defer upgrades.

Nuclear power would be great, if we didn't have to depend on humans to run it.

Re:Progress

[CnlPepper]

I think you missed the sarcasm.

Re:Progress

[Anonymous Coward]

You're one of those idiots who don't understand how nuclear power works, why argue against it? The passive designs do not even require any humans to be present for them to be safe.

Re:Progress

[CnlPepper]

Nuclear power would be great if humans didn't have irrational fear about things there don't bother to understand. If reactor construction had not stopped after the Chernobyl disaster, very few of these old, crappy designs would still be in use. Most of the problems in the modern nuclear industry are related to ancient systems that have had their lives extended due to the lack of replacement plant.

Re:Progress

[CnlPepper]

wow so many typos today... there = they.

Re:Progress

[Anonymous Coward]

What else there is to say, besides the fact that people are lazy, irrational, and stupid?

Re:Progress

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, most reactor construction in the United States stopped in the 70's, after Three Mile Island. So most functioning reactors in the USA are at least 40 years old, rather than just 25 years old.

Wait. That's worse!

Still, at least plants in the United States reprocess the fuel that is used. Oh, no, wait. Damn.

Re:Progress

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, when they built those "ancient" systems they promised us those were safe too.
But then, concentrating material that will remain highly radioactive for longer than any empire in history has stood, and for longer than any region of the world has gone without war, could never be safe when you stop and think about it.

Re:Progress

[AK Marc]

The passive designs have been proven unsafe as well (they age into unstable configurations, even - or especially - the pebble bed ones). The only "safe" passive ones are the ones used in satellites where no runaway fission is even possible because it is relying on the native radioactivity, and not some amplified chain reaction.

Re:Progress

[CnlPepper]

indeed :P

Re:Progress

[Anonymous Coward]

The real problem with nuclear power is something everyone understands -- namely, people's ability for sloth and cheapness. A properly constructed and maintained nuclear reactor can be exceedingly safe. The problem is, those that run said plants will cut corners everywhere -- construction, maintenance, etc. -- and when they do, the consequences can be huge.

Re:Progress

[tantaliz3]

Thing is...people, as a general rule, think they already understand everything ...because the media keeps them informed.

Re:Progress

[Anonymous Coward]

SUPO was an aqueous solution reactor tested at los alomos some time ago, although not for very long. it appeared to be self stabilizing, the closer it got to critical, the more bubbles were formed in the solution, which caused it to move further from critical.

Re:Progress

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear power would be great if humans didn't have irrational fear about things they don't bother to understand.

Fear of the unknown kept humans alive for hundreds of thousands of years, so it's no wonder it's taking us a while to adapt. At least here in the western world we're starting to get over it bit by bit, as evidenced by the fall of religion.

Re:Progress

[mug funky]

hence the engineers creating designs which are redundant enough to survive mediocrity.

now hopefully they're built to spec... or at least halfway to spec.

Re:Progress

[a_hanso]

+1. If a building collapses due to an earthquake, it's not a civil engineering disaster, it's a NATURAL DISASTER. But somehow, no matter what hits a nuclear plant (be it an earthquake or an asteroid), its still a nuclear disaster.

Re:Progress

[mirix]

Naturally engineers never make mistakes. ;-)

Re:Progress

[Anonymous Coward]

There exist no reactor in the western world that is capable of having runaway, "amplified" chain reaction. If you have done any research, you would realize that positive void coefficient reactors are even illegal in the US and almost no one builds them. (CANDU is the only one that has a small positive void coefficient mostly due to Pu during course of running the reactor, but that is accounted for).

The problem is ALL reactors produce enough power that they can cause the reactor to melt.

Fukushima reactors were OFF. There was NO nuclear reaction. They melted because of something called daughter elements produced in fission. I guess one can say, the meltdown occurred precisely due to the scenario you are talking about

The only "safe" passive ones are the ones used in satellites where no runaway fission is even possible because it is relying on the native radioactivity

DING DING! That is exactly why Fukushima had a melt down.

I also question your understanding of AP-1000. The design is clearly passively safe. It requires no moving parts to maintain cooling of the native radioactivity of the daughter elements.

Re:Progress

[hey!]

While I agree the passive cooling designs are promising, I think some people are counting their proverbial chickens before the designs are hatched. I think nuclear power can be done right, but that starts with getting a few of these promising designs built and thoroughly tested. It's not enough to get to the stage where you don't see a way the design can fail. *All* designs pass through that stage, then experience teaches us what we missed.

IIRC, it's a stretch to call the Ap1000 emergency cooling system "passive". I'd call it "automated". That's good, of course- possibly good enough - but not as good as a truly passively safe system would be,all else being equal.

Re:Progress

[sonamchauhan]

http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2587564&cid=38467290

Re:Progress

[Anonymous Coward]

What's funny is how "Greenpeace whackos" shrug off alarmist bird flu stories and say "Comes with the territory..."

But when it comes to radioactivity and over hyped alarmist radiation stories, their assholes pucker up and they're are running for their radiation fallout bunkers and begging for iodine pills on ebay, having their Geiger counters continuously on afraid that 2 atoms of stray cesium will kill them.

Re:Progress

[OrigamiMarie]

I don't bother with seasonal vaccines, I know that hand sanitizer makes my skin dry and thus more susceptible to invasion by microbes, and aerosols bother most people around me. But I'm also mostly a read-only user of Slashdot, so my opinions don't factor in much.

Vaccines for one-time, airborn illnesses that kill lots of people and where we might erradicate the disease? Yes, everybody should get them.

Re:Progress

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy WOOSH, Batman!

Re:Progress

[Jeremi]

But somehow, no matter what hits a nuclear plant (be it an earthquake or an asteroid), its still a nuclear disaster.

There's no "somehow" about it. If radioactivity escapes from the plant and causes health problems (or evacuations to avoid health problems) then it is a nuclear disaster because of the problems caused by the escaped nuclear material.

If an earthquake damages a nuclear plant but no radioactivity is released, it is not called a nuclear disaster because it isn't one.

Re:Progress

[antifoidulus]

If reactor construction had not stopped after the Chernobyl disaster, very few of these old, crappy designs would still be in use

Except for reactor construction did not stop after Chernobyl, a significant amount of reactors were built in Japan, but that didn't stop them from using the much older Fukushima plant.... One of the key issues with nuclear power that very few people seem to address is essentially the concentration of power generation that nuclear entails. For example the Fukushima plants provided almost 10% of the electricity consumed in the entire Tohoku region. Before the earthquake there was significant resistance towards transitioning away from the plant because of potential disruptions to factories, businesses, and homes. This dependence on one facility makes it incredibly difficult to shut down nuclear power plants, even if there may be valid safety concerns.

Now compare this to say coal fired plants. In the USA, there are 1436 plants providing 42% of the power, i.e. each plant provides an average of .03% of the country's total electricity use. On the other hand, there are 65 nuclear power plants providing 19.6% of the total electric power generation, or .287% of total electricity generation per plant, roughly 10x that of coal, and if you look at the regions that have nuclear power, I'm sure the % of total output for the region per plant is much, much higher.

In order for nuclear power to be practical, we have to come up with ways of seamlessly making up for this lost output in case a plant has to undergo an emergency shutdown. In Japan, the transition was not seamless, in Ibaraki prefecture where I live there were rolling blackouts, coupled with severe power rationing measures(it ironically helped that the earthquake put a lot of the factories out of commission for a while, significantly reducing power demand), and a mad dash to get coal and oil into the region ASAP so those plants could increase production. There has to be a better way.

Re:Progress

[AK Marc]

Fukushima reactors were OFF. There was NO nuclear reaction.

Then what generated the heat that caused the meltdown?

If you have done any research, you would realize that positive void coefficient reactors are even illegal in the US and almost no one builds them.

That's irrelevant to what I said. Every "normal" reactor can meltdown. Just withdraw all the control rods, and it'll glow. A reactor (just talking normal ones, commissioned for public power generation, not theoretical or research only), even with negative void coefficient, is still inherently unstable and requires control rods, no matter what level of coolant is present.

It requires no moving parts to maintain cooling of the native radioactivity of the daughter elements.

It still has a cooling system with moving parts. Why?

Re:Progress

[antifoidulus]

I guess I should add that in the US, it might not be *as* bad as there is a huge, interconnected grid available to draw power from, whereas in Fukushima they did not have that luxury as for historical reasons very little power could be sent from the Kansai, Kyushu, and Shikoku regions and for geographical reasons(the center of Honshu is incredibly mountainous) very little power could be sent from the Sea of Japan area to Fukushima as there aren't a lot of power lines that link the two areas.

Re:Progress

[MightyYar]

Then what generated the heat that caused the meltdown?

Radioactive decay, not fission.

It still has a cooling system with moving parts. Why?

I am by no means a nuclear expert, but my understanding is that:
(a) the passive cooling is for when the reactor is shut down but cooling off (think Fukushima), not while operating
(b) normally you need to move the heat over to the turbines in the most efficient way possible

Re:Progress

[CnlPepper]

I'm astonished you compared averages and attempted to use this to backup your argument. Go and have a look at the distribution of power produced by each of those coal plants. You'll see that the majority of the 42% comes from a few large scale coal plants, equivalent in scale to the nuclear installations.

Re:Progress

[Anonymous Coward]

But they *have* proven *relatively* safe. It depends on the benchmark you judge "relative" to.

Fossil fuels kill people all the time. Coal miners, for example. The men on the Deep Water Horizons drilling platform. They sicken and kill people every single day through pollution. And if you believe in the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change, it is likely they damage ecosystems on a global scale and (statistically speaking) kill people through extreme weather events.

The problem is that the killing, sickening and destroying fossil fuels do aren't visibly tied to fossil fuel use. We know these things happen in an intellectual way, but we don't viscerally associate them with flicking on the power switch and burning a little more coal in a plant twenty miles away.

The problem with nuclear power is that its risks are at the opposite extreme. Nuclear disasters are exceedingly rare, so our assessment of risks is based on assumptions built on very little practical experience with nuclear disasters. We don't really have a good basis for judging the risks of having, say, ten times as many nuclear power plants as we do now. The nuclear economy scenario is full of situations where an error in some assumption has non-linear effects on the probability of outcome. For example if you assume the height of a once-in-a-century tsunami is six meters, but in fact it is twelve, you don't *double* the probability of an accident. You transform what is for practical purposes a statistical impossibility into a near-certain disaster.

So what's the rational thing to do? I think it is to move away from a fossil fuel economy and *toward* more diverse energy sources in which nuclear power will be a key part. But I wouldn't go on a crash course to try to solve all our problems in a decade by building as many nuclear plants as we can. The almost certain result of that will be ending up with lots of white elephant designs which proved to be more problematic than we'd hoped. A measured increase allows us to gain experience with designs, and to develop approaches to problems like decommissioning, nuclear waste and, for certain designs, nuclear proliferation. It also provides space for other technologies to take larger roles in the energy economy, spreading our risk over many sources and thus limiting our exposure to problems with any one. Getting ten percent of our energy needs from biomass might be very helpful to us as oil becomes more costly; trying to get 20% might have disastrous effects.

Re:Progress

[a_hanso]

Agreed. But what we should have taken away from the recent disaster is not how inherently unsafe nuclear power is, but how destructive the double-whammy tsunami was and that nuclear plants built in areas at risk of such disasters should have more fault tolerant designs.

If a disaster causes a technology to fail, the rational course of action is to make it disaster-tolerant; not to abandon it outright.

Re:Progress

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd call it "automated"

That's the first I've seen anyone characterize gravity as automation.

Since you appear to believe you have some credibility defining these terms, we should compare your thinking to those that actually do. To a nuclear engineer designing an emergency cooling system passive means no pumps, no power and no control. By that criteria the AP600/1000 designs are passive.

Everything about this emergency cooling system design relies on the integrity of containment. Containment, in this case, is a large free standing steel shell (as opposed to stressed concrete.) Threats to this vessel include kinetic impingement and corrosion. The former was the cause of a recent AP1000 design modification the NRC insisted on, based on a hypothesized attack involving an airliner. The latter can only be addressed through diligent and costly surveillance of the vessel throughout its lifetime ... just the sort of thing that tends not to survive bean counters.

The point is that there are plenty of legitimate criticisms that one can make of the design. Kibitzing about your peculiar notion of 'passive' isn't a very good one.

I think it is worth noting that the AP1000 design would have prevented core damage and radioactive release at Fukushima. The AP1000 design is exactly suited to the 'blackout' conditions that prevailed in Japan.

Re:Progress

[couchslug]

And dispersing poisons we can not control at all is preferable?

All our energy choices including "none" are paid for in dead and maimed.

We also kill tens of thousands of people each year driving to work. It's a perfectly reasonable tradeoff.

Re:Progress

[uncqual]

I've not noticed a lot of Slashdotters indicating that they bath in hand sanitizer or spray Lysol all over the place so I can't comment on that.

However, when the subject of vaccines comes up, I've noticed quite a few Slashdotters do indicate that they trust and even partake of the common ones. (Again, however, I've not noticed that many of these indicate that they take untested vaccines and, indeed, it seems they are usually talking about vaccines that have been approved by the FDA which requires some degree of testing to be done). This position on vaccines seems consistent with not dismissing nuclear power plant just because something "unknown could go wrong" and ignoring the benefits that accrue from both. A pretty standard engineering approach - cost vs. benefit coupled with a realization that there are no 100% guarantees about hardly any aspect of life.

Re:Progress

[joeboomer628]

The real problem with nuclear power is something everyone understands -- namely, people's ability for sloth and cheapness. A properly constructed and maintained nuclear reactor can be exceedingly safe. The problem is, those that run said plants will cut corners everywhere -- construction, maintenance, etc. -- and when they do, the consequences can be huge.

I totally agree, having spent most of my 25 year US Navy career serving aboard nuclear powered submarines I have no problem living in the same ship as those 60's design reactors. The training and quality assurance programs that were required when I was on active duty insured safe operation.

Re:Progress

[Anonymous Coward]

very few of these old, crappy designs would still be in use.

1.Those designs are in no way old on the scale of industry or safety.
2.The statement is false. Studies have shown that just like for "clean coal" opening new plants rarely means closing old ones.

Most of the problems in the modern nuclear industry are related to ancient systems that have had their lives extended due to the lack of replacement plant.

Many "old" nuclear plants operate in areas that don't need the extra energy. The sad fact is that many facilities are still operating simply because of how deep the funding system is built into the government (ie they're too filled with pork for anyone to want to get rid of).

Re:Progress

[AK Marc]

Not being an nuclear engineer, the problem may be that I'm using dictionary definitions of words, as opposed to technical terms.

Radioactive decay, not fission.

The decay was an atom splitting into two smaller atoms and energy, which is fission. From the three dictionaries I looked up, "decay, not fission" is a contradiction, as the decay in question was necessarily *also* fission.

I am by no means a nuclear expert, but my understanding is that: (a) the passive cooling is for when the reactor is shut down but cooling off (think Fukushima), not while operating

The question was of why would fukishima need active cooling when passive cooling is so "easy" to do.

