It might push the rates up, but that extra money would likely go to insurance. For reference, see what an anesthesiologist makes vs. how much they spend on insurance. (In 2009, this was $21,480, according to the AQI. Sadly, they've pulled the 2009 version and the 2013 version is paywalled. But you get the general idea.)
So, to eliminate waste of one kind, we're going to replace it with waste of another. Vacuum seals tend to leak over time, requiring you to run the pump periodically--especially if you want one loose enough to pull out when someone trips on the cord. Brilliant.
I'll second Calibre. It's also an amazing tool for converting between formats if you have a preference for one or the other, with the ability to apply virtually any formatting you'd like. Quite handy.
I sure hope someone does, until they get the message. The design is awful. It's a waste of space and makes browsing the comments--the main attraction here (for me)--a major pain in the ass. Make a redesign that puts the focus where it belongs.
If it's laughably implausible for us to punish people for criminal negligence, we might as well chuck the concept of rule by law. That doesn't sound like a solution to me.
If you'd read the fine article, you'd notice that they apply a protocol (the Bundle protocol) *over* the existing stack. You may continue to use TCP where appropriate.
This is STILL not a citation that ANYONE, EVER, ANYWHERE in the WORLD has used Hastelloy-N with 1.1% Niobium in contact with liquid sodium and it caused embrittlement. This is why citations are important. If your claim was true, you should be able to find a citation. But you can't, because it's false and they don't exist. I even did your dirty work, went looking for a citation, and all I found were claims that the people you say have sodium leaks used a different material. This is why citations are important--to prevent people like you, who are full of it, from making false claims (or at least minimize it).
Still not a citation that they used the one single known material that doesn't crack, next to liquid sodium. Really, if it's so darn common, you should have virtually no trouble finding a citation where they used Hastelloy-N with 1.1% Niobium in contact with liquid sodium and it cracked. This is why citations are important. The real truth is--you can't find any, because they don't exist.
And you still haven't found a single citation showing that they used the one single material ORNL found that displayed 0 crack depth. If you read the ORNL reports, you'd know that only one specific material held up well--and it isn't what anyone else has used, so far as I can find.
Use of 321 austenitic steel
Used extensively at Phenix and PFR, this steel
showed cracks over time corresponding to
residual welding stresses, particularly in the
hot areas.
As a result, all the 321 parts at Phenix were
gradually replaced. Many successive repairs
were made to the PFR steam generators, and
all the parts made of 321 on existing reactors
are closely monitored.
Hey, that's not Hastelloy-N with Niobium!
These sodium leaks can have many very different
origins:
Constructional defects,
Design problems, such as the Monju
thermocouple thimble,
Materials problems, such as the example of
321 steel stress cracking,
Thermal crazing at the mixing tee level,
leading to through cracks,
Corrosion following air intake into the circuits
(one example),
Operator error (for example, during thawing
of the circuit and the corresponding expansion
of the sodium),
In a sodium reactor, avoiding the intake of air or
impurities into the circuits is of utmost
importance. Under certain conditions, these
pollutions can start mechanisms of stress-
corrosion cracking.
Sounds like you need to screw up in some other way, first. Like using the wrong material.
That was a really cool link! They even use Linux (Gnome 2 desktop environment and all) on the computers. I particularly liked "THIS COMPUTER DOES NOT ACCESS INTERNET OR OUTLOOK. THIS COMPUTER DOES CAUSE POWER OUTAGES AND ALARMS."
They turned it off and didn't defuel it or remove high level waste (the decomissioning part). They walked away for almost 40 years--from a design without any of the subsequent improvements (and still didn't kill or harm anyone!). You'd know that if you actually bothered to read the comment. And it wasn't a billion dollars--it was $130 million. About 1/10th of what you suggest. Again, if you'd bother to read the comment, you'd see that.
You can say the same of any industry working with potentially high risk situations. The solution is to levy actual punishments on the key perpetrators. Hard jailtime. This isn't a technical problem (see an LFTR fuel cycle, instead of the existing ones), it's a social one, with social solutions.
More FUD. The longer-term decay products are correspondingly less dangerous. The really dangerous stuff has very very short half-lives. Store it for a short while, let the nasty stuff decay, then continue to use it as fuel. This is FUEL. Not waste. FUEL.
