In Hot Water: The Effects of Even Modern Nuke Plants On Water

Harperdog writes "Dawn Stover has a fascinating article on the newest nuclear power plant to get approval: the Blue Castle Project on the Green River in Utah. Stover details the enormous damage done by nuke plants on local water systems, and points out that the 1-2 punch of climate change and cooling systems is already taking a toll on the ability of nuclear power plants to operate, because in summer the water they use to cool systems with is too hot even before they use it (Tennessee Valley Authority is the example). "

Comments

Interesting definition of "modern"

[Wonko the Sane]

Considering that we're finally seeing liquid fueled molten salt reactors built (in China) based on cutting edge state-of-the-1960s technology can we stop calling pressurized water and boiling water reactors "modern"?

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[sl3xd]

The fact that PWR and BWR have a history that stretches back decades doesn't mean a new water reactor isn't "modern". PWR and BWR reactors are the main operating principle of the reactor - in both cases, water cooling.

Complaining that the new reactors are also water cooled is a lot like saying a car's engine can't possibly be effective or safe because it's based on the century-plus old principle of a piston-driven combustion cycle.

Going with the new for the sake of 'newness' ignores a solid foundation that has withstood the test of time.

There are advantages in using modern evolved PWR and BWR reactors - namely decades of refinements and operational experience with the design, as well as technicians that understand the reactor, and safety issues involved.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[Maury Markowitz]

"liquid fueled molten salt reactors"

No, we're seeing *one* built, and it's purely experimental. And they don't expect to have it until 2020 or so.

"There will always be something that damages some part of the environment"

It doesn't make a difference. Nuclear power is *not* a savour even under the best-case scenarios. Lead times are so huge, and fuel lifetimes so short (like 20 years or less) that the overall impact they'll make is basically zero.

We are *far* better off investing in CCAS technology on large coal plants deploying all the wind and solar we can. Those can go in today and have long operational lifetimes. By the time we get even one *really* new plant up and running, we could have converted the vast majority of existing plants and brought on huge amounts of renewables.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[Loss_of_Coolant]

The AP1000 design that just got its COL approved is a PWR. General Electric's newest Plant is the ESBWR (a BWR). Areva is designing the EPR (a PWR). Molten salt reactors are a pipe dream in commercial power generation. The reason companies are sticking with BWR/PWR designs is due to licensing requirements. The NRC already knows how to license BWR/PWR. It will be quite a while before they have a licensing process from Gen IV/V reactors. Given that; why would a company design a commercial reactor without knowing the licensing requirements? Sounds like a money pit.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[Bengie]

I think you have the wrong idea of "modern". There are much much better safer less waste designs.

Using the car analogy, a "modern" water reactor is like using current tools to build a Model T to it's original specification, then dropping an electric starter in it and calling it "modern". It may be "new", but that doesn't mean "modern".

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[Wonko the Sane]

I don't disagree with you - the regulators are forcing this industry to stay in the stone age. They especially don't want technologies to be developed which are so inherently safe as to make the licensing process appear to be redundant because nobody likes it when their job becomes obsolete.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[CastrTroy]

I guess the best idea would be to have many smaller reactors that could be faster to build. The only problem there is that the nuclear fuel would be spread all over the country. If they can fit a nuclear generator on a submarine, I don't see why they couldn't build small reactors and have them easily dispersed all over the country. A standardized design would mean that it would benefit from economies of scale. Also, because each station only contains a small amount of nuclear fuel, meltdowns would be much easier to contain. The grid would become less centralized, and a lot less energy would be lost due to long transmission distances.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[epine]

Complaining that the new reactors are also water cooled is a lot like saying a car's engine can't possibly be effective or safe because it's based on the century-plus old principle of a piston-driven combustion cycle.

Suppose the Hindenburg accident had never happened and the hydrogen blimp survived its perilous infancy, only to have several spectacular Hindenburg incidents decades later, on much safer designs replete with the benefit of experience and refinement, but also against a much larger operational fleet.

Then a voice pops up saying "Let's finally stop calling the hydrogen blimp a modern design". Part of what this conveys is the notion of "knowing what we know now, we would never have gone down that design road in the first place". Maybe there's no amount of prudent refinement that makes hydrogen blimps a completely safe venture.

A common use of the word "modern" is to encapsulate that our designs consider the full system (environmental, political, social) far more than they once did. Once upon a time, Captain Rickover and the Cold War completely obliterated less dramatic manifestations of the public good. "OK, we're up against the Ruskies, and this looks good. Any objections?"

PWR and BWR reactors are the main operating principle of the reactor - in both cases, obligate water cooling for a full week after you slam on the brakes.

Why doesn't that sound "modern" to my jaded ear?

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[gewalker]

Better off with coal? Coal plants emit more than 10 time the radiation into the environment than a thorium based molten salt reactor would use. In fact, they emit more than 10 times the thorium than an equivalent thorium reactor would use. We cannot run out of thorium faster than we would run out of coal. The very smart designers of the molten salt reactors expected them to be thorium based, and they could be put on-line within 10 years if we had the will to do so.

Do your own research, molten salt thorium reactors actually do have the potential to change the future of energy.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[Luckyo]

Actually, under a best case scenario (zero accidents, recycled fuel), nuclear power is a very obvious saviour. You could replace pretty much all major plants with nuclear and CO2 emissions as well as a number of other emissions that come from older coal-burning plants would crash to zero. We would also have enough fuel to last us at least a millennium with recycling when factoring in usage growth.

The issue is getting to this scenario. We still have ancient plants that we have to run because research is considered unsafe (which is a massive paradox in itself), and because recycling fuel involves enriching it, which has proliferation problems.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[Andy Dodd]

No a "modern" water reactor is like a current internal combustion vehicle - It has vast increases in safety (crumple zones, ABS, stability control, power steering and brakes) and significant improvements in efficiency (improved engine control, improved design methodology), but the fundamental operating principles are the same. Is a non-hybrid internal combustion vehicle such as a GDI Hyundai Sonata not "modern"? I don't think so - they are still modern even though its fundamental operating principles are the same as a Model T.

It's vehicles that make major changes in operating principles like hybrids and all-electric vehicles that are the most analogous to alternative (fast reactors, subcritical reactors, etc.) nuclear designs.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[operagost]

Where are all the articles bemoaning the land usage for solar cell arrays? How cold the earth gets below them with no sunlight, so that nothing can grow there? How wind farms disturb air currents, and create huge zone that is perilous to birds and a disturbance to other wildlife? No, let's focus on nuclear power plants.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[jbengt]

PWR and BWR reactors are the main operating principle of the reactor - in both cases, water cooling.

No, the PWR and BWR reactors use water/steam as the working fluid. The fact that they also use a secondary cooling water loop as a heat sink for their thermodynamic cycle is a separate issue. I suspect most "modern" non-PWR/BWR reactors would also use water as a cooling source.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[Mike Van Pelt]

Nuclear power is *not* a savour even under the best-case scenarios. Lead times are so huge, and fuel lifetimes so short (like 20 years or less) that the overall impact they'll make is basically zero.

Long lead time arguments are mostly an "Eric and Lyle Menendez demand the court's mercy because they are orphans" argument. Omni-obstructionists use over-the-top scaremongering and blatant barratry to force huge delays to any nuclear project, then use the long delays that they have caused themselves as an argument.

"20 years of uranium" is a bogus number that has been debunked many times. 1) 20 years proven reserves does not mean it will run out in 20 years. 2) That's 20 years proven reserves assuming the current insanely wasteful "once-through, throw most of the fuel away" fuel non-cycle. Reprocess the wastes, and the proven reserves goes up vastly. 3) That's also assuming that breeder reactors will be forever banned. Add breeders to the mix, and that's another huge boost to proven reserves. 4) Thorium reactors. According to the CRC handbook, thorium is about as common as lead, and "There is probably more energy available from thorium than from uranium and all fossil fuels combined." And finally, 5) back in the 1970s, Japan demonstrated an ion exchange process to extract uranium from sea water at a cost of about $100/pound in 1970 dollars. That's expensive... but you get enough energy out of fission that it would make sense if there were no other source.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[Medievalist]

Why doesn't that sound "modern" to my jaded ear?

Because all terrestrial nuclear fission (with the possible exception of LENR like Rossi's uproven Ecat, but not excepting the totally mythical Chinese power reactors referred to above) is Victorian Era technology. It's antique crap, that requires filthy and exploitative support industries like 3rd world mining, and it's completely militarily unsound, since it makes your energy infrastructure chock full of bottlenecks and dependencies that enemies can exploit.

Distributed, sustainable, carbon-neutral power generation is the way to go - but that would entail actual modern technology, like biotech and robotics, so we can't have that.

We'll stick to steam power, because people like nuclear irrationally, and are immune to data or argument. The spewing white stuff makes them feel butch, I guess? I suspect nuke shills have potency and inadequacy issues.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[X0563511]

Even then, this won't solve the problem. You still have to cool the coolant (eg the molten salt) somehow, and I don't think open-air radiation is going to cut it.

Though, this all sounds like a design problem. If your coolant system can't work with 100F coolant, but needs to, then you need to rework the design so that it can.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[sjames]

And air bags, seatbelts, electric lights, independant suspension, 4WD, anti-lock brakes....

Same fundamental idea, but hardly the same car.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[sjames]

The proliferation problem is solved. Modern reprocessing never removes the Pu240 which prevents an atomic bomb from working. The cost and difficulty of removing it exceeds the cost and difficulty of making your own starting from natural uranium. It works just fine as reactor fuel.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[ColdWetDog]

One problem I have with breeders isn't that they contribute to proliferation - Dr. Kahn basically tossed that argument into the winds - it's that they don't seem to work well. There are a number of breeder installation wordwide - most have had major accidents / problems. It isn't a technology that has shown it can be geared up. Perhaps it can but the British and Japanese aren't doing an especially good job of convincing anyone.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[ColdWetDog]

Oh stop. They 'don't want to appear to be redundant'? If the industry was interested in Gen IV/V technology then the NRC would have decades of hard, interesting work to figure out how to license them. There are a number of problems in the nuclear industry but it's very much similar to any other technology that is extremely expensive and drawn out - it's a poor fit for a commercial entity. The lead times, the capital costs, the regulatory uncertainties just don't make it attractive if you're trying to make a buck.

So, as a society, what do you do? You do develop less technologically difficult power generation methods - wind, solar, etc. You do have the government fund nuclear in a reasonable fashion over decades to bring up the technology to a point where commercial use is possible, or if that doesn't work, just make it a government function.

Not everything important or useful needs to have an IPO.

(I tend to make the same argument for NASA - there are real uses for a large, organized government aside from beating the crap out of it's citizens.)

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[sl3xd]

Your idea of "distributed, sustainable, and carbon-neutral" ignores reality, as does your concept of what is "modern". It's even more mythical than the liquid-salt nuclear reactors.

Let's look at the ages of the methods we have to generate power:
- Burning Fuel: Predates history.
- Hydro Power: Ancient technology, used since the 6th millennium BC in China. Inherently "centralized", devastating to aquatic ecology.
- Wind Power: Ancient technology (17th century BC in Babylon). Due to limits placed by prevailing winds, wind isn't decentralized either. Serious NIMBY and ecological problems as well, as areas with wind turbines are devastating to avian populations (and their prey).
- Solar Power: Older than fire; The most "modern" tech is photovoltaics -- which are horribly inefficient, and require massive amounts of fossil fuels to produce. There are "hopes for the future", but the same can be said for Fusion.
- Nuclear: Less than a century old, capable of producing stunning amounts of power with very little waste if managed in a sane manner. Unfortunately, sane management has been made impossible by anti-nuclear activists and their propaganda.
- Fusion: It'll be ready any day now, just like "clean" photovoltaics.
- "Biofuels" - I'll let you know my opinion of these when I stop laughing. So far, biofuel production at scale are currently complicated ways of creating a liquid fuel using processes that require burning massive amounts of coal. "But in the future!" you say... well, in the future we'll have Fusion too.

The idea of distributed power isn't about generating power; it's anti-corporatism - efficiency (and environment) be damned.

In all honesty, right now, we need to use every tool in our toolkit -- including nuclear power, including cleaner coal.

I don't see how it makes sense to incentivize a power facility to continue running its legally grandfathered, old, horribly polluting coal plant instead of building a new coal plant that emits a fraction of the emissions - but that is precisely what the "green" lobby is doing.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[sl3xd]

PWR and BWR reactors are the main operating principle of the reactor - in both cases, water cooling.

No, the PWR and BWR reactors use water/steam as the working fluid. The fact that they also use a secondary cooling water loop as a heat sink for their thermodynamic cycle is a separate issue. I suspect most "modern" non-PWR/BWR reactors would also use water as a cooling source.

Reactors that aren't cooled by water are essentially in one of two categories: Lab and military.

A number of "silver bullet" nuclear technologies have proven to be non-starters because they have problems that were unanticipated or swept under the rug until it came time for certification.

I recall a few years back "Pebble-bed" reactors were hailed as the solution to everything; they were helium-cooled, so nothing bad could happen. They also conveniently ignored that a coolant leak can result in air getting into the reactor - at which point the graphite pebbles ignite, burn down, and you end up with the uranium inside having nothing to separate it - leading to an unstoppable meltdown. The pebble-bed is a reactor design whose its proponents claimed that the reactor would safely shut itself down in any emergency... except, of course, one of the most likely - a broken coolant pipe.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[Creepy]

Actually, since we have a working reference design, a new MSRE-like small reactor (with some fixes for technological improvements) could be online in as little as 2-3 years if we had the will to do so, but that would include some serious concessions by the NRC because they don't allow reprocessing on site due to proliferation fears, even though the fuel could be tainted to make it not only bad for proliferation, but dangerous for weapon makers to handle.

