"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the International Energy Ag ency, the United Nations, the Obama Administration and even over 70% of cli mate scientists agree that we must ramp up nuclear power if we are going su cceed in dealing with climate change. Because of its exceptional safety and low cost, perhaps MSR technology is a nuclear technology that most everyon e can embrace."
And this technology can "load follow" which will avoid failures in the rene wable generation as recently occurred in Texas.
That Transatomic they mention has since gone bust. After admitting they mad e several errors in estimating nuclear waste reuse, seems they lost financi al backing.
only the utility companies really have both the financial means and incentive to invest in the (really expensive) R&D required to make it work, natural gas is cheap, and they don't have any interest in spending the money to do it at this time. spending money is the opposite of getting money.
and the utility company execs will gladly burn up every bit of coal, oil, and natural gas there is, then shrug, say "welp", close up shop and either die with everyone else if they're unlucky or escape to their New Zealand end-of-world bunker next to Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel if they're more fortunate.
y Agency, the United Nations, the Obama Administration and even over 70% of climate scientists agree that we must ramp up nuclear power if we are goin g succeed in dealing with climate change. Because of its exceptional safety and low cost, perhaps MSR technology is a nuclear technology that most eve ryone can embrace."
renewable generation as recently occurred in Texas.
made several errors in estimating nuclear waste reuse, seems they lost fin ancial backing.
Not true. There is such a thing as independent energy providers who can put power onto the grid. This is how the big solar and windpower producers are doing it right now, they are not owned by the utilities.
But, many utility companies are regulated monopolies, cannot ever expand into new distribution, and cannot consolidate. So the local utility can NOT afford a world-class engineering effort (and might not be able to profit from it if they did). The economic scale of utilities prevents investment in this matter. One needs nation-scale or international consortium to really participate.
The problem with doing product-research-on-a-budget in the public sector I think is you tend to be constrained to hiring engineers who'll work for an academic's salary.
They need to market it to Americans that the motel salt reactor will incinerate all the Mexicans and prevent the communists from turning everyone gay. then you'll have your moon-shot funding.
The utilities can invest in anything they like as long as it doesn't involv e a rate hike or make their finances so precarious that a rate hike can be predicted to result from it. It wouldn't make sense for a utility to develo p a new power generation technology, they purchase finished products.
What about it? France is in love with their reactor design which I believe they use in nearly all of their current reactors. They don't do the US th ing where they let any Tom, Dick and Harry design nukes.
But I recently heard about a new EPR reactor which is mostly French. Seems it is a bit more expensive than expected the first construction coming in more than twice the expected amount and taking four times longer much of wh ich had to do with safety issues. The second such reactor is currently for ecast to cost more than three times the initial figure (now nearly 11 Billi on Euro) and 13 years instead of 2.5 years.
Clearly France knows how to build nuclear reactors.
China seems to be heading down a MSR path with consideration of thorium fue l. We'll see how far they get and what they end up with.
At this point I'm wondering if any nuclear fuel or reactor design will be e conomically practical. The construction costs of these facilities seem to be out of control and strain the ability to make even competitively priced electricity much less "too cheap to meter".
Why should we focus on the single most expensive electricity source? What' s wrong with finding ways to make renewable energy cheaper and provide powe r around the clock?
The part I find particularly amusing is how pretty much the same people who criticize the various renewable choices based on various calculations of h ow they can't possibly work seem to refute the math of why we need renewabl es in place of fossil fuel energy. The same people who proclaim the market should dictate energy decisions when examining renewable subsidies don't c omplain at all about the high cost of nuclear energy and keep quiet when ot hers mention the subsidies for the oil companies.
I'd be happy with a level playing field... if it were ever level.
--
Rick C.
- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209
"The new investment will allow Seaborg?s team to increase its staff to 16 employees, making it the largest reactor development start-up in Eur ope."
Are you kidding me, 16 employees is the largest startup in Europe???
formatting link
And they're using all the R&D money to develop regulation compliant analysi s software for their process!
