Russia's Unique SVBR-100 Nuclear Reactor
Posted by Gail the Actuary on May 17, 2009 - 10:54am
This is a guest post by Christopher Babb. Until 2007, Christopher worked as a Ph. D. Economist. In 2007, he retired early to work on issues related the peak oil problem. His background in physics is from undergraduate coursework and from studying about it on his own.
The Significance of the SVBR-100 Modular Nuclear Reactor
Many analysts expect that societies in the post peak oil period will go through a “power down” scenario that will force their economies to be reconstituted using the primitive energy systems of the eighteenth century. However, not all analysts share this expectation. Since the accident at Chernobyl, an important group of Russian scientists has taken it upon themselves to rewrite the energy future of technically advanced civilizations.
Those scientists have chosen to turn away from the dangerous sodium cooled breeder reactor technology, and have turned instead to their own “home grown” “heavy metal” alternative. At present, the Russians are forging ahead to develop and build two different types of uranium fueled “heavy metal” reactors that have most of the favorable characteristics that engineers and policy makers would want in a nuclear reactor. In my opinion, those reactors have the potential to usher in a new era of almost unlimited low cost electric power.
The Russian’s SVBR-100 reactor, which is the subject of this short essay, is the first of those “heavy metal” reactors. (SVBR is the Russian acronym for “lead-bismuth fast reactor”). The first SVBR-100 will go critical and begin generating commercial electric power by around 2020.
Background
On July 9, 2008, the company director of power machine engineering in the Russian Machines Company, Vladimir Petrochenko, announced that his company had made a commitment to invest US$400-500m in a joint venture with the State Corporation Rosatom to build the first SVBR-100 commercial power reactor in Obninsk which is in the Kaluga Region [Nuclear.Ru2008]. At that time the project was expected to take approximately seven years with a tentative completion date of 2015.
Subsequently, at the 2nd International Conference “Construction of Nuclear Power Plants” which was held in Moscow in November 2008, Anna Kudryavtsev said that the total investments in the SVBR-100 project are currently estimated at 16bln Rubles. Updated estimates of the time line for the reactor’s construction indicated that the design project should be ready by 2017 with a pilot reactor being installed by 2020. She noted that the SVBR-100 is likely to become the world’s first commercial reactor cooled by liquid heavy metal. In this field, Russia is currently the world leader.
As the deputy director of the innovation science and technology policy department at Atomenergoprom, Anna Kudryavtseva said that the SVBR-100 was a very promising project and that this type of reactor could be used at thermal power plants, floating nuclear power plants, in reconstruction of decommissioned nuclear power plants, desalination, production of hydrogen and petrochemistry [Nuclear.Ru2009].
Even before the July 2008 announcement of the SVBR-100 project, several Russian scientists had proposed that up to 300 of the SVBR-100 reactors should be built for installation in repowering several of the older VVER-440 and VVER 1000 series of pressurized water nuclear reactors [Toshinsky2005, 5]
Separate estimates developed by the IAEA suggested that by 2040 between 500 and 1,000 of the SVBR-100 reactors will have been built to accommodate growing market demands around the world.
The Unusual Properties of the SVBR-100
The SVBR-100 is a small “ultra safe” fast-breeder reactor with a heavy metal coolant. The modular design of the SVBR-100 makes it suitable for large scale production in a factory setting where high levels of quality control can be assured, and unit costs can be kept low. The SVBR-100 is cooled by a lead-bismuth eutectic alloy which is loaded into the reactor at the factory. After testing, the heavy metal coolant is allowed to “freeze”, and the modular SVBR-100 reactor is transported to its power plant destination via railroad flat car for installation. The design of that reactor is both conservative and mature, being based on more than 80 reactor years of Russian operational experience with reactors of this heavy-metal type in the Project 705/Alfa nuclear attack submarines [Polmar2004, 140-146][Zrodnikov2003,117].
The thermal capacity of each individual SVBR-100 reactor is very small when compared to that of traditional “thermal” pressurized water reactors. Specifically, the thermal capacity of the SVBR-100 is only 280MW (thermal) which corresponds to 101.5 MWe [Zrodnikov2006, 1495]. When used in powering thermal electric plants, multiple units or batteries of SVBR-100 reactors are installed to satisfy the steam requirements of the power plant.
The societal implications of the technology embodied in the SVBR-100 are noteworthy. The SVBR-100 is the first in a class of “fast-breeder” power reactors that use a bootstrapping or breed/burn approach to multiply the energy extracted from a pound of uranium ore by a factor of 100 [Amer_Nuclear_Soc, 1]. Inside “heavy metal” reactors, the plentiful, fertile isotope U-238 is progressively converted to fissile Pu-239 which is then burned. As the U-238 gradually becomes depleted from the fuel mixture, more U-238 is added from stocks of un-enriched uranium.
The fuel cycle being developed for this new class of “heavy metal” reactors is also revolutionary. The ultimate waste products from those reactors will require storage times of less than 550 years [Lopatkin1999, 952-953] in contrast with that of the current pressurized water “thermal” reactors that generate plutonium wastes requiring storage times of between 100,000 to 500,000 years [Lopatkin1999, 949].
During scheduled reactor fuel reprocessing, a high proportion of the shorter lived radioactive waste products are extracted for placement in storage. However, enough of the dangerous nuclear actinides are intentionally retained in the reprocessed fuel to make it impossible to construct nuclear bombs from the plutonium component of the fuel. No plutonium is removed from the fuel, during reprocessing. The reprocessed fuel from each “heavy metal” reactor is returned for further burning in other “heavy metal” reactors. The conceptual shift embodied in this new fuel cycle is captured by the phrase: “From clean fuel and dirty wastes towards dirty fuel and clean wastes.” [Adamov2006, 15].