But the problem is nobody is willing to build them and people are unwilling to back a technology they see as faulty, even though technologically it is like comparing a car engine to a gas turbine (basically the same thing in, same thing out, right?). The power companies don't want them because they already have a working design ("why fix something that ain't broke?"), despite safety flaws. The anti-nuclear people (most are liberal Democrats who think it is an environmental threat, even though it is one of the cleanest energy sources) say that it isn't a thorium reactor, it is a uranium reactor (since the thorium is converted to uranium before fission) and therefore creates the same toxic waste as uranium reactor. Ignored is safety, the 3% waste, the fact that 83% of that 3% is non-toxic in 10 years and most of the rest can be recycled, and LFTR and some other thorium reactor designs can actually run as uranium reactors and burn the nuclear waste we already have. To me, something that has built in passive safety, 99% fuel efficiency, can be shut down when the energy isn't needed, and can run on garbage (which is what nuclear waste is, essentially) sounds like a solution, but call me a fool...

Politicians have forgotten about anything other than LWR/PWRs. Why? because in the 1960s, they were concerned with only one thing, breeding nuclear fuel for nuclear weapons, so they killed off designs that did that poorly like MSRE. Our needs have shifted since then, but with the government only seeing accidents with LWR/PWR designs they are scared off when they hear nuclear reactor, despite other designs being massively different and sometimes much safer.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[Medievalist]

That's an awesome list of talking points!

Can you prove to me that "sane management [of nuclear fission] has been made impossible by anti-nuclear activists and their propaganda"? I see zero evidence of this in reality - management of nuclear plants has been entirely driven by the nuclear industry. There is exactly one case - where a plant was to be built on a known active fault line - where "activists" have made a difference in the US, and it had nothing to do with management. Show me the evidence.

In return, here are some links to the thing you claim is laughably impossible - sustainable biofuels.

http://www.bioenergyresearch.com.au/
http://sustainablebiodieselalliance.com/
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100125094641.htm
http://www.virent.com/products/gasoline/

That's high-tech - the stuff Virent is doing. Hot fission plants are obsolete crap even if Rossi's ecat doesn't work.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[Medievalist]

I tend to agree! The greens in the USA are pretty much powerless, especially compared to the doves and hawks.

It's appropriate for India to go for thorium power, because they control the world's largest reserves of thorium. I hope it works out for them; after all, they've got population density problems.

The USA has vast farmlands we pay people not to farm. We should be doing something a lot more high-tech than nuclear fission. Virent is a good example of what I'm talking about; build innovatively on our strengths instead of sticking to our old weaknesses.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[ultranova]

Distributed, sustainable, carbon-neutral power generation is the way to go - but that would entail actual modern technology, like biotech and robotics, so we can't have that.

Care to be a bit more specific? What specific system are you proposing? How does it involve biotech? How does it involve robotics?

Because, when you leave out all the details of implementation, my cynical ears hear "I propose we produce energy by wistful thinking".

We'll stick to steam power, because people like nuclear irrationally, and are immune to data or argument. The spewing white stuff makes them feel butch, I guess? I suspect nuke shills have potency and inadequacy issues.

While speculating on other people's sexual and mental issues certainly makes for a convincing engineering argument, I think you could also work in a comparison to the Nazis somewhere. Can't go wrong with the classics.

"Nazis had a nuclear research program, thus it's evil" or something like that.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[khallow]

Imagine that today in 2012 we were still using the AT architectures in our PCs and the most exciting thing happening in the field was that a large manufacture had just managed to secure regulatory approval to start building IDE hard drives instead of MFM after spending about a decade applying for permits.

The thing is, we do use the same architecture in our computers as we did then. It's just called by different names and is a bunch of magnitudes faster and denser due to the power of miniaturization, something which can't be effectively applied to nuclear reactors beyond the control systems.

And why mention regulation? That's just nails in the coffin for any argument in favor of new technology.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[Meeni]

That doesn't change the fact that you need some coolant loop, even if the primary is liquid metal/salt.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[yurtinus]

All good points and I'm sad to see that Overrated mod there; however, the fact remains that nuclear plants in the US are all based on extremely old and comparatively unsafe technologies due to political red tape. The nuclear industry in the US has been held back much more for political reasons than safety.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[Meeni]

Not only the British and Japs, the French and USSR operated some at some point too. Most breeder design use sodium as the coolant. An inconsequential coolant leak result in a catastrophic inextinguishable sodium chemical fire. It has happened in all the breeder facilities and rocketed the cost out of control (and made security of the installation questionable), leading to their closure.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[sl3xd]

Whoah, that's weird... I thought I shouldn't have moderator access on a thread I'm a part of! Slashdot! BUG!!!

Anyway... for me, the proof that sane management of nuclear energy is made impossible is simple:

The 30+ year moratorium in the USA on processing of nuclear "waste", which is still over 98% unused fuel. A nuclear engineer I talked to likened it to throwing away a gallon of gas after removing an ounce. France, in contrast, reprocesses over their waste, and as a result has dramatically less (I read ~80% less) waste per reactor than in the USA. That moratorium is thanks to an uninformed environmental lobby, and has only recently been lifted.

The assertion that nuclear energy should never be used until it's perfectly safe. It's an asinine requirement and it's impossible to have any sort of sane management when the requirement is as insane as falling upwards. Perfect safety is impossible for any human endeavor, including things we have to do, like breathing.

In other words, you can't have a sane policy when it's being created at the behest of the inmates of an asylum. (I'm actually including both the nuclear companies and the anti-nuclear activists, as both suffer from delusions of competency).

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[sl3xd]

Suppose the Hindenburg accident had never happened and the hydrogen blimp survived its perilous infancy, only to have several spectacular Hindenburg incidents decades later, on much safer designs replete with the benefit of experience and refinement, but also against a much larger operational fleet.

I've got a better idea... let's go with the fact that the Hindenberg went up in a very dramatic, very public fireball.

Now, let's look at current R&D. Hmmm... you know what? There are currently rigid airships being designed that use Hydrogen as a lift gas.

You see, Helium has a few fatal flaws: It's horribly expensive, it's in very limited supply (the world is likely to run out of helium entirely by 2030 or so), it weighs more than Hydrogen, and it lifts significantly less.

Hydrogen, on the other hand is abundant, cheap, is a better lift gas, being around 30% more effective than helium as a lift gas, and, in a serious enough emergency, can be used for fuel. The flammability of hydrogen ranks fairly low on the list of dangers on an airship, and one that's manageable by comparison.

The problem with Airships wasn't unique to the Hindenburg. The US had a number of large airships, which were helium filled: The Shenandoah, The Los Angeles. Even larger were the Akron, and the Makron, which were aircraft-carrier zeppelins.

Only the Los Angeles survived to be decommissioned; the rest lasted less than a couple of years and were lost. The idea was scrapped because the technology was not viable; the Hindenburg was a flashy disaster, but was no more a failure than nearly every other heavier-than-air airship in history.

The big problem with airships has little to do with the lift gas, but with buoyancy control in general, combined with inability to weather storms. Air density changes constantly; this requires a change in the volume (and hence buoyancy) of the zeppelin's gas bags.

We're still working on reliable buoyancy control.

PWR and BWR reactors are the main operating principle of the reactor - in both cases, obligate water cooling for a full week after you slam on the brakes.

Every nuclear reactor requires cooling for a full week after you SCRAM the reactor. It's as unavoidable as gravity. Every nuclear reactor produces heat for a week after all uranium reactions have stopped. This happens in every Uranium reactor - no matter how it's cooled, no matter how it's designed.

Critics point to water's tendency to evaporate in a nuclear reactor in an emergency, which their pet coolant doesn't do. The thing they conveniently ignore is that water is trivial to obtain should more coolant be required. In the end, every reactor drives a steam turbine, meaning every reactor has to have a ready supply of water to make the steam. This in turn requires each reactor to have a large supply of water - like a river, lake, or ocean. In the event of an emergency, additional "coolant" water is already at hand - perhaps not as pure as desired, but it's still there to prevent catastrophe.

Even after a devastating earthquake ten times more powerful than the reactors were designed to withstand, followed by an even more horrific tsunami, replacement coolant was being put into the Fukushima reactors within 16 hours. That wouldn't have even been possible with any other coolant.

And even with other coolants... Fukushima wouldn't have been pretty. Half-meter wide cracks in your coolant tanks tends to deplete your coolant quickly, no matter what coolant you have.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[Wonko the Sane]

Sure, but with a hot enough primary you can use the atmosphere as a heat sink without taking as big of a hit in terms of thermodynamic efficiency.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[Wonko the Sane]

LFTR designs run at a sufficiently-high temperature to run a brayton-cycle turbine, like natural gas power plant. You could use the waste heat from the brayton cycle to run a steam system (combined cycle) or co-locate the plant with some other industrial process which can use it for process heat.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[Wonko the Sane]

There's nothing magical about nuclear power that makes it inherently more dangerous than other industrial processes.

The current batch of nuclear reactor have very dangerous failure modes but there are other technologies that don't present the same amount of risk. Switching to a liquid fuel design based on chemically stable salts near atmospheric pressure means that the worst case failure scenario is a rupture that makes a mess on the floor instead of a steam explosion followed by burning zirconium/hydrogen and a plume of fission products spewing into the atmosphere.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[sl3xd]

There's nothing magical about nuclear power that makes it inherently more dangerous than other industrial processes.

Name one non-nuclear industrial process that can kill millions and render an area of thousands of square miles uninhabitable for a hundred thousand years.

Just one.

Can't find one?

That is why nuclear power is different from any chemical or industrial process. If you don't, then you get a Chernobyl incident. In fact, it's the cavalier belief that nuclear power isn't different from other industrial processes that caused the Chernobyl incident - the only nuclear reactor in history to have a steam explosion. The plant managers thought they could treat a nuclear reactor like a steel foundry or oil refinery - that you can just "turn it off". They hid their activities from their nuclear commission, and even their onsite inspector. They didn't ask anyone for advice, because it was just a heat source - like coal stove. Then they willfully put the reactor into a state that was known to be disastrous. They had many warning signs, and ignored them. When all else failed, they figured they could just "turn off" the reactor like any other industrial machine. When they SCRAM'd the reactor, they rang their own death toll - as well as killed many thousands of innocents, and will continue to kill them until long after we're all dead and forgotten.

Nuclear power isn't like other industrial processes. It's not intuitive, and you can't just hit the 'e-stop' and shut everything down.

Molten-salt reactors are nothing new, by the way... the first reactor of any kind was the Chicago Pile-1 in 1942 - it had no cooling at all, and was used to create plutonium for the manhattan project.

Liquid-cooled reactors followed, with the PWR, BWR, and molten salt reactors all being developed around the same time, circa 1954.

Conspiracy theories exist as to why PWR and BWR reactors became the standard, especially when molten salt reactors are of the same vintage. Either way: molten salt reactors aren't any "newer" or "more advanced" than PWR or BWR reactors.

It'll be nice to have a Gen IV molten salt reactor - in 2040. I also look forward to seeing the DEMO reactor producing net power before I die. But for now, molten salt reactors are relatively unproven - especially from a safety standpoint.

In the meantime, I want to see Gen III+ reactors like the ESBWR and AP1000 replacing the 30-40 year old reactors we currently have - both of which require nothing in a disaster for 72 hours, and only require topping off the passive water reservoir until cooling isn't required (ie. a week or two). I also hope to see our coal-fired power plants replaced, and nuclear looks like the only reasonable option. We'll probably need all of the wind & solar power we can get as well.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[russotto]

Imagine that today in 2012 we were still using the AT architectures in our PCs

Imagine that today in 2012 we were still using a processor architecture based on an 1970s-era calculator chip.

Oh, wait...

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[Medievalist]

Check my other post for some examples of serious high tech fuel companies working on producing sustainable biofuels today. Using the latest technology, we can turn cellulose into gasoline - and we don't have to do any clumsy smashing of atoms to do it, we can use biotech finesse.

And "producing energy by wishful thinking," as you put it, is the very essence of the nuke shill argument. In reality, terrestrial nuclear fission is completely economically unsound - which is abundantly documented, and empirically proven by the fact that no company in the USA was willing to build a new commercial reactor until the Cheney energy policy of 2005 instituted per-kilowatt subsidies and construction cost subsidies, re-instituted the Price-Anderson act (which makes taxpayers foot the bill for private industries' insurance liabilities), and retroactively legalized the common practice of failing to escrow profits for future decomissioning costs.

I guess I can work in the Nazis right there, since you asked - and I don't have to get far off course! Forcing taxpayers to foot the bill for industries they provably do not want, "for the good of society" is National Socialism at its' finest, eh? But that's really just a play on words. Socialism, in reality, entails spending other people's money for the good of the largest group, and the only groups profiting from the Bush administration's recall of fission from the dustbin of history are multinational corporations. Nuclear power is not socialism, it's fascism - the "socialize costs and privatize profits" mantra of modern American politics.

I appreciated your gentle mockery, by the way - understated humor is not something you see much on the Internets.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[russotto]

Name one non-nuclear industrial process that can kill millions and render an area of thousands of square miles uninhabitable for a hundred thousand years.

Kill millions? Hydro power. Releases of poison gas (akin to the Bhopal disaster) could likely do it in the right place.

Render an area of thousands of square miles uninhabitable for a hundred thousand years? Sorry, nuclear accidents don't do that either.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[colinnwn]

What about the French? I've read they have breeder reactors that work well and reprocesse their fuel.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[riverat1]

The biggest reason there have been no new nuclear plants has more to do with the fact that it was cheaper to build a coal plant than it does with red tape.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[badkarmadayaccount]

Don't SCRAM, power down to idle.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[Coren22]

Please, name a reactor that has depopulated a city since Chernobyl.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[sl3xd]

How about three: Fukushima Daiichi 1-3 perhaps? The combined disaster reached an INES level 7 (the same severity and long-term outlook as Chernobyl) for a reason.

