[diemos]

Decay heat from fission products in a fusion-fission hybrid is just as big a problem as in a conventional fission design. If you don't keep the cooling going after shutdown it will melt down. There's no benefit to shutting the neutron production down in microseconds versus seconds for control rods.

[aldente]

thanks for the hint Killjoy

impressive !

[Tanada]

Video

[dissident]

Video

I agree with the gist of this video. No Congress critter has a clue about physical reality.

But electrolytic batteries are not the only way to store energy from wind and solar. Wind and solar can be used to generate NH3 and NH3 can be used by power cells of all scales to generate electricity in situ. NH3 can be stored easily even if it is caustic. H2 by contrast, has serious storage problems and basically leaks through metal container walls. Having a chemical product instead of just raw electricity from wind and solar plants removes both the intermittency and non-peak demand generation problems. The economy is already configured to use liquid fuels, so NH3 does not require a totally brand new infrastructure.

Another benefit of chemical storage is that all the solar and wind plants can be located where they maximize output. So I don't buy the fear mongering about land use. Cover the deserts with solar panels. No farmland or even biologically active real estate will be lost. (Forget about trying to paint deserts as equivalent to forest land in terms of biomass).

The electric car as fossil fuel generators argument is weak. Air quality (i.e. cancer and metabological syndrome health impact) improvement in urban areas by using plug in hybrids is justified all by itself. Only now are we seeing gasoline engines approaching 40% efficiency. Over most of the last 40 years they have been less than 25% efficient. Using power plant electricity is an effective 42% efficiency. So conversion to plug in electric vehicles has been justified for decades. It is a net CO2 reduction.

No, Chernobyl was not an idiotic design. The criminals (likely working for NATO to destabilize the USSR) who conducted the unauthorized experiment on increasing power yield are 100% responsible for the "accident". Any nuclear engineer with qualifications would have known that a runaway risk existed due to the positive void coefficient. This experiment was not conducted and even designed by qualified people. Such experiments can only be conducted in experimental reactors with controls specifically created to deal with the experimental risks. Running experiments on operational power plants that take them way outside their engineered operational scope is a pure criminal enterprise.

Fukushima was a case of criminal negligence since they could have easily placed the backup generators on a hill about 135 feet from the plant that was much higher than any tsunami water rise but chose to keep them in the basement as per the original GE plant design. GE designed the plant for the USA where there is basically zero tsunami risk.

Chernobyl and Fukushima cannot be used to exclude nuclear power as the main choice to combat CO2 emissions. Both were ancient water moderated and cooled designs that are simply not relevant today. Build molten metal vat designs and neither of the "accident" scenarios will apply. Unpressurized vat reactors that do not use water and have enormous passive cooling built in. They can't lose coolant even if it is sodium. Sodium can burn in air but it does not explode. Tens of tons of sodium will take vastly longer to burn off than it will take for the reactor to cool down. And there is plenty of time to respond to any fire since the threat of meltdown is not there in the first few days. Fukushima was doomed as soon as the backup generators got flooded and it took only a few hours to get meltdowns at all four reactors.

[kublikhan]

I agree with what dissent said batteries not being the only way to store electricity. Other storage options include pumped hydro, compressed air, thermal, etc. Any one of those would have orders of magnitude less requirements for the mining of materials.

Also, not everyone in the US is following in the steps of Germany & Vermont and closing their nuclear power plants. Illinois, the state with the largest nuclear generation in the country, is moving in the opposite direction. Instead of prematurely closing plants it is extending lifelines to allow nuclear to compete with cheap gas & subsidized wind.

Dec 4, 2016 - Illinois State Legislature passed The Future Energy Jobs Bill. The bi-partisan bill allows Exelon’s Clinton and Quad Cities nuclear power plants to remain open, saving 4,200 jobs and over 22 billion kWhs of carbon-free power each year, more than all of the state’s renewables combined. These two plants were in jeopardy of closing because even at a low cost of five cents or so per kWh, they were losing a combined $100 million per year because they could not compete with cheap natural gas and wind energy that is subsidized at 2.3¢/kWh. Exelon had drafted a press release announcing the closure of the two plants that was to be issued last night if the bill failed. Instead, these plants will be operating for at least another 10 years, producing over 200 billion kWhs of carbon-free energy.