The Russians Rethink Sustainable Nuclear Power After the Chernobyl Accident
Outside of Russia various proposals for quasi-sustainable nuclear power have been put forward that rely on using pressurized water reactors in combination with smaller numbers of “sodium cooled” fast breeder reactors and “accelerator driven” sub-critical reactors [Nifenecker2003,23-33,36-38]. However, problems with the reactor safety, nuclear proliferation and waste management issues created by that “standard approach” have been found to be close to insoluble.
In their efforts to “invent” a better approach to constructing a sustainable nuclear power system, those Russian scientists with the most cautious and critical view of nuclear power started out by reviewing five main categories of “risk” associated with the “standard approach”. What they found strongly confirmed the societal unacceptability of the “standard” approach.
(1) The occurrence of a major fire in a sodium-cooled fast breeder reactor can easily lead to a Chernobyl level accident involving a massive release of radiation. [Adamov1999, 2].
(2) Because the breeding blankets in sodium-cooled fast breeder reactors produce near bomb quality plutonium, there is an unacceptable risk of the unlawful diversion of plutonium for bomb making. [Adamov1999, 2].
(3) The huge energy potential which exists in the fertile uranium U-238 isotope would be eliminated, if pressurized water reactors continue to be used, with the result that future generations would be deprived of an invaluable high-density energy source. [Adamov1999, 3].
(4) The economic costs of constructing and operating the technically complex sodium-cooled fast breeder reactors and accelerator driven sub-critical reactors would be extremely high, for all fuel cycles structured around the continued use of pressurized water reactors [Aastronomy2009, 2].
(5) The astronomically high costs resulting from the long storage times (100,000 to 500,000 years) of the plutonium and neptunium components of the waste streams generated by the “once-through” reactor fuel cycle would permanently burden future generations. [Lopatkin1999, 949]. Even the partial “burning” of “once-through” waste products creates storage times of up to 1,500 years [IAEA_2004, 12, 18].
A Competing “Heavy Metal” Reactor Design
In breaking new ground with heavy metal “breeder” reactors, the Russian scientists decided to proceed along two tracks. The first track involved the further development of lead-bismuth cooled reactors as embodied in the small modular SVBR-100 reactor. However, because the prevalence of bismuth metal in the earth’s crust is well below that of lead, the Russian scientific community is also pursuing a second path which uses pure lead as a coolant. Currently, two lead cooled reactor designs are under development in Russia: the medium sized Brest-300 and the larger Brest-1200 [Gabaraev2003, 3-6][Saraev2007, 11, 14].
Unlike the lead-bismuth eutectic alloy in the SVBR-100 which melts at 125 degrees Centigrade, the lead used in the Brest series of reactors melts at the much higher temperature of 327 degree Centigrade. That higher melting point of lead presents various design challenges, relating to the temperature “floor” that must be maintained while circulating the reactor’s coolant. In addition, there is also a second design challenge based on an upper coolant temperature “ceiling” that is imposed because of the need to reliably control the corrosive effects of the lead coolant. Together those two restrictions require a reactor design where the core inlet and outlet temperatures are set at 417 and 537 degrees Centigrade, respectively [Adamov2001, 159-180]. Surprisingly, high thermal efficiencies can be achieved in a lead cooled reactor with that very narrow spread between inlet and outlet temperatures, if a high pressure turbine design is employed that uses supercritical CO2 in a Brayton Cycle [Dostal2004, 294-296]. At the Sandia National Laboratories in the United States, preliminary work has been started on testing out supercritical CO2 turbines [Wright2006, 9].
Assessing Risk
In considering the risk of a nuclear accident from a statistical perspective, it is revealing to find that some Russian scientists are inclined to view conventional estimates as not credible. One senior scientist has asserted that the conventional risk measures that fall in the range of 10-6 to 10-7 major accidents per year are unreliable, since they are developed using hypothetical arguments and are not grounded on actual real world experience [Adamov2001, 130-132].
When assessing the probabilities of accidents with “heavy metal” reactors that same scientist took the position that real world probabilities of the loss of a plant should be somewhere in the range of 10-3 to 10-4 major accidents per year.[Adamov2000,201]. However, those much larger accident probabilities do not need to cover collateral damage to people, land and structures which exist outside of the physical confines of the reactor building. All of the heavy metal reactors, including the SVBR-100, are engineered in such a way that the most dangerous accidents, such as fast runaway, loss of coolant, fire, steam and hydrogen explosions resulting from fuel failure and catastrophic radioactive releases, are excluded deterministically. So while the statistical likelihood of failure is higher, using the more realistic probabilities, the risks are nevertheless much lower due to the low impacts that any power plant failure would have on areas outside of the plant.
Adapting the SVBR-100 Reactor to Power Large Ships
In 2001, Shell ordered two LNG carriers to be built by Daewoo. The main steam turbines to be installed in each of those LNG carriers were rated at 32,400 horsepower [Tavinor2001]. In the coming decades when diesel fuelled engines are likely to be prohibitively expensive to operate, the SVBR-100 reactor could be readily adapted to propel large ships around the world at relatively low costs per nautical mile. The antecedent to the SVBR-100 which drove the Russian Alfa submarines had a 155 MWt lead-bismuth reactor that developed 40,000 horsepower [IAEA_2006, 4, 9-10]. (Note: The SVBR-100 generates 280 MWt.) As a consequence, it is not inevitable that International shipping will shut down in the post peak oil period, because of the high costs and limited availability of diesel fuel.