Re:Progress

[godel_56]

I However, when the subject of vaccines comes up, I've noticed quite a few Slashdotters do indicate that they trust and even partake of the common ones. (Again, however, I've not noticed that many of these indicate that they take untested vaccines and, indeed, it seems they are usually talking about vaccines that have been approved by the FDA which requires some degree of testing to be done). This position on vaccines seems consistent with not dismissing nuclear power plant just because something "unknown could go wrong" and ignoring the benefits that accrue from both.

A pretty standard engineering approach - cost vs. benefit coupled with a realization that there are no 100% guarantees about hardly any aspect of life.

So the Vaccines are tested on Slashdotters, proving once again that there are some things that even rats won't do.

Re:Progress

[CnlPepper]

No-one said passive systems were easy, in fact they are quite difficult to design and required modern computational power to produce. That is the stark difference between the old designs and the new designs such as the AP1000 - computing power. We can now model the nuclear, thermal, chemical and structural processes to a degree that was impossible when the first and second generation nuclear designs were produced. This is one of the reasons we can much more confident in the generation III+ reactors.

Re:Progress

[AK Marc]

Computational power can't solve a problem that isn't asked of it, and looking at the problems we've had with nuclear power, the designers and operators modeling things don't have lots of trust at this point. Garbage in garbage out and all that.

Re:Progress

[MJMullinII]

The question was of why would fukishima need active cooling when passive cooling is so "easy" to do.

That's like asking why the Ford Model-T couldn't do 200mph since a modern Ford Mustang can.

The answer is because the Fukishima Reactor wasn't designed to be passively cooled, the AP1000 is.

Re:Progress

[Amyntas]

"I dare you to name just a single nuclear accident in the last few years"
"Fukushima Daiichi?"

I wouldn't call that an accident. One must keep in mind that it was hit by an earthquake and a tsunami. What else would you expect?

If it were an error due to an operator or faulty equipment, then that would be a different story.

Re:Progress

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear power doesn't have to be done as the huge mega plants. They are built as huge reactors because the external costs are so high and don't vary much based on the size of the plant. Thus big plants that generate lots of power to keep those costs low per megawat generated.

The Toshiba 4s design, which is a 4th gen design, is designed to generate 10 MW or 50 MW.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_4S

Re:Progress

[wierd_w]

What I always wondered is why "spent" fuel (really an exotic blend of lighter, but still strongly radioactive materials that cannot sustain catalyzed fission) is glass cast, then buried.

The stuff has a half like of 10 million years? Sounds like a fantastic core for an RTG to me.

Make the glass cast waste able to be extracted from the RTG enclosure by making it modular, so that the core can be retained while the shell is disposed of/replaced when it wears out. The shell would be radically less raiological, and useful energy could be passively extracted from the spent waste, potentially for centuries.

But that would make sense. A large battery of rtgs in a warehouse could power a small city for pennies.

No. Instead we spend billions on fossil fuel instead.

Re:Progress

[rubycodez]

wrong. there are passive *designs* like that, but this AP1000 needs someone to top off the passive cooling water tank within 72 hours of coolant failure, else the reactor is fucked

Re:Progress

[rubycodez]

the passive system of the Ap1000 also depends on someone topping off the water tank within 72 hours of primary coolant failure. if that doesn't happen, guess what happens?

Re:Progress

[Dan541]

Nuclear power would be great, if we didn't have to depend on humans to run it.

Yes, a family of possums would be so much better.

Re:Progress

[rubycodez]

most spent fuel is in storage, pool or cask. It actually *can* sustain fission under the right conditions, and breed more fuel as it does so. That's why we should *not* make long term storage for it, but instead burn "spent fuel" in truly advanced reactors, which will have the benefit of turning it into waste with mere decades rather than millenia of needed isolation time.

Re:Progress

[Anonymous Coward]

For example the Fukushima plants provided almost 10% of the electricity consumed in the entire Tohoku region. Before the earthquake there was significant resistance towards transitioning away from the plant because of potential disruptions to factories, businesses, and homes. This dependence on one facility makes it incredibly difficult to shut down nuclear power plants, even if there may be valid safety concerns.

Now compare this to say coal fired plants. In the USA, there are 1436 plants providing 42% of the power, i.e. each plant provides an average of .03% of the country's total electricity use. On the other hand, there are 65 nuclear power plants providing 19.6% of the total electric power generation, or .287% of total electricity generation per plant, roughly 10x that of coal, and if you look at the regions that have nuclear power, I'm sure the % of total output for the region per plant is much, much higher.

Because in wako kook world efficiency is a bad thing?

Re:Progress

[CAIMLAS]

So what does this have to do with using new, safe(r) reactor designs, exactly?

Better to get them in place ASAP and replace the ancient ones, yes? Or do you propose using coal to blot out the sun, or some alternative (like fascist restriction of power production and use)?

You're like my kids. "I had a meatball with an onion in it once, and I don't like onions, so I'm never going to try anyone's meatballs ever again."

Everything would be better if humans weren't involved. However, things that were obscenely dangerous just a decade ago are ridiculously safe now. They're not just safer because we've regulated mostly everything out of existence, but they're safer because of engineering improvements. Farm machinery is a good example of this: farmers are now frequently fat due to inactivity, having machines do all their work. Tractor cabs are as luxurious as BMWs and Mercendes with heated leather seats and widescreen LCD TVs. "Industrial accidents" become more rare as time goes on not only because fewer people are needed (more efficient) but because things have become ridiculously, ridiculously safe.

When it comes down to it, things are dangerous when humans have to be directly involved. Servers run for decades without being touched. Some vehicles can run a very, very long time without more than having their fluids/filters changed due to good engineering. I imagine large chip fabrication plants are almost entirely automated, because it's safer and more efficient than using humans. These were all engineered well. Modern reactors are designed to not only need human intervention to fail safely; they're designed to fail passively without an auxiliary backup for safety - like safety glass.

Re:Progress

[CAIMLAS]

Unfortunately, they're not designed to survive the idiots in sales, executive, and accounting.

"This isn't needed, we can make another 15% on the project by cutting this. And we can upsell the product as not needing this over here if we just add a pretty ribbon. And then we can retire."

Re:Progress

[Surt]

"I dare you to name just a single nuclear accident in the last few years"
"Fukushima Daiichi?"

I wouldn't call that an accident. One must keep in mind that it was hit by an earthquake and a tsunami. What else would you expect?

If it were an error due to an operator or faulty equipment, then that would be a different story.

If it wasn't an accident, who caused it on purpose?

Re:Progress

[Omniscient Lurker]

Nuclear Engineering (student) here.

>The decay was an atom splitting into two smaller atoms and energy, which is fission.

Fission in the context of engineering refers to the use of neutrons to force atoms to split, not to naturally decaying isotopes.

>The question was of why would fukishima need active cooling when passive cooling is so "easy" to do.

Because it wasn't designed to use passive cooling. Passive cooling requires your reactor to be designed to facilitate it (all gen 3+ are designed like thisâ"I believe the NRC refuses to certify anything that is nonpassive). Passive cooling refers to not requiring power to run the coolant pumps or anything. The AP1000 is designed to using convection of steam inside the containment building to cool the reactor.

Re:Progress

[Anonymous Coward]

The giveaway is that many Slashdotters write code - rats won't even do that (although, a million monkeys...)

Re:Progress

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear disasters are exceedingly rare, so our assessment of risks is based on assumptions built on very little practical experience with nuclear disasters.

Let's have some more disasters to compile statistics.

A measured increase allows us to gain experience with designs

But not too many at once, because we want to learn slowly.

spreading our risk over many sources and thus limiting our exposure to problems with any one.

And 4 massive nuclear disasters per century is an acceptable trade off.

Re:Progress

[AK Marc]

That's like asking why the Ford Model-T couldn't do 200mph since a modern Ford Mustang can.

What's the top speed of the Ford Mustang? 155 or less, right? It's more like asking why the Ford Mustang still being made and sold can't do 150 when there are 30+ year old designs able to do better than that. If you wanted top speed as a consideration, a 1977 Ferrari could be bought for less than a new Ford Mustang and have top speed that's higher. That's what we are talking about now, we have "small cheap car" performance from our nuke plants, when more expensive and better performing ones have been available for 30+ years.

Re:Progress

[Sollord]

If you can't reach a nuclear reactor within 72hours of it's cooling system failing then either the worlds already ended or yeah this is only an issue in anti-nuclear fear monger minds. All reactors are built near bodies of water so at most they'd need 72hours to air lift in a generator and a pump and I'm damn sure a reactors cooling system being down would be top of the priority list and the Air Force can chopper in a pump and generator or if that bad air drop them out of a C130. So outside of global nuclear war I can't see how in 72hours we couldn't mange to refill the tank either using onsite equipment or bringing it to the reactor.

Re:Progress

[Yev000]

irrational fear about things there don't bother to understand

Fearing things we don't understand is how we managed to avoid extinction up until now. Why would that be irrational?

Re:Progress

[HiddenCamper]

Nuclear engineer here. Decay is not Fission. Fission is splitting the atom. Decay is the act of a radioactive atom to reduce itself closer to a stable groundstate. Fission is controllable and is directly related to neutron population, and if we stop neutron production with control rods, fission stops. Decay is not controllable, and happens all the time no matter what until the material reaches a stable ground state. All light water plants, except the AP1000, need active cooling. (The GE ESBWR doesnt need active cooling either, but its design isnt approved or even completed yet). After shutdown the core is still boiling about 600 gpm of water at 1000 pounds pressure (in a BWR). this is due to the radioactive WASTE products decaying. The fuel isn't doing anythign after shutdown, but the waste products are trying to become stable again.

Re:Progress

[HiddenCamper]

It is a passive cooling system, once you activate it. And the activation is automated. Once it is activated, the reactor primary coolant circuit cools to a storage tank. That water boils into steam, then touches the outer wall of the containment, which cools it. The steam condenses and drips down into a collector around the containment and gets funneled back into the water storage tank. On the other side of the containment, the chimney effect will move enough air to keep the containment cooled. For the first 72 hours, water needs to be poured on to help remove heat through evaporation, after that you can keep cooled indefinately with no human interaction. it is truely a passive system.

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[HiddenCamper]

that's not true. after 3 days there the decay heat level has lowered to a point where you dont need the evaporative cooling effect to support passive decay heat removal. the system is only ACCREDITED for 72 hours with no human interaction, however it can do more than 3 days. Additionally if you cant pump water into a non pressurized tank in 3 days you probably should be running a nuclear plant in the first place. ADDITIONALLY this doesnt include all of the non-safety critical systems such as aux feedwater which can run on steam alone and keep the core cooled for several days. (Fukushima Daiichi unit #2 was cooled for 70.2 hours on their steam pump alone)

Re:Progress

[msevior]

The decay was an atom splitting into two smaller atoms and energy, which is fission. From the three dictionaries I looked up, "decay, not fission" is a contradiction, as the decay in question was necessarily *also* fission.

No. The decays in question occur when a neutron within fission product (the nuclei created after the U235) converts into proton together with an electron and a neutrino. Each decay releases around 1 MeV of energy (order of magnitude) as opposed the 200 MeV from the fission process. The processes reduces in intensity in time. Right after a scram the "decay heat" is 7% of the full power of the reactor. After 3 days it reduces to around 0.2% of the original power.

The question was of why would fukishima need active cooling when passive cooling is so "easy" to do.

It was by no means easy to design an economical reactor with the kind of passive safety cooling provided by the AP1000. I can imagine why you think it was.

Re:Progress

[siddesu]

The accident in Fukushima I wasn't caused by the earthquake or the tsunami. It was caused by the inadequate reactor/plant design and by the abysmal handling by TEPCO of the problems that developed as a result of the design inadequacies.

Re:Progress

[msevior]

The reservoir at the top of the AP1000 is used to provide evaporative cooling to the outer shell of the containment structure.
After 3 days the decay heat has reduced to around 0.2% of the original power. At this point convective and radiative cooling of the containment vessel is sufficient to dissipate the heat generated from nuclear decays in the fuel. The water within the containment vessel just circulates within the structure and is driven by the heat of the nuclear fuel. It is never vented.

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[Surt]

Indeed. Number of major nuclear disasters at plants run by humans: 20. Number at plants run by possums: 0.

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[HiddenCamper]

Sattilites use RTGs, not nuclear reactors. And RTG makes use of decay heat and the seebeck effect to generate a voltage difference. Very different from a nuclear reactor. As for nuclear power plants, the chain reaction is not "amplified", it is a chain reaction, nothing more or less. We actually control it using control rods and neutron absorbers. These plants can shutdown in less than 3 seconds, and only once has a plant failed to scram when called upon, and the backup scram system automatically did the job instead.

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[HiddenCamper]

The problem is the NRC notices this stuff. I'm going to take a guess you've never been questioned by the NRC, but I have (nuclear engineer). They get on top of even the smallest hint of bullshit or mistake in logic or even poor quality packages. They would have already known that you are missing a safety system which they REQUIRED you to have and you LEGALLY COMMITED to have and you would have your project stopped and reviewed again which would caost MUCH MORE than 15% to get the project moving forward again. We are told to never ever challenge our NRC commitments or requirements, because the cost of messing up is a LOT more than what you 'could' gain by cutting something.

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[ericloewe]

Radioactive decay implies normal decay. Fission implies a chain reaction. And passive cooling can only cope with the residual heat from decay, not from the chain reaction, which is easily halted (control rods).

Re:Progress

[spacefight]

Parent says "guess what" if you imagine what happens when there is no life around the plant. Imagine there's a war, all personell dead.... Think the unimaginable.

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[spacefight]

Truely passive on the blueprint. If something fails within that passive cooling, human interaction is needed. If no human interaction is possible, what then?

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[flyingfsck]

"who caused it on purpose?" It was an act of God. That is what Gods do. They make stuff and then they destroy it again, just like a small child playing in the mud.

Re:Progress

[Anonymous Coward]

am I the only one considering fukushima not a disaster but a sucess?

one complete core meltdown, one partial core meltdown, and only minimal radiation leaked.

Re:Progress

[msevior]

wrong. there are passive *designs* like that, but this AP1000 needs someone to top off the passive cooling water tank within 72 hours of coolant failure, else the reactor is fucked

Not true. See above posts (#38469106) and (#38469070)

Re:Progress

[msevior]

Well the outer shell of the container vessel would get hotter without the evaporative cooling but by then the decay heat would have subsided to the point where convective and radiative cooling is sufficient to prevent a core melt. See post (#38469106)

Re:Progress

[sempir]

But when it comes to flus and other overhyped alarmist germ stories, their assholes pucker up......

Flus aint that bad....runny nose and a red face!!! Never affected my arsehole though. :(

Re:Progress

[thegarbz]

That is fear mongering if I've ever seen it. Keeping water topped up is amongst the simplest things that can be done in an emergency. Even more so when you have 3 days to plan it.

I was working at a refinery when they pulled a heat exchanger out and the isolation valve was completely stuffed. Cooling water was pissing out the side and the level in the cooling tower was dropping fast. The first thing the operator did was open up a fire monitor and aim it at the cooling tower to re-fill the basin. That was done within 3 minutes. A call was placed to the local fire brigade as well incase the fire monitor couldn't keep up the flowrate (which in this case it just managed to do).