The Tsunami did a *lot* of damage; the exclusion zone includes quite a bit more land than the Tsunami damaged - so the depopulation of those areas are caused solely by the reactors.

There's a rather substantial exclusion zone; it hasn't "gone away".

The "good" part of the Fukushima reactor crisis is that unlike Chernobyl, the reactor containment more or less did its job. Uranium & Plutonium weren't leaked to the surrounding environment (at least, not in quantities that are of concern). Released iodine has decayed by now.

Released Cesium-137, on other hand, will be around in the soil for a few centuries.

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[Coren22]

That depopulated a CITY? Wow, I heard a couple of blocks were proactively evacuated, but can you point me to anything which says the CITY has been abandoned for 1000's of years to come?

Re:Interesting definition of "modern"

[sl3xd]

Wow, I heard a couple of blocks were proactively evacuated

Understating the problem to a hyperbolic degree is harmful, and makes you sound more like crank than anything.

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

"As of September 2011, more than 100,000 Fukushima Prefecture residents are still subject to a range of evacuation measures, forcing them to live outside their home cities and towns."

Cities and towns. Plural. That's a lot more than a few blocks. It's a 20 km radius. The number of people evacuated is more than double the total population of Pripyat, which was the closest city to the Chernobyl plant.

Even hundreds of miles away, there are "hotspot" areas in Tokyo with as much radiation contamination as the "no-go" zones in Fukushima prefecture.

Again - there is a reason the disaster is classified INES level 7 - it has long-term effects over a large area. Were it localized, it wouldn't have reached INES level 7. Were it short-term, it wouldn't have reached INES level 7. Fukushima is neither local or short term.

We are fortunate the Daiichi plants were in a relatively rural area - though "rural" is more akin to "suburbia in the US" in terms of population density.

We've also learned (and will continue to learn) a great deal from Fukushima. It'll make nuclear power safer as a result - with any luck, it'll nudge some power companies in the US into replacing the reactors that have been running decades past their design life, and will get the NRC to deny extensions to old reactors. It'll give more teeth to regulators to handle companies that are more worried about the next quarter's profits than the generations that will follow.

There are other options I guess

[mehrotra.akash]

i) Use some of the power from the power plant to pre cool the water
ii) Completely turn the worlds power supply to nuclear. Should reduce global warming, and stop this issue

Re:There are other options I guess

[sakdoctor]

Point i) is a thermodynamics fail.

Re:There are other options I guess

[vlm]

Point i) is a thermodynamics fail.

Only in the American South. Seriously. Not even a weird anti-science joke.

You blow water thru the air or air thru the water and the water temp, air temp, and dew point of the air all eventually converge to the same number, usually dropping the temp of the water considerably. Works really well in a low dew point area like a desert. Of course low dew point areas usually don't have the spare water to waste evaporating it away. So the cost is a lot of extra water evaporation and quite a bit of electricity to run the pumps. You don't have to get all aquarium tube-y, this can be as simple as an artificial pumped waterfall or a really elaborate water fountain appearing thing. Oxygenates the water too.

Re:There are other options I guess

[ichthus]

No it isn't. You're assuming that the water is not capable of cooling at all without first being cooled. This is not the case. If the water is even one degree cooler than the reactor, it is capable of cooling. The fact is, the water would not have to be cooled much to be completely effective -- you would not need to use the total of the energy produced to cool the system, because the water already has some cooling capacity.

Re:There are other options I guess

[Wonko the Sane]

Any energy you expend to refrigerate the cooling water will exceed the benefit you get.

Re:There are other options I guess

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a thermodynamics fail in Utah. The Palo Verde nuke plant in Arizona does OK in a desert climate. The Utah plant would be no different. Desert climate usually equates to low relative humidity, which means the evaporative cooling used in the condensers will still work, even in the peak of summer there.

Contrast that with the southeast US, where high temps *and* high humidity reign in the summer. During the drought, water levels were way lower than they were. Shallower bodies of water tend to be warmer than deeper bodies of water. The condensers there have a much harder time using evaporative cooling, if they do at all, so they try to pull in cool enough water from a big body of water next to the plant, whether it is a significant river or a large lake. Except in this case, due to the drought, high temps and low water levels, the water being pulled in simply wasn't cool enough.

Re:There are other options I guess

[vlm]

Any energy you expend to refrigerate the cooling water will exceed the benefit you get.

Unless your condenser coils hang in air, not back into the same water you're trying to cool.

Lets see... COP of 4 is relatively unambitious for ammonia refrigerant, if I remember correctly. So you dump 1/4 GW into some ammonia compressors, hang the condensers in the air so they dump out around one GW or so, then around a GW or so of heat gets sucked out via the evap coils in the water.

It is technically possible, but it is probably cheaper to move the plant somewhere that is nicer to live and operate, and install some HVDC power lines. Really, there is no point in installing anything other than solar geo and wind anywhere out west... water is to valuable for drinking and growing plants. Out east we have more water than we know what to do with... Ring the great lakes with plants, no problemo, and the Mississippi river too.

Re:There are other options I guess

[robot256]

That would be true if you were trying to cool the water with the energy you extracted *from the water*. But a nuclear reactor does not conserve energy, it has input from the nuclear fuel. The only reason you need to cool the water at all is because the fuel is generating more heat than you can extract in your turbines, either because of their design or because of the limited electricity demand. If you have a place to dump the extra heat, using some of that electricity to get it from point A to point B is not thermodynamically implausible.

The reason this is a stupid idea is completely unrelated, though. If the reactor design requires active refrigeration, this is even more likely to fail than simple pumps, and you run a much higher risk of melting down. And if it is not required, no one would want to pay extra for a redundant overly-complicated system unless there are other reasons not to use the passive system in normal operation.

Re:There are other options I guess

[thomasw_lrd]

Do you know the environmental effects of ammonia if it leaks? You'll destroy the whole river and the ocean's it feeds.

That's what people who are afraid of environmental damage will say, at least.

Re:There are other options I guess

[MobyDisk]

I think that really is a thermodynamics fail.

Anything you do to pre-cool the water would be better done after the water has been heated by the plant. Ex: If you can air cool the water, then do it afterward. The temperature gradient is higher so it will be more efficient. Also, the idea of the American South implies you are thinking of evaporative cooling, which uses water to cool something else. You don't cool the water itself that way.

Re:There are other options I guess

[Oswald McWeany]

Ammonia isn't as bad as somethings. It is part of the natural nitrogen cycle. Bacteria will break down the ammonia- plants will use the ammonia as food.

Aquarists sometimes use ammonia to kick-start the nitrogen cycle in fish tanks before adding any animals.

It is quite toxic to animal life though if in high enough concentrations- if draining into a lake this would have to be a HUGE quantity of ammonia. So it could potentially kill off animal life, you'd need an awfull lot of it- but in a few months of the leak being found it will be gone from the system.

Re:There are other options I guess

[X0563511]

Why not? Tank of warm water, with evaporative cooling on the outside.

Left on it's own the temperature of the evaporative system and the interior tank should equalize, which should be lower than the tank water started at.

The only difference here is the water in the tank is cool enough to be liquid, rather than steam. You've just added another stage:

Primary (in reactor) -> Secondary (steam turbine) -> tertiary (cooling towers)
to:
Primary (in reactor) -> Secondary (steam turbine) -> tertiary (coolant tanks) -> auxiliary (cooling towers)

I'm not mathematician or engineer though. I have no idea if this would be efficient enough to be bothered with. Smarter people than me are looking at the problem.

Re:There are other options I guess

[sjames]

That's how current cooling towers work. Hot water sprays in at the top, cool water pools at the bottom.

Re:There are other options I guess

[vlm]

I can't be bothered to figure out the exact quantity of refrigerant needed in a GW class cooling plant, I'm sure its a lot, but when you're dealing with a gigagallon cooling system my gut level guess is if the leak takes more than a couple hours to vent then nobody ecologically speaking notices.

Hmm. So if my car pushes a couple KW of heat around with a couple pounds of freon, I'm guessing a total system venting incident would drop something like mega-Kg of ammonia into giga-gallons of water if it took a day to leak out... so you're looking a a gram-level quantity of NH3 in a Kg quantity of H2O.

The big question is why you'd wanna vent that, or physically how you'd open all the loop simultaneously. I bet a tactical nuke could do it, but that leads to other MUCH more pressing issues.

The best way to "clean up" an ammonia spill is dissolve it in water... you don't get to do that at a refrigerated food warehouse, but a cooling tower at a nuke plant has a lot of water laying around.

It'll be OK unless they almost intentionally screw it up.

Re:There are other options I guess

[ichthus]

Others have already pointed out the merits of evaporative cooling, but I'll add this. It works, because the nuclear fuel is adding energy to the system. The motion of the water itself is not the energy source. Just like in your car, the gasoline is adding energy to the system, and this is why your radiator can keep your engine cool. The water pump and fan do not consume the total kinetic energy from the engine.

Re:There are other options I guess

[ultranova]

The only reason you need to cool the water at all is because the fuel is generating more heat than you can extract in your turbines, either because of their design or because of the limited electricity demand.

Or because of basic physics. The theoretical maximum efficiency of any heat engine is ((temperature of the hot end) - (temperature of cold end)) / (temperature of the hot end).

Since ambient temperature on Earth tends to be a bit shy of 300 Kelvins, no heat engine here can extract all of the heat energy flowing through them, and most fall far short of being even 50% efficient.

Re:There are other options I guess

[cynyr]

Are we still talking Amonia or R134a? 134A is likely to need around 2.5lb-3.5lb of refrigerant per 12MBH of cooling needed (sorry to lazy to type that into wolfram and get it in kW) at least with a standard DX air cooling setup. It is probably lower in a close coupled chiller. The issue there, is that the compressors still need cooling(condensing), this requires more energy than the cooling side makes not sure how this will really help at all.

Equivalent in miles?

[vlm]

Can someone digest the data and give me a distance equivalent in miles? For example, I live about 30 miles south of a great lakes nuke. I know a lot about nukes. I don't know enough about ecology to figure the distance.

What I'm getting at is obviously the water in lake michigan is warmer in Milwaukee than at the Point Beach nuke. So building the Point Beach plant did the equivalent of picking up that splotch of lake michigan and dropping it further south. How much further south? 100 feet? 100 miles? I'm guessing having boated and sailed in both general areas that its much closer to the 100 feet figure than the 100 miles figure. I guarantee the fishing around Pt Beach does not result in tropical aquarium fish.

Obviously the effect on a little creek of a river is much more pronounced, but I'm sure a figure can be made up, where its just like digging a new river channel X miles south of its current position.

Also in a closely related question, could someone express global warming in miles per hour to the south? I'm guessing this is a scientific notation type of problem, so I'll accept miles per century or whatever.

Dumb article

[phayes]

According to TFA: "more than one billion aquatic organisms" are killed annually by NY's Indian Point plant.

No definition of what they mean by "aquatic organism" is given. Blue whales? Minnows? Paramecium?

Re:Dumb article

[vlm]

According to TFA: "more than one billion aquatic organisms" are killed annually by NY's Indian Point plant.

No definition of what they mean by "aquatic organism" is given. Blue whales? Minnows? Paramecium?

That means one organism per 2.5 * 365 = about 912 gallons. That can't be distinct algae cells unless its nearly sterile water. Then again my 40 gallon tropical fish freshwater tank has around 10 fish, admittedly that is a pretty high loading but doable, at around 4 gallons per fish. They are probably talking about fish and are probably counting everything from hatched egg on up.

You'd think at those numbers, a nuke would be surrounded by a sea of floating bloated bodies, but when I toured one I didn't see that. Weird. Maybe after a couple decades everything nearby was already long since dead?

Re:Dumb article

[JazzHarper]

More than one billion aquatic organisms are killed annually by my town's surface water treatment facility, I hope.

Re:Dumb article

[Troyusrex]

According to TFA: "more than one billion aquatic organisms" are killed annually by NY's Indian Point plant.

No definition of what they mean by "aquatic organism" is given. Blue whales? Minnows? Paramecium?

I stopped reading as soon as I read that. When they throw around terms like "one billion aquatic organisms" without defining the organisms you know it's for effect instead of for truth and thus a hack job instead of real science.

Re:Dumb article

[StikyPad]

Mermaids.

Re:Dumb article

[Anthony Mouse]

That means one organism per 2.5 * 365 = about 912 gallons. That can't be distinct algae cells unless its nearly sterile water.

You're doing the math assuming that every living organism is killed, and so the numbers can't be right for algae because there must be more algae than that. I suspect what is actually going on is that some very small minority of algae (and other organisms) are killed, but there is so much algae that it ends up being a big number. After all, who other than pedant scientists would call a fish an "organism"?

Re:Dumb article

[ironjaw33]

According to TFA: "more than one billion aquatic organisms" are killed annually by NY's Indian Point plant.

No definition of what they mean by "aquatic organism" is given. Blue whales? Minnows? Paramecium?

I live about 5 miles from the Surry Nuclear Power Plant which draws and discharges its cooling water directly from the James River -- there are no cooling towers at all. You think this would be a worst case scenario for increasing the river water temperature and killing off organisms but I've never heard a thing about that in the 10 years I've lived here. The wiki article says that testing has minimal environmental impact but doesn't cite who performs the testing or how it was done.

Re:Dumb article

[thomasw_lrd]

Mosquito larvae. They lay like a million eggs a day.

Re:Dumb article

[the_Bionic_lemming]

I stopped reading as soon as I read that. When they throw around terms like "one billion aquatic organisms" without defining the organisms you know it's for effect instead of for truth and thus a hack job instead of real science.

this, and the fact that the water just vanishes never ever to be seen again in the river.