Using the SVBR-100 to Repower Coal Power Plants to Curtail CO2 Emissions
Another application of the SVBR-100 reactor, which could have a very important impact on the World economy and environment, would be to adapt the reactor to repowering a high proportion of the World’s coal-fired power stations. This would be possible because the inlet and outlet temperatures of the SVBR-100 are very close to those of many coal fired power plants. Such a repowering operation would help mitigate the CO2 emissions problem which arises from the operation of coal fired power plants. If the SVBR-100 reactors were used in that application, it would be necessary to greatly expand world bismuth production. That production expansion could only be accomplished with a combination of deep mining and a major run up in bismuth prices. Currently, bismuth is produced only as a bi-product of the mining and smelting of lead, tin and tungsten.
Prospects for Russia and the Russian Federation in the Post-Carbon Era
Based on the energy framework given in the “White Book of Nuclear Power” [Adamov2001, 229-235], the Russian leadership is working systematically to move toward a “post carbon” energy future to be secured by building several different types of breeder reactors. Those reactors will operate within a nuclear industry framework that will manage a numbers of different closed nuclear fuel cycles [Ratchkov2004, Sec. 3.3 & 5]. Currently, the idea of a “Nuclear Renaissance” is being used to market various elements of their program to interested foreign investors and governments [Nuclear_Ren2009]. Since Russia is a dominant oil exporter, and also has vast undeveloped reserves of natural gas, it is all but certain that Russia and the Russian Federation will succeed in their efforts to build a high tech “post carbon” future for their citizens.
It is a grand irony of history that a major support for the Russian plan to repower their economy using nuclear power will come from the run-up in oil prices that will occur as the world’s oil importing nations scramble to purchase oil imports, during the “post peak” declining phase of world oil production.
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Thats the great thing about breeder reactors, they have been just ten years away sense 1950.
The first SVBR-100 will go critical and begin generating commercial electric power by around 2020.
I know "we have them, now, just they need a little work".
Breeders have been around for quite some time now. It's just that nuclear fuel and waste handling are both really cheap, so there hasn't been any real economic incentives to abandon conventional reactors for the more frugal but also more complex breeders.
SVBR-100 and other ideas such as LFTR can be employed large-scale (replacing all other electricity generation) with moderate effort the day economic fundamentals change. Such a change would be heavy carbon taxation, for example, or peak coal. Until then, uranium reserves can easily provide the small amounts of uranium necessary for our small fleet of conventional plants.
In contrast with pressurized water thermal reactors (PWRs)and sodium cooled fast breeder reactors (SFRs), the heavy metal reactors (lead and lead-bismuth) are being designed to be much simpler in concept and operation with an absolute top priority being given to safety. In other words they are supposed to be idiot proof. Safety systems for the SVBR-100 reactors are 100% independent of the operational status or conditions of the turbines and generators within the electric plant of which they are a part.
In a fast reactor world as the Russians conceptualize it, the reactors are supposed to be relatively cheap, and very robust. The largest "nuclear" investments in an economy that is built around fast reactors will be in the plants constructed to handle fuel reprocessing, recycling and disposal.
The Carter administration, believing that essentially any processing of spent fuel from reactors was a proliferation threat, committed the US to an open (once-through) nuclear fuel cycle in the second half of the 1970s. Absent that decision, something like the LFTR might be much closer, as engineers sought higher burn-up rates and simpler reprocessing techniques.
I could be wrong, but I think the vote in Congress was unanimous for the ban. Carter was not the only pol at fault. The pervasive fear of nuclear annihilation made all pols accept any promise of security no matter the cost. Sort of like when almost all Congress members gathered on the steps of the Capitol after 9/11 to pray and sing God Bless America. To hell with the Constitution.
The BN-600 reactor is a sodium-cooled fast breeder reactor located at the Beloyarsk Nuclear Power Station, in Zarechny, Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia. That reactor has been operated successfully since 1980. The historical operations profile for that reactor can be seen in Fig. 2.1 in the IAEA tecdoc 1289 , "Comparative assessment of thermophysical and thermohydraulic characteristics of lead, lead-bismuth and sodium coolants for fast reactors". The Russian experience with that class of reactors has been much better than that of the Western Nations.
Quite interesting from a theoretical POV, and this design may see widespread use post-2050 (i.e. solve issues that are not immediate today).
The rate of scale up with a novel technology posted in this article ignores Mr. Murphy and the rest of reality. Almost all new technologies have unexpected issues and problems.
What if these new reactors work, but they cost twice as much to build and operate as PWRs ? What if their operating cycle is less predictable ? Et5c.
PWR & BWRs have a 60 year head start, hard to overcome.
Best Hopes anyway for a "promising" technology,
Alan
This is an issue with any new technology at this point in time. No matter how good it is, it will take time to shake out all of the problems, and other technologies will have a head-start. During the shake-out period, it is usually best not to replicate the technology in huge numbers, since it is likely that the initial version of the technology will be sub-optimal.
In a way, it would be better if this technology (or any new technology) were being tried in several places around the world, all of whom shared their experiences with each other. With something very expensive to make and test, this is difficult to do.
