Re: pointless when we have LENR
Looking more *plausible* but a hell of a long way from delivering.
New nuclear fuel source would power human race until 5000AD
Since the Fukushima meltdown - as a result of which, not a single person is set to be measurably harmed by radiation - we know that nuclear power is safe. New discoveries by US scientists have now shown it's sustainable as well. That's because US government scientists have just announced research in which they've massively …
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Thursday 23rd August 2012 13:46 GMT John Smith 19
Re: Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors
The government problem. LFTR's are *unproven* reactor tech.
The corporate problem. LFTR's *eliminate* the need for fuel elements. Nuclear reactors are like disposable razors. Companies make their money on the *heads*, not the razors. Reactor companies make their money on the fuel elements, which are incompatible between designs.
LFTR's were developed to meet a *need* (specifically the US nuclear powered bomber programme) not to make money for Westinghouse or GE.
You'll need to demonstrate a design and then change their *business* model to get corporate support.
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Saturday 25th August 2012 19:15 GMT Charles 9
Re: Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors
They're finding solutions, such as shorter-term reactors that are cheaper, much more compact, require less maintenance or human supervision, easier on smaller communities, and provide repeat business since they're only meant to run for a decade or two before being changed out. It also helps with the proliferation problem because their fuel quantities are so small. Many are also designed to minimize radioactive waste by having recyclable fuel, leaving only minimal byproducts that will only require sequestration for a few centuries rather than millennia (something much more manageable in a government--you're basically talking time-capsule scales). A bunch of these little guys (which are normally supposed to be subterranean) spread out around a country will dampen a lot of proliferation concerns while Gen IV designs with passive or even inherent safety should address the NIMBY issue of possible meltdowns. IIRC, some of the designs can be converted over to use Thorium, so this can be considered in addition rather than instead.
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Thursday 23rd August 2012 12:06 GMT Anonymous Coward
This thread is incredibly TL;DR
There's no new arguments in this debate so I don't see why you all keep trotting out the same things. I hope you just copy and paste to save time.
However it would be a much more pleasant and streamlined experience if we could just remove all this drivel coming from cretins who are incapable of stringing two sentences together without butchering the English language. Those of us with brains might then find we were free to do more useful things.
A note to the cretins [and to some of the other vultures, you know who you are]: maybe you would like your comments/articles to be taken more seriously and not be referred to using derogatory terminology? I would advise that you should learn to write in English (like almost all foreigners can), and can I suggest such a crazy and far-fetched idea as reading your bullshit before clicking on that 'submit' button?
Lewis, thanks for demonstrating that not everyone in Britain is illiterate.
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Thursday 23rd August 2012 14:15 GMT nrta
Re: This thread is incredibly TL;DR
To me that is the interesting thing about this article. The article itself is just more of Lewis's sub-Clarkson eco trolling, a man deluding himself that he is the lone voice of reason in a world gone mad. What really mystifies me is the blind faith that readers of The Register have in the governments and companies who are going to be building, maintaining and decommissioning these reactors.
I accept the argument that wind power (the most often cited) is expensive and inefficient way of generating power. What hasn't been discussed is the actual cost of nuclear power. The reason for this is because it is not quantifiable, there is no way to predict how much it will cost per unit of electricity.
In my view both the public and politicians are being tobogganed into an acceptance of the inevitable need for nuclear energy by a fear of having to change our comfortable lifestyles, or that other parts of the world might also want a piece of the pie. Spend a few billion on some reactors, defer difficult decisions and stick the rest on the tab.
Out of interest, does anyone know how many existing technology reactors would be needed to generate current U.K. demand? Multiply that figure by 100 as a rough rule of thumb for an equitable distribution of energy around the world and you have our glorious clean nuclear future.
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Thursday 23rd August 2012 12:37 GMT CCCP
Forsmark 1 (Sweden) in 2006 got close to doing a Fukushima
No, there was no tsunami in the Baltic Sea, but there are parallels with failing electricity supply.
During maintenance work, the sub station connecting Forsmark to the external grid wasn't earthed properly and a circuit breaker causing arching which lead to voltage fluctuation of +/-20% across the internal power grid.
