Nuclear Power is Dangerous - Use with Care

kbd512 · 2022-03-26 22:19:58

Louis,

The way I can tell your market analysis is wrong is that the actual cost of actual power plants that provide actual electricity actually proves that anything plus storage is more expensive than nuclear.

I know what the last nuclear reactor we built here in America actually cost.

I know what the total cost is for wind and solar that provide equivalent energy over the course of 365 days.

I know what the total cost would be for storage and the requisite increase in capacity would be to fill that storage with stored energy, in whatever form.

I have actual capital costs for wind, solar, nuclear, and storage.

Anything plus storage is more expensive than nuclear in 100% of all cases, when scaled to produce the same quantity of electrical power over the same time period.

Your responses sound exactly like Leo DiCaprio in "The Aviator", during the end scene.

Here in America, nuclear power plants are online and producing power 92% of the time. Solar ranges between 20% and 25%. Onshore wind ranges between 30% and 34%.

Here's your link:

US EIA - Electric Power Monthly - Table 6.07.B. Capacity Factors for Utility Scale Generators Primarily Using Non-Fossil Fuels

Your idea of "cheap energy storage being here now" must differ wildly from my own. $130+/kWh is not my idea of "cheap storage". As for thinking that will become $1/kWh in 30 years... Not very likely.

There are possibilities for advancements, but not for huge cost reductions. The cost reductions are driven by reduction in capital cost and mass purchases of raw materials over time. You're talking to someone who has spent the last 15 years in supply chain planning and forecasting, just so you know. Lead-acid batteries were mature technology decades ago. There were no enormous cost reductions between now and today. Prices are always stratospheric when a new technology comes online, but complex electrochemical devices like batteries will never become "too cheap to meter".

This is how I know your analysis of storage is wrong:

According to this, we already have a technology with a basic materials cost below what you're projecting, but that's not what the batteries cost to operate by a longshot.

That link comes from PV Magazine, way back in 2020 before time began:

How zinc-air battery capacity might reach a cost of $45/kWh

The US would need 5.4 TeraWatt-hours of storage for 80% wind and solar, according to the article, which is only 12 hours of battery storage. That's only $45 billion dollars. That's chump change for America. Even if it was $90 billion dollars (Lead-acid prices), we would've done that several times over already. $90 billion across all 50 states is peanuts. Literal. Peanuts. When the military drops a deuce, it costs more than that. Our toilet seats cost $600, remember?

It's a L-I-E, Louis. Isn't that obvious? Do you really think we give a crap about spending $90B on anything? We have specific weapon systems with waaay more money into them than that.

You never have an explanation as to why the electricity rates keeping going up, as more "green energy" is brought online. Even if it was a modest increase or mostly the same, then I would say, "go for it", but that's not what has been happening lately.

Getting down to brass tacks, a solar facility that provides the same power as nuclear is 6 to 10 times as expensive in terms of capital costs, and since it will be replaced at least 3 times over the nuclear power plant's lifetime, so it's going to be 18 to 30 times more up-front money in total. If Topaz solar farm was scaled up to provide the same amount of electricity as a 1.25GWe nuclear reactor like Watts-Bar #2, then it would be 3X more expensive in terms of up-front money, then 6X as expensive (1st replacement), then 9X as expensive (2nd replacement).

You may be able to get dirt cheap panels right now because of coal, but the construction costs only go one way over time. I guarantee you construction won't get cheaper in the future. You can take that to the bank and cash it.

kbd512 · 2022-03-26 22:48:06

How can you really not understand this?

It's not a matter of money. If we threw all of our "research money" into buying Lead-acid batteries for grid scale storage, then we would have had that problem solved 20 YEARS AGO! It's a "technology at scale" problem. It fundamentally doesn't work. That's why we keep dumping more and more money into basic research like gangbusters, while producing no actual solution. This is about someone spending your money to satisfy their scientific curiosity. They don't give a rat's rear end about solving the problem. If they did care about results, then whether the "final solution" was solar thermal and molten salt, photovoltaics and wind turbines with batteries, or nuclear reactors, we would have solved this problem already.

What's the real issue with the batteries?

It's clearly not the purchase cost. It's the recycling cost to continue using the solution. You will spend $1,350B or $1.35T on the batteries over 75 years. That's enough money to build 270 1.25GWe nuclear reactors and supply the US with 60% of our electricity requirements.

You will spend 18 to 30 times as much money on photovoltaics alone, as compared to a nuclear reactor. You can throw in a billion dollars for Uranium fuel, and the purchase price of the reactor for decommissioning, yet the photovoltaics alone are still more expensive. If you need a wind farm and batteries, then you're so absurdly beyond the cost of nuclear power that it's not even funny.

We'll keep screwing around, playing this stupid game with Earth's climate instead of solving the immediate problem, and eventually it will become apparent that no solution will materialize within a meaningful timeframe. At some point, things will become bad enough that money will cease to matter. That will not be a good day.

Calliban · 2022-03-27 04:17:05

Kbd512, interesting stats on battery materials costs. The sodium sulphur battery has been around for a while now. Back in the 90s, there was a project that examined using them as vehicle batteries. But they had a nasty habit of catching fire. Maybe because they were full of liquid sodium. They tend to be used for stationery applications now.

Battery systems applied to renewable energy systems will never negate the need for backup power supply, because lulls can last for many days. Wind and solar power production vary from year to year. Batteries that can handle those sorts of fluctuations will be huge and will have shockingly poor utilisation factors. It doesn't really matter what new technology comes along. The energy cost of building huge batteries is always going to be huge.