Re:Dumb article

[Oswald McWeany]

If not- by your gut!

Apparantly there are enough copepods (small crustaceans) in New York drinking water that some Rabbis say that New York's drinking water is not Kosher.

It's not just New York either- there are little wee beasties in the drinking water that all of us drink. Usually not harmfull ones- but they're there nonetheless- happily swimming around until someone decided to have a glass.

Re:Dumb article

[GameboyRMH]

For those who are grossed out, these things are microscopic and basically unicellular. Put a drop of pond water under a microscope and you'll see some skittering around.

Re:Dumb article

[GameboyRMH]

I only wish a little warm water would kill them, but leave a tire in the sun and where it can collect water, and they'll breed just fine no matter how hot the water inside gets.

Re:Dumb article

[Oswald McWeany]

Most of them are fairly small and hard to see with the naked eye- but some freshwater copepods are big enough to see with the naked eye. Most municipal water supplies don't have them that big- but in some places there are some big enough that you can see... just barely.

Jet bound Icebergs

[Flipstylee]

Simple, just have some Icebergs come to you!

Magical water

[Applekid]

Pro tip: evaporating water does not make it disappear.

The complaint is that a closed-cycle plant pulls water from the river and never returns it. Well, if they already lose 5% per pass due to evaporation and, when dirty enough, pipe the water to evaporation basins, doesn't that return the water to the environment?

Re:Magical water

[phantomfive]

The aren't worried about water being removed from the environment, they're worried about it being removed from the ecosystem (or changing the ecosystem by heating the water around the plant). It's great that the water doesn't disappear and re-enters the water cycle, but that isn't any consolation to the people and creatures who were relying on that water downstream.

Re:Magical water

[Nethemas the Great]

The whole article is a complete supposition by someone that is more interested in making a case against the power plants than they are in knowing how their operation really affects the environment. The article is specious, with the intent of fear mongering and has no business being on /. unless it was intended for the purpose of geek sport--picking it apart.

Maybe I missed something...

[liquiddark]

Her suggestion that water is *never* returned to the river seems wrong. Or is the word "evaporation" in "evaporation basin" a misnomer?

"lost" water?

[JoeRobe]

I'm a bit confused by the article. They say it's a consumptive use, where the cooling system evaporates 5% of its water on every pass. Doesn't that water go into the atmosphere and then condense and fall as rain eventually? If so then it's not really "lost" since it will pass back into the water table. Is the issue that the condensation and rainfall may not be a local process? I feel like I'm missing something here...

Re:"lost" water?

[leehwtsohg]

The point is that the river downstream from where you pump the water to the plant has less water.
When a city pumps the water from a river, the water also ends up eventually in the clouds, but that doesn't fill the river downstream from the pump.
Maybe it is because most rain falls in the ocean... but even if all rain ended up back in the same river, downstream of the pump you'd have less water than without any pump.

Re:"lost" water?

[Leuf]

In the same way as if you were diverting the water for irrigation or drinking water, the water doesn't disappear it re-enters the system somewhere else. The people (and ecosystem, but no one really gives a damn) downstream have less of it.

Now if you had a plant that was fed by a river that came down from mountains just to the west of the plant, and the prevailing winds were east to west, then some of the condensate would tend to end up right back into the river.

Re:"lost" water?

[Attila Dimedici]

Yes, what you are missing is that this is article two on slashdot in the latest "OMG, what will we do when all the fresh water is gone" scare that is being promoted as an excuse to justify greater bureaucratic control over the economy.

Should read "power plants", not "nuclear plants"

[Burdell]

All modern power generating plants that use fuel (as opposed to hydro, wind, etc.) work basically the same way. They use a fuel to generate heat (burn coal or gas, create nuclear fission), heat water to steam, and use steam to turn turbines. The water is then cooled and returned to its source, usually a river or lake. All such power plants have problems when the incoming water is too warm or they cannot cool it sufficiently before discharging it.

The only difference between a nuclear plant and a coal/gas plant is that a nuclear plant can concentrate more generating capacity at a single location, which then can require more water.

Kill the planet for energy

[na1led]

Being from Maine, I used to do a lot of fishing with my Dad, and we always used to catch good fish many years ago. Lately we catch nothing, or small yellow perch if we’re lucky. These companies have been telling us for years how they are environmentally friendly, or how they care so much about the environment. They will tell you whatever it takes to shut you up! It’s business as usual, as always!

Re:Kill the planet for energy

[Sir_Eptishous]

Why else do you think we're seeing a massive "positive" publicity campaign to warm our hearts towards Hyrdraulic Fracturing? Pennsylvania will be sorry... They'll get a few thousand quick and short-term high paying jobs. Peoples real estate values in some areas will go up drastically. High school kids with no education will be making 6 figures and then spending themselves into a hole. Then the boom will end. Property values will drop, unemployment, local communities will be stuck holding the bag while the energy companies will skip town to the next boom.

Re:Kill the planet for energy

[Troyusrex]

So PA is making a mistake because the boom from Fracking may only last a decade or two? Isn't that like feeling sorry for someone because their massive lottery payments only run 30 years and then they'll have no income?

Re:Kill the planet for energy

[na1led]

Over fishing only plays a small part. Maine has strict regulations on what you are allowed to keep (if you catch anything). There is plenty of data showing that fishes in Maine are not thriving like they used to. The recent fishing tournament price winner was a 4 oz. fish, out of 300 fisherman. Maine lobster species are dying because of increased water tempurates. We used to have Hard Shell lobsters, not anymore.

Re:Kill the planet for energy

[na1led]

I didn't say that. I'm speaking in general, all these businesses that tell us how they will create energy for us and there is no downside to the environment. Lakes in Maine have high concentrations of mercury and other pollutants that have killed off most of the fresh water fish.

Re:Kill the planet for energy

[Anthony Mouse]

Do you have some evidence to support your theory that a nuclear power plant in Maine destroyed your local fishing hole?

That would be a pretty neat trick considering that there are no nuclear power plants in Maine.

Re:Kill the planet for energy

[JaredOfEuropa]

So you caught them all. Gee, thanks...

Re:Kill the planet for energy

[Sir_Eptishous]

I agree with you. The lakes in the west are in the same situation because of coal burning power plants. They actually issue warnings not to eat fish caught in most of the lakes.

Re:Kill the planet for energy

[Migraineman]

Your lottery payouts don't require you to scorch the earth beneath your feet.

Re:Kill the planet for energy

[coinreturn]

So PA is making a mistake because the boom from Fracking may only last a decade or two? Isn't that like feeling sorry for someone because their massive lottery payments only run 30 years and then they'll have no income?

Unfortunately, no. PA is made up of many individuals and they do not all benefit equally. Those that don't benefit enough will still need income later, when their water wells are all polluted and suddenly they have to truck water in from out of state. The water wars are next.

Re:Kill the planet for energy

[Oswald McWeany]

Being from Maine, I used to do a lot of fishing with my Dad, and we always used to catch good fish many years ago. Lately we catch nothing, or small yellow perch if we’re lucky.

You BAR-STEWARD! You caught all the fish- and now there are none left! ;)

Re:Kill the planet for energy

[HeckRuler]

I didn't say that. I'm speaking in general,

Well you're certainly trying hard to not point fingers here.

Lakes in Maine have high concentrations of mercury and other pollutants that have killed off most of the fresh water fish.

Which is JUST AS LIKELY, given your evidence, a side-effect of organic farming done in Maine!
Hippy business as usual.

Re:Kill the planet for energy

[jandrese]

Overfishing is a huge problem, you are right. I don't know what that has to do with Nuclear Power Plants though.

Re:Kill the planet for energy

[Troyusrex]

Your lottery payouts don't require you to scorch the earth beneath your feet.

Fracking is not scorching by any means. But the proper way to handle environmental issues isn't to stop all development, especially in a case like fracking where the evidence of environmental damage is hotly debated. Instead it's to hold the companies making the profit liable for any environmental damage. Unless you are one of those people who think mankind is evil the problem is how to improve human living standards while keeping the earth a fit home for future generations. We need energy to improve those living standards and bring people out of poverty. Alternative energy just isn't there yet and likely won't be until a major breakthrough occurs. Fracking is a much needed stop gap. Saying we should stop fracking is essentially saying that a possible environmental problem, which can both be mitigated and reversed, is more important than people and more important than making sure we have the means to develop the long term sustainable energy sources that will ensure we won't have to continue using petroleum in the long term.

Re:Kill the planet for energy

[GameboyRMH]

More like "then they'll have no income...and cancer."

Also I hope you don't think environments only need to be preserved for one human lifespan.

Re:Kill the planet for energy

[ColdWetDog]

Your lottery payouts don't require you to scorch the earth beneath your feet.

But that's what typically happens to a natural resource lottery. The other states need to look at something the the Alaska Permanent Fund whereby a portion of the 'proceeds' get invested so hopefully there is money left in the bank when the resource runs out.

And the resource always runs out. Faster than you expect.

If you don't do that, you find that politicians' eyes glitter with all that cash - money that has to be spent on something. Fast. Boom / Bust - it's the way of resource extraction everywhere.

Re:Kill the planet for energy

[na1led]

Which is JUST AS LIKELY, given your evidence, a side-effect of organic farming done in Maine!
Hippy business as usual.

What are u talking about. We have the same farms we've always had, only less of them. Farms are not the problem.

Re:Kill the planet for energy

[na1led]

There used to be, Maine Yankee.

Re:Kill the planet for energy

[na1led]

Some of the rivers in Maine are so poluted, you can't swim in because of contamination. Thanks to the Paper Mills.

Re:Kill the planet for energy

[ChrisMaple]

We have the same farms we've always had, only less of them. Farms are not the problem.

400 years ago, there was negligible farming in Maine. 150 years ago, probably most of the state was farmland. Now, most of the state is forest and there's very little farmland. What's changed is the nature of farms, and particularly fertilizers. Modern fertilizers, whether "organic" or "chemical", are not purified significantly with respect to heavy metals. Runoff from modern farms is much different than 150 years ago, or even 60 years ago.

Re:Kill the planet for energy

[na1led]

Well, that maybe somewhat true, Somantos is probably part of the problem. I guess mother nature is getting attacked from every angle.

Re:Kill the planet for energy

[Migraineman]

Right now, fracking is the underground equivalent of strip-mining or "topping." It's the least expensive method for extracting the desired resource, loaded full of cost-shifting methodlogies. Fracking fluids are a "trade secret?" Well, as soon as they are deployed into the environment, they should be subject to EPA regulation. Benzene and other toxic chemicals? It's much less expensive to use them as fracking fluids than to properly dispose of ... easier too, especially since no one knows what's in the "secret sauce."

Take the recent east coast earthquakes. The Washington DC area isn't considered seismically active. Structures are not built with earthqakes in mind. If fracking produces earthquake activity, the general population will experience a "scorched earth" result. (That's on of the cost-shifted expenses mentioned above.)

Re:Cooling Towers

[butt-rock camaro]

Cooling towers cool evapoatively, so they need a supply of water to make up for the losses.

Reservoirs

[WindBourne]

Out here in the west, it makes sense to store water in large reservoirs and then use that for cooling purposes. Utah can do the same.

Nothing is ever good enough

[Karmashock]

We had a big solar power plant shut down in california because it infringed on the habitat of a local lizard. It was in the middle of the desert... nothing around it for miles.

They always have a reason not to build something or shut something down. I don't care what it is or how you build it. They have a reason for shutting it down.

What they'll say is you can't build it right there. Then you say okay, how about over there? Nope that won't work either. Then you say, okay how about this other place? Nope.

After awhile the only place you can build something is some place where they don't have authority. If they can stop you they'll try.

Call that cynical but that's what we've seen. We can't build anything. Try it. Ask them where you can build something. They'll promise to get back to you with an answer. Twenty years later you'll ask them if they've made progress and they'll respond "what are you talking about?"... the point is to do nothing.

Re:Nothing is ever good enough

[JazzHarper]

The objective is a sustainable, post-industrial, agrarian economy... with one tenth of the present population.

Re:Nothing is ever good enough

[vlm]

The objective is a sustainable, post-industrial, agrarian economy... with one tenth of the present population.

And whenever you ask the cowards who the 9/10th are supposed to be, the cowards always dodge the question and imply its gonna be someone else who gets the axe. No, not us of course because we are the elite enlightened ones. No not you guys, we need your support to carry out our genocide. Um, the 9/10th will be, uh, um, someone else.. Probably brown people.

Re:Nothing is ever good enough

[JWW]

Did you just propose killing 6 billion people?

Sorry I'm willing to try almost ANY other option.

Re:Nothing is ever good enough

[Troyusrex]

After awhile the only place you can build something is some place where they don't have authority.

China comes to mind as one of those places. It's not just the lower labor costs but the less painful regulation in China that makes jobs move from here to there. It's ironic that we have to go to a country known for authoritarianism and corruption in order to get the freedom needed to build things.

Re:Nothing is ever good enough

[Nethemas the Great]

So really what we need to do is develop high-efficiency power transmission that requires neither a conduit nor a receiver. Essentially, have all the power generated in China. With that power, magically store the complete power requirements for the life of the devices they manufacture for us inside.

Re:Nothing is ever good enough

[rthille]

How about we just plan 100 years out? Or maybe 250? Dropping the birth rate enough would take care of it.

Re:Nothing is ever good enough

[Karmashock]

True... of course, the catch is that you're building it for the chinese by the chinese. This is a painful lesson many corporations have learned over there as factories they built to pump out goods suddenly turned into competitors.

Dell was nearly killed outright by that mistake. Asus was one of their suppliers. Started out making just one tiny bit of the computer. Then they offered to make a little more. They mastered that bit. Then a little more. Dell kept feeding them the next bit and helping them build it. It was great on their balance sheets. They were making more and more of the computer for a cheaper price. And then one day Asus was making the whole computer and they asked themselves... why do we need dell anymore? And right there Dell almost died.