You solve the problem of storing energy (energy density of anything out there right now sucks) and shorter lifetimes than a nuclear reactor, and we'll talk. Contrast that to a nuclear reactor where the energy is already stored, and you merely throttle the reaction. You can operate a nuclear plant in load-following mode--not so easy to do with solar/wind/etc.. A quicker ROI is not necessarily the correct way to go about choosing a technology--especially when it means quicker to fail or quicker to require replacement. You suffer from bean counter syndrome.
I have a boner for the long-term survival of conscious entities in the universe. You can huddle around the fire (Sol) until it goes out, or you can learn to build fires yourself. You want to save the planet, invest in science, figure out how to mine the rest of the Universe, and get us off this rock. Then you can turn the Earth into your nature preserve.
The metal problem was solved with Hastelloy-N by adding various alloys (primarily 1.1% Nb) and they predicted it to have a sufficient lifetime for an operational reactor. That was in 1977.
A metallographic examination (Fig. 10) of the tensile tested specimen showed a complete absence of grain boundary cracks.
We have found that if the U(IV)/U(III) ratio in fuel salt is kept below about 60, embrittlement is essentially prevented when CrTel.266 is used as the source of tellurium.
They recorded a crack depth of 0, and very minimal cracking for other sources of Te.
The evolution of fluorine gas was solved in 1970 by putting insulation (a reflective layer) around it.
Nevertheless it is clear that prevention of fluorine evolution from stored MSR salt will not be very difficult or expensive,
A decommissioning process was developed in 1997 and the original MSRE, without the later developments, improper defueling and storage and all, was decommissioned and now serves as a source of thorium for medical research at present. The original decomissioned procedure in 1969 was simply to turn it off and walk away. So we don't do that anymore.
Wiki summaries:
Cleanup of the Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment was about $130 Million, for a small 8 MW(th) unit. Much of the high cost was caused by the unpleasant surprise of fluorine and uranium hexafluoride evolution from cold fuel salt in storage that ORNL did not defuel and store correctly, but this has now been taken into consideration in MSR design.
If the fluoride fuel salts are stored in solid form over many decades, radiation can cause the release of corrosive fluorine gas, and uranium hexafluoride.[94] This was due to radiolysis of the salt from remaining fission products, when colder than 100 degrees Celsius.[79] The salts should be defueled and wastes removed before extended shutdowns. Fluorine and uranium hexafluoride evolution can be prevented by storing the salts above 100 degrees Celsius.[79] Because some of the fission product fluorides have high solubility in water, fluorides are less suitable for long term storage. For longer term storage, fluoride containing wastes could go through a vitrification process to be encased in insoluble borosilicate glass suitable for long-term disposal.
Corrosion from tellurium—The reactor makes small amounts of tellurium as a fission product. In the MSRE, this caused small amounts of corrosion at the grain boundaries of the special nickel alloy, Hastelloy-N used for the reactor. Metallurgical studies showed that adding 1 to 2% niobium to the Hastelloy-N alloy improves resistance to corrosion by tellurium.[24](pp81–87) One additional strategy against corrosion was to keep the fuel salt slightly reducing by maintaining the ratio of UF4/UF3 to less than 60. This was done in the MSRE by continually contacting the flowing fuel salt with a beryllium metal rod submersed in a cage inside the pump bowl. This causes a fluorine shortage in the salt, reducing tellurium to a less aggressive (elemental) form. This method is also effective in reducing corrosion in general from the fluoride salt, because the fission process produces more fluorine atoms freed from the fissioned uranium that would otherwise attack the structural metals.[92](pp3–4)
Radiation damage to nickel alloys—The standard Hastelloy N alloy, a high nickel alloy use
It never ceases to amaze me. They're sitting on huge energy reserves, vast amounts of easily defensible space (an isolated continent of their own), have an enormous mining infrastructure--Australia, if it got its head out of its ass, could be a real world superpower, not a lapdog.
You'd think that they'd be right up at the forefront of this. Those that fail to adapt die. Those that adapt prosper. With LFTR, there's the opportunity to gain first-mover advantage all over again, especially with the shifting public opinion of nuclear. It won't always be such a regulatory and PR nightmare.
Slashdot Mirror
It might push the rates up, but that extra money would likely go to insurance. For reference, see what an anesthesiologist makes vs. how much they spend on insurance. (In 2009, this was $21,480, according to the AQI. Sadly, they've pulled the 2009 version and the 2013 version is paywalled. But you get the general idea.)