Ignoring batteries for a moment- I have a prediction to make. The cost of renewable energy projects is going to go up this year, just like it did last year to the tune of 20%. Note: solar power INCREASED in cost last year and it will this year as well.
Here is why:

Below is a link to the 2015 Quadrennial energy review, produced by the US department of energy. A reliable enough source?
https://www.energy.gov/quadrennial-tech … eview-2015

Go to Section 10, Table 10.4 for a summary of materials inputs into several different types of powerplant in ton/TWh. Here are some tallys per TWh:

Nuclear (PWR) = 760t concrete / cement; 3t copper; 0t glass; 160t steel; 0t aluminium.
Wind = 8000t concrete / cement; 23t copper; 92t glass; 1800t steel; 35t aluminium.
Solar PV = 4050t concrete / cement; 850t copper; 2700t glass; 7900t steel; 680t aluminium.

The energy needed to make all of this infrastructure, comes from fossil fuels. Huge amounts of mostly fossil electricity to produce the aluminium. Natural gas to produce cement. Coal to produce steel. More natural gas for copper and glass. Behind every RE power plant is a mountain of fossil fuel needed to create it. And those inputs are now getting very expensive. Not least because of the actions of an army of climate change and RE obsessives who are preventing new investments in fossil fuel mining activities. This, on top of already severe problems caused by depletion of oil, gas (and coal) resources, is driving costs of everything that depends on them to the moon. That includes renewable energy. Doh!

This is why any replacement that we put in place for fossil fuels must be very power dense - more power dense than the fossil fuel generation that it is replacing. We need something that is dense enough to really cut down the fossil needed to build it. Solar power cannot do that, neither can wind power. Both are pitiful and both are getting more expensive.
Magnetic confinement fusion cannot either, for the same reason. Pitiful power density. Hydropower is the one renewable energy source that does provide decent power density (but I notice that we used up that one a long time ago). Nuclear fission is very energy dense and power dense. This is where the smart money is going to be in my opinion. I still have faith in inertial confinement fusion, but have come to the conclusion that fission is needed to trigger those reactions. Fusion works best in fusion-fission hybrid concepts. This is what is needed to deliver the really big increases in electricity production to allow all of humanity affluent lifestyles.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-03-27 04:34:23)

Terraformer · 2022-03-27 06:08:47

Battery systems applied to renewable energy systems will never negate the need for backup power supply, because lulls can last for many days. Wind and solar power production vary from year to year. Batteries that can handle those sorts of fluctuations will be huge and will have shockingly poor utilisation factors.

That is why you wouldn't use batteries for more than diurnal or hourly fluctuations. The multi day lulls should be handled by natural gas *or* biofuel. A charcoal-slurry diesel engine could be comparable to a natural gas turbine in load balancing ability, and only slightly less efficient (50% vs 60%). You can't run a modern society on biomass, but as a supplementary power supply it has its place.

tahanson43206 · 2022-03-27 06:25:14

For Calliban re #28

The vision your have published (small pellets/packets of fusion material surrounded by fission jacket) is so attractive, I am beginning to hope there might be something to it.

However, I suspect (since you have never said one way or the other) that you are not in a position to lead a team to investigate your ideas.

This forum is a terrific place for creative folks to work through the early stages of idea development, when it can be entirely theoretical.

We are now at the point where rubber MUST meet the road in Large Ship. We've accumulated over two years now of theory on just about every aspect of that vision, and it is past time to start work on detail design.

In the case of your vision, I have no way of knowing if more theory is needed, but I am sure that experiment would be needed to carry the concept forward.

If you could put together an experiment, who would you hire to help, and what equipment would you need?

Packaging fusion material inside a shell of fissionable material may have been done previously, or perhaps not, since I know nothing about how hydrogen bombs are made.

The work would require participation by folks at the National Lab level, whether we are considering the UK or the US.

RobertDyck mentioned a TV episode about a 10 year old collecting radioactive material to make a fission reactor. I chuckled, because (I suspect) that episode was based upon a real life incident. The young gent was 14 or so, and the location was a shed on the family property.

Your concept, were it to be realized, would require the support (and probably the participation) of the top level National Research establishment.

(th)

kbd512 · 2022-03-27 15:30:17

Calliban,

The entire reason the cost for the photovoltaics and batteries must approach zero is the cost of maintaining the solution over time, plus everything else not related to the solar panels or batteries themselves (Aluminum / Copper / concrete / glass / steel). All that "other stuff" is part of what you're paying for.

I've already shown that diurnal battery storage is chump change- but only if one ignores every subsequent battery purchase required to maintain that solution over the same 75 years that a coal or nuclear power plant operates over. Basically, this could have been done many years ago using Lead-acid batteries. The reason it was not done is that people who are engineers are also intelligent enough to know that in another 5 years, a complete replacement of all the batteries used would be required. That means 100% of all those batteries would have to be replaced with new ones, at an energy and therefore monetary cost at least equal to what was replaced. Over time, that cost adds up to serious money. That is precisely why the cost of the photovoltaics and batteries has to approach zero. If it does not, then it's not long-term viable.

The people who make photovoltaics and batteries have all plainly stated that the energy cost of recycling is equal to or significantly greater than simply making a new one from virgin materials, which is why recycling of Lithium-ion batteries is so low, and recycling of solar panels, with the exception of one thin film technology with very expensive and rare materials, is almost non-existent. When there is less energy available to start with, as there would be if everything was electrified, that necessary practice becomes unsustainable.

Meanwhile, the materials input into a 1GWe nuclear power plant are the same or less today than when we first started making these things, and nearly all of it is readily recyclable, except for the reactor pressure vessel itself. Since we already know how long these plants continue to operate for, in the absence of any ideological interference, we know that they are the most sustainable of all the CO2-minimized options available.