The technology being used in the SVBR-100 was developed over many years as the Russians mastered the challenges of working with the lead-bismuth coolant which is very corrosive. The key to their successes and their confidence in that technology is based on the development of systems that maintain careful control over the oxygen level that is present in the coolant. For information on this see Chapter 4 (Chemistry Control and Monitoring Systems) in Handbook on Lead-bismuth Eutectic Alloy and Lead Properties, Materials Compatibility, Thermal-hydraulics and Technologies.(OECD 2007 - NEA No. 6195)
Sounds a lot more useful fast-breeder type than the abandoned old ones (fearsome beasts that they were) especially without the concomitant 'plutonium economy'.
But I have not got the hang of the scale-up.
Perhaps "1000 SVBR-100 reactors by 2040": does that mean 1000GWe, or some much lower number by 2040 as some kind of hoped for maximum? Even at its highest does that mean the energy equivalent of 12.5 mbpd oil? Electricity is different stuff from oil for sure, but at first glance this does not seem enough to ensure continued world economic growth. No answer for BAU one would guess?
Aging conventional pressurized water reactors (PWRs) in Russia and the United States are approaching the ends of their life cycles. The Russians have a plan to repower their PWR installations using the modular SVBR-100's. In that application, no new turbines or generators would be needed. Consequently, repowering would save substantial amounts of money. However, since all nuclear reactors eventually suffer from embrittlement, due to radiation damage, those retirement dates cannot be postponed indefinitely. (To do so would invite catastrophe.)
Currently, experts in the U.S. predict that the current nuclear power share of U.S. electric generation will drop from its current 20% to about 14% by 2020, because of nuclear plant retirements.(See page 134 in Steam Plant Operation, Eight Edition) As I understand it, the U.S. has no serious plans to deal with those retirements. What is the U.S. going to do, build coal fired plants. Not likely. Maybe we should all stock up on candles.
Maybe you (in general I mean) should go around your house with an energy monitor and see if there is anything that can be unplugged when not used e.g. by using a kill-switch, or be replaced by something more energy efficient. Maybe you can insulate your houses better. Maybe get some solar panels using surplus money, as it is no use trying to get more efficiency out of it buying stocks. Be creative in trying to lower your energy demand.
A few simple things can cut back your energy usage by as much as 50%, perhaps more. If you can rally enough Americans to do so then the 6% loss in electricity generation because of nuclear plant retirements wouldn't be a problem at all. It would kill a few coal fired plants as well.
I didn't catch any mention of load following. For example can a 1000 MWe unit throttle back to say 200 MW? In the next 20 years a lot of wind and solar will be built on the assumption that gas peaking plant will take up the slack. One day we will still have the wind and solar but no gas backup.
Another useful attributes could include
- assembly time under two years
- external air cooling for desert sites
- moderate capital cost say $5 per watt
- ability to piggyback on adjoining early nuclear plant.
For load following, the liquid flouride thorium reactor would work well. It has been tested and was deemed viable already in the 60-ies by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. There is still research being done on thorium, especially by India.
Boof,
I would imagine if it was used in an Alfa class submarine it would be capable of being load following. The problem is the loss of income for very little saving in fuel( U238 is almost free) when demand is less, like wind I am sure these reactors will be running at maximum possible power, whatever the electricity demand.
Do submarine reactors really follow power loads, or just dump heat into the seawater (which is a pretty big heat sink)? I'll ask my ex-navy nuclear engineer friend and return with an answer.
Yes, submarines go from full to minimum to full again in *minutes*. This is possible through the use of very effective neutron poison control and the use of highly enriched fuel.
David
Anything with a steam turbine has trouble "load-following", but it doesn't really matter because the steam turbine generation methods are cheaper than the alternatives. The limiting load-following component in natural gas fired combined cycle plants is the steam turbine. Usually with wind, the weather man can give you a couple hours notice which is compatible with almost all steam turbines. I don't think solar would give you the same luxury.
All nuclear plants can load follow enough for what any sane power operator would want to maneuver, and all nuclear plants have the same maneuvering problems due to the fission process. All nuclear (and fossil plants) can use air cooling to reject heat. Reprocessing nuclear fuel is stupid with uranium this cheap whether the government likes it or not.
I believe in the coming years, commodity prices will create a great incentive for power utilities to refurbish nuclear plants instead of decommissioning them. It will take some innovation, but I don't see why it couldn't be done. All the decommissioned plants so far have been relatively small plants. A utility will crap in its pants at the thought of permanently losing two 1200 MW plants without a mortgage.
All nuclear plants can load follow enough for what any sane power operator would want to maneuver
Simply wrong.
Look at my posts using May 17th in France. Max nuke 0:00 to 01:00, min nuke 08:00 to 09:00. Ratio of max to min was much less than max to min ratio of demand. ZERO nuke response to 16:00 demand minimum.
French nukes do not really load follow, they just cycle daily.
True load following (and a test) is when a thunderstorm hits Houston or New Orleans on a hot summer afternoon. Most of the air conditioning load can disappear in minutes. Or not. Summer thunderstorms are unpredictable.
Nukes are useless for load following.
Alan
Doesn't is not the same thing as can't.
Is there any incentive for the French nuke plant operators to follow load?
Yes, to burn less oil, coal and natural gas.
Alan
If the total load at minimum usage (including exports) is higher than the total supply from nuclear then running flat out would be doing exactly that, no?
Except the French do not "run flat out", as my numbers for May 17th et al show.
It is clear to me, looking at the hour by hour production mix, that hydro is the main peak follower with FF next. Nuke basically not at all.