That was a 3 minute response time. I wonder what you could come up with in 3 days if you really needed to. The important thing about this is that it's simple and there's no engineering involved.

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[walshy007]

Radioactive decay turns unstable atoms into stable ones over time, and does so of it's own accord. Emitting alpha, beta or gamma radiation.

Nuclear fission is the splitting of one large atom into two not equally sized but both still sizable atoms through instigation by a neutron. _Very_ rarely with extemely large particles nuclear fission can happen through radioactive decay (instead of emitting alpha,beta etc, a large chunk comes off)

They are not the same thing in general. I'd say any dictionary that does not differentiate between them has failed it's job at conveying what it means.

That radioactive decay only sends off tiny bits and makes it more stable of it's own accord, and that nuclear fission does large chunks after being provoked by a neutron creating more unstable atoms, is a significant difference.

Re:Progress

[Anonymous Coward]

It is easy to criticize the event in the aftermath of three meltdowns and say that the design was flawed and that the response was mismanaged. You might even go as far as to say that the accidents weren't caused by the earthquake and tsunami, but by the failure of humans to properly design and operate the nuclear power plant (which in fact you did).

There is a point where you can't design for the most improbable events. A meteor landing in the ocean or North Korea bombing the plant aren't items you can design for. You also need to make a cutoff for earthquakes and tsunamis. An earthquake 10 times larger than any earthquake previously recorded in Japan's extensive seismic record might qualify. Add in the fact that seismologists didn't think the nature of the fault lines could even theoretically allow that powerful of an earthquake to occur.

You would have needed to build a 15m (45 ft) seawall to protect the plant from an event that experts didn't think could theoretically occur. The country that coined the term 'tsunami' didn't forget to design for it. They got hit by an extremely improbable occurrence that may not happen again for another 10,000 years. The probability of this type of massive tsunami destroying nuclear plants has not increased just because it happened recently. Nuclear plants are no less safe now than before the accidents. It is just more apparent that they have their limits, like any piece of technology.

Re:Progress

[Anonymous Coward]

>From the three dictionaries I looked up, "decay, not fission" is a contradiction, as the decay in question was necessarily *also* fission.

So being born and living your life is the same?

Re:Progress

[khallow]

In other words, ignoring things that happen in the real world

And ignoring the subsequent, remarkable disaster recovery. I've noticed something. Nuclear power has to prove itself when things happen in the real world. And it has. Nuclear power critics don't.

Re:Progress

[Anonymous Coward]

"who caused it on purpose?" It was an act of God. That is what Gods do. They make stuff and then they destroy it again, just like a small child playing in the mud.

Which god was that? The FSM?

Re:Progress

[khallow]

Too many armchair engineers just don't understand what happened. I wouldn't consider Fukushima a success altogether. It has caused too much inconvenience and costs for that. But given what is produced for the cost, including the occasional meltdown or whatever, it's pretty impressive.

Re:Progress

[Nutria]

The problem is, those that run said plants will cut corners everywhere

You forget the construction crews that smoke dope and then weld pipes so badly that it takes a year to re-weld the pipes. (Yes that really happened in the 1970s.)

Re:Progress

[qbast]

You know, every word that you just said could applied to for example dam. But hey, it is 'green' energy so it must be safe.

Re:Progress

[WindBourne]

That is the nice thing about the thorium reactors. It depends on physical laws, not man to keep it safe.

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[MightyYar]

The decay was an atom splitting into two smaller atoms and energy, which is fission. From the three dictionaries I looked up, "decay, not fission" is a contradiction, as the decay in question was necessarily *also* fission.

Yeah, you are using the wrong terminology.

The question was of why would fukishima need active cooling when passive cooling is so "easy" to do.

LOL, well, the state of the art has changed quite a bit in the last 40 years!

Re:Progress

[HiddenCamper]

yes. it would likely add some level of fatigue to the containment. but the containment heat transfer function is likely only designed for a small number of passive core cooling events and will need to be heavily reanalyzed after each one. Similar to existing BWRs which will emergency depressurize to atmospheric pressure to allow low pressure coolant systems to inject. Every time you use ADS (automatic depressurization system) you need to do a TON in order to show that your vessel didnt get over fatigued, and it will likely limit the total lifetime before you need to reanneal the vessel

Re:Progress

[hey!]

That's the first I've seen anyone characterize gravity as automation.

I am no more defining "gravity" as automation than I would define "electricity" as automation.. It is you who are defining "passive" as "using gravity in the design".

See my other post re: the IAEA's definition of "passive safety", which is the one I'm going with. Using the IAEA's terminology, the AP1000 uses "passive components", but the system as a whole does not qualify as "passively safe"; the AP1000 is a "category D" design, which according to the IAEA is in the "intermediary zone between active and passive where the execution of the safety function is made through passive methods..." [ref IAEA-TECODC-626 Appendix A, pp 15-18]

Re:Progress

[hey!]

I'm just going on the IAEA's definition of passive safety:

(1) no moving working fluid
(2) no moving mechanical part
(3) no signal inputs of 'intelligence'
(4) no external power input or forces

The AP1000 design implements requirements 3 & 4, but not 1 (requires cooling water) or 2 (uses explosive "squib" valves). The system requires no external inputs of control or power to maintain cooling in the event of a main coolant system failure, but the operation of the backup cooling system is automated -- or perhaps it would be better say "automatic".

Re:Progress

[thebigmacd]

Decay is not fission.

When a radioactive element decays it does not fizzle into two new elements, it decays into a single, lower atomic mass element. The radiation isn't even necessarily the same type. A lot of decaying elements produce Alpha radiation, which can be stopped by a piece of paper and is only dangerous if ingested. They can still produce a lot of heat, but it's not the same as a nuclear *fission reaction*.

Re:Progress

[hey!]

But not too many at once, because we want to learn slowly.

It's not a matter of wanting to learn slowly. It's a matter of wanting to learn more quickly than a particular reactor design or technology becomes politically "too big to fail".

And 4 massive nuclear disasters per century is an acceptable trade off.

Sure, but currently 14% of the world's electricity is generated from nuclear. Let's say it grew to 50%, and the electricity demand quadruples (reasonable given population growth, economic development, and a shift toward electric vehicles). We're now talking approximately *60* per century. Also if you are use 100 years as a denominator, you're including the years 1911- 1956 during which there were *no* nuclear power plants in existence, so you've got to start with a rate of 8/century. That means you're talking about around *120* major nuclear incidents per century, or *more than one per year*.

Is that an acceptable trade-off? Of course not. The bogus thing about this analysis of course is that it assumes our designs perform no better than designs of the last century historically did. So what is our base accident rate likely to be? There really is no defensible way of estimating that, which is why a *crash* program in building any *one* reactor design is a bad idea, as is immediately putting all our eggs in the nuclear basket, even if that's where we expect them to be in the long run.

It's not a matter of choosing to have accidents so we can learn from them. Accidents are inevitable so we ought to plan to have them before we can't do anything about the flaws they expose.

Re:Progress

[Anonymous Coward]

If the war is so intense that a) you couldn't shutdown and evacuate the plant preventively, b) more than that, personnel was evaporated before they hit the scram switches, c) and there's noone in 72hr range around, then you've got nothing to worry about.

Just leave it for next intelligent species who'll come around in a million years or so after that.

Re:Progress

[hey!]

am I the only one considering fukushima not a disaster but a sucess?

I'm sure you're not the *only one*, but I think it's safe to say you are in the minority.

Re:Progress

[Maury Markowitz]

> It is easy to criticize the event in the aftermath of three meltdowns and say that the design was flawed

Actually, people were saying the design was flawed even before it was built. And they were saying that the flaw was precisely the problem that actually occurred.

> You would have needed to build a 15m (45 ft) seawall to protect the plant

Which assumes that the only way to trigger the flaw would be a tsunami.

If one asks the correct question, "what events might cause the backup generators to fail to provide power in the event of a reactor shutdown" then there are suddenly hundreds of quite credible issues and thousands of less credible ones.

For instance, what if the file tanks corrode and start leaking all their fuel between the time of the scheduled maintenance and the shutdown event? Or what if the fuel becomes contaminated without obvious signs of issues? Or what if the SCADA system running the switchboard fails due to a software problem? Or there is a steam explosion which drops a portion of the containment building on the cables? Or what if a terrorist organization attacks the backup generators instead of the reactors, an event that would demand reactor shutdown anyway?

In this *particular case* the tsunami was the trigger for the generators failing through fuel starvation, but that's certainly not the only possible way to cut off emergency backup power. When you consider all of *those* possibilities, then the design doesn't look very good at all.

Right down the road from me is the Pickering nuclear plant. They concluded that this very problem could occur there. The result was a contract for $100 million to add more capacity in redundant packages. It actually ended up costing more than $250 million. While that is certainly preferable to a meltdown, it hardly inspires confidence in any design of this era -- CANDU was marketed as being essentially impossible to meltdown.

Re:Progress

[Maury Markowitz]

> Fission in the context of engineering refers to

The original statement did not contain the word fission, it contained the phrase "nuclear reaction".

I think you will agree that radioactive decay is a "nuclear reaction".

The original post remains incorrect.

Re:Progress

[Maury Markowitz]

Oh, and

"Fission in the context of engineering refers to the use of neutrons to force atoms to split"

That is absolutely not correct. What you are referring to is *induced* fission.

In either event, all of these remain "nuclear reaction"s.

Re:Progress

[Maury Markowitz]

> When a radioactive element decays it does not fizzle into two new elements,
> it decays into a single, lower atomic mass element

Oh geez, did you stop for a moment and consider what you were going to post?

Spontaneous alpha decay of Americium -241 results in Neptunium -237 and Helium.

Duh.

Re:Progress

[Maury Markowitz]

> That's the first I've seen anyone characterize gravity as automation

Really? They use it in exactly this fashion all the time in industrial packing systems.

Re:Progress

[Maury Markowitz]

> Nuclear power would be great if humans didn't have irrational fear about things there don't bother to understand

No, nuclear power would still suck financially in any event.

Look to the market. See any big lineups in the US for new plants? There's a list of what, four? Are you going to blame this on things people don't understand? Do you really believe you personally know more than the entire power industry?

Re:Progress

[Shatrat]

Bad car analogy! The top of the line 2012 Mustang can't do 200 mph either! The Ducati Panigale can, for half the price. You want performance, get a motorcycle. :)

Re:Progress

[Shatrat]

" longer than any empire in history has stood, and for longer than any region of the world has gone without war"
Are those units of measurement the time equivalent to 'libraries of congress'? And like that measurement, only impressive to people who don't really understand the actual math?

Re:Progress

[Anonymous Coward]

"An earthquake 10 times larger than any earthquake previously recorded in Japan's extensive seismic record might qualify. Add in the fact that seismologists didn't think the nature of the fault lines could even theoretically allow that powerful of an earthquake to occur."

Except that's nonsense. An earthquake and tsunami on about this scale had already occurred historically in the area, and would have exceeded the preparations that had been made at Fukushima even if the recent quake had been the same strength. The fact that these seismic/tsunami events are so rare and so long ago means there aren't instrument records of them (there's only about a century or so of instrument records), but it doesn't mean the risk was unknown or that the recent event was spectacularly beyond anything seen before. It wasn't. The reality is, they built a structure to a specification that did not account adequately for a once-in-1000-year or so known historical event, and then a big one happened. There were even predictions that it was due. Contrary to your claim, this wasn't a once-in-10000-year event.

Re:Progress

[Anonymous Coward]

WRONG...

...

Naw I'm just kidding... carry on.

Re:Progress

[Maury Markowitz]

SUPO was also filled with highly corrosive fluids which dramatically limited the lifetime of the reactor designs and made their long-term feasibility and safety highly questionable. Newer designs are somewhat better due to the use of nitric acid, but this by no means eliminated the problem. In every other measure, notably in terms of power density and related economic figures-of-merit, solution reactors will never be competitive.

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[rubycodez]

false, the decay heat curve is fairly flat even before the three days, so cooling MUST go on for WEEKS after shutdown (in this respect same as any gen ii reactor, in fact). this is to be provided by *pumping* water to refill that tank from other external tanks (requires gen power)

You can read about the 0 to 3 days, 3 to 7 days, 7 days and beyond here:

www.ne.doe.gov/pdfFiles/AP1000_Plant_Description.pdf

Re:Progress

[rubycodez]

wrong, see document in my post above. disaster will happen if that tank not refilled for weeks (assuming primary coolant not restored), same as any other commercial reactor we have today in that constant cooling needed. the plan after 72 hours is to use other tanks onsite, but that requires pumping and external power.

www.ne.doe.gov/pdfFiles/AP1000_Plant_Description.pdf

Re:Progress

[rubycodez]

NO! why does this LIE persist on slashdot? quit aping it. cooling needed for weeks, see document in other posts.

Re:Progress

[rubycodez]

I'm pro nuclear, but that is not fear mongering, plenty of scenarios could leave reactor unable to be serviced by anyone for more than 72 hours. the solution could be as simple as having the aux tanks in the plant's design to be raised, so no powered pumps needed. The on site water in the plant's design is sufficient to get reactor cooled for the weeks it will take. Why leave anything to chance, have unattended safe and complete shutdown and cool-off.

Re:Progress

[nusuth]

The passive system also depends on someone filling the water tank in the first place. What if they filled it but water leaked or evaporated? Imagine what would happen if they forget to connect pipes to the tank and inspectors forget to check for it. Obviously, nuclear power cannot be safe.

Re:Progress

[Maury Markowitz]

> But given what is produced for the cost, including the occasional meltdown or whatever, it's pretty impressive

Actually that's the main failure. Even if you discount the billions in development funds that were spent through the weapons side of things (the accounting is easier here in Canada) the actual price of the power it generates is much higher than hydro (and there's lots of that left, contrary to claims otherwise), much higher than coal, somewhat higher than natural case, only slightly cheaper (or slightly more, depending on the accounting) than wind and somewhat cheaper than PV.

The problem is that the cost of nuclear is unpredictable. It is generally higher now than it was when it was first introduced, which is why all those plants were abandoned in the 70s. Newer designs aim to address this, but their success in doing so remains to be proven. When the US plants come online, if they ever do, then I'll have a metric I'll trust. After all, AECL claims that their two CANDU6's cost $4 a watt in China, but when one looks at the $8.25 bid for Darlington B you'll see they are relying on artificial exchange rates to make that number.

Moreover, there's a serious fuel issue to consider. Uranium is basically a proxy for oil now. Don't believe me? Look it up. If oil goes up again, so will the price of nuclear. So, do you believe the price of oil will be going up in the future?

In the meantime the price of other sources has plummeted. Gas looks like it will remain flat for at least 50 years. Wind power has dropped from 15 to 6.5 cents/kWh in the last 15 years. It's likely bottoming out now, but that's still around what nuclear costs. PV has dropped from about $1 a kWh to something around 15 cents in the last 5 years, and it is just about 100% certain to hit 10 cents in 2012, if it hasn't already.

So, you're king for a day. You need to build a power network. You have your choices of many technologies. Do you choose one with a 12 to 15 year lead time that has a history of going up in price and has serious fuel concerns? Or do you bet on one that keeps going down in price and will almost certainly be producing watts cheaper than the other technology before that one even starts construction?