If we use the Supercritical-CO2 cycle for power, then we achieve at least 50% energy conversion efficiency, up to 70% with re-heat. The gas turbines for a 1GWe power plant can literally be towed by a pickup truck because they're so small, relative to steam turbines. A lack of water coolant in the core means most of the catastrophic reactor accidents are not possible, and the reactors can be located anywhere.

The steel used can be very low quality, which enabled the Russians to almost entirely avoid the micro-cracking associated with the west's misguided attempt to make the reactor pressure vessel and piping from "super-grade" alloys. We don't always "get everything right" by "engineering the hell out of it". Sometimes simpler and cheaper really is better. Fatigue from thermal cycling is the service life limitation on the steel, not the neutron radiation damage. If you turn the reactor on and leave it on by using fuel that can be cycled into and out of the core without shutting down the reactor, never thermal cycling the steel as a result, then the reactor will continue operating until you need to replace something due to radiation damage- a process that takes longer than a human lifetime.

Relatively recently, we've come up with ways of repairing the microstructure of steel and welds using electro-pulsing, so it's probable that the neutron damage to the steel's microstructure could be repaired in-situ. This process causes highly localized re-melting of the steel where the electrical pulse was directed, which is why it works (it's sophisticated rate-controlled in-situ electrical smelting that causes the steel or weld to retain the mechanical properties it had when it was originally forged or welded). Since this process was developed with this specific use case in mind, it's probable that new-build reactors taking advantage of this combination of cheap steel and new steel repair technology can be run indefinitely with yearly electro-pulsing maintenance.

If we're willing to spend more money, there are also materials that are kept in pristine condition by radiation exposure:

MIT News - To engineers’ surprise, radiation can slow corrosion of some materials

Those materials are Nickel-Chromium alloys, which are expensive.

From the link:

Radiation nearly always degrades the materials exposed to it, hastening their deterioration and requiring replacement of key components in high-radiation environments such as nuclear reactors. But for certain alloys that could be used in fission or fusion reactors, the opposite turns out to be true: Researchers at MIT and in California have now found that instead of hastening the material’s degradation, radiation actually improves its resistance, potentially doubling the material’s useful lifetime.
...
Short says the finding was a bit of serendipity; in fact, the researchers were looking to quantify the opposite effect. Initially they wanted to determine how much radiation would increase the rate of corrosion in certain alloys of nickel and chromium that can be used as cladding for nuclear fuel assemblies.
...
The experiments were difficult to carry out, because it’s impossible to measure temperatures directly at the interface between the molten salt, used as a coolant, and the metal alloy surface. Thus it was necessary to figure out the conditions indirectly by surrounding the material with a battery of sensors. Right from the start, though, the tests showed signs of the opposite effect — corrosion, the main cause of materials failure in the harsh environment of a reactor vessel, seemed to be reduced rather than accelerated when it was bathed in radiation, in this case a high flux of protons.
“We repeated it dozens of times, with different conditions,” Short says, “and every time we got the same results” showing delayed corrosion.
The kind of reactor environment the team simulated in their experiments involves the use of molten sodium, lithium, and potassium salt as a coolant for both the nuclear fuel rods in a fission reactor and the vacuum vessel surrounding a superhot, swirling plasma in a future fusion reactor. Where the hot molten salt is in contact with the metal, corrosion can take place rapidly, but with these nickel-chromium alloys they found that the corrosion took twice as long to develop when the material was bathed in radiation from a proton accelerator, producing a radiation environment similar to what would be found in the proposed reactors.
...
Careful analysis of images of the affected alloy surfaces using transmission electron microscopy, after irradiating the metal in contact with molten salt at 650 degrees Celsius, (a typical operating temperature for salt in such reactors), helped to reveal the mechanism causing the unexpected effect. The radiation tends to create more tiny defects in the structure of the alloy, and these defects allow atoms of the metal to diffuse more easily, flowing in to quickly fill the voids that get created by the corrosive salt. In effect, the radiation damage promotes a sort of self-healing mechanism within the metal.
There had been hints of such an effect a half-century ago, when experiments with an early experimental salt-cooled fission reactor showed lower than expected corrosion in its materials, but the reasons for that had remained a mystery until this new work, Short says. Even after this team’s initial experimental findings, Short says, “it took us a lot longer to make sense of it.”

Safer coolants than water, which are supposed to induce greater corrosion rates, turn out to help reduce corrosion rates when the reactor pressure vessel is bathed in radiation.

MIT News - Measuring radiation damage on the fly

A new lead on a 50-year-old radiation damage mystery

From the article:

...
Iron and steel, like most metals, organize themselves in a crystal lattice -- an arrangement of atoms based on a repeated pattern. In this case, it's a cube with an atom at each corner and one in the center. Radiation and other stresses can create a variety of defects.
n "loop" defects, the out-of-place atoms form rough rings. Some loops can travel through the lattice, and their mobility means that they don't get in the way of the steel bending. But the defect in question (known as a <100> interstitial dislocation loop) tends to stay put. Placed in an uncontrolled way, these stationary loops cause brittleness, but if they were placed deliberately, they could strengthen steel by improving its stiffness.
"Now that we know the mechanism, we can reduce radiation damage by limiting the energy of the particles that materials are exposed to," said Qing Peng, a research fellow in the lab of Fei Gao, a professor of nuclear engineering and radiological sciences.
"We can also use it to engineer the defect inside materials. Depending on the energy, you can generate different types of dislocations to tune the material's properties."
"If the simulation is too small, a high-energy particle just passes through. No reaction," Peng said.
Gao's team created a computer model of a box of 200 million iron atoms, arranged in the typical lattice, and slammed a high energy particle into it. What they saw was a powerful shockwave ripping through the lattice, branching out in different directions.
Millions of iron atoms were displaced from their spots, and millions of them fell back into the lattice as the wave dissipated. Left behind were hundreds of "point" defects in which single atoms were out of place -- and a handful of loops. Many of these were loops that can travel, which aren't a major cause of brittleness, but often one or two were the stationary type.
It turned out that the loops were created in the initial shockwave, a process that takes just 13 trillionths of a second or so. This explanation was floated as early as 40 years ago, but it was used to explain defects that appeared in lines rather than closed loops.
Now that the mechanism is known, similar computer modeling may be used to recommend operating conditions for steel alloys in environments with radiation. Less energetic particles won't create shockwaves strong enough to produce this defect.
Or, defects like this can be deliberately placed in steel to enhance its rigidity. These stationary loops of atoms, jammed in between other atoms in the crystal, make it harder for steel to bend.

Recycling of a large steel components is also much easier than recycling millions of comparatively tiny batteries. When the time inevitably comes for disposal of the irradiated steel, that steel can be melted down and buried deep within the Earth.

Calliban · 2022-03-27 16:33:02

Radiation induced corrosion protection. I found that article fascinating. The opposite to what one would expect. In stainless steels, neutron radiation can induce grain boundary precipitation which accelerates corrosion effects like stress corrosion cracking. There are also some really weird effects. If the steel contains copper, neutron radiation can cause the copper atoms to accumulate into tiny clusters within the steel. This can really play havoc with brittle failure effects like cracking. Neutrons also result in radiolytic decomposition of water, generating oxygen ions. Most BWRs need core shroud replacement long before other reactor systems reach end of life. One more reason to move away from light water reactors I suppose.

Sodium cooled reactors tend to be very well behaved and boring to operate. No real issues with corrosion or vibration. Sodium has excellent compatability with stainless steel. But the need to keep oxygen out of the core complicates refuelling and envelope design. Any oxygen that gets into the coolant forms sodium oxide, which is highly abrasive.

I agree that S-CO2 has a lot of advantages over water as a secondary coolant. The turbine is extremely small in comparison and presumably S-CO2 secondary side would be cheaper than a steam plant. Other advantages are that reaction of CO2 with liquid sodium is less violent than air or water. However, S-CO2 is only really usable if hotleg temperatures are greater than 500°C. It doesn't give good efficiency beneath that. The original MIT study into S-CO2 cycles looked at hot temperatures of 550°C. They chose that temperature because it allowed 45% efficiency whilst still within acceptable temperatures for carbon and stainless steels. That temperature is also compatible with the operating temperatures of sodium cooled reactors. S-CO2 is clearly unsuitable for LWRs of any kind. It would work with molten salt reactors and could work direct cycle with a gas cooled fast reactor.

Many different coolants have been studied and all have their advantages and drawbacks. The inert chemical and nuclear properties of helium are attractive. But the need for high pressurisation is a problem as is the high pumping power of gases. S-CO2 has relatively low pumping power. But radiolyis can create corrosion issues. Gases must run at high flow rate to achieve good heat transfer properties. This introduces vibration problems. Molten salts are a liquid coolant that avoids the strong chemical reactivity of sodium. But they are relatively viscous, corrosive and have substantial moderating power, which is something to avoid in a fast reactor. Lead has been examined as a coolant. At first sight, this would appear to be a fit for a fast reactor coolant, as it is high-Z and has a low melting point. However, it's high density limits its acceptable flow speed through fuel channels. The channels must be wider a sodium cooled reactor, which increases neutron leakage and softens the spectrum. Sodium is an excellent coolant if we can get around the problem of it catching fire when exposed to air and exploding in water.

In the Western world, it has become fashionable to knock Soviet technology as dumb and unsophisticated. But those Soviets often knew what they were doing. Those old RBMK reactors had some big advantages over western LWRs. They were graphite moderated, so could run on very low enriched or even natural Uranium. They were pressure tube boiling water reactors. No costly heat exchangers or thick walled pressure vessels. To increase power rating, just build a bigger moderator block and add more pressure tubes. This allowed the Soviets to develop some very big and powerful reactors and build them very cheaply. Unfortunately, the physics problems inherent to RBMK meant that operators really needed to understand the limitations of the plants and follow strict operating rules. Unfortunately, the USSR lacked that sort of safety culture.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-03-27 16:54:12)

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-03-27 17:04:14

AGAIN !??

New Chernobyl radiation fears as huge WILDFIRES ‘sparked by Russian shelling’ burn across Exclusion Zone
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/18081937/ … -shelling/

More than 10,000 hectares of forest burning in Chernobyl exclusion zone, Ukraine claims
https://news.yahoo.com/more-10-000-hect … 22619.html

“Catastrophic consequences can be prevented only by immediate de-occupation of the territory by Russian troops. Therefore, I call on international human rights organizations to take all possible measures to increase pressure on the Russian Federation to end military aggression against Ukraine and de-occupy high-risk areas,” Ms Denisova said.
The abandoned zone around the Chernobyl plant is still considered highly risky because of the radiation from the 1986 nuclear disaster.
Possible dangers still linger in the plant area itself as radioactive components from the time of the disaster still exist.
Also, the soil still contains radiation and particles are still present in Chernobyl’s atmosphere from the time of the accident. This can spread to further regions via smoke when wildfires occur.