The station automatically switched to "house power" but only two out four diesel generators started. This was because the UPSs (bloody large batteries) that the generators need to run had been disconnected by surge protectors. Two generators is the minimum the station needs. Phew.
In addition 12 different core safety systems were knocked out. For example, the control room had no reading on the position of the control rods and what the water level was in the reactor. Squeaky bum time. After 30 minutes they were able to confirm full shut down and safe water level.
In effect, they were one generator away from a meltdown. Also, some valves were in the open position when power failed, weakening the structural defence.
Clearly, there were design flaws, looking at you ABB, but the question is how "safe" can you in practice can engineer these things. Personally I think systems this complex will always have flaws and unforseen scenarios. A bit like space rockets. So building hundreds, or even thousands, of these all over our little blue ball is on balance probably not a good idea.
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Thursday 23rd August 2012 13:51 GMT John Smith 19
Re: Forsmark 1 (Sweden) in 2006 got close to doing a Fukushima
"In addition 12 different core safety systems were knocked out. "
But the reactors did *not* meltdown.
And (it would appear) they were not able to keep it secret.
The Swedish nuclear regulator should come down *hard* on them but the takeaway from this is
12 safety systems fail, but enough left working to *prevent* serious accident.
I salute the operations team.
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Thursday 23rd August 2012 14:48 GMT CCCP
Re: Forsmark 1 (Sweden) in 2006 got close to doing a Fukushima
You are spot on about the operations team. The official report in fact gives them the main credit for nothing bad happening. They followed procedures calmly and accurately. They also managed to restart the two failed generators.
It wasn't secret at all. However, it was only in the post mortem they realised what a close call it was. Water level got down to 1.9m from the core. Should be more like 6 I believe.
My point is you don't need a natural disaster for a melt down, just an unlucky series of events. Murphy's law and all that.
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Monday 27th August 2012 09:37 GMT John Smith 19
Re: Forsmark 1 (Sweden) in 2006 got close to doing a Fukushima
"My point is you don't need a natural disaster for a melt down, just an unlucky series of events. Murphy's law and all that."
True. Hopefully newer designs will recognize the importance of designing systems that work right by *physics* rather than by active subsystems (generators and pumps).
And "secrecy" may have been a poor choice of word. Perhaps "transparency" over the event would be a better way to say it. This sense that the nuclear power industry tends to down play problems is one that simply does not exist (AFAIK) with *any* other form of power generation.
So what *could* have been a disaster proved to be their finest hour. Demonstrating the importance of skills and training in an emergency.
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Thursday 23rd August 2012 12:57 GMT Alan Johnson
The problem with any discussion of nuclear power is the emotional association between nuclear power, radiation and safety. A big part of teh problem is teh strong nuclear/radiation related safety culture. There is actually no strong evidence that low levels of radiation are a health hazard at all. Studies of radiation workers show they are healthier than average and once corrected for other factors; profession, environment, diet, smoking etc the health effects are tiny in boith directions and almost certainly artefacts of the statistics. A strong argumnet to me is that there is no observed correlation between high natural radiation levels and lower life expectancy.
As radiation was a new hazard a very very cautious approach was taken the effects of high levels of exposure were scaled down linearly to low doses. This is almost certainly an over estimate but it is cautious. On top of this very cautious safety limits were set based on this assumption. No other area takes such a cautious approach. Paradoxically it has increased fears because the extremely low limits are breached when incidents occur and it makes a good story. The thing to remember is that at these dose levels no health effect has been observed.
The other thing that occurs is people take these extrapolated low probability health effects and multiply them by huge population numbers generating scary numbers for example 2500 dying in an earlier comment. This is crazy from several points of view. Most radiation exposure is natural, there are many many more important risk factors we never treat in the same way or consider at all. The radiation emitted by fossil fuesl for example coal fire power statiosn dwarfs that from nuclear power stations.