So, to eliminate waste of one kind, we're going to replace it with waste of another. Vacuum seals tend to leak over time, requiring you to run the pump periodically--especially if you want one loose enough to pull out when someone trips on the cord. Brilliant.
I'll second Calibre. It's also an amazing tool for converting between formats if you have a preference for one or the other, with the ability to apply virtually any formatting you'd like. Quite handy.
I sure hope someone does, until they get the message. The design is awful. It's a waste of space and makes browsing the comments--the main attraction here (for me)--a major pain in the ass. Make a redesign that puts the focus where it belongs.
Those unleaked documents may be all that's keeping him alive. No sane being would ever give up that insurance policy in his situation.
If it's laughably implausible for us to punish people for criminal negligence, we might as well chuck the concept of rule by law. That doesn't sound like a solution to me.
If you'd read the fine article, you'd notice that they apply a protocol (the Bundle protocol) *over* the existing stack. You may continue to use TCP where appropriate.
This is STILL not a citation that ANYONE, EVER, ANYWHERE in the WORLD has used Hastelloy-N with 1.1% Niobium in contact with liquid sodium and it caused embrittlement. This is why citations are important. If your claim was true, you should be able to find a citation. But you can't, because it's false and they don't exist. I even did your dirty work, went looking for a citation, and all I found were claims that the people you say have sodium leaks used a different material. This is why citations are important--to prevent people like you, who are full of it, from making false claims (or at least minimize it).
Still not a citation that they used the one single known material that doesn't crack, next to liquid sodium. Really, if it's so darn common, you should have virtually no trouble finding a citation where they used Hastelloy-N with 1.1% Niobium in contact with liquid sodium and it cracked. This is why citations are important. The real truth is--you can't find any, because they don't exist.
And you still haven't found a single citation showing that they used the one single material ORNL found that displayed 0 crack depth. If you read the ORNL reports, you'd know that only one specific material held up well--and it isn't what anyone else has used, so far as I can find.
I wonder, it's not like you make use of TCP/IP every day, and the guy didn't co-invent it or anything.
Use of 321 austenitic steel
Used extensively at Phenix and PFR, this steel showed cracks over time corresponding to residual welding stresses, particularly in the hot areas. As a result, all the 321 parts at Phenix were gradually replaced. Many successive repairs were made to the PFR steam generators, and all the parts made of 321 on existing reactors are closely monitored.
Hey, that's not Hastelloy-N with Niobium!
These sodium leaks can have many very different origins :
Constructional defects,
Design problems, such as the Monju thermocouple thimble,
Materials problems, such as the example of 321 steel stress cracking,
Thermal crazing at the mixing tee level, leading to through cracks,
Corrosion following air intake into the circuits (one example),
Operator error (for example, during thawing of the circuit and the corresponding expansion of the sodium),
In a sodium reactor, avoiding the intake of air or impurities into the circuits is of utmost importance. Under certain conditions, these pollutions can start mechanisms of stress- corrosion cracking.
Sounds like you need to screw up in some other way, first. Like using the wrong material.
That was a really cool link! They even use Linux (Gnome 2 desktop environment and all) on the computers. I particularly liked "THIS COMPUTER DOES NOT ACCESS INTERNET OR OUTLOOK. THIS COMPUTER DOES CAUSE POWER OUTAGES AND ALARMS."
Is that the documentary on those two Italian plumbers, whatstheirnames...?
They turned it off and didn't defuel it or remove high level waste (the decomissioning part). They walked away for almost 40 years--from a design without any of the subsequent improvements (and still didn't kill or harm anyone!). You'd know that if you actually bothered to read the comment. And it wasn't a billion dollars--it was $130 million. About 1/10th of what you suggest. Again, if you'd bother to read the comment, you'd see that.
You can say the same of any industry working with potentially high risk situations. The solution is to levy actual punishments on the key perpetrators. Hard jailtime. This isn't a technical problem (see an LFTR fuel cycle, instead of the existing ones), it's a social one, with social solutions.
You must have missed the past 40 something years.
FUD: If it doesn't work the first time, just keep spouting nonsense.
The problems with nuclear were largely caused by ignoring the engineers who said, "This is a really bad idea."
More FUD. The longer-term decay products are correspondingly less dangerous. The really dangerous stuff has very very short half-lives. Store it for a short while, let the nasty stuff decay, then continue to use it as fuel. This is FUEL. Not waste. FUEL.