You would think the bureaucracy would accommodate an intrinsically safe rea ctor technology, but they won't. The U.S. has to be the most unmovable proc ess in the world. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), puts all applica tions for construction permits on 5-year schedule, and ultimately wants a d etailed engineering blueprint of every little aspect of the plan before the permit is granted. The application process alone can cost hundreds of mill ions of dollars. You're never going to get anything done with that kind of overhead, it's a major impediment to progress.
ff to 16 employees, making it the largest reactor development start-up in E urope."
sis software for their process!
eactor technology, but they won't. The U.S. has to be the most unmovable pr ocess in the world. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), puts all appli cations for construction permits on 5-year schedule, and ultimately wants a detailed engineering blueprint of every little aspect of the plan before t he permit is granted. The application process alone can cost hundreds of mi llions of dollars. You're never going to get anything done with that kind o f overhead, it's a major impediment to progress.
Which nuclear reactor technology is intrinsically safe??? Certainly no one can say this about a new technology that has not been tested in any signif icant way.
People seem to put a lot of emphasis on preventing a meltdown from the prim ary reaction. I don't think we've ever seen that anywhere other than Chern obyl perhaps. The other accidents at civilian reactors has been from the r esidual heat from the fission products. The only way to deal with this is to cool the reactor. Loose your cooling and it will melt down even if the moderator is removed and the control rods are inserted.
--
Rick C.
+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209
Nonsense. One can test any technology in small pieces, before asssembling the whole. The first A-bomb went pop on schedule, after lots of listening to clicks, watching things glow, and feeding measurements through computation (the 'computers' were Army enlistees with good arithmetic skills). The second wasn't even the same design, and it went bang as predicted, too. The
Technology testing doesn't only happen with full-scale working models, it just turns out to be easier that way sometimes.
There's no 'intrinsically safe' room or room design except a padded cell, by some reckoning.
Safety is important, but the 'intrinsically safe' label only applies to one particular kind of safety solution, it's NOT a requirement (nor panacea). A variety of disaster scenarios can be minimized or eliminated, so why have we virtually frozen designs at half-a-century-ago level of development? I see fear, uncertainty, doubt, hear loud irrational voices, but no other cause to cease nuclear engineering progress.
y no one can say this about a new technology that has not been tested in an y significant way.
, it just turns out to be
ere are no "intrinsically safe" nuclear reactors or reactor designs.
by some reckoning.
ne particular kind of
aster scenarios
t
,
ing progress.
No, the issues are all cost. It simply costs too much to develop new techn ologies to use nuclear energy with adequate safety.
You seem to want to claim the safety measures are excessive. Many will poi nt out the problems with earlier facilities that resulted in the accidents we have had. Accidents that we were lucky were not more frequent and more severe. Then you are suggesting we are doing too much for nuclear safety.
When people try to equate nuclear safety to other industries, they forget t he enormously high impact a worst case nuclear accident can half on an area . If your home were in the are of a nuclear disaster, it would be much lik e your home burning to the ground. Your life will never be the same again. You will never recover financially. The difference is when your home bur ns, often your neighbors will help you out, at least in the beginning when things are the hardest. If your home is impacted by a nuclear accident, yo ur neighbors will be in the same boat. Hundreds or even thousands of famil ies will never recover financially.
--
Rick C.
-+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209
How can you know that? Have you done such development? It seems not to be happening, as far as I can tell (money-starvation is visible, but NOT money-at-work). A common opinion of 'costs too much' does rather impede investment; engineering schools close programs and experts retire in genteel poverty.
No, what I want to claim is that spent-fuel 'safe storage' is an unnecessarily high-cost, low-safety option, and either reprocessing or some variant on burial (both of which have been ruled out 'at this time'... for decades) must be reconsidered.
The TMi accident wasn't 'lucky', it was not injurious to the neighbors because of robust safe design. Why would one call it luck? What 'problems' can you be referring to? Rather than talking about luck, reassess probability estimates. Worst-case analysis over-predicts problem likelihood and magnitudes.
What ARE we 'doing... for nuclear safety' when above-ground repositories, like at Fukushima, must be actively managed?
