Fission FAQ v 1.5

[deMolay]

Any comments on the Canadian Slow Poke Reactor. http://www.cna.ca/curriculum/cna_can_nu ... d=Slowpoke

[Tanada]

Any comments on the Canadian Slow Poke Reactor. http://www.cna.ca/curriculum/cna_can_nu ... d=Slowpoke

I read up on the Slowpoke 3 design back 15 or 20 years ago and thought it was great, the idea of having district heating without any GHG emissions really appeals to me a lot. Though initially designed to run on highly enriched U-235 (20%) the system could also operate on comparable levels of Np-237 or mixed Plutonium recovered from exposed MOX fuel assemblies that are deemed too poor in quality for use in LWR fuel recycle. Because the neutron spectrum is fast it does not need to be high percentage Pu-239/241, the Pu-238/240/242/243 all act as fuel in the fast spectrum a Slowpoke produces.

Basically research reactor style designs are fast burner reactors, if it is fissionable with fast neutrons these gems can use it for fuel. As designed none of them that I am aware of can be refueled, they are small and compact and when they are used up you haul them to a reprocessing plant and just replace them as a unit.

[deMolay]

At one time they were talking of using them in isolated northern communities in Canada's far north as an alternative to fossil fuel. It seemed to just die down tho, no recent discussion on this in Canada that I have seen. I think they just rebuilt them in situ as best I recall.

[Graeme]

New Computer Model Shows Nuclear Fission

Scientists at the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) announce the development of a new computer algorithm that allows for them to visualize the reactions that go on inside a nuclear reactor in finer detail than ever before. The neutron transport code UNIC, which is still under development at ANL, will provide researchers in the end with the most detailed view of a reactor's core possible, without them actually jumping inside a reactor.

Engineers and nuclear physicists could use the UNIC algorithm to create safer, more environmentally friendly nuclear reactors, which could benefit a large number of countries in the world. As carbon dioxide becomes an increasing threat, oil and natural gas will be shunned from the market more and more, and renewable energies will take their place. Nuclear fission is one of the safest bets, but new nuclear reactors have not been built in a while. A video of a more detailed simulation of the Zero Power Reactor experiment is available online here.

softpedia

[lper100km]

…the model algorithm showed that the initial reaction would be very slow, but after reaching a critical point, would suddenly accelerate. Dr. (blacked out) said that the curve plotting this reaction reminded him of a hockey stick …..

[eclipse]

I just wanted to bump this topic as Climatologist (and peak oil advocate) Dr Barry Brooks of Adelaide University, Australia says that just today's nuclear waste could run the world for 500 years.

In summary, he believes:

* IFR’s eat today’s nuclear waste, and are the only way to economically solve the previous generation’s long lived nuclear waste!
* Instead of old waste being an expensive problem to guard for the next 100 thousand years or so, it becomes a fuel that could run the world for the next 500 years! Just the American waste alone would then be worth $30 trillion dollars!
* Nuclear waste from older reactors has to be stored for 100 thousand years, but after ‘burning’ in an IFR it is reduced to 10% of the mass and then only has to be stored for 300 years because it is so radioactive that it quickly burns itself out.
* 500 years of cheap baseload power is attractive in a world of peak oil, gas, and coal, and who knows what other energy alternatives we may have discovered and developed by then?
* If we started building IFR’s today, by the time we ran out of ‘normal waste’ to reprocess, the first few generations of IFR ’super-hot’ waste would have burnt themselves out and could be decommissioned from high security storage and be safe! That’s the nuclear waste problem solved!
* Even at lower concentrations of ore, the particles are so rich in energy that it becomes economical at some point to extract uranium & thorium even from seawater!

http://bravenewclimate.com/integral-fas ... ear-power/

Concentrated, baseload power as long as we need. As an activist for New Urbanism, I'm also a bit sad that I can see "Better Place" electric cars solving the long-distance drive problem with the 2 minute battery swap. (Filling up at your old fashioned petroleum station takes an average of 7 minutes).

Sha Agassi, the founder of Better Place, gave this presentation at a pivotal Australian conference, and claims he can sell electric km's at a fuel equivalent price of about $0.80 cents a litre. (Which is about 30 or 40 cents cheaper than petrol at the moment in Australia).