Chernobyl Radiation Fears As Huge Forest Fires Break Out Next To Plant
https://www.unilad.co.uk/news/chernobyl … t-20220327

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2022-03-27 17:18:16)

Calliban · 2022-03-27 17:22:14

Mars_B4_Moon wrote:

AGAIN !??
New Chernobyl radiation fears as huge WILDFIRES ‘sparked by Russian shelling’ burn across Exclusion Zone
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/18081937/ … -shelling/

Unlikely, I would suggest, given that all reactors have been shut down since the 1990s. There isn't anything at Chernobyl now that could generate a big radiological release.

Calliban · 2022-03-29 19:48:28

Energy security and the nuclear option.
https://morningporridge.com/blog/blains … /#comments

Terraformer · 2022-03-30 03:30:49

Peak Uranium still hasn't been addressed. There have been claims it's not an issue because we can get it from seawater, but no-one has demonstrated an economically viable method of doing so. Maybe it would be viable if Uranium was far more expensive -- but then energy from Uranium will be far more expensive, and we're back to dealing with energy being too expensive to sustain the economy.

He suggests fusion power. I *sort of* support a massive increase. But for hybrid reactors: we have plenty of fissionable but not fissile uranium available, just no cheap enough neutron source to use it. Chasing pure fusion is not something we can afford at this time.

Calliban · 2022-03-30 04:31:26

Hybrid reactors can in principle work in two ways:

(1) In inertial confinement, tiny amounts of fissile material can be used to provide the heat needed to ignite a central hotspot. It is much easier energetically to use external drivers to compress a fuel pellet, than to heat it. The resulting Fusion reactor would generate radioactivity from fission products, but in far smaller quantities than a conventional fission reactor. Exactly how much Uranium is needed to achieve pellet ignition is uncertain at present.

(2) For both IC and magnetic confinement, the reaction chamber can be surrounded by depleted Uranium or Thorium. These isotopes, 232Th and 238U, are fertile. Upon absorbing a neutron, they will transmute into fissile isotopes. However, for neutrons with incident energy greater than 1MeV, these nuclei may fast-fission without need for subsequent breeding. The number of neutrons released through fission, is a function of incoming neutron energy. In addition to releasing energy, a fast fission from a 14MeV neutron will release enough neutrons 3+ to breed several fissile plutonium or Uranium nuclei. In this way, a 1GWe hybrid reactor, may provide fuel supply to at least three conventional fission reactors.

Compared to conventional fast neutron reactors, hybrids can breed a lot more fuel more quickly. The benefits are maximised if hybrids are used to provide starter cores for fast neutron reactors with at least unity breeding ratio. A 1GWe hybrid could supply a starter core to a new 1GWe fast neutron reactor each year. It would take at least a decade for a sodium cooled fast neutron reactor to generate sufficient fuel to start a second reactor. Thus, hybrids are useful if we intend to build up a lot of nuclear capacity very quickly. I think the world is waking up to tye need to do exactly this.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-03-30 04:48:18)

tahanson43206 · 2022-04-02 18:14:04

The name "Elon Musk" shows up in the most surprising places...

https://www.yahoo.com/news/britain-coul … 18579.html

Mr Kwarteng said that if the emerging technology of small modular reactors was successful, Britain could deploy up to 10 on one site to provide the equivalent output of a large-scale nuclear plant.
The Telegraph has revealed that a US energy developer linked to Elon Musk is in talks with the Government to build "hundreds" of small modular reactors across the UK.
Last Energy wants to build its first "mini-nuclear" power plant by 2025 and has identified a site in Wales. The company will invest £1.4 billion to build 10 reactors by the end of the decade.

(th)

Calliban · 2022-04-03 03:03:29

Last Energy website.
https://www.lastenergy.com/technology

They are planning to build 20MWe pressurised water reactors. One of these could power a small base on Mars. I'm not sure why the steam generators are horizontal. SGs rely on gravity to separate saturated steam from the boiling water. But no doubt they have their reasons. No information on how much these units will weigh. To generate 60MW of heat, core volume must be at least 1m3. Because the core is so small and enrichment is only 5%, core power density will be reduced compared to a larger PWR. Best guess, we are looking at a compact cylindrical core maybe 1.5m in diameter and 1.5m in height. Total system mass, including the generating set, would be circa 1000 metric tonnes.

Large PWRs take 5% enriched fuel and will discharge at around 4% burn up. The discharged fuel will be 1% 235U and another 1% Pu isotopes. Small PWRs like this will discharge at lower burn up. The spent fuel contains sufficient fissile isotopes to provide starter fuel for aqueous homogeneous reactors. We would first need to dissolve the fuel in nitric acid and then separate the actinides for use in the AHR. The AHR can function as a breeder, using Martian Thorium as fertile material.

One of the convenient things about fission technologies like this is that all of the really heavy components are steel. We should be able to fabricate many of them on Mars using ISRU.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-04-03 03:32:37)

tahanson43206 · 2022-04-03 06:26:55

This is another of Calliban's many high value posts:

Calliban wrote:

Power density is very important. It is the difference between a system that is sustainable without fossil fuels and one that is not. We cannot build solar power plants on Earth or Mars using the energy produced by solar power. The EROEI of solar power in Spain is 2.45. That is the value calculated by Charles Hall back in 2016, including all of the inputs to the power plants- roads, labour input, everything. I'm not sure if he even included storage or back up. But either way, there isn't enough net energy to allow solar to build new solar over their producing lifetime. These things are fossil fuel extenders. That is why they are produced in China using otherwise stranded coal reserves. Here on Earth, it is a way of accessing coal reserves that would otherwise be inaccessible. So we can think of solar power as being stored coal energy from Xinxiang.
A solar panel is rather like a non-rechargeable battery, that charges up will coal energy in China and discharges in California. If you build it in Germany or England, you will actually get less energy back than it took to build the power plant. Those levels of insolation are comparable to what we will encounter on Mars surface. If EROEI drops beneath about 11, economic growth becomes impossible here on Earth. That is because economic growth means investing in new infrastructure at the same time as paying operating and maintenance costs of existing infrastructure. On Mars, the EROEI threshold will be higher, because usable land must sit in a pressure vessel, heating will be needed everywhere all of the time, and even air is something that must be manufactured.
So the reality is that if nuclear power can produce enough net energy to allow us to expand civilisation on Mars, then a Martian civilisation is a realistic prospect. If it cannot, then there will not be a civilisation on Mars. End of. There is no coal or natural gas on Mars and no air to burn it in. The air is too thin for wind power. Solar power is a niche power supply. It cannot power heavy industry. It will be useful in some small, dislocated applications, just as it is on Earth. And nuclear power will be needed to produce solar power.
The capacity factor for light water reactors is 90%+. Most of the down time they do have is scheduled refuelling outages. For a PWR, fuel shuffling needs to take place once every year. A 1GWe PWR will replace some 30 tonnes of fuel (out of a total of 90 tonnes) every year. That is where most of the down time comes from.
If so many people are employed at a nuclear power plant, then I have to question what they are really doing. A NPP is a steam plant, with a nuclear pile replacing the boiler. There are no mills, no blowers, no fuel delivery systems, no ash handling equipment, no coal heaps, no tanker jetties and no ash lagoons. This is what has made nuclear operating costs so low. Fuel is cheap. Maintenance is light. The main costs come from building. So if nuclear workforce is really that high, what are they actually doing?

Whatever those workers are doing, the management company must consider every one of them important for the survival of the enterprise, because these are profit based entities, who labor under a burden imposed by society to avoid disaster. Otherwise, they would take excessive risks and eventually bring ruin on themselves and the neighborhood.

If someone has the time to look for details about nuclear fission reactor employment characteristics, it would be helpful to have available in the forum.

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tahanson43206 · 2022-04-11 17:16:08

This article reports on a startup that is proposing to use horizontal drilling to increase the storage capacity of deep wells.

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/bigg … 00155.html

The Biggest Hurdle In Nuclear Power Adoption
Editor OilPrice.com
Mon, April 11, 2022, 3:00 PM
As countries look for alternative energy production for greater energy security, concerns remain around the disposal of nuclear waste as governments establish new nuclear energy strategies for the coming decades. At present, there is no one accepted ideal nuclear waste disposal method, meaning that different countries have varying levels of success in getting rid of their waste safely, with scientists and governments around the world continuing to look for the best long-term solution.
Around 350,000 tonnes of nuclear waste from decades past is sitting in temporary storage containers, some of which are gradually eroding, while politicians continue to discuss a longer-term solution. In the U.S., the government has long talked about storing this waste below the Yucca Mountain in Nevada. But, due to strong opposition from the state, this plan has never come to fruition. Various other plans have come and gone, bringing the U.S. government back to square one each time.
There has been extensive talk by governments and scientists over which methods of disposal are most effective, with some states accusing others of not addressing the situation seriously enough. This conversation has been most prominent following the Chernobyl disaster 35 years ago. And, to this day, high levels of radioactivity are present in many animals and plants across a large radius around the site.
The World Nuclear Association identifies the two main ways in which countries dispose of their nuclear waste. The first is near-surface disposal, at ground level or in caverns tens of meters below ground level. Countries including the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the UK, the USA, Finland, and Sweden follow this method. The second is deep geological disposal, at a depth of 250 to 1000 meters for mined repositories, or 2000 to 5000 meters for boreholes. Several countries have explored this option, but few have put plans into practice. The U.S. currently does it for defense-related transuranic waste at WIPP, and Finland is building its first facility, which it hopes to become operational in 2023.
While many countries favor deep geological disposal as a long-term method, most face the challenge of finding a town, city, or state willing to take on this burden, with many scared for their safety. In the U.K., a facility of this nature is expected to cost around $14 billion. Finland’s new plant, the first of its kind, will have 100 nuclear waste disposal tunnels at a depth of more than 400 meters, with the hope of keeping the waste isolated for the required 100,000 years. Although, changes in world temperatures make this prediction less certain.
While nuclear power is quickly making its way back onto the agenda, with governments eagerly discussing ways to establish greater energy security and less reliance on Russia, and other states, the public is not so sure. In the U.K., it is estimated that the decommissioning of civil nuclear sites across the country could cost taxpayers around $153 billion, and sites won’t be considered safe to use in an unrestricted manner for around 120 years.
But the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is confident that it is providing safe advice for the disposal of nuclear waste, in countries that are producing nuclear energy, which should help alleviate some of the public concerns.
The IAEA visits countries around the globe with nuclear programs to advise them on safety and best practices, for both nuclear plants and their waste. In addition, ARTEMIS missions are held in several countries to provide independent expert advice from an international team of specialists convened by the IAEA. They review national frameworks and programs for the management of spent fuel and radioactive waste, to ensure each country is disposing of its nuclear waste effectively.
In Canada, the government has decided to ask for public input on the situation. An online survey will be available until the 10th of June for members of the public to provide feedback on a five-year implementation plan for a proposed underground storage facility to store nuclear waste. It is thought that by involving the public, the government will gain greater support for the project, as well as be able to identify the best site for the facility.
But not everyone is relying on the government to come up with a solution, with scientists working independently for decades to see how they might best fix the problem. Specialists around the world have studied the main causes of the corrosion and degradation of nuclear waste storage materials to come up with a safer solution for people and the environment, even if only for the mid-term. And now some are coming up with innovative solutions for the disposal of this waste.
A father and daughter start-up called Deep Isolation may have a possible solution for U.S. waste. The duo plan to make commercial technology available to dig 18-inch-diameter holes deep into the Earth’s surface to then put radioactive nuclear waste in 14-foot-long containers down into the deep boreholes.
Deep Isolation has been working on the idea for the last six years. CEO Elizabeth Muller explains of the plan, “We didn’t invent the idea of using boreholes for disposal — that has been around since the 1980s.” But “Nobody had thought of using directional drilling. And so that was the key innovation that Deep Isolation brought” she stated. The potential to drill horizontally as well as vertically could create more storage space, according to Muller. And experts believe this slight variation of an existing method shows great potential.
So, will the public be convinced about nuclear power as new waste disposal methods crop up and the IAEA assures the public of the safety methods already being imposed? Due to the need to store nuclear waste for thousands of years until it becomes safe, it is unlikely that the public will be truly confident about their safety around nuclear waste facilities. However, novel ideas are showing greater promise, and the more hidden the waste (for example, if it is placed deep underground) the more likely the public will be to support nuclear programs.
By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com