And that is why the nuclear renaissance is dead.

Seriously, given the lead times and CAPEX on these projects, waiting a year to see what happens is absolutely a fantastic idea. And everything points to the results one year from now being very unfavourable for nuclear.

Re:Progress

[Mspangler]

"The latter can only be addressed through diligent and costly surveillance of the vessel throughout its lifetime ... just the sort of thing that tends not to survive bean counters."

And this is different from every other pressure vessel/boiler how? At least here, every boiler/pressure vessel must be registered with the State, and inspected every two years. This comes from the hard experience at least a century and a half of blowing up boilers. The bean counters don't even get a say in this one.

I went through the AP-1000 design documents on line looking for good ideas to borrow for work. 8" thick SA-533 steel pressure vessel. No main coolant isolation valves, which is surprising. Is the risk of the valves leaking greater than the risk of a pipe failure? Could be. But nothing really remarkable in metallurgy. Still using 304LN stainless and going paranoid about chlorides as a result.

Re:Progress

[Dr. Spork]

I hope there aren't people here trying to minimize the seriousness of what happened at the Fukushima plant, but let's put this in perspective: The bill being debated now in the US congress is supposed to reduce the emissions from old coal plants, which is estimated to prevent 11,000 deaths per year. Yeah, 11,000! That's just from people breathing pollution, and doesn't take into account the catastrophes that happen when coal is mined. It also doesn't take into account all the damage to the planet's climate from all those tons of CO2. Now compare this to Fukushima, the second largest nuclear accident of human history. It turns out that the death toll of this catastrophe so far is zero; hopefully it will remain that way. Another way to put it: if nuclear power killed 10,000 people, it would be the world's worst nuclear catastrophe, by far. When coal kills 10,000 people, we call that a "better than average year" for coal deaths. I'm all for improving our sources of electricity to more optimal ones, but in doing this, the plants we should shut down first are the ones that are hurting us and the planet the most. And clearly, those are coal plants. When we're no longer burning coal, we can start thinking about replacing our nuclear and gas-burning plants, which are also not great, but nowhere near as terrible as coal.

Re:Progress

[wierd_w]

Agreed. However, getting such a reactor design through the nonproliferation hurdles would be quite a feat, let alone the "nuclear is teh evil!" Crowd.

Fast breeder reactors that can convert high level reactor waste into catalyst for thorium and other plentiful potential fuels can easily be outfitted for neutron capture in non fuel materials, such as low grade uranium to produce weapons grade.

It would be fantastic if we lived in a world where people with big egos and tiny penises didn't have to "make up" for it with collosal explosions (and the threat of them), but sadly we do. People like the late kim jong il, and armadinajad (however you spell his name) pretty much ruin it for everyone.

An rtg on the other hand, would take millions of years to passively radiate an enclosure made of low grade uranium sufficiently for such a purpose. Even then the idea of even trying that itself is asinine. I agree that far more useful quantities of power could be harvested with a fast breeder reprocessing reactor/ordinary reactor pair for the same fuel costs. It is just the dipshit world leaders stroking their e-peens that are the problem.

Re:Progress

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, in that case, there's nobody to run around, clutch their heads and scream about how the reactor is melting down and might release a puff of slightly radioactive hydrogen. But if we're really thinking the unimaginable, let's imagine the "personell" [sic] dead from war as being not dead, but simply being in some sort of war where most people died. In that case, these dead/not-dead people have more important things to worry about that some stupid radioactive leak: for example, the war you mentioned.

Re:Progress

[hplus]

Unlike 'Libraries of Congress' (at least how the 'unit' is usually used), comparing political stability to radioactive half-life is actually relevant.

Re:Progress

[Omniscient Lurker]

> *induced* fission

Engineers commonly use fission to refer to induced fission and decay to refer to spontaneous decay. I was merely commenting because AK Marc is (self-admittedly) using dictionary definitions and not the definitions that engineers use. The goal of my comment to was clarify what engineers mean when the say fission.

Re:Progress

[khallow]

Actually that's the main failure. Even if you discount the billions in development funds that were spent through the weapons side of things (the accounting is easier here in Canada) the actual price of the power it generates is much higher than hydro (and there's lots of that left, contrary to claims otherwise), much higher than coal, somewhat higher than natural case, only slightly cheaper (or slightly more, depending on the accounting) than wind and somewhat cheaper than PV.

Uh huh. Maybe you ought to back that up with some numbers. And I really like how you can just dismiss rival arguments with the wave of the hand. I sometimes wish I could do that in the real world.

The problem is that the cost of nuclear is unpredictable. It is generally higher now than it was when it was first introduced, which is why all those plants were abandoned in the 70s. Newer designs aim to address this, but their success in doing so remains to be proven. When the US plants come online, if they ever do, then I'll have a metric I'll trust. After all, AECL claims that their two CANDU6's cost $4 a watt in China, but when one looks at the $8.25 bid for Darlington B you'll see they are relying on artificial exchange rates to make that number.

They'll be built and the uncertainty will become less uncertainty.

Moreover, there's a serious fuel issue to consider. Uranium is basically a proxy for oil now. Don't believe me? Look it up. If oil goes up again, so will the price of nuclear. So, do you believe the price of oil will be going up in the future?

Of course, I don't believe stuff that someone just made up.

In the meantime the price of other sources has plummeted. Gas looks like it will remain flat for at least 50 years. Wind power has dropped from 15 to 6.5 cents/kWh in the last 15 years. It's likely bottoming out now, but that's still around what nuclear costs. PV has dropped from about $1 a kWh to something around 15 cents in the last 5 years, and it is just about 100% certain to hit 10 cents in 2012, if it hasn't already.

Gas doesn't look like it'll remain flat for 50 years. Don't even waste my time with bullshit like that. Wind power is heavily subsidized. I don't buy that cost per kWh until I see the unsubsidized numbers. PV looks to be going down, but both it and wind aren't base load.

To get base load using wind or solar, you need hydro, natural gas, or some other source that you can start and stop easily. For example, wind, solar, and natural gas could in combination provide the entire power for a society. But that would result in an increase in demand. The two biggest markets, North America and Europe would be able to cover some of the offset with hydro rather than natural gas. But you'd still see a massive increase in the demand for natural gas which would void the claim that the natural gas market will somehow remain "flat" (a thing it hasn't been able to do over the past ten years in the US).

So, you're king for a day. You need to build a power network. You have your choices of many technologies. Do you choose one with a 12 to 15 year lead time that has a history of going up in price and has serious fuel concerns? Or do you bet on one that keeps going down in price and will almost certainly be producing watts cheaper than the other technology before that one even starts construction?

Natural gas has that problem as well. Major plants have long lead times even when there aren't major regulatory obstacles to overcome.

And that is why the nuclear renaissance is dead.

Uh huh. We'll see. Nuclear power has considerable advantages that have not been touched here. For example, even counting land made fallow by radioactive fallout from nuclear meltdowns, nuclear power still is more compact in land use than any combination involving wind, solar, and hydro.

Seriously, given

Re:Progress

[couchslug]

I don't consider the casualty rate from EITHER method to be high enough to bother reducing further due to economic tradeoffs.

We already live so long as to be guaranteed decades of crippled incontinent dementia.

Re:Progress

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that the killing, sickening and destroying fossil fuels do aren't visibly tied to fossil fuel use.

That is incorrect. We visible see smog. We visible get sick because of it. We die of lung cancer and heart attacks. We are warned about mercury contamination of our water and soil. All thanks to pollution from fossil fuels!

The problem is this is *normal*. People will get used to anything that is horrible, as long as the society accepts it as normal state. Look at the horrible levels of air pollution in China, or some Indian cities like Calcutta. In Calcutta the government wanted to mandate cleaner fuels then kerosene for the auto-rickshaw, but what happened? Nothing - there were protests against these anti-pollution laws while people are dying left and right in massive smog clouds.

The problem with nuclear power and accidents is that people associate it with nuclear weapons. They associate them with apocalyptic doomsday movies - these are abnormal, not understood ideas. They do not understand what radiation is - there are even fools that say that "radon is safe and radioactive cesium is unsafe because radon radiation is *natural*". The problem with nuclear is FUDI - fear, uncertainty, doubt and ignorance. There is no rational way to state that nuclear is dangerous or polluting, but that does not stop FUD from being spread around under the umbrella of ignorance.

And if course it doesn't make it safe that if you have a device that emits evil clicks of uncertainty for measuring radiation! Even I was surprised how noisy such a device can be even measuring "natural background" (as a physics student).

Re:Progress

[rubycodez]

that would be example of technology designed at same time Chernobyl's RBMK were

Re:Progress

[rubycodez]

but most of the countries that would benefit most from using up the "spent fuel" for peaceful energy are already proliferating nukes like bunnies (U.S., Russia, India, China), some for them to build such reactors, it wouldn't make any difference.

Re:Progress

[jmcvetta]

Interesting point - but the numbers don't work out for me. Base price to order a new Ford Mustang is $22k. On Autotrader there are zero Ferraris available at or below that price within 100mi of San Francisco. Local Craigslist has only one available below that price - a 1984 Ferrari 400i. Top speed of that car is only 140mph. There's also a 1975 Dino 308 GT4 for around $24k (competitive with a realistically equipped Mustang), but it's top speed of 154mph falls just slightly short of the mark.

Re:Progress

[Anonymous Coward]

When the reactor is shut down there is no fission! There is only decay heat, which needs cooling. No fission. And passive methods are easy, you just have to build a reactor to use them. If you don't build it that way you need active cooling, like pumps. A passive method would be gravity fed water, no power or pumps needed which is one of the methods the ap 1000 uses. Others are natural convection, which is also uses.

And we'd have tons of reactors with passive safety systems if it wasn't for ignorant antinuclear alarmists who obstruct any effort to build anything anywhere no matter how safe it is. For them the answer is always no, so the old reactors stay online and never get upgraded because the antinuclear Luddites always say no to that too.

Re:Progress

[thegarbz]

Firstly by plenty you actually mean incredibly few, and when something goes wrong people typically make an attempt to service it. Think of Fukushima, if helicopters can fly around dumping water on to the exposed core right after a hydrogen explosion there's actually very little that could go wrong that would prevent someone from getting water to a tank, depending on how the access is designed.

In any case this is all moot because they didn't leave anything to chance. Go read the design spec: www.ne.doe.gov/pdfFiles/AP1000_Plant_Description.pdf 96 hours to achieve complete cold shutdown. The passive water cooling system is designed to do 100% of the shutdown heat removal during this time.

Re:Progress

[msevior]

Could you provide page numbers for the 0-3 days, 3-7 days, 7 days and beyond? I couldn't find them.

Hmm looks like my calculations were wrong by a factor of 2.

This web page from MIT:

http://mitnse.com/2011/03/16/what-is-decay-heat/

Shows the curve for the Fukoshima reactors. The table shows the decay heat dropping to 0.5% of full power after 3 days (not the 0.2% I stated above).

I agree that the sensible and prudent thing to do would be to top up the water in the tank (lets face it, you have 3 days to get a firetruck onsite) . In any case the most exhaustive analysis of the AP1000 estimates a large radiative leakage at 1x10^-7 per reactor year. I would happily take those odds. My per year risk of dying through accidents is 1x10-3 years. So I'm 10^-4 less likely to have an AP1000 reactor leak than die through some random accident.

Re:Progress

[makomk]

Even if this is true all you need to do - and indeed, this is what they seem to have done - is to convince the NRC that the safety measures aren't needed in the first place. Most of the NRC staff are ex-nuclear industry and they're quite cozy with the companies in the industry, so this isn't a huge obstacle. Also, Wikipedia seems to disagree with you:

A 1986 Congressional report found that NRC staff had provided valuable technical assistance to the utility seeking an operating license for the controversial Seabrook plant. In the late 1980s, the NRC 'created a policy' of non-enforcement by asserting its discretion not to enforcement with license conditions; between September 1989 and 1994, the 'NRC has either waived or chosen not to enforce regulations at nuclear power reactors over 340 times'.

Re:Progress

[0WaitState]

Holy Mod Wars, Batman! The moderation of my parent comment (so far):

Re:Progress, posted to NRC Approves New Nuclear Reactor Design , has been moderated Interesting (+1).

It is currently scored Normal (2).

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Re:Progress, posted to NRC Approves New Nuclear Reactor Design , has been moderated Overrated (-1).

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Re:Progress, posted to NRC Approves New Nuclear Reactor Design , has been moderated Overrated (-1).

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Re:Progress, posted to NRC Approves New Nuclear Reactor Design, has been moderated Overrated (-1).

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Re:Progress, posted to NRC Approves New Nuclear Reactor Design, has been moderated Insightful (+1).

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It is currently scored Insightful (4).

Re:Progress, posted to NRC Approves New Nuclear Reactor Design, has been moderated Overrated (-1).

It is currently scored Insightful (3).

Re:Progress

[msevior]

From the document you posted:

"The steel containment vessel provides the heat transfer surface that removes heat from inside
the containment and rejects it to the atmosphere. Heat is removed from the containment vessel
by continuous natural circulation flow of air. During an accident, the air cooling is supplemented
by evaporation of water. The water drains by gravity from a tank located on top of the
containment shield building.

Calculations have shown the AP1000 to have a significantly reduced large release frequency
following a severe accident core damage scenario. With only the normal PCS air cooling, the
containment stays well below the predicted failure pressure for at least 24 hours. Other factors
include improved containment isolation and reduced potential for LOCAs outside of
containment. This improved containment performance supports the technical basis for
simplification of offsite emergency planning." .......

"Long-term accident mitigation - A major safety advantage of the AP1000 versus current-day
PWRs is that long-term accident mitigation is maintained by the passive safety systems without
operator action and without reliance on offsite or onsite ac power sources. For the limiting
design basis accidents, the core coolant inventory in the containment for recirculation cooling
and boration of the core is sufficient to last for at least 30 days, even if inventory is lost at the
design basis containment leak rate." ......

Where does that document say things go to hell after 3 days if the coolant is not topped up? It seems to me that 60 MW of heat could easily be removed via natural convection over the large surface area of the steel containment vessel.

Re:Progress

[msevior]

Whoops it's 15 MW of decay heat after 3 days..

Re:Progress

[AK Marc]

Craigslist has only one available below that price - a 1984 Ferrari 400i. Top speed of that car is only 140mph.

That'll still beat a base Mustang. And I hadn't looked in a while, but a 308 GTB (the one I was thinking of during my original post) was commonly available for $18k, back when I was looking for a sports car (ended up with a supercharged 911 in great shape for less than that instead).

Re:Progress

[MobyDisk]

What you say is valid in general, but the biggest flaws at Fukushima were known of ahead of the disaster. Specifically: the gas generators were in a flood-prone location, which frankly was 99% of the problem. The Wikipedia article links to various nuclear regulatory experts who pointed this out on several occasions.

I keep trying to find a good quote showing how well-known the issue was, but frankly that whole section of the Wikipedia entry makes it so clear (And it is very well-cited) so I can't summarize it any better. They knew about this, and they ignored it, many times.