Alan
Not being intimate with their production profiles myself, what you describe is almost exactly what I would expect given:
1. Hydro follows at the turn of a valve and has near zero fuel cost.
2. Fossil Fuel plants have varying cost/following capabilities, from NatGas plants that follow as fast as Hydro to coal plants that move even more slowly than nuclear for following load.
Simply put, when you have easier options for following and no cost benefit for following with the nukes, who would do so?
Civilian power plants aren't made with the turn on a dime capability that the military models are, the hardware to do so safely costs extra as does the training to make sure your operators will use it properly.
What I call "sane" load following is the cycling you mention. It is insane to throw money down the toilet, which is exactly what you would be doing when diving down in power on a nuke unit to compensate for a thunderstorm turning off the AC.
To classify fossil and nuclear technologies as unable to load follow is disingenuous because a turbine-generator is designed for the application for which it is being used. If some clown wanted to load follow at higher speeds (its all relative) with a nuclear plant, they in theory, could develop a steam turbine with better ramp rates, resistance to high-cycle fatigue, longer outages, etc. Stupid, yes, but entirely possible.
A large portion of the operating costs in nuclear units goes to the engineers working in support of the plant. This makes it uneconomical to ever drop below the unit rating. It also makes nuclear the most economically stimulating form of power generation for a community.
All the decommissioned plants so far have been relatively small plants.
Trojan - 1,130 MW
Alan
PS: It is expected that demolition of the plant will cost as least as much as its construction.
Maybe, but it sure as hell shouldn't.
Alan,I have been following your posts with great interest and find them highly instructive.
Sometimes though I disagree with some info you seem willing to take as definitive.I am by no means a nuclear expert,but I used to live near North Anna in Virginia and worked there on several occasions during maintainence shutdowns and as always I talked to as many people as I could,especially the engineers who were generally willing to take a few minutes to explain the operation of the plant.(The fact that nuclear maintainence work involves a lot of hurry up and wait may explain the engineers free time.)Once I had my initial experience I was able to secure other well paid short term work at some other plants,and enjoyed many a long conversation with other workers every where I went,some of them very well trained specialists.It takes a lot of talk to fill up a twelve hour shift when you may only be needed for an hour or two.
So we talked about everything from proliferation to decomissioning to long term uranium supplies to coon hunting and the humongous bass that lived in the cooling water exit.Unfortunately you had to be cleared by security to fish there,and my job description didn't require me to me to enter that area.In a nuke, you are generally either required to be at a certain place, or else forbidden to go there.For what it's worth,the people I talked to generally thought that the uranium supply would last more or less forever-just like the coal and oil people.They did however acknowledge that at some distant time that breeder reactors might be needed,and did not seem to think that building and running them would be a problem.
Make what you will of this.Oil and coal depletion were mentioned only in passing if at all,but everybody seemed to agree that coal/oil prices would be going up,thereby making the nuke a better long term deal.
I can't remember that the question of reactor type being determined by the need/desire of the feds to control the fuel cycle came up.I could have forgotten by now anyway.
These people generally viewed spent fuel storage and decomissioning as non issues,from an engineering pov.As they saw it,sealing the fuel up in a deep dry salt cavern would take care of the problem if not with absolute safety then safely enough that our future citizens would have numerous other problems of far greater consequence to occupy thier time.As it has worked out,it seems to me that they were quite possibly right....mountiantop removal,ash slurry impoundments failing,global warming induced drought storm rising sea level..you see what I mean?Maybe even a nuclear war(oh the irony!)over oil.
As far as decomissioning goes,thier view was that once you pulled out the fuel,you could pretty well just bury the rest of the plant in a good dry desert and forget it,as any body dumb enough to dig it up would live long enough to regret it,but not a whole lot longer.Or you could just pour the containment building full of good concrete and forget it.Anybody capable of breaking into an ungaurded plant at some far distant time would be capable of doing far worse things, and with much less effort.
Now of course this is nothing less than the worst sort of sacrilege from the anti nuke environmentalist pov,and I personally do not know enough about the RELATIVE risks over the long term have a definite opinion either way.
But let us run the following thought experiment.Let us suppose that we can pour the containment building of a dead nuke full of concrete,weld up the entrances,and pour another few thousand tons of concrete here and there for good measure.Let us pass leglisation to pay for half a dozen around the clock gaurds to keep people off the premises,which would be more than ample,considering that getting into the containment would be literally impossible without a large crew using a great deal of heavy equipment which would have to be driven to the site over public roads. let us suppose that this costs 500 million dollars,which would seem to be ample.
This would free up anywhere from 4 or 5 billion dollars on up to maybe 9 or 10 billion dollars,depending on whose figures you use,to fund more solar,wind,geothermal,biofuel or whatever the best current use happens or seems to be.
Now let us suppose that we do this fifty times,and save 250 billion dollars,which properly invested in renewables,just might be the difference between a soft landing and an uncontrolled crash or worse.
If you step all the way back and look at the big picture,this might not be as farfetched as it sounds.Keep in mind that if we don't get thru the next half century more or less whole,then in centuries to come there will almost certainly be plenty of land and water well removed from any nuclear ruins(of the electricity generating kind,at least!)and probably very few people around anyway.If they are capable of getting in,they would ,one,either know better,or two,as stated above,be capable of worse mischief with less effort imo at least.If somebody ten or twenty thousand years from now gets radiation poisoning,that will be sad,but people will also be getting hit by lightning,murdered by jealous spouses, and maybe eaten by grizzly bears.