You solve the problem of storing energy (energy density of anything out there right now sucks) and shorter lifetimes than a nuclear reactor, and we'll talk. Contrast that to a nuclear reactor where the energy is already stored, and you merely throttle the reaction. You can operate a nuclear plant in load-following mode--not so easy to do with solar/wind/etc.. A quicker ROI is not necessarily the correct way to go about choosing a technology--especially when it means quicker to fail or quicker to require replacement. You suffer from bean counter syndrome.
I have a boner for the long-term survival of conscious entities in the universe. You can huddle around the fire (Sol) until it goes out, or you can learn to build fires yourself. You want to save the planet, invest in science, figure out how to mine the rest of the Universe, and get us off this rock. Then you can turn the Earth into your nature preserve.
The metal problem was solved with Hastelloy-N by adding various alloys (primarily 1.1% Nb) and they predicted it to have a sufficient lifetime for an operational reactor. That was in 1977.
A metallographic examination (Fig. 10) of the tensile tested specimen showed a complete absence of grain boundary cracks.
We have found that if the U(IV)/U(III) ratio in fuel salt is kept below about 60, embrittlement is essentially prevented when CrTel.266 is used as the source of tellurium.
They recorded a crack depth of 0, and very minimal cracking for other sources of Te.
The evolution of fluorine gas was solved in 1970 by putting insulation (a reflective layer) around it.
Nevertheless it is clear that prevention of fluorine evolution from stored MSR salt will not be very difficult or expensive,
A decommissioning process was developed in 1997 and the original MSRE, without the later developments, improper defueling and storage and all, was decommissioned and now serves as a source of thorium for medical research at present. The original decomissioned procedure in 1969 was simply to turn it off and walk away. So we don't do that anymore. Wiki summaries:
Cleanup of the Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment was about $130 Million, for a small 8 MW(th) unit. Much of the high cost was caused by the unpleasant surprise of fluorine and uranium hexafluoride evolution from cold fuel salt in storage that ORNL did not defuel and store correctly, but this has now been taken into consideration in MSR design.
If the fluoride fuel salts are stored in solid form over many decades, radiation can cause the release of corrosive fluorine gas, and uranium hexafluoride.[94] This was due to radiolysis of the salt from remaining fission products, when colder than 100 degrees Celsius.[79] The salts should be defueled and wastes removed before extended shutdowns. Fluorine and uranium hexafluoride evolution can be prevented by storing the salts above 100 degrees Celsius.[79] Because some of the fission product fluorides have high solubility in water, fluorides are less suitable for long term storage. For longer term storage, fluoride containing wastes could go through a vitrification process to be encased in insoluble borosilicate glass suitable for long-term disposal.
Corrosion from tellurium—The reactor makes small amounts of tellurium as a fission product. In the MSRE, this caused small amounts of corrosion at the grain boundaries of the special nickel alloy, Hastelloy-N used for the reactor. Metallurgical studies showed that adding 1 to 2% niobium to the Hastelloy-N alloy improves resistance to corrosion by tellurium.[24](pp81–87) One additional strategy against corrosion was to keep the fuel salt slightly reducing by maintaining the ratio of UF4/UF3 to less than 60. This was done in the MSRE by continually contacting the flowing fuel salt with a beryllium metal rod submersed in a cage inside the pump bowl. This causes a fluorine shortage in the salt, reducing tellurium to a less aggressive (elemental) form. This method is also effective in reducing corrosion in general from the fluoride salt, because the fission process produces more fluorine atoms freed from the fissioned uranium that would otherwise attack the structural metals.[92](pp3–4)
Radiation damage to nickel alloys—The standard Hastelloy N alloy, a high nickel alloy use
It never ceases to amaze me. They're sitting on huge energy reserves, vast amounts of easily defensible space (an isolated continent of their own), have an enormous mining infrastructure--Australia, if it got its head out of its ass, could be a real world superpower, not a lapdog.
You'd think that they'd be right up at the forefront of this. Those that fail to adapt die. Those that adapt prosper. With LFTR, there's the opportunity to gain first-mover advantage all over again, especially with the shifting public opinion of nuclear. It won't always be such a regulatory and PR nightmare.
No. You know why? Because right now, the key stumbling block is not the science--it's the public.