We should argue about nuclear power based on cost, availability and dependability, not safety as it is far safer than anything else, but it is bogged down by emotional baggage. Future historians will regard attitudes to nuclear as bizzare and incomprehensible. Wind power is almost the opposite, completely impractical, almost no environmental benefit, extremely expensive but with positive emotional associations
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Friday 24th August 2012 16:00 GMT Charles 9
There's also the stigma of DA BOMB (of which there is plenty of historical footage to demonstrate the effects). The mere thought of a manmade technology capable of wiping out an entire city of millions can make nearly anyone's blood run cold. Nuclear reactors, using similar technology, fall under that stigma. There's always the thought deep in the back of someone's mind that a nuclear reactor can lead in some way to a nuclear bomb...which would in turn be detonated in their midst. And because of its scale, it's not something you can just wish away. It's like broken trust.
That said, to anyone who has said nuclear is an inherently unstable technology, what do you say to the likes of pebble bed and uranium hydride reactors and other Generation IV reactors built on the premise of negative coefficient of reactivity (meaning they slow down as they heat up rather than runaway).
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Thursday 23rd August 2012 19:32 GMT Charles 9
Re: Hemp
ANY plant-based (indeed, any LIVING) resource can be over-harvested, resulting in depletion. Furthermore, for it to be sustainable for a large population, you would need an even larger amount of land with which to grow, and this land no longer grows food (because last I checked, hemp is not a food crop), which ALSO has large land demands per person.
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Thursday 23rd August 2012 20:51 GMT fung0
Re: Hemp
Charles 9 said: "...you would need an even larger amount of land with which to grow, and this land no longer grows food (because last I checked, hemp is not a food crop)"
You are mistaken on several of your assumptions, Charles. First, hemp IS in fact a food crop, at least to a degree. The hemp plant can yield edible oil, as well as material that's at least suitable as animal fodder. Second, and more important, hemp grows well on sandy, arid land that will support almost no other type of crop. So it doesn't really have to compete with any of our staple food crops. Third, hemp is incredibly bountiful, able to produce tree-sized plants in a single growing season. So it doesn't need as much land as most other crops.
Not saying hemp it the answer, just that it's better than you seem to believe...
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Monday 27th August 2012 13:20 GMT Charles 9
Re: Hemp
But you have to wonder how hemp grows so fast without drawing on some resources with which to build its bulk. Further analysis shows the while hemp replenishes much of what it takes from the soil, it still needs a rich soil to start with to provide the best results. IOW, planting hemp in poorer soil will result in less yield. It also prefers warmer environments.
As for the oil, while it can be useful as a food or fuel, it shares one potentially-bothersome trait with linseed oil: it oxidizes. This means the oil can turn rancid if not stored carefully. The fibers are stiffer than cotton fibers, which make them well suited for woven products like pants, but cotton will still be king on knit products like T-shirts which need to be more flexible. And the fibers wick (when used historically on ships, hemp ropes had to be tarred to prevent inside-out wet rot--they were phased out for non-wicking Manila rope), making them less suited for humid or water-exposed environments.
I've learned not to take someone's "cure-all" gospels at face value. It never hurts to subject it to a reality check and see if they have strings attached (they usually do).
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Thursday 23rd August 2012 16:09 GMT Anonymous Coward
Nuclear waste
This article makes quite an assumption that anti-nuclear-power people are only concerned about proliferation. I am "lucky" enough to have lived in two US states where the storage (or lack thereof) of nuclear waste became a political scandal and is still an embarrassment--there are millions (billions?) of pounds of radioactive waste that are being improperly stored as we speak and are contaminating soil and water. THIS, for me, is the #1 concern re: nuclear power and the article (and most commenters) fail to even mention it.
Sure, you can talk about breeder reactors until you're blue in the face, but where are they? Declaring that nuclear power is clean because of a reactor type that is barely used is disingenuous.
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Monday 3rd September 2012 19:15 GMT Charles 9
Re: Nuclear waste
The big concern with breeder reactors is the possibility of proliferation since breeder reactors by their nature enrich nuclear fuel. It doesn't take a genius to realize that such reactors can be retooled to product weapons-grade fuel, which in the US is a treaty violation IIRC and elsewhere would be a destabilizing prospect at the very least. There is ongoing research into concentrating the breeder reactor's processing so as to reduce the likelihood of weapon-grade fuel being made at all (by using processes that produce richer but still not weapons-grade fuel). But the situation is still not fully trusted: can the processes be altered to produce weapon-grade fuel? Or could the technical knowledge allow an observer to deduce enough to do it themselves?
