Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 4:25 am Post subject: Re: Uranium Supply
sch_peakoiler wrote:
Dezakin wrote:
Theres no way PWRs are going to breed at 1.02.
the number 1.01 comes from Tanada, the number 1.02 from EnergyUnlimited. Can you please agree with them on anything?
because it is difficult to discuss if the proponents do not agree on one number.
1.01 came from first shot experiment on commercial reactor, as described by Tanada.
I suspect that 1.02 could be achieved with some more "fiddling" but we are not there yet and there was no interest in developing this technology further.
Dezakin think, it is not possible due to reactor geometry.
I think, that with some engineering efforts it may be possible to get there.
It is very rare that firs experiment ever run delivers the best possible result.
Usually there is some room for improvement.
I have noted that you are stating that we have one running commercial fast breeder.
Unfortunately it is not breeding fast breeder (in Russia).
Fast breeder which doesn't breed cannot help.
I think, fast breeders are working well only as ~50MW military installations, very expensive to run.
I doubt that we will ever succeed in adapting them to commercial electricity production.
Superphoenics was a spectacular failure.
Japanese installation is haunted with problems related to leaks of molten sodium, causing fires and it was not demonstrated to breed either.
Russian project does not breed, but otherwise is probably the best.
Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 8:32 am Post subject: Re: Uranium Supply
EnergyUnlimited wrote:
Dezakin think, it is not possible due to reactor geometry.
I think, that with some engineering efforts it may be possible to get there.
I think you three should either agree on something :)or agree on something:)
because otherwise if I cite numbers from you or Tanada I get an "its impossible" from Dezakin:) and vice versa.
That way the discussion is a stalemate.
Quote:
I have noted that you are stating that we have one running commercial fast breeder.
Unfortunately it is not breeding fast breeder (in Russia).
I know. it runs with HEU. So to say it is running in the eternal ignition mode (similar to what we discussed with igniting thorium). To make it breed one would have to reprocess the waste and make a "breeder load".
I called it a running breeder because
a) it is a breeder by design.
b) it runs
c) according to its project assessment documentation it has been confirmed to breed at some 1.3.
this breeder cannot help because even if you start building things like it tomorrow, you will have to wait 50 to 100 years before getting a substantial amount of them run. Build time+ignition breed+first reprocessing: all takes time.
So we can forget FBRs for the scope of our lifetimes. They are loosing it in our timeframe.
It looks like the same is true for almost every advanced nuclear tech out there. Fusion, FBRs, you name it. _________________ There is no knowledge that is not power.
Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 3:10 pm Post subject: Re: Uranium Supply
sch_peakoiler wrote:
EnergyUnlimited wrote:
Dezakin think, it is not possible due to reactor geometry.
I think, that with some engineering efforts it may be possible to get there.
I think you three should either agree on something :)or agree on something:)
because otherwise if I cite numbers from you or Tanada I get an "its impossible" from Dezakin:) and vice versa.
That way the discussion is a stalemate.
Well, I know the numbers for graphite moderated fluoride reactors for thorium breeding are 1.02 or so, and there you have helium sparging pulling out all of your neutron poisons online. In order for a solid fuel reactor with accumulated neutron poisons and a worse moderator to do close to that good, you have to be more than a little creative.
Mea culpa, but it doesnt sound like converting a PWR is fast, cheap, or easy. I'm not very familiar with how they constructed their core so I'm not sure its even possible in most PWRs.
Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 3:15 pm Post subject: Re: Uranium Supply
[quote="EnergyUnlimited"]
sch_peakoiler wrote:
Superphoenics was a spectacular failure.
Japanese installation is haunted with problems related to leaks of molten sodium, causing fires and it was not demonstrated to breed either.
Russian project does not breed, but otherwise is probably the best.
To be fair, all of these boondogles are liquid metal fast breeder reactors. A molten chloride fluid fuel power reactor offers some significant advantages over all of these (and even light water reactors)
No fuel fabrication for a start. Breeding ratio of 1.5 or more. No offline reprocessing plant. No corrosion issues from lead-bismuth, no bismuth neutron activation, no sodium fires, no massive pressure vessels.
Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 5:58 pm Post subject: Re: Uranium Supply
[quote="Dezakin"]
EnergyUnlimited wrote:
sch_peakoiler wrote:
Superphoenics was a spectacular failure.
Japanese installation is haunted with problems related to leaks of molten sodium, causing fires and it was not demonstrated to breed either.
Russian project does not breed, but otherwise is probably the best.
To be fair, all of these boondogles are liquid metal fast breeder reactors. A molten chloride fluid fuel power reactor offers some significant advantages over all of these (and even light water reactors)
No fuel fabrication for a start. Breeding ratio of 1.5 or more. No offline reprocessing plant. No corrosion issues from lead-bismuth, no bismuth neutron activation, no sodium fires, no massive pressure vessels.
maybe you can provide more specs on it?
like what is the fuel mix,
how does the bred fuel come out (should one stop it for unload?)
should one let the spent fuel cool for several years before reprocessing
whats the "doubling time"?
time to build one reactor?
whats its assessed technology state (working prototype or theoretical prototype or pure fantasy) ? _________________ There is no knowledge that is not power.
Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2008 3:32 pm Post subject: Re: Uranium Supply
sch_peakoiler wrote:
maybe you can provide more specs on it?
like what is the fuel mix,
how does the bred fuel come out (should one stop it for unload?)
should one let the spent fuel cool for several years before reprocessing
whats the "doubling time"?
time to build one reactor?
whats its assessed technology state (working prototype or theoretical prototype or pure fantasy) ?