Re:Progress

[lonecrow]

Threats, Vulnerabilities, Risks

So the threat was a low probability event, the vulnerability turned out to be what, a run away meltdown? The risk is how many square miles and ocean contaminated for how long?

It doesn't matter how low the probability of the threat is, if the risks are high enough you need to plan for them.

Re:Progress

[siddesu]

There is a point where you can't design for extra safety, but this is not Fukushima I. It used reactors that were obsolete at the time of construction and that should have been retired after Chernobyl, or at least after the Kobe earthquake in 1995. Only complete retards, blinded by greed and backed by "old boys" in the government regulatory bodies -- that is, the TEPCO management -- would have allowed Fukushima.

It is not the only serious accident in Japan either, and it isn't the only serious accident where coverup was attempted, and where there is no prosecution of the responsible. Incidentally, this is why Japan will be seeing more of them accidents in the future.

Re:Progress

[HiddenCamper]

My experience is in the last 5 years. the industry has been changing rapidly over the last 20 years and still is changing. it's hard to look at the 1989-1994 NRC and compare it to the 2006-2011 NRC

Re:Progress

[rubycodez]

that fluffy pamphlet is not a design spec (which as nuclear engineer I can assure you would take more bookshelves than you have at home). However you are misunderstanding its words, it speaks of shutdown temperature reached after 96 hours via passive cooling, but that passive cooling requires human intervention after 72 hours by pumping from other on site tanks. The reactor will require cooling for weeks (and hence topping off of that supply tank) or it will do the bad thing that any gen ii reactor would do without adequate heat removal.

Re:Progress

[uninformedLuddite]

Was it the jews?

Re:Progress

[uninformedLuddite]

There are a network of stones around the Japanese coastline warning not to build below them because of the danger of tsunamis. One of them reads "High dwellings are the peace and harmony of our descendants, Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis. Do not build any homes below this point.". Some of them had been in place for over 600 years and many got washed away by the latest tsunami. Modern man of course knew much better than their ancestors and not only built homes but nuclear reactors right on the coast.
What's that saying those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

How you get modded insightful claiming that a tsunami is an improbable event in Japan just shows how fucking low /. has sunk.

Sour grapes

[coldfarnorth]

Now that the rest of the world is rethinking nuclear power, We Americans have changed our tune.

However, I think the US might be on the right track here. Of course, it helps that the risk of tsunamis in the southeastern US is right between that of a zombie outbreak and Ralph Nader winning the presidency.

Re:Sour grapes

[Anonymous Coward]

It's more likely than the Year of The Linux Desktop.

Re:Sour grapes

[Anonymous Coward]

Hurricanes?

Re:Sour grapes

[Anonymous Coward]

Guys! New disaster movie idea! Nuclear Nader! We start filming in February!

Re:Sour grapes

[coldfarnorth]

Now that's a movie I'd pay good money to see!

Re:Sour grapes

[coldfarnorth]

We should write out the rest of the list . . . So much potential for snark.

Re:Sour grapes

[Anonymous Coward]

The bottom of the list would be you getting laid.

Re:Sour grapes

[silas_moeckel]

Yes let the rest of the world stop using the only scalable sensible power source. If we can avoid letting the big corps and the nimbly's making it massively expensive we could be positioned to make a resurgence. It will never happen were to short sighted for that.

Re:Sour grapes

[Amouth]

if a hurricane was a threat to a reactor design then it never should have been built.. hurricanes really are not that damaging..

Re:Sour grapes

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that the rest of the world is rethinking nuclear power

That world you mention is a fiction that exists exclusively inside your head. Except for a few (and by no means all) European countries there has been no significant change in the trajectory of nuclear power development.

China hand waved Fukushima; they cancelled a couple of exceptionally vulnerable projects and re-sited some others. Aside from that they're still building out the 50GW of nuclear power supply they expect to have by the end of the decade. That's the equivalent of 5 new AP1000s every year.

Re:Sour grapes

[AmiMoJo]

Yes let the rest of the world stop using the only scalable sensible power source.

I think you will find there are plenty of other scalable technologies. You should really investigate these claims before repeating them.

If we can avoid letting the big corps and the nimbly's making it massively expensive we could be positioned to make a resurgence.

The reason it is massively expensive is because it is also massively dangerous and needs massively skilled labour to design, build and test. The government reduces the cost by subsidising it at every stage in order to make the economics work.

It will never happen were to short sighted for that.

That is pretty much why nuclear power turned out the way it has. Back in the 60s it was assumed that power would become too cheap to meter and as technology rapidly advanced people would figure out ways of bringing costs down and dealing with all the waste, but it didn't turn out like that.

Now we are in a situation where there is a lack of investment because the returns are just not good enough and the government subsidy companies rely on isn't as reliable as they thought. Running costs are much higher than expected and dealing with waste and site clean-up turned out to be massive headaches that no-one has found an economical way to solve yet.

Given that the world is moving away from nuclear now it seems unlikely that the situation will change significantly. It is interesting that Westinghouse, a subsidiary of Toshiba, is building this new reactor in the US where costs are much lower than Japan because of less stringent safety requirements and the option to entomb the core rather than properly clean up the site afterwards.

Re:Sour grapes

[sociocapitalist]

Tell it to New Orleans...

Re:Sour grapes

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't the southeastern US not in the kill zone of a mega tsunami from one of those canary island islands near afrika?

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

La Palma is currently the most volcanically active island in the Canary Islands Archipelago. It is likely that several eruptions would be required before failure would occur on Cumbre Vieja. However, the western half of the volcano has an approximate volume of 500 cubic kilometres (120 cu mi) and an estimated mass of 1,500,000,000,000 metric tons (1.7×1012 short tons) If it were to catastrophically slide into the ocean, it could generate a wave with an initial height of about 1,000 metres (3,300 ft) at the island, and a likely height of around 50 metres (164 ft) at the Caribbean and the Eastern North American seaboard when it runs ashore eight or more hours later. Tens of millions of lives would be lost as New York, Boston, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Miami, Havana, and many other cities near the Atlantic coast are leveled. The likelihood of this happening is a matter of vigorous debate.

Re:Sour grapes

[khallow]

I guess we better not build a nuclear plant in the middle of New Orleans then.

Re:Sour grapes

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a very short list of structures one should consider building below sea level.
Nuclear reactors and entire cities are not among them.

Re:Sour grapes

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for the waiting game for the canary islands slide event.

Re:Sour grapes

[digitalsolo]

At least if it floods, sufficient cooling of the core would not be an issue.

Re:Sour grapes

[Anonymous Coward]

about as damaging as earthquakes or tsunamis...

Re:Sour grapes

[silas_moeckel]

I have an understanding of basic physics power comes from 2 sources atomic (fission/fusion) and gravity. Hydroelectric is tapped out as it's a very good source of power but it requires nature to cooperate. Burning stuff makes sense for a few things mostly our own trash and we only have so much stuff to burn and burning stuff that's been effectively sequestering carbon for a few million years is not sustainable is not a great long term idea. Wind is not a great baseline load, requires a lot of space and is visually displeasing. Solar again needs a lot of space and the price needs to come down significantly (30k to cover my needs with a life expectancy of 20 years + maintenance costs it's at best break even) again not baseline load. Wave power could be a baseline load similar to hydro, environmental impact still tbd.
I miss any?

Atomic power makes sense outside of wave power it gets rid of the middle men. As to cost we have crazy regimes that deem things less radioactive that a human as radioactive waste. Most of the cost is these units are one off and we refuse to let them recycle as that can spin off weapons grade materials. FYI coal plants put more uranium in the air than all the accidents put together has even released. The best current fit would seem to be the 70mw Russian barge based power plants.

The world is moving away because they are scared of it not because there is good reason to be scared. Atomic energy is a tool and like most tools it's dangerous. Long term we need to insure power gets cheaper and more abundant to continue to grow as a society.

Re:Sour grapes

[coldfarnorth]

I propose a challenge: I'll take one end of the list, and you get the other. My kids get to decide who gets which end, and the loser has to post as AC on Slashdot for eternity.

why isn't thorium being developed?

[DevotedFollower]

The NRC should approve some more thorium reactors if it doesn't want to be buying technology off China 10-20 years down the line. From what I understand Thorium (especially LFTRs) are far safer. They are "walk away safe". My suspicion is that it is too late for the US to catch up though. As the article mentions..China already has a bunch these coming online in 2013...while it just got approved in the US. China is also filing more patents...they are progressing much fast than the states at this point. China and thorium: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8393984/Safe-nuclear-does-exist-and-China-is-leading-the-way-with-thorium.html The US and their history with thorium and further thorium info: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4

Re:why isn't thorium being developed?

[dgatwood]

Or the U.S. could just let them spend the money and take all the risks in terms of designing and testing the new reactors, then steal the designs and build the reactors themselves, forcing the Chinese firms to eat the R&D costs....

Wait, something about this sounds familiar. I sense a pot and a kettle are involved.

Re:why isn't thorium being developed?

[thermopile]

Thorium isn't being developed in the US for 2 reasons:

1. Current uranium-based reactors are more affordable than thorium reactors.

2. The path for licensing a thorium-based reactor in the US is exceedingly uncertain.

While a thorium-based fuel cycle may be a good idea, it's just not going to be done by any commercial enterprise today. The costs and risks are too high. When staring at a $5B initial investment cost, any electrical utility is going to favor the known route ... which, frankly, could just as easily mean building 10 natural-gas fired plants instead of 1 big nuke.

India, however, is going full-bore on a thorium-based fuel cycle, and has already built a few reactors that are capable of accepting thorium. Copied shamelessly from world-nuclear.org:

India's plans for thorium cycle

With huge resources of easily-accessible thorium and relatively little uranium, India has made utilization of thorium for large-scale energy production a major goal in its nuclear power programme, utilising a three-stage concept:

Pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWRs) fuelled by natural uranium, plus light water reactors, producing plutonium.

Fast breeder reactors (FBRs) using plutonium-based fuel to breed U-233 from thorium. The blanket around the core will have uranium as well as thorium, so that further plutonium (particularly Pu-239) is produced as well as the U-233. Advanced heavy water reactors (AHWRs) burn the U-233 and this plutonium with thorium, getting about 75% of their power from the thorium. The used fuel will then be reprocessed to recover fissile materials for recycling.

This Indian programme has moved from aiming to be sustained simply with thorium to one 'driven' with the addition of further fissile plutonium from the FBR fleet, to give greater efficiency. In 2009, despite the relaxation of trade restrictions on uranium, India reaffirmed its intention to proceed with developing the thorium cycle.

A 500 MWe prototype FBR under construction in Kalpakkam is designed to produce plutonium to enable AHWRs to breed U-233 from thorium. India is focusing and prioritizing the construction and commissioning of its sodium-cooled fast reactor fleet in which it will breed the required plutonium. This will take another 15 â" 20 years and so it will still be some time before India is using thorium energy to a significant extent.

Re:why isn't thorium being developed?

[Anonymous Coward]

You should check out how many American engineers are involved in those Chinese nuclear plants.

Don't even get started on the difference between quality and quantity in patent applications.

Re:why isn't thorium being developed?

[couchslug]

That's LONG overdue. The US should ditch its counterproductive pride and let other "early adopters" take the risks.

Re:why isn't thorium being developed?

[Jeremi]

The NRC should approve some more thorium reactors if it doesn't want to be buying technology off China 10-20 years down the line.

And what's so bad about buying them from China? They'll be cheaper that way, and any catastrophic design flaws can be worked out on the other side of the globe rather than here...

Re:why isn't thorium being developed?

[MrMista_B]

Yeah, that sounds exactly like what the US did in the 1800's with their massive pirating of the European industrial revolution, stealing the designs, flaunting their massive patent and copyright violations, outright theft of designs and ideas, and massive intellectual dishonesty.

Re:why isn't thorium being developed?

[Anonymous Coward]

So.. the next movie will be called "The America Syndrome"?

Re:why isn't thorium being developed?

[lightknight]

Hmm. Thorium is intriguing, and quite possibly profitable. Perhaps more so than Uranium-based power plants.

However, there are two problems: 1.) a proper Thorium power-plant needs to be designed (correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the Thorium reactor most often cited is a Research reactor -> promising, but not commercial), 2.) we need to begin mining for Thorium, which I imagine requires locating various deposits, and extracting the ore in quantity (Uranium mining is rather developed, and a Google search for Thorium mining is coming up with nothing).

Re:why isn't thorium being developed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure where you're getting your bullets from bud.

After reading that entire linked page, nowhere did it say 'uranium is more affordable', and that the only concern with 'licensing' is that of 'licensing experience'. Of course very few people, or agencies, have 'licensing experience' with Thorium based reactors. There aren't that many in operation, much less the US.

And for point of fact, the first bullets on that page you linked.

1. Thorium is more abundant in nature than uranium.
  - Might presently be cheaper to mine and process uranium due to almost 70 years of infrastructure, but I highly doubt rapidly creating an equivalent thorium processing industry would be a hassle to undermine that.

2. It is fertile rather than fissile, and can be used in conjunction with fissile material as nuclear fuel.
- Dual purpose. We're getting 2 bangs for the buck here. Come on!

3. Thorium fuels can breed fissile uranium-233.
- Hey look at that. It undermines the need for further discovery and extraction of natural Uranium deposits. That is, unless we really need to make more nuclear weapons.

While 10 'nat-gas' plants are great for the today argument in 'this economy', whilst we apparently have 'nat-gas' reserves in the US for the next 200 years [citation needed] (with recent reserve discoveries..; yes it's online, go find it), we shouldn't be looking for the easy way out. That type of thinking and policy especially regarding long-term energy solutions, is what gets us in half the trouble we're in with every other industry in existence. Case in point, the OIL industry, corruption behavior, and control is a damn travesty and everyone who isn't a direct profiteer knows it. We need to be looking at stable long term energy solutions that aren't driven by International commodities markets.

What I find most interesting, after reading your linked page, is that China is planning on building a LFTR (Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactor) hoping to claim 'IP rights' on the tech if all goes well. Wonder if the US will violate their IP if China gets it right. Oh, and India is operating a combined U/P/Thorium reactor presently, and plans to build a Thorium based AHWR (Advanced Heavy Water Reactor) with its vast 12% of estimated Thorium reserves world-wide. And from your link, the US has 15% of the reserves. Nothing to scoff at since domestic supply won't be an issue.

Seems the only real thing standing in the US' way is with this technology is some further chemistry analyses, expanded engineering designs, policy, education, and a will to invest in a stable long term future. Sure as hell isn't a scarcity problem.

For those not versed on Thorium LFTR, please read this. Yes it's wiki page, however it's kinda hard to lie on a page completely based on physics and chemistry.

Re:why isn't thorium being developed?

[Anonymous Coward]

The US Government killed molten thorium reactors in 1974. They cannot be use to build ginormous bombs that you can then use to threaten people in other countries. Besides, Uranium is a crappy --but known-- reactor. The US does not want to spend money on research or anything. They shipped research stuff offshore. Research is a cost center, take whatever research you have, patent the hell out of it, then litigate. That's progress in the US in 2011. You can't build a nuclear stockpile with these molten salt Thorium reactors.

Re:why isn't thorium being developed?