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kbd512 · 2022-04-11 20:31:22

tahanson43206,

Uranium has a density of around 19,000kg/m^3, so a whopping 18.5 cubic meters of waste was the sum total from around the world, which consists almost entirely of fissionable nuclear fuel with 95% to 98% of its original energy content remaining, but this is what "scientists are grappling with"?

Whatever will we do with 18.5 cubic meters of Uranium?

We need another 135 TIMES more nuclear waste to fill up one Olympic swimming pool.

We couldn't reprocess it, in order to put it back into a reactor to burn up the remaining 95%+ of the energy it contains, could we?

No, of course not. That would make far, far too much sense, and of course, it would put the Uranium miners out of business.

It's obviously much better to create an entirely new problem while we pretend to "solve" an insurmountable problem like powering the entire modern world using sunshine and batteries.

What's the plan for storing the cubic miles of waste from burning coal, mining all types of metals, all the broken wind turbine blades, and all the old photovoltaic panels containing Arsenic, Cadmium, Gallium, and Lead?

Will the public be "truly confident" about the level of air pollution and radioactive releases from burning coal?

They must be, because they're burning "renewable coal" in Germany.

SpaceNut · 2022-04-11 20:38:07

Don't for get the fracking wells where we are pumping all sorts of contaminated water into just to bring up a bit more oil...

The only issue is those asleep at the wheel Discovery of radioactive liquid pauses work at US nuke dump area at the U.S. government’s nuclear waste repository in southeastern New Mexico

kbd512 · 2022-04-12 00:41:04

SpaceNut,

If they put a Lithium mine in your backyard, then the frack water will seem tame by way of comparison:

Lithium Extraction Environmental Impact

Apparently, Derps don't want to mine Lithium, either. There's too much sulfuric acid and Uranium discharge to be to their liking. As always, their solution is to stop making Lithium-ion batteries and start making a different kind of battery with even lower power-to-weight capabilities. The original problem couldn't be solved, so let's create a new one that has even less chance of solving our energy problems.

Anyway, back to fracking...

I suppose it would be better to give more money to people who hate us, as opposed to drilling for our own oil. We don't have a suitable like-kind replacement for oil, which is why we continue to drill for it. Sometimes you have to make cost-benefit decisions that won't please people who have been taught to hate the things that keep them alive and warm and well-fed. How much happier would you be if you had to walk to work every day? We could always go back to burning wood, but within about 10 years you'd be hard-pressed to find any trees left.

I know hating petroleum products is en-vogue these days, but turn the power off for a few days in the dead of winter and it's amazing how fast these environmentalists become our latest "energy security advocates". The moment they can't post their angry screed using cell phones and computers and internet servers that were almost entirely the end result of voracious petroleum and coal consumption, it's like their world ended. In fairness to them, and in spite of their naive beliefs, it did end. They go back to living like medieval serfs- no running water, no heat, no shopping malls that serve up kale smoothies in plastic cups (oil) or glass or metal cups (those are made with coal), no Uber, no posting about how much they care about "saving the planet" to FacePlant or Instaderp or Tweedle-Dee.

Entire countries operate under that scenario every moment of every day, having never left the stone age for all intents and purposes, but these kiddos experience a few short hours to days of what life was like before reliable power from petroleum and coal, and then their priorities instantly change, or they simply starve or freeze to death. The word "gratitude" isn't in their vocabulary.

"I dream of a world without coal and oil and gas... " Yeah, I had that same dream, kid, but sadly you weren't in it. Rather than imagining how wonderful that world was, it looked an awful lot like my worst nightmare. When we both wake up, though, the real objective world that you couldn't function without, isn't powered by sunshine and brain farts.

On to nuclear materials...

No workers or the environment were contaminated or otherwise harmed, said radioactive liquid was in a storage container, and the workers simply didn't know that it contained radioactive materials. Workers working at a nuclear waste disposal site were horrified to learn that a nuclear waste container, contained... Get this... Nuclear waste. I'm as shocked as you are. All this time I was expecting to find cow patties in the giant drum emblazoned with the words "Radioactive Waste" on the side of it. How dare they put that there?