That sounds like someone reading out of the old Rasmussen report. Quotable, yes; accurate, no.
There's nothing prudent about shopping for over-optimistic scenarios, NOR about shopping for over-pessimistic ones. Try for accuracy.
** Plus a nice full scale trial in New Mexico - the "Trinity" test.
** The second nuke dropped was a Plutonium implosion device - same as the one dropped on Nagasaki - and its exact twin was the one tested in full scale.
Tests are normally required to prove any new design.
The engineers working on the Manhattan project would have like to do more tests but there was neither time nor opportunity. Such isolated examples CANNOT be used to prove anything.
ainly no one can say this about a new technology that has not been tested i n any significant way.
dels, it just turns out to be
ns.
ell, by some reckoning.
to one particular kind of
oubt,
neering progress.
echnologies to use nuclear energy with adequate safety.
o be happening,
.
Not sure what you just said, but sounds like you are agreeing with me. Yes , investment in new nuclear reactor technologies is not happening. At leas t not to enough degree that it is happening in a meaningful way. The Chine se say they are making investments, but elsewhere not so much.
hools close
arily high-cost, low-safety
have been
Yes, various methods of disposing of nuclear fuel have been "ruled out" at this time. So far this seems mostly reasonable and is an indicator of unkn own risk and expense. Even if we pick a disposal method and use it, how ar e we going to make the utilities pay for it for the next 10,000 years? Who can accurately forecast the costs well enough to allow the utilities to se t enough reserve to make sure it never runs out of money when problems happ en?
n the accidents we have had. Accidents that we were lucky were not more fr equent and more severe. Then you are suggesting we are doing too much for nuclear safety.
cause of robust safe design.
Lol! I like that. You should try to deliver that with a straight face tho ugh. I suppose the accident also was the result of a robust, safe design? Give it an honest read sometime. The accident happened because in many wa ys, the power plant was an accident waiting to happen. There were numerous problems in the design and procedures that allowed a relatively minor issu e to cause the reactor core to melt. That's not a "robust, safe design".
You can't improve until you admit you have a problem.
With the earthquake at the North Anna reactors more of the curtain was pull ed aside. Any number of safety problems were uncovered as well as construc tion issues that prevented proper data collection and analysis to get to th e root causes.
I would go through the list again, but I've posted here about this several times already.
So from 1979 to 2011 and we are still learning how to make these things saf e.
ase analysis
The nuclear industry can't seem to do that, why would you expect me to? No rth Anna was designed to withstand stronger shaking than any anticipated ea rthquake in the area. When an actual earthquake hit the impact was twice t he design limit. There are any number of design and operational failures o ver the history of the nuclear industry.
I did an analysis of risk from earthquake here once. I believe the startin g point was a US figure of 1:74,176 risk of core damage releasing radiation per reactor per year. Do the math of 100 reactors (in the US) over a 40 y ear operating life (even though many have been extended to another 30 years ) and you get something worse than 1:20 overall!!! Is that an acceptable r isk? Factor in a 70 year lifespan and it reaches 1:10.
I guess because TMI happened you could argue we've had our one accident for the next 100 years.
Here's some more info...
formatting link
Actual historical world data shows 1 in every 1,309 reactor years. Why is this so much worse than expected??? Sounds to me like the risk is being " under-estimated" rather than "over-estimated".
like at Fukushima, must
Not sure what you are asking here.
et the enormously high impact a worst case nuclear accident can half on an area...
able, yes; accurate,
Not accurate? What isn't accurate?
about shopping for
You mean like Chernobyl or Fukushima? What are you talking about?
--
Rick C.
+- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209
one dropped on Nagasaki - and its exact twin was the one tested in full sc ale.
tests but there was neither time nor opportunity. Such isolated examples C ANNOT be used to prove anything.
Mostly there wasn't enough material. While they were making Plutonium in ( barely) adequate amounts, it was very hard to separate the U235 in adequate amounts and they would not have had enough for another bomb for weeks. So the little boy dropped on Hiroshima was the first test of such a weapon.
formatting link
--
Rick C.
++ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209
ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.