I don't know if it's better than IFR, but it beats the stuffing out of our current PWR's. The article infers that they can burn a wide range of fuels, and perhaps can burn up our current waste. That'll be a good thing for sure.
But its neutron absorption cross section precludes using it as a coolant in anything but thermal reactors, right? We've got to get away from the once thru fuel cycle and get to a point where we can safely burn up our current waste and weapon plutonium and reduce the amount and containment duration of the resulting waste. I don't see how we can hope to accomplish that using thermal reactors.
The neutron activated isotope of Sodium is fairly hot, but it only has a half life of 15 hours, as I recall. Sodium isn't the only primary coolant available - lead and eutectic combos of lead and other metals may be a better answer. Anything with a small neutron absorption cross section and relatively high specific heat will do.
I'm not wed to sodium, but I am convinced that fast flux reactors a la IFRs are the way to go.
Yep, I watch their progress with great interest and a heavy heart knowing that the greenies have tossed us, once again, into the backwaters of technological progress. They really want us to go back to subsistence living, don't they?
Note that the last time I was in Scotland, petrol was 0.99 pence/liter for 95 octane (the only grade available). In the US, typically the lowest octane rating is 87, with 89 being mid-grade and 92 or 93 being premium. We can't get 95 octane at a typical pump at any price, aside from specialty racing and aviation fuels.
The cheapest premium I can find around me is $4.01/usgal, and the most expensive is $4.59/usgal. Diesel fuel is out of control - the cheapest is $4.49, and the most expensive is $4.94. I used to heat with that stuff (#2 fuel oil is also known as 'dyed Diesel fuel').
I live about 30 miles line-of-sight from the North Anna Nuclear Power Station, and it doesn't bother me at all. In fact, I'm tickled pink that Dominion Power has applied for (and received, I think) an additional license for another reactor there. I just hope the man-made "Lake Anna" can handle the residual heat load.
Gee, I can't think of a more dangerous undertaking than firing screaming hot nuclear waste thru our atmosphere atop a giant tank of explosive rocket fuel just itching to blast all of that nuclear crud all over the planet.
To which nuclear powered rovers on which moon are you referring? The Apollo rovers were battery-powered, and so far all of the Mars (the planet) _rovers_ are solar-powered (Viking landers were RTG-powered). The stationary lunar experiment packages left by Apollo 12-17 were RTG-powered, as have been many Earth-orbiting satellites.
Huh!?!?! You didn't read the articles, did you? I contend that the current design is fatally flawed, safety-wise, and that we should research reactor designs that have intrinsic safety features instead of engineered ones.
ALMRs use liquid sodium for cooling and heat transfer, which makes the system intrinsically safer than one that uses water. That is because the molten sodium runs at atmospheric pressure, which means that there is no internal pressure to cause the type of accident that has to be carefully designed against in an LWR: a massive pipe rupture followed by "blowdown" of the coolant.
Also, sodium is not corrosive like water is. Regarding testing passive cooling:
All control power for the operating reactor was cut off. Coolant pumps stopped, control rods did not move, and the operators did nothing. The core temperature rose slightly, causing the reactor to go subcritical and shut itself down without incident. Unassisted convective cooling then prevented overheating. Metallic vs ceramic fuel rods:
Metal is a good heat conductor, while oxide is a poor one. That means the interiors of the metal rods stay much cooler, which means that there is far less heat stored in an operating ALMR, which means that if there were a loss of coolant flow there would be much less heat present to raise the temperature of the fuel, which means that the consequences of a hypothetical accident would be much less severe.
In the United States, it is well documented that the National Bureau of Standards issued pronunciation guides for the metric prefixes in the 1960s and again as late as the 1980s, giving the 'g' in "giga" a soft "j" sound, thus formalizing the pronunciation as "jiga"[2] within the United States. The same article mentions the BTTF use of jiga.
That's probably true if you're willing to limit yourself to 1970's tech _and_ reprocess for LWR designs. The IFR recycling process is likely to be simpler than that of current designs because you don't have to separate the plutonium from the other transuranics.
Ouch! That's a very different outcome than the one I experienced. My geek friends and I ended up teaching "computers" in high school since the teachers were not up to speed. (This was in the [cough] early 1980's).
We also had a very active "Talented and Gifted" program that provided accelerated classes and took advantage of the Mathematics and Science Center (as it was named then). I took "Saturday Morning Explorer" classes at MCV in Human Anatomy (actually dissected a human in high school), dentistry, biology (induced seizures in mice; injected mice with PCBs and performed necropsies; saw the effect of heroin addiction in monkeys and the effect of naloxone), and other really cool classes. What an opportunity!!!
Yeah, Cerenkov Radiation is cool. I've stood next to several 'swimming pool' reactors (even stood on top of one!), and it's cool with all that power humming away down there. Technically, it's a charged particle zipping along faster than the speed of light _in that medium_, not a water molecule.
Again, that's a common fallacy. It depends on how you go about reprocessing. The current once-thru fuel cycle actually results in more and purer plutonium in the waste stream than an IFR would. IFR's can burn up all of the current nuclear waste and all of the 'pure' plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons. I'd say that's a reason to REQUIRE IFR reactors and reprocessing. 200 year waste with essentially no useful isotopes in it is a clear win over what we have now (that being lots of terrorist-bait in poorly guarded swimming pools at reactors sites all over the country).