They'll never recover from that. It's a pattern.

Smart companies will retain something difficult to duplicate and scrupulously make that themselves even at a premium. It's that or your supplier becomes your competitor.

We'll see if Boeing is going to make the same mistake by teaching the chinese to build jet engines.

Re:Nothing is ever good enough

[NeutronCowboy]

Actually, it was an endangered tortoise, not a lizard. And it wasn't shut down, the company behind it had to acquire more land to manage habitat for displaced animals.

So really, nothing actually happened to that particular solar plant. I swear, sometimes I think environmentalists are the new all-powerful bogeyman. Everything goes wrong is their fault, even the stuff that doesn't go wrong.

One source: http://energy.gov/articles/department-announces-loan-guarantee-brightsource-energy-inc 2 minutes of googling finds you load more.

Re:Nothing is ever good enough

[Karmashock]

I prefer to turn the power off and leave the little babies to cry in the dark. They'll wander around and wonder why the magical power isn't coming from the mystical socket. if the believed in electrisity they'd believe in power plants. And since they clearly don't believe in power plants they must think power comes from mystical fairies in never never land. Same place the water and food comes from. They just go to the store, pick up their packaged whatever and have no conception that all of it had to be produced somewhere by someone. And maybe... just maybe f'ing with their livelihood will have consequences like... food being twice as expensive as suddenly we're importing it all from mexico by truck.

think the mexicans won't exploit the hell out of that? Hey gringo, what would happen if we cut off your food? Who wouldnt' use that in a trade negotiation. The Russians do that all the time with the Europeans and their natural gas pipeline. Which is also stupid because the euros have plenty of domestic power and resources for heating. And that's the only really critical thing they import from the Russians.

being dependent on any nation for something you cannot live without is a crazy. This is especially true if you're a giant country like the US can easily source just about any good domestically.

Re:Nothing is ever good enough

[rthille]

You wouldn't have to ration children if your time horizon is long enough, just incentivize (ugh) people to have fewer children, either with tax breaks or free birth control or propaganda. Note, I'm not suggesting this is what we should do, I was just replying to the "we'd have to kill 6 billion people" post, and now to you as to how we could do it.

Re:Nothing is ever good enough

[aynoknman]

We had a big solar power plant shut down in california because it infringed on the habitat of a local lizard. It was in the middle of the desert... nothing around it for miles.

"Not In My Backyard" applies for lizards too!

Re:Nothing is ever good enough

[Karmashock]

If you press many environmentalists they eventually will get to the "over population" portion of their little religion. It's always pretty horrifying. I first heard it from my college environmental studies professor. I just couldn't believe the crap coming out of his mouth. He was all kittens and sunshine most of the time. Really he was one of the nicest guys you've ever seen in your life. Just warm and friendly. And then at the risk of invoking Godwin's law he started spouting genocidal stuff like forced sterilizations and limits on numbers of children... etc. It was very fairly traumatic. I didn't even argue against it. There was nothing you could say. It was just mad foaming dogma in a university classroom. I just sat there with my book... took notes and passed the make work test.

They're going to scream libel or whatever, but they're pretty clueless to how brainwashed they are... so right after protesting the accusation you should be able to get them to effectively admit it. Just get them talking about over population. They'll out themselves. I've been able to consistently get them to do that AFTER they denied and they didn't even realize they had done it. it's a little surreal.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for protecting the environment. I breath the same air, drink the same water, and walk upon the same earth feeling the soil through my toes. It's just some of their ideas are psychotic.

Re:Nothing is ever good enough

[Karmashock]

birth rate in the first world has already tapered off naturally.

We're not rodents. We're human beings. Japan and Italy for example are looking a huge population implosions. Really most of the first world. The only exceptions are countries with high immigration and that's just the immigrants offsetting the reduction in the birthrate. If the whole world were first world we might be looking at a halving of the global population.

So need or more importantly justification for some horrible government body that has civil liberty violating power to determine who can and cannot have children.

It's unnecessary and I would hope we're not so stupid as to trust you or anyone else with that kind of power. I'd frankly rather bring civilization to it's knees that live under that crap. A big war would be better. Anything.

Re:Nothing is ever good enough

[GameboyRMH]

You've met a real-life eco-wingnut straw man who actually believes that becoming more eco-friendly requires a Unabomber lifestyle and genocide? I thought they were a bogeyman made up by Fox News.

Re:Nothing is ever good enough

[ShakaUVM]

>>What they'll say is you can't build it right there. Then you say okay, how about over there? Nope that won't work either. Then you say, okay how about this other place? Nope.

Yes, you got it exactly right.

The arguments they make in their landscapes is always, "Well, this place has a drawback, so we can't do it here." Ignoring, of course, the fact that every place on Earth will have some form of drawback, and that a lot of the time, the people building the railway line or solar plant or whatever have situated it on the most optimal site they could find, balancing a lot of factors.

The fact that judges allow these suits to proceed let alone win indicates that we desperately need reform of how the judicial system conducts reviews of major projects. I'm not saying that we should throw out all lawsuits, as some have merits, but rather that judges should look more holistically at the process, and not just rule on the narrow question of, 'Will 25 lizards be killed by this solar plant?'

Re:Nothing is ever good enough

[Karmashock]

it's not the justice system's fault...

the more I learn about the justice system, the more I know them to be as much victims of this nonsense as anyone. The whole institution is like a temple turned into a whore house... and very much against the will of the judges. There's just nothing they can do about.

It's the politicians and the politicians only do that because the people put them there to do it.

This is actually what the people want. They want to stop everything. Not because they want to starve in the dark like rats but because they're ignorant as chickens. They just don't know what the hell they're doing. They've lived in these wonderful cities all their lives. Their parents live in them. Their grand parents. There has been no one in their lives they trust to ever impress upon that there is a world beyond the city that the city depends upon for EVERYTHING. They don't grasp that the city produces nothing it needs. It depends on everything from somewhere else. They have no idea what that means.

I don't really believe in one shot fixes to complicated problems. But the closest I could get to a solution would probably be stranding everyone in the woods totally alone for one week every year or every couple years. Maybe just a few times. However many it takes to get explain the point. If you just made that a social custom or a law that everyone had to spend time in the middle of no where... in a place where you "can" survive and they had to make it happen on their own. Make it somewhere with water. But if they want to eat they're going to have to try catching something, starting a fire, etc. I'm not giving them a bunch of fancy camping equipment.

The point is that after you do that, you appreciate what the city is and all the things it provides that everyone just takes for granted. The food. The water. The heat. The light. The safety. The information. The entertainment. The comfort of a pillow suddenly becomes a luxury when all you've got is a pile of possibly tick filled leaves.

You come back from something like that and I would hope people understand. All this wonderful modern stuff we have is great. It's a great accomplishment. But it isn't magic. It's real stuff that comes from real places and has real costs.

Dicking with the farmers because they need water to grow crops is just nutbar crazy especially when the cities could very easily get plenty of water by doing as their grand fathers did and building something. Hell, forget taking water from the farmers. Find a way to give them more so they can grow more food. Those cities don't just need more water.

Re:Nothing is ever good enough

[The_Wilschon]

Good thing they had enough cash to buy that land then. Not everybody would have. It's not surprising that environmentalists get turned into bogeymen, since they turn everything and everyone else into bogeymen for a living.

Re:Nothing is ever good enough

[vlm]

You've met a real-life eco-wingnut straw man who actually believes that becoming more eco-friendly requires a Unabomber lifestyle and genocide?

You haven't? Listen carefully for explanations about how we'll have to rapidly reduce the human population to save the endangered housefly or prevent the sea level from raising a centimeter.

Re:Nothing is ever good enough

[GameboyRMH]

I've been listening but I don't hear it. Maybe my tinfoil hat's on wrong, how do you wear yours?

Re:Nothing is ever good enough

[ShakaUVM]

Who is blaming the judges? I think they're actually doing what the law says most of the time. That's why I said reform of the system is necessary - we can't just look at something with these myopic glasses on, and say that if there is just one negative thing about a project, it needs to be scrapped. We have to look at the big picture, and weigh the pros and cons to make a rational decision.

Re:Nothing is ever good enough

[ChrisMaple]

Most econuts don't think through the results of their desires. It's only when pressed that they crumble, and then they either deny that bad things will happen or they say "So what?". You don't hear it because few people are willing to spend the hours it takes to grind through the layers of idiocy in environmentalism.

Re:Nothing is ever good enough

[donscarletti]

Boeing doesn't make jet engines.

I also doubt if Rolls Royce, Pratt & Whitney or GE would outsource. For Boeing, it would make more sence, airframes are too big for automated production, still need someone to patiently weld most of the joints together. Chinese do that sort of thing well, as long as the workers are given time and motivation to do it right.

For jet engines, not so much, the compressors, fuel injectors and turbines are made out of small, identical parts, which can be made by automated jigs onsite, assembly is still done by hand, but the labour involved is low, per unit (jet engines can be fully dismantled for service) and mostly I imagine it serves as a quality control step, parts that don't fit right should be either discarded or carefully re-machined. Chinese workers tend to care a lot about quotas and less about precision, in my experience (I'm Chief Engineer at a Chinese tech company) mostly would rather blame the parts manufacturer when something goes wrong than inspect parts before installation./p.

Re:How much would better cooling cost?

[StikyPad]

There are ways to cool without dumping heat into rivers and oceans or evaporating water. You could drive a bunch of Stirling Engines. You're not interested in the power from the Stirlings, just their use of the excess heat. How much would that cost though?

There are ways to cool without dumping heat into rivers and oceans or evaporating water. You could drive a bunch of Stirling Engines. You're not interested in the power from the Stirlings, just their use of the excess heat. How much would that cost though?

The need for "cooling" is a bit of a red herring. It's not strictly about keeping things from getting too hot, but about providing a sufficient temperature (and therefore pressure) differential. Such differentials would also be required to drive a Stirling Engine, and while they will function at a much smaller differential than a steam turbine, they will still have cooling requirements, otherwise they would achieve thermal equilibrium. And since Stirling engines are more useful for performing relatively slow mechanical work (you can gear them up, but gears have parasitic losses), you may well end up using more energy to create the same amount of electrical power as a steam turbine. That's just my armchair analysis, though I trust that the engineers who designed the plant have made optimal decisions in generator selection, so the fact that they're using steam turbines speaks for itself in that regard.

Only Nuclear?

[hawguy]

Don't fossil fueled plants also have waste heat they need to dump somewhere? Do Nukes generate a lot more waste heat?

Re:Only Nuclear?

[Wonko the Sane]

Nuclear power plants tend to be much larger so they have a lot more waste heat to dump. In addition, some forms of fossil fuel plants dump their waste heat directly into the air without using water cooling. This works because the combustion temperature inside a fossil-fuel power plant is much higher than the fuel plate temperatures in a water-cooled nuclear power plant so they can still be efficient overall even with using the atmosphere as a heat sink.

Re:Only Nuclear?

[hawguy]

Nuclear power plants tend to be much larger so they have a lot more waste heat to dump. In addition, some forms of fossil fuel plants dump their waste heat directly into the air without using water cooling. This works because the combustion temperature inside a fossil-fuel power plant is much higher than the fuel plate temperatures in a water-cooled nuclear power plant so they can still be efficient overall even with using the atmosphere as a heat sink.

One interesting article I read said that power generation accounts for about half the water usage in the USA:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-saving-energy-means-conserving-water

Almost right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Water used in steam turbines is distilled water - as few particulates as possible at they will erode the turbine into junk.

The heat source heats water into steam to drive the turbines. That water is then cooled by external water before being returned to the heat source.

The external water may be pass through or recycled, but it never ever gets to the turbines.

And water really doesn't expand during heating (under 1%) until it boils and becomes vapor.

Re:Almost right.

[jbengt]

Some modern plants use super-critical "steam", and the water never really boils. And from room temperature to just below boiling at atmospheric pressures, liquid water expands around 4%, not under 1%.

Re:Almost right.

[dj245]

Some modern plants use super-critical "steam", and the water never really boils.

Sure it boils. Supercritical steam is at a pressure where the density of water and the density of the steam are the same. It means that you need to force the circulation of the water since density won't make the bubbles rise. But rest assured that liquid water is turning into a gaseous form.

Re:Should read "power plants", not "nuclear plants

[inKubus]

Well, they require a cold-sink to operate. It's the temperature difference (gas laws, etc) that enables them to generate so much electricity. If the conventional wisdom about this is like the conventional wisdom about other electric technologies (e.g. server rooms), it's likely that a reactor could be designed that does not require as much of a cold sink or temperature differential to operate (e.g. air cooling, or converting more heat into power). The issue of course is that even the smallest chain reaction events generate such a huge amount of energy that you have to have the scales we've seen to harness even a percentage. I've always thought some type of sub-critical or even better a semi-critical (pulse modulated) reactor with lower heats and smaller footprints would be the way to go long term. There are a lot of these safe by default reactors that use some of the energy generated to maintain the reaction through an active feedback system rather than passive. So instead of having a giant atom bomb that's kept from exploding with a barrier, you have a non-atom bomb that's made into an atom bomb by a barrier that has to be actively held up. Then you just pulse the barrier to modulate the reaction and achieve whatever power output you want. It won't change needing a cold sink, but it could be a lot smaller since you aren't having as much waste.

Doesn't matter

[sycodon]

The Nuke Haters will always hate.

There will always be something that damages some part of the environment.

There will always be some scenario that could possibly result in the end of us all.

Re:Doesn't matter

[Anthony Mouse]

The ironic thing about this situation is that the entire problem could be solved (especially for newer reactors) by building cooling towers rather than using rivers for cooling. But cooling towers look scary, so nobody likes them.