Nuclear power produces over half of Illinois’ electricity, all with no carbon or other polluting emissions. The enormous negative impact of shutting down nuclear plants because of an artificial market finally got through to the Legislature, since the generating capacity of these nuclear plants would have to be replaced by natural gas or coal, doubling the State’s total carbon emissions and ensuring that the state would not meet its emissions goals anytime soon. This is just what happened in New England after the unnecessary closing of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant in 2014. Their clean nuclear energy was replaced entirely by natural gas and out-of-state purchases, the local community was devastated economically, and electricity prices have increased. The fate of these Illinois nuclear plants had drawn the attention of the entire country, including the leading climate scientists, since Illinois generates more zero-emissions electricity than any other state, 90% of which comes from nuclear power, and climate scientists are in favor of nuclear power.

Illinois Sees The Light -- Retains Nuclear Power

MAY 30, 2018 - U.S. energy regulators said federal rules do not preempt Illinois’ program to provide money to nuclear reactors that provide carbon-free energy to help prevent the units from shutting early, according to a filing with a federal appeals court. Several nuclear reactors in the United States are in danger of shutting for economic reasons because cheap and abundant natural gas from shale formations and subsidies paid to renewable energy projects have reduced power prices to their lowest levels on record in several parts of the country. Illinois adopted the ZEC program in 2016 to keep some nuclear power plants in service to help meet the state’s greenhouse gas reduction goals after Illinois power company Exelon Corp said it would shut its Clinton and Quad Cities nuclear plants because they were losing money.

In addition to Illinois, New York, Connecticut and New Jersey have also adopted rules to subsidize nuclear power plants. Pennsylvania and Ohio are considering similar legislation to keep reactors in their states in service.

Illinois can subsidize nuclear power if it wants: U.S. FERC brief

Mar 27, 2019 - Illinois lawmakers have set the wheels in motion to allow for power provider Exelon’s nuclear fleet, as well as wind and solar power providers, to sell energy to a state authority that opponents say will give it preferential pricing over coal and natural gas sources. The legislation passed unanimously.

Illinois lawmakers move ahead with bill to benefit nuclear power plants

[eclipse]

I have a new favourite reactor. For years it has been the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) but now I'm moving to the Molten Chloride Salt Fast Reactor (MCSFR).

SAFETY: It *cannot* melt down as it is already a liquid. If the fuel overheats it expands and the atoms move apart, reducing fission and cooling the reactor. It is self-limiting and self-cooling. Also, a Molten Salt Reactor requires power to hold the liquid fuel up in the reactor. If the power fails, the liquid salt drains out of the reactor into safety tanks that shed nuclear-decay heat and absorb neutrons (stop the fissioning). Win win. How does it hold up in the reactor core? Power supply runs a fan blowing freezing gas across the drain pipe. The hot liquid salts only have to get under 450 degrees to 'freeze' and trap the hot molten salt above. In a power failure, the fan stops blowing, the 'frozen' salt plug melts and the reactor fuel drains away to safe drain tanks under the reactor where it spreads heat and dumps neutrons into the surrounding drain tanks.

The diesel generators at Fukushima were knocked out and failed to cool their solid fuel reactor, causing a meltdown. But when was the last time gravity failed? Power failure = automatic shut down, with or without technicians. Even if someone shot an armour piercing bullet through the reactor, the liquid salt would drain out of the core and into the containment room and the liquid salt dries hard at 450 degrees C. It wouldn't burn and boil off across a continent like Chernobyl did, it's stuck in the salt crystals.

BREEDERS EAT NUCLEAR WASTE! They effectively 'recycle' spent fuel, getting 90 times the energy out of once-through reactors. This means the UK's spent fuel rods could run her 500 years, and America's would last a millennia! Uranium from seawater is 'renewable' as geological processes and erosion constantly top it up. It means nuclear power is now renewable — that uranium from seawater will last billions of years.

NO SEPARATION OF REAL WASTE FOR DECADES! While breeder reactors 'eat nuclear waste', nuclear waste is a complex mix of stuff and some of it will eventually become fission products — the broken atoms that must one day be extracted from the reactor. Fortunately we can melt this final waste into ceramic tablets and store it under the reactor park for 500 years and then it is safe. It's only 1 golf ball per person or 1.25 Olympic swimming pools for 70 years of clean energy for 25 million Australians. But here's the real miracle — the MCSFR can run for 40 years or more without extracting wastes, but other molten salt reactors like the LFTR must do it all the time. The diagram above shows a Reprocessing chemical plant off to the left of the reactor. That's more expensive industrial pumps and equipment per reactor, and more expense. The simpler MCSFR is cheaper.