Calliban · 2022-04-12 02:33:13

A more realistic goal is a world in which we use less oil, coal and gas per capita than we do now. The fossil fuel resource base is like a pyramid with high grade resources at the top and lower grade resources at the bottom. If we are able to use these fuels more efficiently, then resource base expands. And it is not unachievable.

Nuclear power plants, when mass produced to a common design, can provide cheap electricity. The French have demonstrated that. The Koreans and the Chinese can build new reactors for $2000/kWh right now. And this is before we have really started to implement modular construction techniques that may dramatically reduce build times. Trying to transition to renewable energy sources like wind and solar, is a waste of time. Countries that have attempted this have only increased their dependency on natural gas and coal. So if nuclear power can be used to produce electricity, then we don't need fossil fuel to make electricity. Just enough to produce the steel and concrete that we use to build the power plant.

Vehicle engine efficiency per horsepower has improved dramatically, as per the graph that Kbd512 referenced earlier on. Using a small two-cylinder engine in a vehicle with hydraulic braking energy recovery, made using high strength steel and carbon fibre panels, it should now be possible to produce small cars that get 100mpg. We don't need mountains of lithium to make that work. BEV vehicles can only be energy efficient if range is really limited, because of the inherently poor mass energy density of batteries. And with fuel efficiency at 100mpg, synthetic fuels made from biomass or nuclear electricity, begin to look like affordable prospects. We can mix methanol in with gasoline or burn it neat. We can produce engines that burn ammonia, though I wouldn't personally want to be near a tank of anhydrous ammonia. Either way, for these prospects to be realistic, we need improvements in fuel economy per passenger-mile. We need evolution, rather than revolution in this area.

Most of the world's freight is carried using a mixture of seaborne container and tanker ships, rail, HGVs and pipelines. All of these modes are already very energy efficient. In the future, it would be sensible to examine ways in which rail and seaborne freight can displace and reduce road freight travel distances. The US is in a good place to do this. There is an extensive rail freight network that reaches all of its major cities. The mississippi allows inland water transportation to reach a huge swathe of the US. Pipelines are extensively used in the US for transport of oil, water and refinery products. They could in fact be used to transport solid goods in barges, pumped along at roughly human walking speed. If some combination of these methods can deliver goods to within about 30 miles of where they need to be, then trucks powered by compressed gas or even batteries can do the final part of distribution. Just don't expect electric trucks to replace what Diesel HGVs do today. With one tenth the effective energy density, you need to accept one tenth the effective range. The same with compressed natural gas and biogas. These things work within limitations.

It is difficult to do away with fossil fuels in industrial processes that either use them as material feedstock or require high heat. Making concrete requires temperatures of at least 1200°C. Whilst it is possible to use electricity to produce such high heat, it is not a desirable option. It is very difficult to store heat at these temperatures for any length of time. Natural gas and coal gas meet most high heat applications at present. In principle, we could use hydrogen if it were cheap enough and could be produced on a more or less continuous basis. Which brings us back to nuclear power.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-04-12 03:05:28)

Terraformer · 2022-04-12 07:46:04

The mississippi allows inland water transportation to reach a huge swathe of the US.

Britain is actually quite similar in that respect. We don't have a sprawling watershed connecting almost everything, but nowhere is all that far from the coast, and we have rivers that can be used to get close to major cities. It would take some dredging of course, and a faster system of transshipping that doesn't rely on cranes. But we could do it. Leeds already has a canal that runs right to it. I don't know how many bridges are in the way though.

SpaceNut · 2022-04-16 19:45:37

Wind surpassed nuclear power output in the US for the first time AAWht91.img?w=620&h=348&m=6

A quartet of wind turbines stand in front of the billowing smokestacks of a coal plant

The country’s combined wind and solar output doubled in the decade between 2008 and 2018, while coal electricity generation fell by more than half over the same period. Since March 2019, wind and solar output have nearly doubled again, according to data from the US Energy Information Administration.

kbd512 · 2022-04-16 20:01:34

SpaceNut,

U.S. utility-scale electricity generation by source, amount, and share of total in 2021

In 2021, the following outputs were obtained from the following sources (in billion kilowatt-hours):
All fossil fuels: 2,504
Coal: 899
Nuclear: 778
Wind: 380
All solar: 115

Cherry-picking the total wind output from a single day is meaningless. That MSN article is typical of the sort of nonsense I've come to expect from ideologues who are after a specific end result. Generating more power on March 29th and April 12th is not in any way indicative of total yearly output at all. That's like looking at the solar output during the Summer solstice and asserting that output on that particular day is indicative of how much power it produces over an entire year.

SpaceNut · 2022-04-16 20:09:58

Yes Kbd512 I did see that is was a one time event for power output to the article and wondered how the electrical grid will hold up if we had more fluctuation from such source events where it is over producing with out any system to take it off the grid so as to not cause damage?

Normally wind mill breaking is due to wind speed being to low but I have not heard of one being used to reduce production due to wind speeds being to great. Then again we have heard that they are used for other events so as to protect the wind mill.

kbd512 · 2022-04-16 20:19:43

SpaceNut,

I think it's great that wind produced so much power on those days, but what the grid needs is consistent output, or an output level so high, even if it's not very consistent, that it always meets demand. The nation's electricity generation is merely part of total energy demand, so we're a long way from reducing our reliance on fossil fuels.

I think we're going about this the wrong way, though. If we synthesize all of our fossil fuels from intermittent sources, then the intermittency is much less of a problem and it materially contributes to the economy, rather than subtracting from it, because it's making high value / high demand products every second of operation, no matter the output level.

Wind and solar would achieve exponentially faster market penetration if they were actually producing liquid hydrocarbon fuels.

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