Re:Doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

I like them.

Re:Doesn't matter

[Andy Dodd]

Yup, the French make prolific use of cooling towers in order to reduce thermal impact on rivers.

Also keep in mind that this affects coal plants just as much as nuke plants, and will also affect combined cycle natural gas plants that use steam for a bottom cycle.

Re:Doesn't matter

[jbengt]

The ironic thing about this situation is that the entire problem could be solved (especially for newer reactors) by building cooling towers rather than using rivers for cooling.

Uh, no. Even if I hadn't RTFA I'd know you are wrong. Cooling towers are built to cool the water through evaporation, and said evaporation (and blowdown) of the proposed "closed-loop" cooling system is what TFA was complaining about, since none of the water taken would be returned to the river.
Also, a lot of cooling towers are built precisely to cool the used river water before returning it to the river, so, because of evaporation, they not only return less water to the river than taken, because the river is lower temperature than the typical ambient wet bulb temperature, what they return is warmer than the river (unless you had a really unusually hot river).

Re:Doesn't matter

[GameboyRMH]

Yeah I always thought they looked like some kind of giant kid's toy, or a big cup of hot coffee. A cooling tower is one of the least scary looking pieces of large industrial equipment.

Big diesel generators look a lot more intimidating with their huge plume of mirage-hot air rushing out, but I think they look kinda badass, like some kind of giant CPU heatsink from hell or a doomsday machine warming up.

Re:Doesn't matter

[sjames]

Yes. Any process that uses heat to generate electricity has to have a sink That includes solar thermal.

Re:Doesn't matter

[ColdWetDog]

And really, they should not be wasting all that heat. It should be tied into cogeneration of something - warming up greenhouses, buildings, whatever. But they shouldn't be just wasting it.

Of course,we should not be flaring off millions of cubic feet of natural gas because it's 'cheaper' to do so, but there you have the free hand bitch slapping us around again.

Re:Doesn't matter

[Curunir_wolf]

but there you have the free hand

I think you mean "invisible hand" of the free market. And if you think that's bad, you should see the waste that goes on when the people in charge don't care how much anything costs, because it's somebody else working for it.

Re:Doesn't matter

[imakemusic]

They should build handles on the side to complete the image. And make the reactor teapot shaped.

Re:Doesn't matter

[The_Wilschon]

Are you aware that agiculture is also a "consumptive" use of water, and to an enormously greater degree than nuclear power generation?

Re:Doesn't matter

[aurispector]

The haters need to give up their computers, tv and air conditioning first. Then I'll listen. But they'll still be wrong.

Re:Doesn't matter

[michael_cain]

The big hyperboloid towers come in two flavors: wet and dry. Wet ones still need a water source because they use evaporative cooling. Dry towers can't cool below exterior dry-bulb temperature, which can be quite high in parts of Utah in the summer, which in turn reduces overall plant efficiency. Summer is peak power load season in the US -- owner/operators will be reluctant to see reduced efficiency (hence output) then. Mixed systems are possible, of course -- wet cooling in the summer and dry cooling in the winter -- but are more expensive.

Re:Doesn't matter

[michael_cain]

There are problems with this. The power station is separated from any major population centers by one or more mountain ranges -- the project requires that long-distance high-voltage lines be built in order to transport the generated power to markets where it can be sold. Opportunities for local use of the amount of heat (typical nuke rated at 1 GW electric is looking to dump the equivalent of 2 GW in waste heat) are limited. Particularly during summer, which is peak power season.

The location of the plant looks like the real target market is processes for extracting liquid fuels from the Green River basin oil shale deposits. The in situ processes that have been proposed (eg, by Shell) would consume prodigious amounts of electricity, which is not currently available in the region.

Re:Doesn't matter

[sourcerror]

Build the majority of Nuke plants in cold areas near population centers

Yeah, you really want to build nuclear plants near population centers ...

Re:Doesn't matter

[neonKow]

Like in Prypiat!

Re:Doesn't matter

[Creepy]

I'd feel safe burying one in my backyard, but not a conventional reactor, just an MSR. Google has expressed interest in putting them near their data centers, as well.

Too bad SFRs are getting a lot more industry attention. Not that SFRs are bad (unless you think Bill Gates backing one is a good reason), they just aren't as safe - Sodium burns in air, explodes in water, and is slightly radioactive. SFRs are one of the simplest reactor designs, more similar to existing reactors than something like LFTR, and can burn nuclear waste nearly completely, so they have some advantages. Oh, and prototypes are being built anywhere but America for the same reason a LFTR won't be built here - NRC fuel reprocessing rules to prevent proliferation make it nearly impossible.

Re:Doesn't matter

[mug funky]

does this imply that you'd prefer to run your PS3 than eat?

Re:Doesn't matter

[Anthony Mouse]

NRC fuel reprocessing rules to prevent proliferation make it nearly impossible.

Does anyone else find it insane that we have anti-proliferation rules that primarily act to prevent countries that already have nuclear weapons from reprocessing spent fuel?

Re:Doesn't matter

[cynyr]

There are many industrial uses for that sort of heat, and those processes also seem to need large amounts of power, both would be handy if they were near the nuke plant. Anyways, stop thinking about just houses and it will make more sense.

Re:Doesn't matter

[michael_cain]

If they were building the power plant near where there was any industry (and population) to speak of, that would be a reasonable argument. But they're not -- it's 300 or so driving miles from either Denver or Salt Lake City, which have the other infrastructure to support large-scale industry. In the Mountain West, power plants tend to go where they can get water. Some planned power plants have been canceled after the owners spent years trying to buy rights to enough water for cooling, and failed. The water issue also makes it a rather undesirable location to build a new factory or chemical plant or something that could use the excess for industrial process heat -- most industrial processes also consume large amounts of water, and the power plant appears to have gotten the last of any uncommitted water in the river.

Western water law is both obscure and arcane, but dictates an enormous amount of where industry can be located in the West.

Re:Doesn't matter

[russotto]

And really, they should not be wasting all that heat. It should be tied into cogeneration of something - warming up greenhouses, buildings, whatever. But they shouldn't be just wasting it.

Figure out a way to efficiently move low-grade heat around, and you'll retire rich. (Or get the invention stolen from you by a large corporation and die a pauper, but them's the breaks)

There's generally not a lot you can use low-grade heat for in Tennessee in the summer.

Re:Doesn't matter

[bryan1945]

Whenever I go back to my hometown, the site of the 2 towers for the local nuke is like a 'Welcome Home' sign. When you grow up with a nuke about 5 miles away, you get used to it. Besides, in the winter, if the wind is blowing in the right directions, we can get "nuke snow flurries!" (No superpowers yet, though, lol)

Re:Doesn't matter

[AmiMoJo]

It happened recently in Europe. During the heatwaves of the last decade nuclear plants were either forced to shut down, reduce capacity or dump very hot water in rivers and lakes. The former was a problem for something we rely on to provide base load and serve us at a time when we need energy the most (air con actually prevents people dying, as well as the economic cost). The latter killed a lot of fish and other wildlife.

The pro-nuclear lobby like to make out that it is the most reliable and the only way, other than coal, that we can meet base load and peek demands. All I'm saying is that it isn't true, nuclear has weaknesses just like all other systems, and many European countries have realised that and are moving away from it. Is it so hard to accept?

Re:Doesn't matter

[MrKaos]

The Pro Nukers will love nuclear industry propaganda.

There will always be nothing that damages any part of the environment.

There will never be any scenario that could possibly result in anything like Fukushima and Chernobyl.

Facts! well they are just optional, Pro Nukers are never required to provide them.

Evidence! No proof is possible to a Pro Nuker.

Reason. Pro Nukers have a belief system, challenge it and Pro Nukers will ad hominem you.

Arguement. Pro Nukers will produce so much bluster they will exhaust you - but don't make the most minor error (like a spelling mistake) because that means everything you have ever said is a lie.

Re:Doesn't matter

[AmiMoJo]

That includes solar thermal.

Nope. Solar thermal is designed to store heat, that is how it works. Heat it built up during the day and used to power it through the night. If you have too much heat you just turn the mirrors away from the tower (manually if necessary). You don't need to dump heat ever, the whole point is that you collect only as much as you can store/use.

With nuclear, coal and gas excess heat is unavoidable and must be dumped somehow.

Re:Doesn't matter

[Stuarticus]

I think you mean "Don't care how much something costs as long as it's done properly"

Re:Doesn't matter

[sjames]

You fail thermodynamics! At some point, that stored heat will need to be converted to electricity. At THAT point, you'll need a sink because you can only get heat to do work by creating a temperature differential. That is, a source (the big thermal storage you spoke of) is the hot side. The sink is the cold side, and the generator is between them.

Re:Doesn't matter

[Coren22]

I was thinking this. If all the Greenpeace like morons complaining about every kind of power couldn't use a single power generation type they complain about, maybe the world would be a better place.

Hey Greenpeace, put your money where your mouth is and only pay for "Green" electricity (if you can find anything you consider green...).

Coal Plants have same problem

[echusarcana]

There is no difference between a nuclear station and a coal station with respect to limits on outlet temperature: generally about 30C is the upper limit. Coal units squeeze out a little more thermal efficiency because they can operate at higher temperatures, but more or less the issue is the same.

But hydro power *cools* rivers, can't they offset?

[Dr. Spork]

When you dam up a river, the water that flows through tends to be much colder than in the undammed river. For example, the Colorado river in the Grand Canyon is only 47F due to the Hoover Dam/Lake Mead. Maybe the local flora and fauna would actually benefit if we built some powerplants there and in the summer we heated it back up to the pre-dam summer temperatures, which were as high as 80F.

Very odd!

[angiasaa]

Why don't they use Odd Modern Nuke Plants instead?

Lake Anna and the Hudson River

[kriston]

At Lake Anna in Virginia, there are two man-made lakes. The north lake, used for hot water discharge from the nuclear plant, is very warm and never freezes. The cold, south lake is also slightly warmer on the portion nearest to the north lake. Local environmental studies are well established but since these lakes did not exist to begin with the local ecosystem is already radically changed, anyway.

On the Hudson River in NY, local environmental studies are just starting to understand the effect that the Indian Point nuclear plant's discharge water is having on the river's ecosystem. It's come to the point that Indian Point may be required to be retrofitted with low-profile cooling towers.

Re:Cooling Towers

[Joce640k]

So they need a better condenser to minimize the loss? Maybe a closed system using radiators.

Re:How much would better cooling cost?

[Joce640k]

If there's really *that* much heat left over then they could maybe improve the efficiency of the plant. There has to be some use for a bunch of heat.

Re:Cooling Towers

[Anthony Mouse]

Are you sure they're (inherently) evaporative? There is no obvious reason that you can't create a closed coolant system that works like a larger version of what is used in a car or home radiator.

Re:Should read "power plants", not "nuclear plants

[vlm]

The only difference between a nuclear plant and a coal/gas plant is that a nuclear plant can concentrate more generating capacity at a single location, which then can require more water.

And the delta T of a nuke is much lower and the cycles have historically been simpler (less stuff to contaminate or break)... lower thermal efficiency means if you want 1 GWe at the substation, then a nuke needs like 3 GWt but a hot hot hot coal plant might only need to dump 2 GWt (well, to get 50% eff on a coal plant you need something bonkers like a liquid mercury combined cycle, but that's how they rolled a century or so ago...)

So two plants, one nuke one coal/whatever at the same nameplate capacity, the nuke will output about 50% more thermal heat energy to make the identical amount of electricity.

Re:Solution

[stephencrane]

Good idea. We can start with anonymous cowards.

Re:Should read "power plants", not "nuclear plants

[Rich0]

Keep in mind those same laws of thermodynamics dictate that the larger the temperature difference, the higher the efficiency. Now, temperature isn't the same thing as heat, so that doesn't automatically put limits on small-scale operations. However, in practice it tends to do so. Generating high temperatures in a huge furnace is a lot easier than doing it in a small one, which is why a coal plant is more efficient than a car engine.

Re:How much would better cooling cost?

[nxcho]

Well, the stirling engine requires a large temperature difference between a hot and cold medium. And will essentially need some kind of cooling source to operate. Stirling engines usually has a maximum efficiency of ~40% (number grabbed from the back of my head, don't take it too seriously) wich means that more than 60% of the heat energy will end up heating the cooling medium. Also, the mechanical energy generated by the stirling engine will turn into heat sooner or later due to the grim laws of thermodynamics.

Re:Big Mistake

[Jaqenn]

... his gang of LDS Church approved eco-thugs...

Citation Needed.

Re:Big Mistake

[Sir_Eptishous]

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705397726/State-officials-grant-use-of-water-for-N-plant-in-Green-River.html

Cost

[bigtrike]

Aren't those much more expensive to operate?

Re:Cost

[cynyr]

It needs fans instead of pumps, and a fair bit more maintenance. Pumps are typically more efficient than fans.

Also see legionnaires disease, making water treatment a must.

Re:Cost

[rtb61]

Simpler to locate them near the sea. Draw water from shallower depths and discharge water as deep as possible. The rising very dispersed plume of warm water offshore actually promotes healthy ecological growth in that region.

If your really smart, you actually pass the inlet water through a reverse osmosis desalination plant first and then use the waste water from the desalination plant as cooling water for the nuclear reactor (keep in mind reverse osmosis filtration is only about 25% to 30% efficient, so there is a lot of left over 25% to 30% saltier water).

This obviously is very energy efficient, as you are getting double value out of the energy used to pump water and is this case taking twice the load of fresh water resource (less water taken from the system and no excess heat burden in a reduced water supply).