Let us also remember that the folks who are howling the loudest about spent fuel storage and nuclear decomissioning costs are the same ones in many cases who are also screaming the loudest about the environmental costs of burning oil and coal,although I must admit some of them have recently seen the nuclear light.
You may safely assume that I think the environmental movement is driven in part by nature worship,and that I don't tend to take shamans and preachers very seriously.I do realize the grave risks we are running of destroying our life support system,and support environmental initiatives that imo will do more good than harm.
If this post doesn't raise a few howls,I am sadly mistaken.Remember,I'm just a crabby old farmer and shouldn't be taken too seriously,except when I comment on agriculture.
Is there any connection between the marketing of fast-breeder technology and the Rosatom/Siemens joint venture:
http://w1.siemens.com/press/en/events/2009-03-PK.php
Berlin, Mar 03, 2009
Rosatom and Siemens sign Memorandum of Understanding on the creation of a nuclear joint venture
Siemens and the Russian State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom today signed a Memorandum of Understanding on the creation of a joint venture in the field of nuclear energy. The joint venture plans to push ahead with further development of Russian pressurized water reactor (VVER) technology. It also intends to handle marketing and sales, and the construction of new nuclear power plants as well as modernization and upgrades of existing plants. The joint venture may take up business opportunities along the entire nuclear conversion chain from fuel fabrication to decommissioning of nuclear power plants.
Thank you Christopher Babb and Gail for this article.
It is positive to see TOD post articles about future energy production possibilities, in addition to articles about the decline status of oil fields, and the many possible actions that people can take to reduce their resource consumption. Posting about possible contributions from nuclear energy systems shows a useful open-mindedness towards addressing all aspects of human sustainability with respect to energy availability and use.
I know that the United States has a wealth of talented and experienced nuclear engineers who could contribute greatly towards creating new generations of safer, easier-to-maintain nuclear power plants. We need to turn some of our brightest minds in these areas away from weapons research and naval rectors and properly fund (yes, subsidize, just like we have done with oil and coal) work on civilian, commercial power reactors.
We cannot wait until a favorable correlation of economic forces that may occur somewhere out in the 2050 time frame...we need to push forward with nuclear, solar, wind, and geothermal (including and maybe primarily ground heat pumps for residential needs.
Waiting until we are too far behind the power curve is simply planning for a self-fulfilling prophesy of doom. Write your Congress-people, as I have done, and tell them to turn our nuclear engineering talent from Sandia National Labs, Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, Idaho National Labs, Oak Ridge, and the numerous other institutions, including universities, to create commercial nuclear power solutions. We have much to learn from the French and the Russians and other countries.
Nuclear, solar, wind, and geothermal power can provide us the power we need, reduce the environmental destruction from mining and burning coal and producing and consuming oil, greatly reduce our money flowing overseas to people who want us and our way of life dead, and create long-term high-skills, high-paying jobs for our citizens. We need to start replacing base-load coal with nuclear immediately. I do not want any more mountains leveled and permanently destroyed; no more ash sludge lakes, and no more mercury in my fish and other heavy metals spewed into my environment. Slashed CO2 levels would be a huge plus as well. Short-range, light-weight, lower-speed electric cars for our people...don't say we can't, because we can.
And...no more than two (2) children per each woman's lifetime, with incentives for having one child. Maybe a child cap and trade credit...if you don't want any children, profit from selling your two shares to those who do. A little tongue-in-cheek, but not really. Some of those who preach the most and loudest about 'personal responsibility'/'values' don't have much self-control or exhibit many community sustainability actions at all. This para is off-topic, but not really...we can't create new energy sources without addressing over-population and over-consumption and expect to bequeath a sustainable civilization to our descendants.
Thankyou,MW,for that very sensible post.And the paragraph on population is not off topic.Population overshoot is either the basis of,or a major contributor to most of our problems.
We need less emotion and more rational thinking in our approach to nuclear power.It is evident that the waste problem can be much reduced by 4th generation reactors.I believe that there is far too much emphasis put on nuclear weapons proliferation which might result from the nuclear industry.
Those nations who want nuclear weapons are going to obtain them regardless - the last half of the 20th century illustrates that.
I couldn't agree more....
Since my days working as a project engineer at a plant producing D2W, S3G and S8G naval reactors (as well as others), I can't understand the concerns with nuclear weapons, dirty or otherwise. We have accepted massive death on the roads of this county (variable from 70,000 a year to 45,000 a year), as well as massive deaths due to oil (look at a few of the recent wars for example) as well as massive deaths from coal (google it) and not one death due to a nuclear incident on a US Navy Nuclear vessel in over 50 years!! And these are moving targets!!!
What is seemingly forgotten is that these cores last, and last and last. Some of the S3G's and S8Gs and a couple D2W's that I was involved with are still operational (they were built over 20 years ago) without refuel. In fact, some of the designs had 30 to 50 year potential lifespans depending on usage. Most of the ones today have shorter lifespans but it is possible to reverse that course as well with some of the newest designs.
The cool thing is that these cores were often capable of 100+ MW output in a package that fit on a railcar (although this was more of a peak number as I recall - hey, it was over 20 years ago). (Note: The US Navy has specified a power output of 80 MW - see link below) BTW, at the time, one of the running jokes was that the paperwork that went out with the core weighed more than the core itself - so maybe Rickover, anal retentive that he was, had a great idea, because the safety of these worldwide roaming powerplants has been stellar.