NO BLANKET REQUIRED. The LFTR requires a nuclear 'blanket' around the reactor. If nuclear waste is like wet firewood that must be put around the edge of your firepit to 'dry out' (absorb neutrons), the blanket is the brick ledge you built to sit wet firewood on without burning. It's a special drying rack around your firepit. In a LFTR version of the molten salt reactor, it's an extra layer of expensive industrial plumbing around the reactor core, where the fertile actinides sit and soak up extra neutrons and become fissile (our wet firewood drying metaphor). But think of the MCSFR as such a big super-hot bonfire, you can just chuck the 'wet firewood' straight into the fire. The physics and chemistry of fast reactions in chloride salt is simpler than fluoride salts, and allows a simpler more elegant reactor with a lot less plumbing. The LFTR only burns thorium feed, but the MCSFR uses any actinide or waste. More wastes and warheads and fuels can just be dumped in! Got some chunks of plutonium from a bomb? Into the fire! Old fuel rods from a reactor core? Cut them up, and in they go!

ANTI-PROLIFERATION: Other waste-eating breeder reactors use various fuel reprocessing steps outside the reactor. This could be as many as 7 chemical reprocessing stages! Some worry that these stages could be fine-tuned to siphon off bomb-grade material. That's a nuclear weapon's proliferation risk — or it *could* be to the very paranoid. (1.) The MCSFR just outright bypasses the whole reprocessing stage. Old fuel rods are cut up a little, then thrown directly into the hot molten salt core, zirconium cladding and all. The coating on the fuel rods will one day bubble out as particulates. It also helps bypass anti-proliferation laws in America. As nuclear engineer Ed Pheil told me, "Conversion of SNF to Chloride de salt fuel is not reprocessing according to NNSA. This process supercedes the ANL processes for pyro-processing by reducing it from 7 chemical steps to 1 chemical step. Pyro-processing involves Plutonium and uranium separations, and we separate nothing, but oxygen, so no proliferation concerns."

More here: http://www.elysiumindustries.com/

Half hour youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqVt8cxx-44

(Footnote 1: I'm convinced that almost any reactor is better than coal, and any modern breeder reactor that eats nuclear waste is better than any normal reactor. There are lots of great breeder reactors I like, including the Integral Fast Reactor and other Molten Salt Reactors. Good governance and inspection regimes and video surveillance would prevent any proliferation risks during fuel reprocessing, as bomb-making equipment and processes stand out like a sore thumb! This isn't a 'good vs bad' list, but a best of the possible good.)

[eclipse]

Nero Fiddles while Rome Burns

The Dissident Doodles with 60's Nuclear Junk While Giant Oil Fields SharkFin.

When will someone tell The Dissident that Fission Reactors + Ponzi Counterfeit Fake Money can't coexist.

We are only a couple of years away from the obvious: Boeing JetLiners crashing into France Nuclear Reactors

Its inevitable.

We can build mostly plane proof reactors, of even build them underground.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--_RGM4Abv8

But even if the plane still hit the reactor, there are various kinds of reactors. Molten Salt Reactors would vaporise and send hot salt around for a bit, but as the reactor is already a liquid the fuel would crystalise and fall back to the ground, not float off around the continent.

[dissident]

I am excited by new technology, but a lot of these fancy reactors are in the promise-to-build-prototype phase and are a long time away from being deployed commercially.

The US has almost killed off its nuclear reactor industry:

http://energy.mit.edu/research/future-n ... ned-world/

The reactor deployment in the US gets delayed for periods that basically flush out qualified engineers and technicians from the job pool.

Looking for data on construction of reactors around the world, Google returns two bit propaganda about Putin. Rosatom is not shrinking, it is growing in its global order book and has 67% of the global market. The US has the AP-1000 which receives more lip service than actual orders. PDS like TDS is a form of mental deficiency.

[eclipse]

I hear you, but there are still a pool of great engineers coming out of the navy and that's Ed Pheil's background. His team have something like 300 years experience between them, and while I've been pushing certain safety features like vitrifying the final fission products waste (for storage for 300 years), he pushes back on price. He wants to store it in dry casks in a bunker under the reactor-park. It's only 300 years!

Also, his reactor could be built sooner rather than later as it is so simple and even though a 'breeder' doesn't reprocess fuel on site so there are no proliferation laws against it. I'm hopeful. But even mass producing CAP1400's could get down to $3 bn per 1400 MW reactor!

Lastly, I'm excited by this thread as it is the first time in years I got notified by email by peakoil.com that there was a reply to this thread. Is notification back? Don't get my hopes up peakoil.com!