Re:Cost

[hidave]

rtb61 - why do you think facts and logic would have anything at all to do with an anti-nuke's position? They claim they don't want CO2 (also stupid), but then oppose power generation technology that produces no CO2. Maybe they want the 17,000 1 MW wind turbines which it takes to produce about the same energy as one mid-size nuclear power plant (Brown's Ferry, e.g.), but then you can't store that wind energy so you have to build the plant anyway. Actually, it's worse than no logic, it is no thought.

Re:Cost

[rtb61]

You don't seem to understand, all of the discussion et al are not about changing the position of those diametrically opposed to nuclear energy. They provide an opposition, they detail problems, they challenge greed based engineering and basically they act as a 'devils advocate' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devils_advocate to challenge those that promote nuclear energy.

This forces review of problems, defeats easy cheap greedy solutions (which no on wants except a psychopathic few). So better safer nuclear energy solutions are provided as a result of their opposition. Not to forget, the broad majority of people, will influenced by those opposed or be influenced by those for nuclear energy. That will largely be based upon the problems presented by those opposed and the solutions provided by those for.

Their opinions are valid as their opinions and in instances their stances on some issues is sound. Those for, well, hidden amongst them are the psychopathic few, with total disregard for the outcome as long as they can profit in the interim (they often represent the far greater challenge and often those opposed help the rest of us to either get rid of them or mitigate the harm their greed will causes). Weird, huh ;).

Re:Cost

[hidave]

Those are pretty good thoughts, but I really don't think the vast majority of people who are opposed to nuclear power are doing it as devils advocates. I think they are opposed for idealistic reasons. They believe in Godzilla, and think every nuclear plant can suffer the same kind of disaster that hit Fukushima. They think the nuclear waste problem is totally intractible and will cause the whole world to glow eventually. They are either incapable of doing simple research or math, or worse, incable of thought in general. There is the beneficial side effect as you note of making nuclear power safer in the long run. We see the liberal media helping their cause. For example, where do we see that nuclear plants which use local rivers for cooling typically raise the water temperature is only a few degrees, sometimes by only one degree? And where do we read that it doesn't matter whether the plant is a coal plant or a nuclear plant, the cooling water requirement is virtually the same? So the anti-nuke argument of raising river water temp by nuclear power plants is a red herring; it applies to all power plants (except hydroelectric of course).

Re:Cost

[rtb61]

Firstly you fallacy in river thinking. All calculations are based upon average flows, not only for the nuclear power plant but for irrigators. When flows are low, generally during warmer than average conditions, the irrigators continue to draw their licensed amount. This generates an enormous impact upon flows. Less water at a higher temperature. Now comes the Nuclear power plant, running at full load to feed air conditioners. Already excessively warm water is raised to higher temperatures triggering fish kills, the fish kills alter oxygen levels generating even worse conditions.

Nothing, absolutely nothing in isolation. Regardless of how often corporation fob off the responsibilities by pretending their actions occur in isolation completely ignoring how impacts are compounded by multiple loads upon the environment.

Re:Lies, all lies!

[0123456]

How can global warming affect the efficiency of nuclear power plants when FOX News told me that global warming is a myth created by a vast international conspiracy run from an obscure school in the UK?

More to the point, last I looked at the temperature record America was warmer in the 40s than it is today. So if the water is warmer than it was a few decades ago, it's not because of Global Catastrophic Warming Change or whatever the latest buzz-word is.

Lol efficiency

[sakdoctor]

Let's say your reactor runs at 1000K (Your one degree cooler water is 999K)

Thermal efficiency = 1 - (999/1000) = 0.1%

Your reactor is 0.1% efficient. That's not so good.

Re:Lol efficiency

[MaWeiTao]

Shouldn't that be .001%?

Re:Is "nuclear" really applicable?

[dak664]

Yes, to a large extent. Nuclear plants don't use as high a boiler temperature as fossil-fuel plants, sometimes not even superheating the steam. This makes for poor thermal efficiency and more heat rejected per kWh of electricity produced. Cooling towers give a lower exhaust temperature and raise the thermal efficiency (and profit margin) at the expense of "consumptive" use of water. River or pond cooling is usually considered as non-consumptive water use, as are dams, although there is extra evaporation in all cases.

Re:Cooling Towers

[Bengie]

Real question

The nuclear reactor runs quite hot relative to water's boiling temp. Is there a reason they can't just let the cooling system run at 101c?

Re:Big Mistake

[Jaqenn]

Linked article does not substantiate your claim that Aaron Tilton and his gang of eco-thugs have LDS Church endorsement.

Re:Rising Sea Level

[rthille]

Both, but I think right now it's primarily thermal expansion. I don't have the figures handy, and am too lazy to look :-)

Re:Is "nuclear" really applicable?

[Baloroth]

Well, there is the fact that when a coal reactor overheats, you simply stop adding coal. When a nuclear reactor overheats, you can get Chernobyl. TFA seems a little... sensationalist, though, like this claim:

None of the water withdrawn from the Green River will ever be returned to the river.

If you mean deliberately, sure, it isn't dumped back into the river. But it isn't like the reactor destroys the water. It evaporates and then falls back as rain, a lot of which ends up back in the river again.

Mmmm. Warm water

[rak-wolf]

Isn't it odd that we then use the electricity produced by these plants mostly to heat water...
If only there was a way to transport heated water from power plants to be used directly in homes. Like maybe with insulated pipes. Hrmm...

Re:Cooling Towers

[Wonko the Sane]

It's actually a relatively low temperature when you're talking about steam turbines. The Carnot efficiency of a heat engine is the difference between the source and sink temperatures divided by the sink temperature (using absolute temperature scales) so increasing the sink temperature has a larger than linear effect on thermal efficiency.

Re:Should read "power plants", not "nuclear plants

[Anthony Mouse]

a giant atom bomb that's kept from exploding with a barrier

That's not how it works. There is never any exploding. A meltdown occurs if the reactor produces more heat than the cooling system can remove (for example, because the cooling system failed), and the reactor chamber temperature increases until things that were formerly solid start to melt, which ruins the reactor. Notwithstanding all the media hype, the consequences of a nuclear meltdown are almost exactly the same as the consequences of a building that stores spent fuel rods burning down after an electrical fire, except that the latter is actually worse (at least for US reactors) because the reactor proper would be inside of a containment building.

Re:Big Mistake

[Sir_Eptishous]

I live in Utah. Do you? I don't need to substantiate the claim that the LDS church has the last say in any major State of Utah decisions. There are countless examples. Countless... If you need convincing I suggest you use a search engine and start reading. And I'm not talking "fringe" opinion blogs, I'm talking about the cold analytical eyes of 150+ years of academic, journalistic and historical research. It's common knowledge.

Re:But hydro power *cools* rivers, can't they offs

[rthille]

The trouble is that dammed rivers are (at least in CA) generally warmer over all (due to lower flows and a larger heating surface on the surface of the lake). Then you do a release from the dam (bottom of the lake) and dump a bunch of frigid water into the stream. Huge temperature swings for the organisms to deal with.

There is a reason - Physics

[sakdoctor]

These figures are pretty rough, but a black-body emitter can radiate around 56,000 joules per second per square meter.
Evaporating one kilogram of water removes 2,260,000 joules.

The reason power plants user cooling towers is related to the latent heat of vaporization of water. It's a lot.

Re:Cooling Towers

[treeves]

The obvious reason is that the phase change of water transfers a lot more heat than simple convection cooling through a radiator. You think a cooling tower is big. Make a radiator with the same heat transfer capacity. It'll be ginormous, as my four year old daughter likes to say.

Re:How much would better cooling cost?

[TopSpin]

There are ways to cool without dumping heat into rivers and oceans or evaporating water.

Stirling engines? Well maybe. Do those produce economically meaningful output without a large temperature differential? Regardless, these problems have solutions already available in real power plants.

Power plants can isolate their heat to cooling ponds with little lost to evaporation. Examples:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_Station
http://www.powermag.com/coal/Rawhide-Energy-Station-Fort-Collins-Colorado_1444.html

Otherwise, where fresh water is abundant cooling towers work fine.

This is a cost problem. It costs more to maintain a pond. It costs more to build cooling towers. It costs more to locate your plant behind the first or second row of foothills, rather than directly on the beach:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Power_Plant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Onofre_Nuclear_Generating_Station

Heat as a resource

[Animats]

I always liked the comment from a Canadian official asked about hot water discharge from a nuclear plant melting river ice: "Up here, we view heat as a resource".

Bitch bitch bitch..........

[who_stole_my_kidneys]

so a few fish get killed, what about all the HUMANS and GLOBAL ECHO SYSTEMS harmed by burning fossil fuels? nothing is ever good enough.

Re:Should read "power plants", not "nuclear plants

[Medievalist]

...Generating high temperatures in a huge furnace is a lot easier than doing it in a small one..

I believe you have this backwards; not sure why you got all the positive mods.

I can trivially generate a 1000 F temperature on the end of a cigarette, but I sure can't do that to a football field.

Similarly, I can reduce the size of the chamber in my foundry and it will heat up faster, easier, and cheaper.

Re:Should read "power plants", not "nuclear plants

[ahabswhale]

Sorry but I cannot fathom how warmer water would negatively effect a coal plant.

Millions of those stupid people vote

[Benfea]

As long as those millions are out there polluting the dialog with those lies, we need to point out that they are lies at every possible opportunity. Yes, it would be preferable if these kinds of comments were not necessary, but they very much are. Just look at the fellow below who is making more or less the same argument I just lampooned.

Even after I pre-emptively mocked him for it.

Which brings up the point of my other comment about birthers. I did not make that comment to make fun of the birthers (that was a side benefit), but to mock rightists for their use of the "libruls are just as bad" double fallacy that they seem to pull out in every danged argument. Even if liberals really are just as bad (and they never are in the examples used), the argument still has a tu quoque fallacy at the bottom of it. I have found in other message boards that if you mercilessly lampoon the "liberals are just as bad" argument often enough, the number of rightists using that doubly fallacious argument decreases, but it goes back up as soon as you back off from mocking them using ridiculous starwman posts such as I made above. Of all the cheap rhetorical gimmicks they use, this one needs to be nipped in the bud more than any of the others because it's starting to spread to liberals, and that really p*sses me off.

Pics or it didn't happen.

[Medievalist]

AFAIK, there are no commercial liquid fueled molten salt reactors in operation today.

Chinese propaganda claims of what they are going to do in the future have historically exceeded reality.

If you want to see progress in that sort of design, look to India - with their gigantic thorium reserves investing in fission actually makes sense for them.

In the US, we should be using our vast land mass to grow sustainable, carbon-neutral fuel crops but instead we are paying farmers not to grow anything at all, and subsidizing the coal, oil and nuclear industries.

Re:How much would better cooling cost?

[X0563511]

I personally like this idea. You could use the energy recovered at this stage to drive some of the lower importance / lower current plant equipment, such as topping off batteries, main lighting etc.

Not much of a sink.

[mdsolar]

For things that run hot, dry cooling is an option. 60% efficient gas turbines are an example. There is much less heat to dissipate for the power produced compared to low thermal efficiency nuclear plants. Dry cooling is an option for desert solar too. http://www.solarthermalmagazine.com/2010/07/12/dry-cooling-project-for-genesis-solar-solar-thermal-energy-plant-in-california/

Re:Not much of a sink.

[sjames]

That's why there is interest in molten salt reactors.

Re:Not much of a sink.

[mdsolar]

Molten salt solar is safer and cheaper.

Re:Not much of a sink.

[sjames]

Sure, and where you have a lot of already cleared land or small power requirements, it's a fine source of energy. I would love to see us get creative with that and place mirrors on top buildings in cities to build effectively zero footprint solar plants (though tracking the mirrors on a swaying building is an interesting problem to solve). Another answer would be a purpose built structure (a large pedestrian area or some such) underneath the mirror farm. However, in the end, we can't get away from needing much denser energy sources as well and I would prefer well done nuclear over coal or gas.

Re:Not much of a sink.

[mdsolar]

You can get 100% efficiency from city based solar because it can be easy to use the waste heat. http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2008/03/lux-lucis-tepida.html

Re:How much would better cooling cost?

[X0563511]

Yea, well heat emitted by plant lighting or charging UPS batteries is more useful than heat emitted directly from the coolant into the environs around it.

If you can get the heat to do something useful without being inordinately expensive, unreliable, or dangerous - you should.

Precisely not the point ...

[golodh]

First of all, I'm not against nuclear power plants. I'm in favour. However, it matters not one whit whether "Nuke haters" do or do not hate nuclear power.

The only thing that matters is whether they are *right* in opposing a specific proposed plant or not.

In case a series of proposals run into opposition because they all have one significant (and often unnecessary) flaw or another, it isn't immediately obvious how that is the fault of those that oppose the plants in question.

As noted in other posts, water-based cooling is unnecessary if one builds cooling towers. So why propose a design that impacts this water supply *unnecessarily* ?

Attitudes like that go a long way towards eroding trust in anyone proposing a nuclear reactor. That's not a technical problem, it's an attitude problem.

Re:Precisely not the point ...

[sycodon]

Nuke Haters always think they are *right* and file incessant lawsuits because of it. THAT is one of the primary inhibitors of Nuke technology...FUD spread by Haters.

And when they lose, they still think they are *right* and do stupid shit like chaining themselves to things to hold up work.

Talk about an attitude problem.

Re:Precisely not the point ...

[ultranova]

First of all, I'm not against nuclear power plants. I'm in favour. However, it matters not one whit whether "Nuke haters" do or do not hate nuclear power.

As long as they get to vote, and building nuclear plants is subject to permission from politicians, and politicians are more interested in getting re-elected than worrying about long-term consequences, it matters.

The only thing that matters is whether they are *right* in opposing a specific proposed plant or not.