I sort of hate the phrase 'doubling time' because its a lot faster to build more mines or more enrichment plants than to build breeder reactors just to create fuel. Really when people are interested in this its about weapons production...
Liquid chloride reactors would be about fissile production and actinide incineration, which are aesthetic objectives at best. I like them but for power production, liquid fluoride reactors are superior because they operate in thermal regimes (safer) and have fewer development issues (most development and prototyping was allready done in the MSBR project decades ago)
The fuel for a liquid fluoride mix is a liquid core of molten berylleum and lithium fluorides with uranium tetrafluoride disolved in. The fluorides act as a moderator or you can reduce the core size and fissile load by having external moderation (graphite or heavy water) but now it seems that because of moderator swelling and capital costs, just dealing with higher fissile load and a slightly larger core is more economical.
Wrapped around the core is a liquid salt medium with thorium tetrafluorides as a blanket. Fluoride volitility pulls out bred U233, and then thats fed into the core. Helium sparging pulls out gasseous fission products online, a sacrificial annode pulls out noble metals, and vacuum distillation gets the rest of the fission products, so there aren't accumulated neutron poisons in the core. The radioactive waste stream is 1/1000th that of a light water reactor, and average half life is 30 years instead of some 25000. After the initial fuel load (which can be just enriched uranium) it requires 1 ton of thorium per GW/year. After the reactor is decommissioned, the fuel load can be moved to another reactor.
Time to build the reactor is comparable to time to build a light water reactor, from 2 to 10 years depending on licensing costs, supply bottlenecks, political opposition or whatever.
The assessed technology state for the liquid fluoride reactor isn't yet commercial yet, but there was a working prototype that ran for five years at ORNL. For molten salt fast reactors using chlorides its theoretical.
Joined: Feb 20, 2005 Posts: 2682 Location: Uppsala, Sweden
Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 5:15 am Post subject: Re: Uranium Supply
The last time the price of uranium was quoted in this thread it was at $90. Now it is $68. The speculative uranium bubble has been bursting as exploration has showed that the resource is very abundant. _________________ Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 8:27 am Post subject: Re: Uranium Supply
Starvid wrote:
The last time the price of uranium was quoted in this thread it was at $90. Now it is $68. The speculative uranium bubble has been bursting as exploration has showed that the resource is very abundant.
The Redbook is out soon also. I am standing by my previous guess, a massive rise again in proven and probable reserves, which will be the final nail in the uranium supply insuffcienty argument.
The Redbook is out soon also. I am standing by my previous guess, a massive rise again in proven and probable reserves, which will be the final nail in the uranium supply insuffcienty argument.
A book will never make it a renewable resource or a resource that can be extracted at any rate required or always at a net energy gain or a resource that will not damage the environment during extraction.
The Redbook is out soon also. I am standing by my previous guess, a massive rise again in proven and probable reserves, which will be the final nail in the uranium supply insuffcienty argument.
A book will never make it a renewable resource or a resource that can be extracted at any rate required or always at a net energy gain or a resource that will not damage the environment during extraction.
The last time the price of uranium was quoted in this thread it was at $90. Now it is $68. The speculative uranium bubble has been bursting as exploration has showed that the resource is very abundant.
So M_B_S's posts peaked too or not ? _________________ "Nuclear power has long been to the Left what embryonic-stem-cell research is to the Right--irredeemably wrong and a signifier of moral weakness."Esquire Magazine,12/05
The genetic code is commaless and so are my posts.
Joined: Sep 25, 2005 Posts: 1972 Location: Waiuku, New Zealand
Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 2:36 am Post subject: Re: Uranium Supply
mkwin wrote:
TonyPrep wrote:
mkwin wrote:
The Redbook is out soon also. I am standing by my previous guess, a massive rise again in proven and probable reserves, which will be the final nail in the uranium supply insuffcienty argument.
A book will never make it a renewable resource or a resource that can be extracted at any rate required or always at a net energy gain or a resource that will not damage the environment during extraction.
We are talking about Uranium not coal.
I know. Uranium has to be mined or extracted and processed, does it not?
Joined: Feb 20, 2005 Posts: 2682 Location: Uppsala, Sweden
Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 3:01 am Post subject: Re: Uranium Supply
TonyPrep wrote:
mkwin wrote:
TonyPrep wrote:
mkwin wrote:
The Redbook is out soon also. I am standing by my previous guess, a massive rise again in proven and probable reserves, which will be the final nail in the uranium supply insuffcienty argument.
A book will never make it a renewable resource or a resource that can be extracted at any rate required or always at a net energy gain or a resource that will not damage the environment during extraction.
We are talking about Uranium not coal.
I know. Uranium has to be mined or extracted and processed, does it not?
The steel, aluminum, copper, concrete etc of a wind turbine has to be mined and or processed too, and you need several times as much base metals and stuff to get a kWh of wind power compared to a kWh of nuke power, according to a slide I saw at a lecture held by the chairman of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences.
Not that it really matters when push comes to shove. Neither does your reflexive counter agruments which have been debunked at this site so many times I can't care to count all of them. _________________ Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
Joined: Sep 25, 2005 Posts: 1972 Location: Waiuku, New Zealand
Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 3:15 am Post subject: Re: Uranium Supply
Starvid wrote:
Not that it really matters when push comes to shove. Neither does your reflexive counter agruments which have been debunked at this site so many times I can't care to count all of them.
They haven't been debunked, otherwise I would not still raise them. But this is a bit of overreaction. All I said was that a red book could not turn uranium into a renewable resource that can be mined and processed at any rate required and always at a net energy gain. I wouldn't have thought that was controversial, though the nuclear pushers might not like to admit it.
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