[eclipse]

The MCSFR is actually less corrosive than the LFTR, and 'salt' on its own is not that corrosive. If there was water in there, there would be a problem. But there isn't. And contrary to your claims, there are plenty of MSR companies working on various prototypes and this industry is just getting started. Edison took 99 light bulbs to find the one that worked, and people are just beginning to get excited by the MSR! Materials science has progressed remarkably since the 1960s and the original MSR test, and the Chinese are pumping REAL money and Phd's into this. Oh, and there are many others if you bothered to read about it. But even these guys admit "Much less is known about chloride-salt reactors, and alloys for those systems will not be explicitly discussed further here."
https://art.inl.gov/ART%20Document%20Li ... ctural.pdf

In other words, maybe we should be taking nuclear engineer Ed Pheil and his professional opinion seriously when he says chlorides are less corrosive than flourides, and stop behaving like a little child throwing a temper tantrum. Oh, and the CAP1400 can get us a few generations until we DO perfect whatever final breeder reactor we go with. There's a LOT of uranium in seawater!

Sorry dude, but I'm listening to state of the art peer reviewed science and you're just spitting bitter because your precious Apocalyptic Outsider cult-like stance is threatened. Changing your signature over little-ol-me? I should be flattered, but attenting seeking internet trolls are a dime a dozen. Do something unexpected and interesting and reply with a more adult tone and data set.

[jedrider]

True toll of the Chernobyl disaster
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190725-will-we-ever-know-chernobyls-true-death-toll

Seems to me that we will have trouble dealing with the first generation nuclear technology before we ever have the opportunity to move onto any new generation of the technology.

[dissident]

True toll of the Chernobyl disaster
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190725-will-we-ever-know-chernobyls-true-death-toll

Seems to me that we will have trouble dealing with the first generation nuclear technology before we ever have the opportunity to move onto any new generation of the technology.

Where are the tears for the millions of deaths from the coal power industry? Some BS hand waving about the unknown Chernobyl death toll does not make nuclear power any sort of problem for humanity. It is rather moron nuclear-phobes who are helping to doom humanity through climate change by attacking the only reliable power source available that avoids climate change.

BTW, in the real world the move to closed cycle nuclear power is happening. That it is not happening in the self-anointed guiding light of humanity colonial powers will just mean that they will crash sooner and harder from their "commanding heights".

[eclipse]

The true death toll of Chernobyl and Fukushima, hey? Such a catchy headline! But how much do you know about radiation? What is the human impact measurement called? How much radiation is in your kitchen? Your backyard? And how does this compare to the exclusion zones of Chernobyl and Fukushima? How many people have died from radiation there? (Hint: vastly more people may have died as a result of depression from the *evacuation* than the *radiation* would have killed!)
https://www.ft.com/content/000f864e-22b ... 8958b189ea
Really, unless you can tell us how radioactive your home city is, you shouldn't be spreading fear about Chernobyl and Fukushima because I'd live there in a heartbeat. A few hot areas would be fenced off, and they could let people back. Indeed, the Japanese government are already letting people live within 4km of the reactor. It's not much more radioactive than my home city of Sydney. If you think Chernobyl and Fukushima are bad, what about RAMSAR INDIA which is 20 times 'hotter'? People must be dying in droves there! Except they're not.
https://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/radiation/

[jedrider]

Until an adequate waste disposal process is in place, I think some skepticism of the benefit equation of nuclear energy is warranted. Our civilization is good at pushing problems into the near future and nuclear energy lent itself to that very well. I am surprised that the Chinese didn't launch themselves into nuclear energy like the French have. I wonder what their reason was?

[Plantagenet]

I am surprised that the Chinese didn't launch themselves into nuclear energy like the French have. I wonder what their reason was?

It takes a while for the Chinese to steal the technology and designs from western countries and then to start building things themselves.

Now that China has acquired nuclear power technology, they are pressing ahead with it. They currently rank third in the world in nuclear power plant capacity, behind the US and France. But France and the US aren't building many nukes these days while China is on track to double the number of their nuclear reactors in the near future. If this trend continues, China will eventually become #1 in nuclear plant capacity.

From Wikipedia: As of March 2019, China has 46 nuclear reactors in operation with a capacity of 42.8 GW and 11 under construction with a capacity of 10.8 GW.[3][4] Additional reactors are planned for an additional 36 GW.....[6]

China ranks third in the world in total nuclear power capacity installed. Around one tenth of global nuclear power is generated in China. Nuclear power contributed 4.2% of the total Chinese electricity production in 2018, with 294.4 TWh.[1] This is an increase from 3.9% and 247 TWh in 2017.[5]

Due to increasing concerns about air quality, climate change and fossil fuel shortages, nuclear power has been looked into as an alternative to coal.[7][8] China's National Development and Reform Commission has indicated the intention to raise the percentage of China's electricity produced by nuclear power from the current 3% to 6% by 2020 (compared to 20% in the United States and 74% in France).[9]... More long-term plans for future capacity are 120-150 GW by 2030.[10] China has two major nuclear power companies, the China National Nuclear Corporation operating mainly in north-east China, and the China General Nuclear Power Group, - formerly known as China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group, operating mainly in south-east China.[11]

Cheers!