[rubycodez]

no problem, thorium is just not a much-needed element right now. If you look at the extraction method for thorium, compared to uranium ore->uranium->uranium 235, you find pure thorium is by comparison trivial to obtain and the means MUCH less dangerous.

Re:why isn't thorium being developed?

[arglebargle_xiv]

The NRC should approve some more thorium reactors if it doesn't want to be buying technology off China 10-20 years down the line.

And what's so bad about buying them from China?

There's the risk that when the US needs them China will refuse to sell, citing security concerns over selling to a country like the US :-).

Re:why isn't thorium being developed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing too... then they had industry ready to save Europe's ass in W W 2.

Re:why isn't thorium being developed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you mean Sam Slater?

"Hearing of the American interest in developing similar machines, and aware of British laws against exporting the designs, he memorized as much as he could and departed for New York in 1789."

Ah the good old days...you actually had to store stolen documents in your brain, and physically walk the data to its destination.

Re:why isn't thorium being developed?

[Anonymous Coward]

The US would not have to buy any technology from the Chinese. Westinghouse is the one who owns the technology (even though we are doing a transfer of technology to the Chinese). It just got approved in the US because it was a little tougher to get through the NRC than the chinese regulators.

Re:why isn't thorium being developed?

[javilon]

Well, if we go with the current U.S. "intelectual property" laws, the U.S. wouldn't be able to use any of this newly patented Chinese stuff without risking (oh the irony) commercial sanctions from China.

Re:why isn't thorium being developed?

[digitalsolo]

The US will just steal the designs and build them anyway. Turn about, is, after all, fair play.

Re:why isn't thorium being developed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thorium is easily recovered from any heavy "rare earth" mining operation. In fact, it is so abundant that it is a significant cost to dispose of, since it's considered radioactive waste.

Only 1.154GW?

[viperidaenz]

Still 56MW short of doing anything useful...

Re:Only 1.154GW?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that was the joke.

Re:Only 1.154GW?

[Anonymous Coward]

not too bright are ya?

Re:Only 1.154GW?

[ArsonSmith]

Great Scott!!

Re:Only 1.154GW?

[Anonymous Coward]

JW?

Could someone elaborate

[chuckymonkey]

My google-fu is failing me here. I'm trying to determine if this is a lightwater reactor, some type of breeder, or some other configuration. If it's another lightwater I'm feeling a little "meh" about it. Despite being Gen III+ if it's lightwater we'll still have a ton of waste to take care of and I find that a little disheartening.

Re:Could someone elaborate

[Anonymous Coward]

its an lwr
http://www.doosan.com/doosanheavybiz/en/services/power/power_plant/nuclear_reactor/performance.page

Re:Could someone elaborate

[dbIII]

It is not a new design, it's just the newest of the old designs (1980s via Toshiba in Japan) that haven't had a single reactor commissioned yet. The first AP1000 is due to start running in the next year or two. Things move slowly in civilian nuclear power so it's just about the first design to take the lessons from Chenobyl into consideration.
We wouldn't even have this level of civilian nuclear technology if it hadn't been bought off the Japanese. For some reason the US Nuclear Lobby mostly descended to the level of mere rent seekers in the 1980s so the only hope for advancement there is small startups based on military technology or input from overseas.

Re:Could someone elaborate

[couchslug]

"For some reason the US Nuclear Lobby mostly descended to the level of mere rent seekers in the 1980s"

There is no incentive to lobby for nuclear power. There are other ways to make money.

Re:Could someone elaborate

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, they could make electrical power inconceivably cheap, to the point where the other industries would be severely discomfited.

People may protest having to spend an hour charging their vehicle, but when it would cost nothing to do, they'd find ways to live with it.

Re:Could someone elaborate

[Anonymous Coward]

Toshiba bought Westinghouse to get the technology. It isn't Japanese tech. It also isn't an old design. The AP1000 is the first of the 4th gen plants. Toshiba previously had a completely different type of reactor and bought Westinghouse from British Nuclear to get the newer tech. The first of the AP1000s will be active in China in the next couple of years.

Re:Could someone elaborate

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm intrigued. What relevant lessons do you believe have been learnt from a graphite moderated BWR RBMK reactor and applied to any western PWR or BWR reactor design in any meaningful way?

Re:Could someone elaborate

[nonsequitor]

I think the Department of Defense would beg to differ. They just designed a new reactor for their latest ship. http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/cliff-kuang/design-innovation/how-does-navy-design-nuclear-supercarrier-future

Re:Could someone elaborate

[epine]

... if it hadn't been bought off the Japanese ... descended to the level of mere rent seekers in the 1980s ... those damn hippies and tree huggers ... precious bodily fluids ...

The quip about rent seeking would make a nice lyric in a rap video of Keynes versus Hayek (you think I jest?) but you'll have to link it to a different example, since the paternity in this case doesn't even pass the bar of he said/she said, as pointed out by a credible sounding AC, which I've trimmed and quoted below:

Westinghouse employee here. The AP1000 final design certification was approved in 2006 and the design began long before that.

Toshiba acquired Westinghouse in late 2006. Prior to that, Toshiba had partnered with our domestic rival, General Electric to build plants in Japan. We sell Pressurized Water Reactors (PWRs), they sell Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs). They're pretty different.

If the corporate romance had happened a decade earlier, it still wouldn't prove that the design put forward required leaching off the Japanese, but it would hard enough to disprove so as not to interfere with random geysers of ideology.

The outlines of the rent seeking story are roughly that Washington lobbyists are the heroine of profit maximization, and that it only we enact prohibition against government will the profit maximizers settle down to clean living and wealth creation to the benefit of greater society.

My view is that after government hours after government is declared drowned in the bathtub, the profit maximizers of the drug-seeking stripe will quickly discover crack cocaine (some other way of extracting rent from society) with society shorn of collective will as weakly expressed through the government organ to oppose them. The view that modern government is grotesquely imperfect is quickly quelled by listening to 50 hours of podcasts about the Roman empire or the Byzantines who followed. These were small governments in cahoots with large armies principally concerned with rape and plunder.

After we flush government, what power remains to cross crack cocaine off the list if it is discovered half so quick as I suspect?

I'm of the view that there is another possible road forward: the Long Now project of evolving government to be less like heroine and more like methadone. I have dark suspicions about the prohibitionist, cold turkey no-government agenda. It might go well for a while, but when the morning arrives that it isn't going well, what are your options? Few historical precedents have glowing resumes. Too many people run around espousing the view that the blood on those documents resulted from an administrative paper cut.

Re:Could someone elaborate

[dbIII]

Which I why the word "civilian" is above.

Re:Could someone elaborate

[Anonymous Coward]

Your writing is delightfully obtuse. Did you have a point underneath that tortured drug war metaphor?

PS it's 'heroin', not 'heroine' unless you're referring to Wonder Woman

Safety Scissors

[Narcocide]

You made this statement sarcastically, right? Or are you going to split hairs and call this some other type of accident other than nuclear... public relations perhaps?

Don't get me wrong, I think nuclear power *can be* and *usually is* used safely but 100% might be a bit overstated. We have a ways to go yet to call it anywhere close to 100% safe. Nothing is 100% safe, not even safety scissors, and a nuclear reactor is hardly as easy to operate safely as say, for example, safety scissors.

Re:Safety Scissors

[uncqual]

Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if safety scissors, on the average, kill and injure more people in the US than nuclear power plants do per year. Obviously if you include, for example, uranium mining accidents in the "nuclear count", you have to include some iron ore mining accidents in the "scissors count" as well.

Re:Safety Scissors

[Amtrak]

Or if the scissors are plastic, oil disasters but those never happen I mean when was the last time you heard of a large scale oil industry fuck up. Oh. Wait.

Is it designed around passive nuclear safety?

[mark-t]

Passive design reactors are, by far, the safest type of reactor in the world (in fact, a meltdown is virtually impossible, because even catastrophic failure results in the core cooling down instead of heating up), and IMO, building *ANY* other type of reactor is just setting yourself up for a possible incident that's going to lead to eventual regret.

Re:Is it designed around passive nuclear safety?

[Trepidity]

Sort of. Unlike Fukushima-style reactors, it doesn't require an external power source (like the DC generators that failed there) to cool the core following a shutdown, but it's not a purely passive system. Wikipedia's summary is decent.

Re:Is it designed around passive nuclear safety?

[AK Marc]

The total failure there is that 100% of generated power is shipped out, and not available for running local systems, not under normal operation, and not under emergencies. So loss of grid tie and generator failure will result in meltdown 100% of the time, even if the plant is operating normally otherwise.

Re:Is it designed around passive nuclear safety?

[a_hanso]

Passive designs for *anything* tends to beat active[ly controlled] designs in fault tolerance. Which is why, even as a software engineer, I'm against putting batteries and chips in every gorram thing that does not need it.

Re:Is it designed around passive nuclear safety?

[The Master Control P]

That appears rather unlikely, seeing as the point at which they'd tap the grid to run their own systems would be the same point at which their turbines feed power onto it.

Now, pointing out that there shouldn't be a single switchboard in a place it can get flooded which will cut off all power everywhere if it gets flooded I can get behind. Also, I've got some notes from Hurricane Katrina here... "do not put emergency generators in basement"

Re:Is it designed around passive nuclear safety?

[AK Marc]

That appears rather unlikely, seeing as the point at which they'd tap the grid to run their own systems would be the same point at which their turbines feed power onto it.

I would envision either an inductive tap on the main lines going out to feed back in a small amount of power back in at usable levels or a secondary generator attached to coolant lines that will put out enough power to run the plant at even low levels of activity (say, the first week after a "total shutdown"). I'd leave the choice between those to nuclear engineers, but absolutely no locally powered backup at a power plant seems silly (or negligent).

Re:Is it designed around passive nuclear safety?

[Anonymous Coward]

The entire Fukushima incident very likely could have been averted if the cooling of the reactors had not been interrupted by the failure of flooded diesel backup generators. IMHO, diesel was a monumentally stupid choice for backup cooling power in a reactor built right next to the coast in a tsunami prone area. Instead, the entire reactor should have been rated to operate submerged to a depth of at least 300 feet of water, with cooling maintained by stirling engines. The reactor itself provides the hot cylinder while the cold cylinder is the nearby pacific ocean (both could be linked via heat exchangers). If the reactor can operate while completely submerged, flooding isn't an issue and it's feasible to create hardened concrete containment structures that can resist the initial tsunami surge or any typhoon or hurricane.

Re:Is it designed around passive nuclear safety?

[mark-t]

That appears rather unlikely

Famous last words, I'm sure.

Purely passive systems have virtually no chance of meltdown, even on a theoretical level, since if the system should ever fail, for absolutely *ANY* reason, all the way up to and including total systems failure, the core will immediately start to cool down.

The cost for this safety is a small compromise in reactor efficiency, and I am at a complete loss as to why anyone would ever want to build a nuclear reactor that was not designed around a passive safety system... it might not ever be needed, and ideally, it never will... but if something completely unprecedented or however unlikely does actually occur, that small compromise more than pays for itself.

Anything else is just a man-made disaster that, regardless of how good your odds are, you can still only hope will never actually happen.

Re:Is it designed around passive nuclear safety?

[rubycodez]

Eh, just need to keep the water tank topped off, if pumper firetruck can't reach it then send in fire fighting helicopter. hell, even a bucket brigade on scaffolds should do.

Re:Is it designed around passive nuclear safety?

[Anonymous Coward]

the ECCS diesel generators in BWR plants are betwen 4 and 5 MW 4160VAC generators.
(not a DC source)

additionally it was the failed electrical switchgear that was the primary issue. the generators were secondary. some of the generators were still somewhat functional, but with total loss of the electrical switchgear and interconnects (the plant's internal power grid) there was no where to send power to.

Re:Is it designed around passive nuclear safety?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the wikipedia link,

In this design Westinghouse's Passive Core Cooling System (PXS) uses less than twenty explosively operated and DC operated valves which must operate within the first 30 minutes. This is designed to happen even if the reactor operators take no action. The electrical system required for initiating the passive systems doesn't rely on external or diesel power and the valves don't rely on hydraulic or compressed air systems.

So, to summarize

1. DC operated explosive valves - think a car battery
2. no operator action needed to blow the valves
3. once the valves are blown, the reactor is in passive cooling mode and cannot be restarted without major overhaul - think, new valves and decontamination of the reactor area
4. there is no need for external power or ANYTHING except for gravity

So, unless you are saying that they cannot explode some explosives with a DC current or that gravity will fail or that they cannot fill a water tank cooling the external of the steel structure, it will not melt down.

I'm sorry, but that is as passively safe as one can reasonably get. Explosive valves are not 99.9% functional. They are more like 99.9999999% functional. Gravity seems to be more or less stable on this planet and filling a tank with water every 3 days is not exactly high maintenance.

Re:Is it designed around passive nuclear safety?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the past, there were no ability to create realistic simulations of heat flows in a reactor. Passive safety was a pipe dream. Now, we have things like computers where thermodynamics can be simulated. Where fluid dynamics are well understood.

Heck, the some old designs currently have problems, like sectors of the reactors will heat up significantly more than other sections simple because water flow does not correspond to heat generation. There was no ability to have passively safe reactors that can produce 1+GWe simply because the science was not there.

And yes, there are still reasons to build plants that are not passively safe. For example the French nuclear reactor, EPR, are not passively safe because they run under very high pressures and have different cooling systems (4 independent cooling loops, etc.). One can argue those systems are even more robust than if it was designed with passive safety in mind.

Re:Is it designed around passive nuclear safety?

[HiddenCamper]

Nuclear engineer here The plant actually runs on generator power under normal conditions. Nuclear plants have 4 AC power sources. The normal source is taking generator power BEFORE it goes out to the power grid in through the auxiliary transformers and then using internally for 4160 and 6900V power. Because this power hasn't gone to the grid yet, we don't "pay" for it. Additionally, when we are shut down, we can disconnect the generator and backfeed power in through the aux. transformers for power. This is typically an emergency/contingency action or an outage action to allow us to work on the reseve power system. The standby source comes in from a different grid (or a different part of the same grid), and comes in from the reserve auxiliary transformers (sometimes called startup transformers). Because this is bringing power in from the grid, we "pay" for it (we get billed by the grid). The emergency reserve transformer (sometimes called backup transformers) comes from a completey different grid than everything else. They power ONLY safety systems. Normal systems cannot use it. The diesel generators are safety seismic and environmentally designed backup power systems. There is 1 DG for each primary safety division which has a decay heat removal function, and an additional DG for coolant injection. Most plants also have a fourth or fifth DG for DC power chargers only. There is enough fuel on site for a minimum of 1 week for all generators running 2% above maximum theoretical load of all equipment under worst case design conditions. The reality is you can probably get another 2-3 days past that since it assumes that like, air coolers and air heater are both on at the same time in the same area, and once you've stabilized an accident or emergency condition you can put most of the redundant safety systems into standby to conserve fuel.

Re:Is it designed around passive nuclear safety?