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Thursday 23rd August 2012 20:41 GMT fung0
Good Grief
"...not a single person is set to be measurably harmed..."
This is obvious balderdash. For starters, the IAEA is effectively an industry group, and hardly to be trusted as an impartial authority when assessing total harm. Secondly, the contention that the area around Fukushima can ever be made completely safe is questionable at best.
But there's no need to even speculate about eventual cancer deaths... the spread of contamination has already resulted in many thousands of people being dispossessed. If someone forced Mr. Page out of his home at gunpoint and told him he couldn't return, at least for many months, and possibly not for the rest of his life, I wonder if he would feel that he was not being "measurably harmed"...?
It's quite likely that we will need nuclear power in the short term. But buying whole-heartedly into transparent industry propaganda is not part of the solution. As an engineer, I have no doubt whatsoever that the current superannuated generation of reactor designs is not safe enough to be economically viable. (No sane engineer would build a machine that inherently WANTS to blow up. It's why we don't have cars that accelerate without limit if the driver becomes unconscious.) If nuclear power is to work, we need to scrap the old crap now, before (even more of) it blows up in our faces, and invest in some of the promising technologies that can do the job far more safely. Not bury our heads in the radioactive sand and accept the status quo.
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Saturday 1st September 2012 16:57 GMT sanity
Yeah radiation is fine.
Yeah radiation is fine. Just ask the residents of Hiroshima. As long as you have a home Geiger-counter and stock of iodine. I suggest maybe you take a course if physics and learn about the effect of gamma, beta and alpha radiation before writing a rubbish story like this!
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Sunday 2nd September 2012 10:29 GMT Matt Bryant
Re: Yeah radiation is fine.
"Yeah radiation is fine. Just ask the residents of Hiroshima....." Straight out of the Pre-schoolers Guide to Debating Nuke Power! Tell you what, why don't we look at napalm and use that as an excuse to ban all attempts to use fire 'cos napalm burns? Or how about banning all food just because some sushi can make you very sick? And then there's the risk Ecstacy users have of over-hydrating (due to other moronic Ecstacy users telling them it was another good idea to avoid dehydrating), maybe you would like us to just ban all water? Complete fail.
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Sunday 2nd September 2012 13:20 GMT lambda_beta
Let's cherrypick our nuclear diasters
"Since the Fukushima meltdown - as a result of which, not a single person is set to be measurably harmed by radiation - we know that nuclear power is safe. "
Huh??
Some facts about Chernobyl:
237 people suffered from acute radiation sickness (ARS), of whom 31 died within the first three months
Four hundred times more radioactive material was released than had been by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima
Thyroid cancer among children was one of the main health impacts from the accident, with more than 4000 cases reported
After the disaster, four square kilometers of pine forest directly downwind of the reactor turned reddish-brown and died, earning the name of the "Red Forest" A significant economic impact at the time was the removal of 784,320 ha (1,938,100 acres) of agricultural land and 694,200 ha (1,715,000 acres) of forest from production.
An area extending 19 miles (31 km) in all directions from the plant is known as the "zone of alienation." Ukrainian officials estimate the area will not be safe for human life again for another 20,000 years.
Between 5% and 7% of government spending in Ukraine still related to Chernobyl, while in Belarus over $13 billion is thought to have been spent between 1991 and 2003. No one knows the true economic cost of this accident.
The Chernobyl Shelter Fund, set up in 1997, has received €810 million from international donors to cover the cost of a large concrete sarcophagus expected to be completed in 2013. We are still trying to contain an accident that happened over a quarter of a century ago.
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Monday 3rd September 2012 19:06 GMT Charles 9
Re: Let's cherrypick our nuclear diasters
Thing is, it ran on an old plant that wasn't built with a lot of passive safety in mind.. They were trying to look into passive safety when the accident occurred for various manmade and not-manmade reasons.
Given that new reactor designs have emerged since then, many of which are smaller, designed for proliferation resistance (partly through the simple idea of spreading out a lot of little reactors) and designed with passive (pebble bed) or even inherent safety in mind (TRIGA, uranium hydride), why don't we do like we did after the Apollo I tragedy, take stock, and keep going to try to better our lives?
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