"Right" by what criteria? It is entirely rational to oppose nuclear power if one places the potential risks as higher priority as pollution-free and fossile fuel independent electricity generated by it. As is, people seem to think that it's either nuclear power or magical maintenance-free reliable windmills, rather than either coal power or de-industrialization.

It's rational to chose opposing nuclear energy over modern comforts like electric lights, but it's not rational to oppose nuclear power and fossil fuels yet insist on having reliable electricity available. So no, I'd say that most people who oppose nuclear energy are not "right", in the sense that they're fooling themselves about what they're actually choosing and what it implies.

As noted in other posts, water-based cooling is unnecessary if one builds cooling towers. So why propose a design that impacts this water supply *unnecessarily* ?

Cooling towers work by evaporating water. While they don't warm rivers, they do consume the supply.

Attitudes like that go a long way towards eroding trust in anyone proposing a nuclear reactor. That's not a technical problem, it's an attitude problem.

Attitudes like what? You aren't seriously suggesting that engineers purposefully pick the most enviromentally destructive option while twirling their mustaches and cackling villainously, are you?

Re:Precisely not the point ...

[yurtinus]

As is, people seem to think that it's either nuclear power or magical maintenance-free reliable windmills, rather than either coal power or de-industrialization.

I think you'd be shocked and disheartened by how many would prefer de-industrialization.

Re:Precisely not the point ...

[MrKaos]

Nuke Haters always think they are *right* and file incessant lawsuits because of it. THAT is one of the primary inhibitors of Nuke technology...FUD spread by Haters.

That's not true. The technological development cycle of a Nuclear reactor is dictated at design time and the core technology can't be changed once it begins it's 40 year operational lifespan. The NRC put together a panel of Nuclear power plant manufacturers and they came up with about 30 fundamental advancements in Nuclear reactor technology. None of them have been implemented in the AP-1000, or any other design because they were too expensive. Protests mean a lot more in Europe and that didn't stop advancements that produced the EPR.

And when they lose, they still think they are *right* and do stupid shit like chaining themselves to things to hold up work.

Talk about an attitude problem.

I think you generated a lot of preconceptions of Nuclear Opponents based on whatever belief system you have that has clouded your judgement. Frankly people like you are the reason for the type of complacency that allowed a Fukushima accident to happen. If you were a *real* advocate of the Nuclear Industry you would lobby for the creation of a Granite spent fuel containment facility (for example in the rocky mountains) that would mitigate the risk of that happening in America.

But the core of your belief system is totally convinced that it could never happen. If you were right the Price-Anderson act would not exist. But it does and because it does your core belief system is built on ignorance of the facts upon which the Nuclear Industry operates.

It's ignorance that produces comments such as the ones you have made. I suggest you keep on making them to demonstrate how vapid and impotent your argument is.

Re:Precisely not the point ...

[AmiMoJo]

It is entirely rational to oppose nuclear power if one places the potential risks as higher priority as pollution-free and fossile fuel independent electricity generated by it. As is, people seem to think that it's either nuclear power or magical maintenance-free reliable windmills, rather than either coal power or de-industrialization.

It's rational to chose opposing nuclear energy over modern comforts like electric lights, but it's not rational to oppose nuclear power and fossil fuels yet insist on having reliable electricity available.

Actually we just bothered to understand the alternatives. Your comments are pure ignorance.

State of the art wind, geothermal, hydro an solar thermal are as or more reliable than coal and nuclear, and are rapidly getting even better. Germany is one of the biggest industrial nations in Europe and is confident they can move from nuclear to renewable without crippling themselves. Maybe you are right and in ten years they will have reverted to an agrarian society for be totally dependent on French nuclear plants, but if you had bothered to look at their plans you would see they are actually rather credible.

Nuclear is still useful to us, but there is little reason to build more now. We have better alternatives, and while it may be possible to develop better nuclear designs like thorium reactors you have to ask what the point would be when the demand is for renewable. Anyone looking to invest a few tens of billions over a decade or two in new tech isn't going to throw money at something they can't sell to most countries and which will be made redundant in the relatively near future.

Re:Precisely not the point ...

[ultranova]

State of the art wind, geothermal, hydro an solar thermal are as or more reliable than coal and nuclear, and are rapidly getting even better.

Wind and solar are inherently unreliable for the simple reason that weather is, and also have low energy density (which means they require lots of land). Hydro is reliable but limited by the unfortunate fact that you need a large river to build it, and has absolutely massive enviromental impact, as well as the risk of catastrophic failure (dam breaks). Geothermal might be reliable (depending on how fast heat is conducted through rock) work, but aside from few fortunate(?) volcanic regions in the world requires the kind of deep drilling techniques we don't have nor will have in the foreseeable future.

By contrast, coal and nuclear plants produce energy as long as you supply fuel.

Now, you could possibly convert Sahara into a giant solar power center that could power Europe. However, this has plenty of technical but even most importantly political problems, specifically that it would make Europe dependent on a region that is known for neither its political stability, military might nor love of Europe. In other words, it would re-create the whole situation with US and the Middle-East, with the difference that North Africa is within arm's reach from Europe if and when someone decides to do something stupid on either side. I don't see how that could possibly end well for anyone concerned.

Germany is one of the biggest industrial nations in Europe and is confident they can move from nuclear to renewable without crippling themselves.

Germany is building coal plants to replace the nuclear power. Renewables can take some of the burden, but not fully replace nuclear, much less non-nuclear (polluting) energy production.

Maybe you are right and in ten years they will have reverted to an agrarian society for be totally dependent on French nuclear plants, but if you had bothered to look at their plans you would see they are actually rather credible.

Most likely they'll quietly drop the plans when hysteria passes and people focus on other things, such as their rapidly rising electric bills.

Nuclear is still useful to us, but there is little reason to build more now.

Well no, running out of fossil fuels sooner or later, having climate change grow worse and worse by their use in the meantime, and newer plans being typically safer and more efficient than old ones, there's no reason whatsoever.

We have better alternatives, and while it may be possible to develop better nuclear designs like thorium reactors you have to ask what the point would be when the demand is for renewable.

Unfortunately none of those you listed are alternatives. Hydro can't be scaled up enough, geothermal is still strictly in the realm of science fiction, and wind and solar are only workable if people get used to the idea that whether they get electricity or not is up to luck.

Anyone looking to invest a few tens of billions over a decade or two in new tech isn't going to throw money at something they can't sell to most countries and which will be made redundant in the relatively near future.

You should perhaps wait until this latest financial crisis ends before trying to imply that the actions of businessmen have anything to do with common good.

Re:Precisely not the point ...

[e_hu_man]

As is, people seem to think that it's either nuclear power or magical maintenance-free reliable windmills, rather than either coal power or de-industrialization.

I think you'd be shocked and disheartened by how many would prefer de-industrialization.

i'm actually shocked and disheartened by how many people consider cell phones a birthright necessary for life on earth.

Re:Precisely not the point ...

[Coren22]

If there are people out there who prefer that, I welcome them to move to another part of the country and live like that. Their rights end where mine begin, and I am tired of those types halting progress.

Re:Precisely not the point ...

[yurtinus]

...on the flip side, your rights end where theirs begins. Then again, they'll all just be bums anyway, right?

Re:Mmmm. Warm water

[jandrese]

25-30 year lifespan? No thanks. It seems like this might work fine for people who are within a couple of miles of the power plant, but beyond that I doubt it will be economical when you start counting the replacement costs (digging up everybody's yard/roads again) and the fact that the water temperature will depend on how much hot water people are using (get up early in the morning and it won't be as hot for instance). The short lifespan will make it a nonstarter in a city too, even though the higher density housing could theoretically benefit the most. Most older cities have water pipes that are over 100 years old (and made of lead!) because it is too expensive to replace them.

Thirty eight eyes

[mdsolar]

Maybe after mutation you couldn't see straight. http://simpsonswiki.net/wiki/Multi-eyed_squirrel

Re:How much would better cooling cost?

[ColdWetDog]

Could you not stick stirling engine after the steam part, when the cooled down steam returns to pretty warm water. As you said, the stirling engines require less heat difference to run. This would be a way to recover some of the heat in the water as energy. Thus helping to cool the water a bit more.

You COULD. It would be prohibitively expensive due to the poor Carnot efficiency at that point. But you could do it. You could also make a radiative system that was 600 stories high - it will work but make the plant cost prohibitive. Just like any engineering project, you have to balance a whole bunch of things.

Re:How much would better cooling cost?

[ColdWetDog]

Cogeneration. Use the 'waste' heat to feed a greenhouse or local buildings. Again, it's a matter of cost. Relatively low thermal density energy sources (which is what waste heat really is) is expensive to ship around. You can pipe it, but pipes are expensive. You can't bottle it, you can't ship it over a wire so uses are limited.

It's all a matter of how much money you want to toss at the project and what your financial returns are.

Re:Should read "power plants", not "nuclear plants

[T5]

...giant atom bomb...

Really?

This is the kind of inartfully worded rhetoric that continues to fuel the distrust of nuclear power.

Metric-metric-metric please

[Suomi-Poika]

Time after time again you Americans are fed with articles which can not make any sense to you - not even to the most hard core imperial system users.
Lets translate some of the numbers of this article to the Human Readable units:

Power station has a grant to take 17 billion gallons of water annually.

Translation to human readable units which have some meaning:

17 billion US gallons = 64 352 000.3 m3 / year

How much that is per second?

66114626.5m3 / 365d = 181135 m3/d

181136m3 / 24h = 7574m3/d

7547m3/60min = 125m3/min

125m3 / 60s = 2.1m3/s

So, there you have it. Your shiny new nuke can take TWO POINT ONE CUBIC meters per second of water from a river which has average discharge of 172m3/second. Whoop-di-doo, this thing will KILL THIS RIVER AND AMERICA TOO... or how about NO?


From the Blue river www-site:

"The Blue Castle Project has leased water rights for 53,600 acre feet per year, already approved by the Utah State Division of Water Rights for coal fired power plants. These coal plants were never built and years later the water remains unused."


Writer of TFA should drown herself.. to the metric system and facts.

Re:Metric-metric-metric please

[Suomi-Poika]

One thing more:

From TFA, this is comedy gold: "Both types of cooling systems will also kill fish by sucking them into equipment or trapping them against intake screens, but the once-through method is more deadly because it diverts more water than does a closed-cycle system."

Well, now when we know that the flow is 2.1 cubic meters per second. Lets assume that the nuke plant wants to build a super small intake screen, like 5m x 2m, now, how FISH-CRUSHING is this 2.1m3 flow through this screen? It is 500cm x 200cm x 20cm, which is twenty centimeters per second. That is eight inches of FISH-CRUSHING per second. I'm from the country of thousands of lakes and while swimming in our crystal clear waters I have not seen a fish that slow, not small or big.

Hey! You American fish. You disappoint me.

Re:Should read "power plants", not "nuclear plants

[Rich0]

...Generating high temperatures in a huge furnace is a lot easier than doing it in a small one..

I believe you have this backwards; not sure why you got all the positive mods.

I can trivially generate a 1000 F temperature on the end of a cigarette, but I sure can't do that to a football field.

Similarly, I can reduce the size of the chamber in my foundry and it will heat up faster, easier, and cheaper.

If you dumped a huge pile of cigarettes onto your football field, you'd find that it takes far fewer of them with less ventilation per cubic inch to heat them up to 1000F, compared to what you have to do with a single one. Sure, it does require more heat, but not more heat per unit of volume.

Heat is lost through the surface of an object - the larger an object is, the less heat it loses per unit of volume through its surface, since the former increases with the cube of size, and the latter increases with the square.

All that said, it is true that it takes a smaller heater to heat an oven than a foundry. It just takes a bigger heater per unit of volume to heat a kitchen oven.

Re:Mmmm. Warm water

[rak-wolf]

Not sure where the article gets 25-30 years from [citation needed?]. My parents-in-law's place in Europ is heated this way and those pipes have been down for at least 30 years with no leaks, loss of efficiency or other problems. It's a relatively new tech so even the best estimates are probably fairly sketchy.

The least expensive option is not necessarily the best one (lead pipes as a case in point). So why complain so much about cost when it would get people back to work, reduce carbon output, fix this article's alleged problem, reduce reliance on foreign energy, and maybe even get some lead out of the drinking water? I'm sure with the proper research, funding and legislations this tech could take off in the US. Not that I really expect it to... These days there seem to be fewer Americans and more American'ts.

Just 1/3rd Re:Nothing is ever good enough

[Fubari]

Just one third. Think of them as "The 33%" Scientists: 'Look, One-Third Of The Human Race Has To Die For Civilization To Be Sustainable, So How Do We Want To Do This?'

Did you just propose killing 6 billion people?

Sorry I'm willing to try almost ANY other option.

A Reputable Source?

[echusarcana]

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists isn't exactly a reputable source for unbiased science stories (unless you like nutbar conspiracies from failed academics). While the story is sorta true it is misleading because (1) this isn't anything new and (2) this isn't unique to nuclear power.

Re:How much would better cooling cost?

[michael_cain]

The problem in this case is that the power plant is going to be out in the middle of nowhere. The nearest population centers that can make use of a big nuke plant are all located on the other side of one or more mountain ranges. The project includes building at least one long-distance high-voltage transmission line to carry the power from the plant to somewhere that it can be used. In a considerable part of the Mountain West, you locate power plants where you can get access to water, and then move the power to where the people are.

And coal doesn't?

[AaronLS]

Don't coal plants discharge a bunch of hot water into the environment as well? I seem to remember this from a childhood tour of one.

Re:And coal doesn't?

[profplump]

Yes, since they use exactly the same process at all points past the "fuel->heat" stage. But you get more attention if you say "nuke" in the headline.

Re:Mmmm. Warm water

[jaymemaurice]

Bruce nuclear sold industrial steam up until recently. BBSS I think they called it. System was demolished in 2006.