[HiddenCamper]

The issue wasnt the DGs in the basement. they were put there because it was seismically more stable. The main issue was the building was designed as "flood tight" but not "flood proof". Basically it can handle a certain level of flooding, and that tsunamic went several times beyond that. Normal flooding would not have been an issue, but it isnt completely 100% water / flood proof. All the primary electrical switchgear are in basement locations as well. Ive worked at 2 nuclear plants and visited 3 more, and at all of them in the US, their critical switchgear were in water tight areas above the flood plane (generally 30' or more above ground level)

Re:Is it designed around passive nuclear safety?

[HiddenCamper]

for normal power, when our generator is synced to the grid, we have 2 transformers which pull power in BEFORE it gets to the outside grid breaker. We don't pay the grid for this, since they never see it. One brings in 4160V power, the other brings in 6900V power. We also have reserve transformers, and emergency reserve transformers, on top of diesel generators

Re:Is it designed around passive nuclear safety?

[subreality]

Which is why, even^H^H^H^H especially as a software engineer, I'm against putting batteries and chips in every gorram thing that does not need it.

FTFY

Re:Is it designed around passive nuclear safety?

[mark-t]

And that additional robustness won't be worth dick all if something completely unprecedented occurs. Seriously... how many more meltdowns do we have to see before people get a friggen clue? And all these meltdowns do is scare people away from nuclear power being generally used, rather than providing any incentives to simply build the nuclear reactors safely in the first place.

Nobody *expects* a meltdown to occur when they build a nuclear reactor, but one only has to look at history to realize that we make mistakes, and sometimes stuff we haven't ever anticipated happens. With passive safety systems, it doesn't matter what happens - even a 100% catastrophic failure, regardless of cause, will result in the system cooling down instead of continuing to heat up, which is the cause of meltdowns and has historically been the cause for serious widespread radiation issues, and is what has made so many people antsy about nuclear power usage in the first place.

Re:Is it designed around passive nuclear safety?

[Raven_Stark]

Ever since the Fukushima incidents, I have been wondering if steam powered coolant pumps are ever used for backup? It seems like the simplicity and ruggedness of steam power would make it much better than electrically powered pumps. An overheating reactor could power them directly.

Also, it seems like maybe the nuclear industry could win public confidence by releasing open source plant simulation software that would allow people look for problems in the safety systems in various disaster scenarios.

Re:Is it designed around passive nuclear safety?

[mark-t]

What if you can't stabilize it? Never mind that you might not or can't imagine what might happen that such an incident could ever occur... what happens in the event of an all-out catastrophic failure, where absolutely nobody can stabilize the system? Bear in mind that every nuclear plant that ever had a meltdown in history was not expected to do so when it was first designed either.

My point is that trying to predict the future or only accommodate what are considered "likely" scenarios, regardless of how good your odds might happen to be on paper, is futile... and still amounts to rolling dice, with people's lives at stake. It's an arrogance about what we think we know about what can happen to the point that is almost makes me sick... particularly since passive systems exist and have proven themselves to be economically viable.

Passive systems require absolutely *NO* powered systems for emergency cooling, and thus even in the event of a complete catastrophic failure (regardless of what could cause such a failure), there will not be any meltdown, and the worst that will happen is that the power plant will simply go dark instead of leaking radiation everywhere, which would cost *FAR* more in cleanup expenses than any additional resources you would have spent using a passive safety system in the first place.

Re:Is it designed around passive nuclear safety?

[HiddenCamper]

In BWRs, the HPCI system (in BWR 2- some of the 5s) and RCIC system (found in BWR4+) are steam driven. Fukushima Daiichi unit 2 was cooled for 70 hours on RCIC using steam alone, and unit 3 on RCIC and HPCI for 36 hours. The limiting issue is cooling water for the pump, because the cooling water is the same water that is going in and out of the reactor and suppression pool, eventually the whole mass heats up beyond the maximum temperature of the pump. PWRs have aux feedwater which is steam driven or direct diesel driven (or both depending on design) to provide feedwater to the steam generators for decay heat removal to the atmosphere in this case. Steam driven aux feedwater pumps are usually the same pump design as the RCIC pump used in BWRs.

That ship sailed long ago

[dbIII]

if it doesn't want to be buying technology off China 10-20 years down the line

Almost all of the post 1970s technology in the AP1000 came directly from the nuclear division of Toshiba in Japan after merging with Westinghouse. It's technology bought off Japan instead of China but still looks like what you are worried about.
India is leading with Thorium at the moment and appear to have taken the US advances and added a couple of decades of development. Accelerated Thorium (mixed fuel such as expired weapons material or used uranium fuel rods in addition to thorium) holds paticular promise.

Re:That ship sailed long ago

[Anonymous Coward]

Westinghouse employee here. The AP1000 final design certification was approved in 2006, and the design (including the predecessor AP600) began long before that (mid 90s).

Toshiba acquired Westinghouse in late 2006. Prior to that, Toshiba had partnered with our domestic rival, General Electric to build plants in Japan. We sell Pressurized Water Reactors (PWRs), they sell Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs). They're pretty different.

Even now that they own us, there is very little technical collaboration between our two entities. If there's a technological connection between Westinghouse and Toshiba that predates any of that, I'm certainly not aware of it.

Re:That ship sailed long ago

[Anonymous Coward]

The AP1000 uses different technology than what Toshiba used. One of the reasons Toshiba looked to purchase Westinghouse was due to their newer technology. Westinghouse didn't use Toshiba's technology. It's the other way around.

Re:That ship sailed long ago

[arglebargle_xiv]

Almost all of the post 1970s technology in the AP1000 came directly from the nuclear division of Toshiba in Japan after merging with Westinghouse. It's technology bought off Japan instead of China but still looks like what you are worried about.

Beat me to the punch. The AP1000 is not a "new" design, it's a slightly warmed-over 1970s design that got NRC approval because it was close enough to the antiques currently in operation that no bureaucrat had to risk his pension by sticking his neck out and approving something that would be a genuine improvement (I'm lumping the Gen IIIs in with the Gen IIs here because they're mostly incremental improvements obtained from experience in running Gen IIs) . When the NRC approves anything Gen IV like a PBR or, heaven forbid, something genuinely modern like a TWR, then it's time to celebrate.

Re:That ship sailed long ago

[dbIII]

OK looks like I've been misled and it's really a 1970s design with a few bolt locations changed and painted green. I apologise for assuming that it was the result of post-Chenobyl technology instead of just what was left over from before Westinghouse gutted their nuclear R&D.

Re:That ship sailed long ago

[thegarbz]

That is common throughout industry. HF Alkylation technology was invented by ConocoPhillips and UOP designed a plant that operated in a completely different way with different specifications etc. UOP bought ConocoPhillips' HF Alkylation process, and Honeywell bought UOP.

Regardless of that now the same company owns two specifications that say two different things (one permits only flanged fittings, the other only threaded). Asking them about using either in the plant it wasn't originally speced for is met with a resounding no despite the design conditions in a specific part of the plant potentially being 100% identical.

Lack of intercommunication is incredible.

Re:That ship sailed long ago

[khallow]

Why would you think otherwise? It's clearly impossible to learn from experience or modify existing designs. And if this actually should be a barely modified 1970s design? Well, that's a very good example of "unintended consequences" as it pertains to nuclear industry regulation. Why should Westinghouse have nuclear power R&D, if the pipeline for new plants has been shut down for more than a couple of decades?

Re:That ship sailed long ago

[dbIII]

Why would you think otherwise?

PR and advertising, which in my opinion should have been a lower expense than R&D. It's also more about laziness, greed and an unwillingness to invest than regulations - as seen in places where regulations are mostly irrelevant if they exist at all.

Re:That ship sailed long ago

[Anonymous Coward]

I dream of the day I can drop a TWR in a 30' hole in my backyard and power the neighborhood for 60 years.

Re:That ship sailed long ago

[khallow]

as seen in places where regulations are mostly irrelevant if they exist at all.

Like what? Somalia's nuclear reactors? Last I checked, the entire nuclear industry is either heavily regulated or directly under some government's control.

Re:That ship sailed long ago

[Anonymous Coward]

The NRC doesnt decide what designs to appprove, it reviews and may approve a submitted design of it meets regulated safety and security requirements. If someone wants to build a pebble bed, thorium, traveling wave, etc. reactor they must submit their design to the NRC and then and only then will the process start for approval. So if a design isn't being reviewed by the NRC it's because no one submitted that design. That has nothing to with the NRC.

The US should wait

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously. The US has a lot of working infrastructure right now, it just has to be maintained. Other nations will build the standardized nuclear reactors first, and there will be bugs that have to be fixed.

Re:The US should wait

[Anonymous Coward]

Other nations will build

Other nations are building AP1000 reactors today. China didn't wait for NRC blessing. They're building several, in fact.

The US is where Westinghouse executives keep their wives. China is the center of the industrial universe.

Re:The US should wait

[rubycodez]

So China will be where married Westinghouse executves get horny and after getting a taste of young asian pussy, make much trouble for old U.S. wife and family.

The new design isn't perfect,

[stewartm0205]

but its better than the old designs. I would agree to a one to one replacement of the oldest plants in the most unsafe locations.

Bible Belt Prophesy

[Whiteox]

YAY! Radioactive Christians glow in the dark :)
Or is this how the Zombie Apocalypse begins?

Westinghouse Sucks

[offrdbandit]

I hope this works better than the POS Westinghouse TV I bought last year...

Re:Westinghouse Sucks

[Ellis D. Tripp]

Nuclear plants and similar heavy industrial equipment are about the only products of the "real" Westinghouse that still exist. They had nothing to do with your POS TV set.

Like so many other venerable US brand names, The Westinghouse name and logo has been licensed for use on El-cheapo imported consumer electronics built by various "One Hung Low" outfits.

Looks good except for the single license part

[Anonymous Coward]

"Up to now reactors had to obtain a construction license and then undergo a long wait for an operating license, resulting in expensive delays in starting up reactors that had essentially been completed."

Isn't a "long wait for an operating license" necessary to make sure that A) what was built actually meets the design specs (what the article refers to), and B) that the design specs actually work properly even if it was built to specs? There are these things called "design flaws" that don't always become evident until the design is implemented and thoroughly tested in operation. For example, these planes were also built to specs -- flawed specs that pushed the technology envelope in ways that weren't recognized until problems started happening.

Getting approval all in one shot is indeed faster, but I'm not sure it is a good idea, unless I'm misunderstanding the distinction between construction and operating licenses.

Nuke

[Anonymous Coward]

Love me some cheap power. Live in Arizona AC rocking 24/7 . Like begging the electric company to take all my money.
And a increase in price is approved every time you turn around.
My bill not long ago was 150.00 per month I have changed all my light to CFL and TV's to LED now my bill is 350.00 per month with peak off peak program.
I would let the air look like China if My bill would go back to 150.00.

Hmmm

[lightknight]

This reactor design in an improvement, but I would like to see a design which does not use a pressured coolant. I consider the usage of a pressurized coolant to be a possible point of failure.

By the by, didn't Westinghouse have an earlier standardized reactor design?

Re:Hmmm

[HiddenCamper]

The pressurized coolant leak is the main design basis accident for nuclear power plants. ALL nuclear power plants are designed to handle a double guillotine shear break in the largest coolant lines from the reactor, plus ANY single failure (including full failure of an entire train of safety systems), and prevent more than 1% core damage with radiation releases less than 10CFR100 requirements. A pressurized coolant means it is harder to inject, but it is not as bad of an issue as you would think. Pressurized coolant has advantages too. the two Fukushima units that had functioning HPCI and RCIC systems (passive steam powered cooling pumps) were able to keep cooled for 70 hours and 36 hours (for units 2 and 3 respectively) purely on steam with no DC power.

Approved, but financed?

[JoeMerchant]

I interviewed with NRC in 1991, they had "just approved" a new "advanced, passive cooling, highly safe" reactor design then. I asked the interviewer what my prospects were in an industry that hadn't built a single new facility in over 15 years, his response: "Oh, quite good, these new designs are coming online real soon now...."

Fast forward 20 years... new design approved, but, will it be built? Or, will we continue to operate reactors that are dependent on powered pumps for cooling water, designed in the 1960s for a 30 year maximum lifespan? The correct answer is likely not the good answer.

Re:Approved, but financed?

[HiddenCamper]

They werent designed with a maximum lifespan in mind. the "design lifespan" was based on financial decisions, but it was never the intent to make the plants only last 40 years. additionally, they didnt have computers and methods to compute very specifically what 40 years would do to a plant or vessel, and we are finding that they went so far overboard in the conservatisms that we can easily get to 60 years and still maintain more than the required safety margins with no compromise in safety.

Re:Approved, but financed?

[JoeMerchant]

They werent designed with a maximum lifespan in mind. the "design lifespan" was based on financial decisions, but it was never the intent to make the plants only last 40 years.

additionally, they didnt have computers and methods to compute very specifically what 40 years would do to a plant or vessel, and we are finding that they went so far overboard in the conservatisms that we can easily get to 60 years and still maintain more than the required safety margins with no compromise in safety.

And, yet, in less than 60 years, we have had, what, like four "once a millenia" nuclear power generation disaster events so far?

Re:Approved, but financed?

[HiddenCamper]

And none of those had to do with the age of the plant. Additionally, probabilistic risk assessment (which is what generates the number 1 accident in X years) is a model, and a tool, used to determine what is the most safety significant components which you need to maintain. A tool, nothing more. People cite numbers believing that they are gospel truth that a plant will only have 1 accident every X years, but it is only a tool. Additionally, PRA depends on your design basis being correct from the start. PRA does not model operator error very well as what happened in TMI (multiple operator errors combined with process errors, multiple latent failures, etc), and does not model bad designs like chernobyl. PRA also can't account for an incorrect design basis, like only 14ft tsunami vs. 45ft. tl;dr, age of the equipment and strucutres has had nothing to do with any nuclear accident. Only human error at some level of the process (design, operation, etc).

Re:Approved, but financed?

[JoeMerchant]

Don't get me wrong, I'd like to see every coal fired plant in the Western Hemisphere shut down and replaced with 1.3x the nuclear generation capacity. But, what I want are "new" nuclear plant designs, "new" like the stuff they were coming up with in the 1980s after TMI and 30 years of experience in running the things. The big accidents have not happened because of the age of the plants, but I do believe the big accidents could have been a lot smaller if the old plant designs had been retired and replaced with new ones. We shouldn't be limping these things from the 1960s along and refusing to build new capacity, but, that's the "Green" mentality - fight the fight, regardless of whether or not your obstructions and protests are actually making things worse instead of better.

resources

[Sebastopol]

Yay, nuclear. We'll NEVER run out of uranium. /s

Why are we still using PWR??

[MagikSlinger]

There are newer, better designs like pebble bed, or molten-salt reactors which, when it fails, fails by shutting itself down and locking the radioactive materials in the core. I see some people talking about the thorium cycle reactors above too.

PWR can be safe, but frankly, there are far more effecient, potentially more cost effective and definitely safer designs out there. We have to stop using 1960 light-water reactor designs meant for nuclear submarines.

Re:Why are we still using PWR??

[Sollord]

Isn't molten salt highly corrosive plus doesn't react badly to water?

Re:Why are we still using PWR??