Navy Nuclear Powered Ships
Of course, I'd like to see a mix of Solar, Wind, GT, with less of the nat gas, oil and coal being used to fuel our power demand. And yes, I can agree that adding insulation and turning off the lights will also help but, for me, the bridge from oil is not going to be easy. It takes highly power dense materials to do that and nuclear, especially ones modeled on the Naval Nuclear format, have the combination of output, load balancing and lifespan needed to keep the lights on, the web running and the toilets flushing, and this does matter to this human. Also, if we are truly going to go to a smart grid arrangement - assuming no use of coal/oil/natgas then only Nuclear and Hydro provide the flexibility to make that a reality. Wind and Solar do not - yes, I too am waiting on the battery systems to provide long term multi-day outputs of 100KW or more.... ;-) The alternative is to go dark....power down...which, granted, may not be all a bad thing.
IMO if we are going to make the eventual conversion to solar and wind "exclusively" in a 20 year window (which I doubt but seriously hope can be done) then we need a highly power dense source to do so if what I'm reading is correct about PO. Nuclear, especially via proven breeder technology, could likely be the most significant contributor to that conversion. And there are already processes to handle the conversion from HEU to LEU for those decommish issues in the distant future. Much of what is stored as "spent" fuel can be reprocessed and reused with the right application of technology already available. Yes, there is a law of diminishing returns, but what is the diminishing return of the current oil situation comparatively????? Just keeping it in perspective.
And what about Nuclear as a source for Hydrogen? Its not only possible, it is proven. And at least we do have folks looking forward in that direction.
Nuclear Hydrogen
yes, I too am waiting on the battery systems to provide long term multi-day outputs of 100KW or more.... ;-)
I toured one such battery (as it was being upgraded to 1.6 GW)
http://www.tva.gov/sites/raccoonmt.htm
Problem solved !
Alan
Nuclear, solar, wind, and geothermal power can provide us the power we need...
I want to believe that. My concern is the capital required to implement a combination of new generating technologies and much greater efficiencies exceeds that which will be available. It is one thing to say that the technology exists to electrify the transportation system, replace the coal- and NG-fired generators, and build smaller, energy-efficient housing close to all the jobs for (in the US) the 50% of the population living in the 'burbs. But those represent enormous capital investments, quite possibly more than is available to do the job.
Capital investments is not a problem. Look, you guys' GDP is 14 trillion dollars per year. If all that money went into nuclear power at $5,000 per kW, then it would build you 2800 nuclear rectors of 1000 MW a piece in a year. Now, the power produced in that fleet would be about 9 kW per capita. You guys use about 11 kW from all sources, including oil, but more sensible first-world countries use about 5-6 kW.
Of course, you can't and wouldn't want to do this expansion in a year for a variety of reasons, but it serves as a good example of your might when it comes to capital investments. If you mobilise as you did for WWII, I think you'll find that your resources are more than enough to cope with a post-peak world in time. In the beginning, if oil availability would drop by 4% per year, you could cope for more than a decade just by curbing some waste. Drive less, move closer to work, car pool and so on. During this time you could invest in a lot of low hanging fruit in the areas of power saving and power production, which gives you even more time, and so on.
GDP is such a bad measure of industrial capacity. More than half of the GDP of usa and "developed" world is services, in some countries even 80%. Then in industry there are all kinds of industries and you can't be sure that in proportion they exist is exactly what is needed for nuclear power plants' construction.
Yes, I agree, but I feel the size of different investments in proportion to GDP gives some indication if they are doable or not.
Here, I concluded that a fleet of nuclear reactors covering the entire energy requirements of USA would cost it about a year's worth of GDP. Since reactors have a life span of at least 60 years, the stable state investment would be 1/60 of GDP per year, or perhaps 1/40 of GDP if all costs, including fuel, O&M, waste disposal and so on were included.
2.5% of GDP for energy is not that much. Sure, you might need a bit more initially if we consider ourselves under-invested now. And of course, electricity can't always be used in place of oil. But anyhow.
The number of reactors (or is it plants?) needed in the US has been variously stated to be 400 - 1000 in various threads here on TOD. Overestimation is safer, so let's go with 1k.
The last number I remember a current plant under construction, or recently finished (or whatever) was 12 billion. At that price, and using 1k, which is less than half the reactors you state could be built, the price is actually 12 trillion.
And that only covers the US.
Cheers
You get two reactors for 12 billion.
As we get two for that price, this cancels out your "half the reactors". The US GDP is somewhat larger than 12 trillion. So, this seems to support what I said about one year's GDP
worth being sufficient.
1. I didn't say estimates, I said construction. As in REAL, touchable buildings. Estimates are worthless.
2. Those prices are exclusive of all other costs.
But at least you linked to something! Got a real, live, being-constructed-as-we-speak or recently completed reactors at those prices?
Cheers
EDIT: Also just an estimate. (AFBE probably has numbers.)
http://www.newsobserver.com/business/story/993686.html
That's a fair bit over your provided estimate.
Besides cost, my biggest issue with nuclear is time. We don't appear to have decades for a build-out.
If those estimates (some of which are based on actual contracts) are worthless, my friend, you are welcome to provide something better. As far as I know, the Japanese, the French, the Russians and the Chinese have built cheaper than those estimates. They typically build on budget and on time. But I expect you to come up with the Finnish fifth reactor as a deterring example.
Regarding time - time is money. Wind, for example, is more expensive, all things considered, and is therefore fundamentally slower to scale.
Wind, for example, is more expensive, all things considered, and is therefore fundamentally slower to scale.
The expansion of wind is a close parallel to the expansion of nuke, with an offset of decades. It is *NOT* "slower to scale" than nuke was.