...for our current backwater nuclear power status. From Wikipedia:
With the election of President Bill Clinton in 1992, and the appointment of Hazel O'Leary as the Secretary of Energy, there was pressure from the top to cancel the IFR. Sen. John Kerry (D, MA) and O'Leary led the opposition to the reactor, arguing that it would be a threat to non-proliferation efforts, and that it was a continuation of the Clinch River Breeder Reactor Project that had been canceled by Congress. Despite support for the reactor by then-Rep. Richard Durbin (D, IL) and U.S. Senators Carol Mosley Braun (D, IL) and Paul Simon (D, IL), funding for the reactor was slashed, and it was ultimately canceled in 1994. [Just 3 years before completion.]
Emphasis mine. See all those bold 'D's for Democrat? Uh huh.
Slashdot Mirror
Mebi I will, mebi I won't.
I don't know if it's better than IFR, but it beats the stuffing out of our current PWR's. The article infers that they can burn a wide range of fuels, and perhaps can burn up our current waste. That'll be a good thing for sure.
Yeah, I kinda misread the original article. The way I read it, it looked like the last three D's changed their minds. My mistake.
But its neutron absorption cross section precludes using it as a coolant in anything but thermal reactors, right? We've got to get away from the once thru fuel cycle and get to a point where we can safely burn up our current waste and weapon plutonium and reduce the amount and containment duration of the resulting waste. I don't see how we can hope to accomplish that using thermal reactors.
I'm not wed to sodium, but I am convinced that fast flux reactors a la IFRs are the way to go.
Sounds like a DIY one-way ticket to gitmo, if you ask me.
Good God, Janet Simpson, R-MC '87 or so, is that you? Jenny could be your twin!
Yep, I watch their progress with great interest and a heavy heart knowing that the greenies have tossed us, once again, into the backwaters of technological progress. They really want us to go back to subsistence living, don't they?
Most plants here use river or lake water in their secondary loop. Hardly demineralized, barely de-fished!
The cheapest premium I can find around me is $4.01/usgal, and the most expensive is $4.59/usgal. Diesel fuel is out of control - the cheapest is $4.49, and the most expensive is $4.94. I used to heat with that stuff (#2 fuel oil is also known as 'dyed Diesel fuel').
I live about 30 miles line-of-sight from the North Anna Nuclear Power Station, and it doesn't bother me at all. In fact, I'm tickled pink that Dominion Power has applied for (and received, I think) an additional license for another reactor there. I just hope the man-made "Lake Anna" can handle the residual heat load.
Gee, I can't think of a more dangerous undertaking than firing screaming hot nuclear waste thru our atmosphere atop a giant tank of explosive rocket fuel just itching to blast all of that nuclear crud all over the planet.
To which nuclear powered rovers on which moon are you referring? The Apollo rovers were battery-powered, and so far all of the Mars (the planet) _rovers_ are solar-powered (Viking landers were RTG-powered). The stationary lunar experiment packages left by Apollo 12-17 were RTG-powered, as have been many Earth-orbiting satellites.
From here:
In the United States, it is well documented that the National Bureau of Standards issued pronunciation guides for the metric prefixes in the 1960s and again as late as the 1980s, giving the 'g' in "giga" a soft "j" sound, thus formalizing the pronunciation as "jiga"[2] within the United States. The same article mentions the BTTF use of jiga.That's probably true if you're willing to limit yourself to 1970's tech _and_ reprocess for LWR designs. The IFR recycling process is likely to be simpler than that of current designs because you don't have to separate the plutonium from the other transuranics.
Most recently seen examples:
- Walla! for Voila!
- persay for per se
- "a setaline torch" for Acetylene torch
- Monocot construction with regard to automobiles instead of monocoque.
You get the idea, I'm sure.We also had a very active "Talented and Gifted" program that provided accelerated classes and took advantage of the Mathematics and Science Center (as it was named then). I took "Saturday Morning Explorer" classes at MCV in Human Anatomy (actually dissected a human in high school), dentistry, biology (induced seizures in mice; injected mice with PCBs and performed necropsies; saw the effect of heroin addiction in monkeys and the effect of naloxone), and other really cool classes. What an opportunity!!!
Yeah, Cerenkov Radiation is cool. I've stood next to several 'swimming pool' reactors (even stood on top of one!), and it's cool with all that power humming away down there. Technically, it's a charged particle zipping along faster than the speed of light _in that medium_, not a water molecule.
How about a 1.21 gigawatt plant dedicated to time travel?
Again, that's a common fallacy. It depends on how you go about reprocessing. The current once-thru fuel cycle actually results in more and purer plutonium in the waste stream than an IFR would. IFR's can burn up all of the current nuclear waste and all of the 'pure' plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons. I'd say that's a reason to REQUIRE IFR reactors and reprocessing. 200 year waste with essentially no useful isotopes in it is a clear win over what we have now (that being lots of terrorist-bait in poorly guarded swimming pools at reactors sites all over the country).
Mod parent up. His language may be inflammatory, but what he's saying is spot-on.
Patently false, unless you limit yourself to the retarded design we currently use. Using IFR technology, there is enough fuel for 100,000 years.
With the election of President Bill Clinton in 1992, and the appointment of Hazel O'Leary as the Secretary of Energy, there was pressure from the top to cancel the IFR. Sen. John Kerry (D, MA) and O'Leary led the opposition to the reactor, arguing that it would be a threat to non-proliferation efforts, and that it was a continuation of the Clinch River Breeder Reactor Project that had been canceled by Congress. Despite support for the reactor by then-Rep. Richard Durbin (D, IL) and U.S. Senators Carol Mosley Braun (D, IL) and Paul Simon (D, IL), funding for the reactor was slashed, and it was ultimately canceled in 1994. [Just 3 years before completion.]
Emphasis mine. See all those bold 'D's for Democrat? Uh huh.