[HiddenCamper]

there are still operational challenges for some of the more advanced reactor types. The US has no generation 3 reactors producing power, we need to build Gen 3 and a lot of research on specific operational issues need to be completed on Gen 4 reactors, plus a big company like westinghouse or GE needs to pick up a gen 4 design and commercialize it. it will happen eventually, may take another 20 years.

Re:Why are we still using PWR??

[MagikSlinger]

The salts used in these reactors are (according to the Wikipedia article):

MSRs can be safer than ordinary light water reactors. Molten salts trap fission products chemically, and react slowly or not at all in air. Also, the fuel salt does not burn in air or water.

As I understand it, they are using more stable fluoride salts like uranium tetraflouride, which is still potentially reactive with water, but much more slowly and is quite manageable, so I hear.

Although, I do admit to having drunk the Kool-Aid on MSR's, so I hope someone more knowledgeable in the chemistry comes along to correct me if my faith is misplaced. :-)

Re:Why are we still using PWR??

[Anonymous Coward]

[[ potentially more cost effective ]]

That is one word away from being able to get the five billion dollar loan to construct it.

Re:Why are we still using PWR??

[dunkelfalke]

We had two pebble bed reactors in Germany. Both of them were very problematic. And molten salt reactors are currently at about the same state as fusion reactors (will be there in 20 years), and personally, I like fusion better.

Re:Why are we still using PWR??

[marcosdumay]

Now that you pointed the actual salt used, fluorides are very corrosive to metals. Uranium tetrafluoride is probably even worse than NaCl.

Anyway, everything in the nuclear industry is done with UF4, sometimes even vaporised. I guess people have plenty of experience in protecting steel against it.

Re:Why are we still using PWR??

[Dr. Spork]

Pebble bed reactors are very nice, but I'd prefer we really go for it with traveling wave reactors. They're just so damn beautiful, elegant and efficient that it's worth our while to get them right.

Re:Why are we still using PWR??

[Dr. Spork]

What you are talking about are research reactors built in the 60s. They were used for research, and the one that started operating too hot did so because it was being used to research situations that wouldn't occur in an operational reactor. For example, they were testing out many different kinds of fuel pebbles, because they didn't have the computers back then to model what would happen, so they just had to jam them in and see what happens. Yes, problems can occur in that kind of research, it's lucky that nobody got hurt. Anyway, now it's 50 years later and our designs, along with our understanding, have improved a lot. I'm glad that Americans aren't saying in 2011 that because a 1961 rocket design failed, we shouldn't build more rockets.

Re:Why are we still using PWR??

[dunkelfalke]

Wrong and wrong again. THTR was neither built in the 1960s, nor was it a research reactor but a commercial reactor that was operating (in very broad terms) 1983-1988. The pebbles tended to break, the reactor overheated often and the cost of building and disposing the power plant is higher than the profits that reactor could do even if it had run for 50 years.

Re:Why are we still using PWR??

[Dr. Spork]

Ok, I've returned from a long trip through the Wikipedia and it turns out that you're right. I think I was talking about the AVR, which started operation in 1961. The story of the THTR is a sad one, especially the costs of decomissioning it. (Although to be fair, the THTR is basically also a 60's design; construction started in 1971, which means that final plans must have been made long before that). I don't know enough about reactor engineering to judge whether the problems of graphite dust buildup are fundamental to the design or whether we have since discovered better solutions. The inherent safety of the pebble/helium design is still a very attractive feature, and many people seem to think we can do it better. So yes, this was an important lesson. It's sad that it turned out to cost so much, but like I said in my last post: When the goal is something important, we can't let ourselves be deterred by early mistakes. I think the analogy with stopping the space program when our first rocket exploded is still a good one. Maybe that's exactly what we would have done if the space program were getting started today. But we're all glad that we kept at it. Nuclear power is an answer to an even more important problem, and I think we should give ourselves a few generations to work out the bugs.

I would certainly prefer this to what Germany is doing today, which is building new, gigantic coal burning plants while refusing to close their old ones. Some info on the scale of the coal boom is here, but I remember reading a much more detailed article about it in the Spiegel. It coincides nicely with the exit from atomic power, and yet everyone knows that it will kill more people (thousands instead of zero) and do much more to damage the global climate. It puzzles me immensely that a country which is afraid to plant GM crops and use nuclear power is not afraid of new, record size powerplants that burn brown coal! I thought Germans would act more responsibly. One thing I appreciate about the Germans I know is that shame makes them act more responsibly (this works less well in here in the US), and this new coal boom to replace their nuclear powerplants really is something that Germans should be ashamed of. There is no uglier way to make power today. OK, sorry for the rant, but it's not completely off topic here.

It's the Economics, Stupid

[Vegan Cyclist]

Good timing, just came across this piece today:

Nuclear Dead End: It's the Economics, Stupid | The Nation

It outlines how expensive nuclear is - it's not cheap. From the building of the plant, to the insurance (no private options, they won't touch it, always costs the public), and of course waste disposal and storage - when you add up the total costs, the $/kw is pretty pitiful, even compared to emerging technologies.

This doesn't factor in that uranium is a limited resource (and pretty harmful for those in the industry), and that all this time, energy and money directed towards researching, developing and building nuclear plants also directs money, time and energy away from sustainable, safe and economical alternatives.

When you really dig into the matter, nuclear really doesn't make much sense from any angle.

Re:It's the Economics, Stupid

[epine]

If your standard is "really dig into the matter", Christian Parenti falls woefully short of the mark.

Moreover, casting a nuclear renaissance as the panacea for climate change is dangerous because it threatens to delay the shift to clean energy. Continually pushing nukes has opportunity costs; every dollar, euro or RMB spent on nuclear power is one not spent on clean technology like wind, solar, hydro or tidal kinetics.

If I were teaching introductory economics, I would fail a student who wrote that statement. There's obviously some competition for sunk capital at the margins, but it's hardly 1:1 and the buckets are unclean to begin with. Do we count every dollar invested in lithographic die shrink technology as a dollar invested in solar? If not, why not?

He continues in the brinkmanship vein:

A massive industrial-scale build out of fourth-generation nukes(slashcodefuckup)the ones that are supposed to be safe, cheap and easy to build(sfu)would arrive too late to stave off climate change(sfu)s tipping points.

Nowhere does he demonstrate that any other technology will arrrive "soon enough". He argument seems to be that alternative is our only hope, so pour the dollars on that horse, whether it will save us or not.

Work on it has just begun in Georgia, and already there are conflicts between the utility, Southern Company and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Moreover, this project is going forward only because it is in one of the few regions of the United States (the Southeast) where electricity markets were not deregulated. That means the utility, operating on cost-plus basis, can pass on to rate-payers all its expense over-runs.

I'm sure that the installed wind and solar capacity also sought favourable contexts. Here's a man flying the magic carpet of brinkmanship logic decrying his foe for becoming mired in controversy. We all know that the correct solution to global warming will be conflict free. Just keep proposing virtue until common sense prevails and the planet engages in the multiracial kumbaya group hug.

If all of these nuclear power plants are completed they will add 62.56 gigawatts of capacity, which is less than one-third of already-existing wind capacity worldwide, which was at 196.63 gigawatts at the end of 2010.

Here he's comparing the entire capacity for wind generation to an increment of nuclear capacity, where capacity is actually what you think it is.

The Worldwatch Institute reports that between 2004 and 2009, electricity from wind (not capacity but actual power output) grew by 27 percent, while solar grew by 54 percent. Over the same time, nuclear power output actually declined by half a percent.

He clearly does know the difference between base load and peak capacity, at least when quoting other sensible people. But so what the wind is growing 27% starting from nowhere?

Clean Energy's Dirty Little Secret

Mountain Pass(sfu)s mine contains a rare-earth ore that yields neodymium, the pixie dust of green tech necessary for the lightweight permanent magnets that make Prius motors zoom and for the generators that give wind turbines their electrical buzz. In fact, if we are going to make even a few million of the hybrid and electric cars that are supposed to help rescue the planet from global warming, we will need to double production of neodymium in short order.

He clearly doesn't understand economics at the margin one bit. Even at modest scale, we are already encountering obstacles to maintaining the current growth rate. The economics don't improve as we populate more of the world's best sites with turbines, either. We could figure out how to install turbines in harsher

Westinghouse?

[sociocapitalist]

I heard this and I thought 'Finally a kitchen appliance sized nuclear reactor I can have at home!'...

It Has Already Been Done

[Anonymous Coward]

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR

Where are my modpoints when I need them

[scsirob]

You are spot-on. My modpoints just expired or else I would have modded your comment "Insightful".

Whoo Cares

[WindBourne]

I want to see GE-PRISM and GA's EM2, as well as B&W's designs approved. Probably the most important one are the first two. They reason is that they use 'waste' fuel, rather than simply requiring all new fuel.

Bombs

[Anonymous Coward]

If we keep building reactors, there will be a big jump in the mining, refining, and distribution of fuel. Give it a few hundred years, and there will be many chances for a shady, weapons-grade refinery to emerge. For example, there are already tensions between USA and Iran regarding this (perhaps this is not founded in reality...this time...). Who will volunteer to inspect every refinery and investigate every lead, in order to prevent every attempt to make a bomb? In 500 years will the USA still be the world police? Maybe China will foot the bill?

I UNDERSTAND! - modern designs don't require weapons-grade fuel. I just don't see any reliable way to prevent such fuel from being made, in the long term.

I'm NOT saying that we shouldn't try to get safe, cheap nuclear energy. My point is that eventually, anyone who wants a bomb will be able to make one (and use it). The proliferation of nuclear reactors and the associated infrastructure will make that happen faster.

On a side note: I despise the straw-man argument that 'coal kills more people than nuclear per Watt'. The whole premise of that argument relies on the idea that the number of Coal deaths is somehow acceptable.

Nuculear Fusion is the Future

[Tokolosh]

and it always will be!

godzilla likes this

[Anonymous Coward]

godzilla wishes to thank US nrc

love
xoxo
godzilla
ARCTIC OCEAN, NEAR THE 170th PARALLEL

Bias and stupidity in slashdot mod system

[MrL0G1C]

Slashdotters are so biased re nuclear power, I now get less mod points because some asshat who disagreed with me modded my nuclear power related posts as troll and flamebait - Any opposing view is flamebait to a person who is fanatical enough in their opinion, so that shouldn't affect mod points.

So if you don't agree with the consensus, shut-up or you don't get mod points.

Fukushima had more plants than Daichi

[Mike Van Pelt]

The 40-year-old Fukushima Daichi plants had the problem.

The 30-year-old Fukushima Daini plants, hit by the same earthquake, and a biggger tsunami, shut down safely.

FTA: many projects were abandoned half-built

[Trax3001BBS]

The story mentions :
"The new licensing procedure is intended to cut costs, which ran so high
  in the last round of construction, in the 1970s and 1980s, that many
  projects were abandoned half-built."

  While I'm not sure of the full reason. Two plants were shut down in this area
  in the middle of construction (1980's), and can still be seen.
  Located at Lat 4628'13.42"N - long 11918'49.85"W

For those who need a bit of help
Paste
4628'13.42"N 11918'49.85"W
into Google Earth, Google Maps, or similar.

They will never operate. only the one to the left was finished, and has been operating for over
20 years now.

A friend of mine who had been studying for over a year to be a reactor
operator was told one morning before class to go home it's was over.

WPPSS the contractor is responsible for the largest default in the history
of municipal finance http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa028.html (1983).

Re:FTA: many projects were abandoned half-built

[Trax3001BBS]

4628'13.42"N 11918'49.85"W just doesn't work for me, I'm sure there's away.
Till I finger it out, here's a picture if interested. http://i41.tinypic.com/azdky0.jpg

I just don't know any more...

[Trax3001BBS]

Reading of the reactor -I'm sure it's considered safe,
it's just those automatic valves that need to close within 30 minutes.
This could be to account for a system to be brought back into service if
taken out for maintenance. (I don't know, the PDF isn't available and I'm not
searching for it).

It's just that it's kind of hectic during a progressing nuclear event and
being brought back into service might not be as easy as it was imagined
in the risk analysis.

While it mentions the reactor to be able to shut down without any operator
actions. All reactors are made that way. The reactor operators only makes
sure everything happen as it should. Taking necessary actions to start that
system or decide if an alternative is possible, or even needed. I've been
through many unexpected shutdowns, without fail each system operated
as expected.

It's just after Fukushima I'm not so trusting.

You shouldn't be condescending when you get it wro

[dbIII]

Why should "directly under some government's control" contradict anything I've written above?
I've heard some very scary stories from a reliable witness about a reactor in Indonesia for instance, and from Russian turbine engineer about some reactors he worked at there. Why are you so deluded as to think anybody in nuclear industries outside of the USA, including the governments with reactors, really gives a shit about US regulations? Are you really that naive? When the same guys that own and run the plant get to write their own regulations (as with just about every government run nuclear operation) what do you think happens? Here's a clue - they don't deliberately put unnecessary roadblocks in their own way.

Re:You shouldn't be condescending when you get it

[khallow]

When the same guys that own and run the plant get to write their own regulations (as with just about every government run nuclear operation) what do you think happens? Here's a clue - they don't deliberately put unnecessary roadblocks in their own way.

So you admit they are regulated. Thus, my argument remains. The system isn't unregulated, but rather that it's mostly disengaged from any consideration of risk or externalities.

Disappointing

[dbIII]

I'm sorry, what the fuck does that have to say with anything I've written above? What is this "so you admit" bullshit? Are you pretending to be stupid as some sort of mechanism to pretend that you've won some sort of argument that is mostly in your own head?
It really was a bad mistake to cut education funding but you can educate yourself by getting off your arse and reading a lot if you can't be bothered to observe the world around you more directly.

Re:Disappointing

[khallow]

I'll try again. You use the word "unregulated". I merely pointed out that these government-owned facilities were regulated, just not for the betterment of society or public or with an eye towards risk management.

It also seems to me that poorly run Indonesian nuclear plants don't tell us anything about US plants.

Re:You shouldn't be condescending when you get it

[Hartree]

"stories from a reliable witness about a reactor in Indonesia"

Which one of the 3? The MPR or one of the TRIGAs?

They're fairly low power research reactors, not power reactors. They only finalized what site to build a power reactor this past year.

Re:You shouldn't be condescending when you get it

[dbIII]

The comment was about safety standards - using neutron sources that are supposed to be fuel for radiographic inspection of welds in not paticularly safe even when done with care.

Re:You shouldn't be condescending when you get it

[Hartree]

Must have been at the MPR. They do a good bit of radiography testing there. But, it was specifically made as a source for that and making isotopes.

Still not sure from what you're saying what the problem was.

It is true that safety standards vary a lot at research reactors.

Re:You shouldn't be condescending when you get it

[dbIII]

They were using very active material which was supposed to be the fuel for the reactor as a source for a lot of radiographic inspection of welds and the material used was a very strong neutron emitter so not safe for that role without extreme care and remote manipulation. Instead very little care was taken. It was a bit before 2000 so everybody exposed is likely to be dead by now.
Neutron sources need a lot more care than gamma ray sources and in most countries are used only where nothing else will do the job (eg. down boreholes for oil exploration), and they are a lot smaller and less active than was used in the series of incidents I was informed of.