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/fora/stories/2 ... 656263.htm

Sure there will be horrible economic consequences for having left peak oil too late to adjust to smoothly, and sure we're probably going to face a Greater Depression as the rationing over the next decades kicks in, but by the time my kids are in their 30's I'm guessing society will be largely petroleum free and running on electricity, and that includes mining, agriculture (with nuclear synthesised fuels or maybe biochar syngas), electric airships (solar PV on the outside and maybe some backup hydrogen fuel on the inside... and yes I know hydrogen costs a lot of energy to make), fast rail, and hopefully... if we have half a brain, lots of New Urbanism.

(See this... my favourite summary of New Urbanism in 3 minutes. I hope Kunstler's seen this!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGJt_YXIoJI

[dissident]

but there are problems caused by the fact that the Lead and Lead-Bisimuth alloys are very dense, which can cause erosion of the piping as they are pumped from the core to the heat exchangers and back.

Actually the erosion is related to the fact that lead dissolves iron. The solution to this problem is to induce continuous iron oxide formation on the pipe interior wall.

article link

One of the Soviet sub reactor designs based on lead-bismuth is now being commercialized for small scale applications.

Bellona link for LOLz

Russian press link

[Graeme]

5 myths about nuclear energy

Explosions. Radiation. Evacuations. More than 30 years after Three Mile Island, the unfolding crisis in Japan has brought back some of the worst nightmares surrounding nuclear power — and restarted a major debate about the merits and the drawbacks of this energy source. Does nuclear energy offer a path away from carbon-based fuels? Or are nuclear power plants too big a threat? It’s time to separate myth from reality.


1. The biggest problem with nuclear energy is safety.

Safety is certainly a critical issue, as the tragedy in Japan is making clear. But for years, the the biggest challenge to sustainable nuclear energy hasn’t been safety, but cost.

In the United States, new nuclear construction was already slowing down even before the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979; the disaster merely sealed its fate. The last nuclear power plant to come online started delivering power in 1996 — but its construction began in 1972. Today, nuclear power remains considerably more expensive than coal- or gas-fired electricity, mainly because nuclear plants are so expensive to build. Estimates are slippery, but a plant can cost well north of $5 billion. A 2009 MIT study estimated that the cost of producing nuclear energy (including construction, maintenance and fuel) was about 30 percent higher than that of coal or gas.

Of course, cost and safety aren’t unrelated. Concerns about safety lead to extensive regulatory approval processes and add uncertainty to plant developers’ calculations — both of which boost the price of financing new nuclear plants. It’s not clear how much these construction costs would fall if safety fears subsided and the financing became cheaper — and after the Fukushima catastrophe, we’re unlikely to find out.


2. Nuclear power plants are sitting ducks for terrorists.

It’s easy to get scared about terrorist attacks on nuclear plants. After the Sept. 11 attacks, a cottage industry sprung up around the threat, with analysts imagining ever-more horrific and creative ways that terrorists could strike nuclear facilities and unleash massive consequences.

There are certainly real risks: Nuclear expert Matthew Bunn of Harvard University has pointed out that well-planned terrorist attacks probably would produce the sort of simultaneous failures in multiple backup systems that Japan’s reactors are experiencing. But it’s much harder to target a nuclear power plant than one might think, and terrorists would have great difficulty replicating the physical impact that last week’s earthquake had on the Japanese plants. It also would be tough for them to breach the concrete domes and other barriers that surround U.S. reactors. And although attacks have been attempted in the past — most notoriously by Basque separatists in Spain in 1977 — none has resulted in widespread damage.

To be sure, the water pools in which reactors store used fuel, which reside outside the containment domes, are more vulnerable than the reactors and could cause real damage if attacked; there is a debate between analysts and industry about whether terrorists could effectively target them.

3. Democrats oppose nuclear energy; Republicans favor it.

4. Nuclear power is the key to energy independence.

5. Better technology can make nuclear power safe.

Most energy sources entail risks. In the past year, we’ve seen an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, fatal explosions at the Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia and now the crisis in Japan. The American public will need to decide whether the risks of nuclear power — compared with those of other energy sources — are too high.

washingtonpost

Michael A. Levi , a senior fellow and director of the program on energy security and climate change at the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of “On Nuclear Terrorism.”

[Frank]

A lot of the data that Tanada presented in the early part of this thread was from circa 2006; has there been any significant updates on fuel availability, etc.? What's the industries "take" on Japan's moving reactors off-line and Germany's supposed interest in doing the same? (If it's off-topic I understand.)

thanks