[eclipse]

Until an adequate waste disposal process is in place, I think some skepticism of the benefit equation of nuclear energy is warranted. Our civilization is good at pushing problems into the near future and nuclear energy lent itself to that very well. I am surprised that the Chinese didn't launch themselves into nuclear energy like the French have. I wonder what their reason was?

Are you kidding? The Chinese are throwing money at nuclear, building some of the best Gen3+ reactors today and putting heaps of research money into tomorrow's breeder reactors.

Now, nuclear waste = resource. OK? Nuclear breeder reactors that EAT normal nuclear waste burn the longer lived high energy stuff (actinides) to get 90 times the energy from the uranium and thorium. They do leave final waste (called fission products) — but it's only 1 golf ball for your entire lifetime. That golf ball generates abundant, pollution free energy, enough for all your electricity and synthetic liquid fuels for transport. Nuclear waste was a problem of yesterday's reactors. Australia would have 25 million golf balls of fission products waste, filling just 1.25 Olympic swimming pools every 70 years. That's compared to burning 800 ELEPHANTS worth of coal for 1 lifetime of energy, with all the resulting particulate air pollution, lung and throat cancers and fly ash waste resulting from coal - let alone global warming! Nuclear is the CLEANEST form of power generation there is. Solar has 300 times the waste! (It's so dispersed.) Nuclear is cleaner than wind and solar and the final true waste product from breeder reactors only stays radioactive for 500 years. Just melt it down into ceramic blocks and bury it under the reactor. Here's a 4 minute video that explains it. Uranium and nuclear waste and warheads go into the reactor park and never come out again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlMDDhQ9-pE

[jedrider]

So, technologically, we took the easy route by digging up coal and pumping oil and finding natural gas. I wonder how that happened? Did the oil companies have something to do with it? Did the fact that West Virginia was a company state practically also cement in coal?

A lot of the public was against nuclear reactors, but that should not have stopped the development of better reactor technology.

[Plantagenet]

So, technologically, we took the easy route by digging up coal and pumping oil and finding natural gas. I wonder how that happened? Did the oil companies have something to do with it? Did the fact that West Virginia was a company state practically also cement in coal?

The industrial revolution started in the UK in the 18th century, and was based on using steam power generated from burning coal. Other countries mostly copied the UK until oil drilling was perfected in the United States in the 19th century, and huge amounts of oil became available.

A lot of the public was against nuclear reactors, but that should not have stopped the development of better reactor technology.

Unfortuantely, Obama just about zeroed out the nuclear power research program in the United States. However, as Eclipse notes in his post the Chinese are doing a lot of nuclear research. There are also some "high-tech" startups in the US. One of them is actually funded by Bill Gates.

terrapower a nuclear power startup

[eclipse]

Exactly! We started with the easiest way to boil water and generate steam for turbines, and that's coal. Then later on we progressed to nuclear power but that was via the military route. Unfortunately there's good solid evidence (not tinfoil hat stuff but actually documented here in the real world) that the military concerns about obtaining enough plutonium for bombs meant we went down the uranium pathway instead of the thorium breeder reactor pathway. There's even phone conversations revealing how Nixon closed the Molten Salt Reactor program to fund different nuclear concerns in politically sensitive, job-craving seats. Now, eventually that lead to the Integral Fast Reactor, still a VERY good breeder reactor that burns nuclear waste! The EBR2 was a little trooper, and they tested it with power outages as bad as at Fukushima and it 'politely declined' to melt down. It's a great reactor, and GE have the S-PRISM ready to go in the first nation that approves it. (Based on decades of testing the EBR2.)

BUT!

We could have had a world of Molten Salt Reactors by now. I mean, this is the chief MSR engineer Alvin Weinberg showing a certain someone around the prototype MSR!

[jedrider]

So, the USA was hell bent on building bombs and nuclear energy took a back seat.

Climate change went on the radar in 1980 and, so, nuclear should have received a big boost starting then.

It didn't. Probably, too late, though. China will take the lead because they have the will and we don't.

I wouldn't blame it on conservatives nor republicans, though. Short-term thinking was probably the culprit.