And wind can go from financial commitment to production in 20 to 36 months. *FAR* faster than nuke, especially in the USA.
Best Hopes for a Wind Rush and a reasonable, economic build out of nuke,
Alan
Have you considered that we have more resources now, and should be able to build much faster?
It's even faster to put a generator on your stationary bike and pedal away, but how much speed do we need? If you have a fixed amount of resources to devote per year, and lets assume wind is 50% more expensive but can be built in two years compared to nuke's four. Then buildout would look like this, equal money spent:
Build a nuke in the USA in four years !!
LMAO !
The Dept. of Energy has calculated that we have the scarce resources (people & materials) to build 8 new nukes in a decade. MAX !
Add a tincture of Murphy, and I think (after reading the report) 6 plus completing Watts Bar 2 is the maximum realistic goal for the next ten years.
Lets build that 6 + WB2 *AND* lots of wind (no major resource constraints there).
Money is not the only constraint. You are promoting some fantasy nuke building world that is out of sync with reality.
Just ain't going to happen.
And if we try, I expect the nuke building industry to commit hari kari a second time (TVA cancels 11 nukes one fien day, 1 of 5 WHOOPS reactors gets completed, etc.)
Best Hopes for Reality Based Planning,
Alan
In the decade from 1964 to 1973, you started construction of 73 reactors. Granted, "only" 49 of them were in commercial operation four years later (by 1977).
Now, with five times higher real GDP, a more than 50% higher population count and a simpler reactor design available to you, you still can't imagine doing more than eight(!) reactors in a decade. It's a pity you yanks have grown so impotent.
While this is Westinghouse sales talk, I think it does count for something:
The AP1000 design saves money and time with an accelerated construction time period of approximately 36 months, from the pouring of first concrete to the loading of fuel. Also, the innovative AP1000 features:
50% fewer safety-related valves
80% less safety-related piping
85% less control cable
35% fewer pumps
45% less seismic building volume
73 started in a ten year period, 49 finished in year 14 does NOT imply it takes 4 years to build a nuke in the USA.
Example, Calvert Cliffs 1 started June 1, 1968 and was connected to the grid (still not commercial) on January 3, 1975. Commercial in May 1975.
In 1964 we had a large naval nuclear program and had been building smaller commercial nukes.
Today, repairing Browns Ferry 1 and completing the two Watts Bar nukes (plus a few naval nukes) are all the new construction base we have. The suppliers are gone (unless they serve maintenance needs), the people are dead or retired (or about to retire).
A new nuke building program in the USA in 2010 would have FAR fewer human and nuke rated material resources than we had in 1964. The statistics on population & GDP are quite irrelevant.
And we built some unsafe nukes during that building boom (TMI & Zimmer come to mind, others would not pass today's standards).
Alan
A number of the early nukes were actually built in four years. They were not up to current standards, but AFAIK, the AP-1000 is still simpler than they were.
While I agree that there needs to be some ramp-up period, I feel you are being extremely an unnecessarily pessimistic. Much of the construction work involved is much like following any other blue-print. Another large part of the work is done in foreign factories that delivers parts. Regarding general nuke O&M - the Homer Simpson work - there exists a base of trained personnel in your current 100 reactors. A few key parts or specific skills may require a small ramp up period, but that's it.
I'm convinced you can do more today than in the 60-ies. You won't, because the need isn't pressing enough, but you could.
WE cannot safely and economically. We can repeat the disaster of the late 1970s and 1980s.
The detailed study by the Dept of Energy did cannibalize maintenance staff (but not enough to make operation of existing nukes unsafe). X-rays of pipe welds was a major bottleneck in the study, but many others.
I will take a detailed study of all factors by the appropriate gov't body over a guess from Sweden.
You underestimate the need for experienced construction management (the lack of this is what killed nuke building before, my #1 cause). Bad management > cost overruns and delays + bad quality
Alan
You have 50 states, each with the size and resources of a single country of the rest of the world. You saying you cannot do 50 reactors simultaneuously is like saying that, for instance, Israel, Ukraine, Romania and Chile cannot build one each.
But it's okay. I won't press the issue further. If you don't believe you can, then you can't.
Jeppen,I am with you here buddy,there are MANY REASONS why we should be able to speed up nuclear construction.The miracle of standardized production alone,if it could be realized politically,would take care of half of the problem.Substantial portions of each new plant could then be produced off site by a company and crew that would build the tenth subassembly probably in half the time it took for the first one,even though the hundredth one might take only a little less time than the tenth.A truly standardized design allows you to put nine women on the job and make a baby in a month.
Any construction job is held up innumerable times by uxexpected glitches if it is a one off.The solution is ready the second time around.As far as I can see,every nuke in the US seems to be pretty much one of a kind in more details than not.
Furthermore most of the necessary materials could be made available by diversion from other big jobs.Right now I expect concrete capacity is adequate for any number of new nukes,considering the slow state of construction in general.There are millions of bright young men and women out there who can master the trade work such as welding and pipe fitting in record time if the opportunity is made available.
Why?Well,the joke goes like this.Whaddya get when ya cross a fitter with a chimp?A. a retarded chimp
The average student able to pass freshman chemistry at any legit university has already learned before he gets out of high school all math a fitter learns in a long drawn out apprentice program-and the program is deliberately drawn out so the apprentice can learn slowly at a reduced wage as a helper over several years.Engineering students are expected to to master more and infinitely more sophisticated new knowledge in thier first half semester than any craftsman learns in his entire journey man program.
We can have all the skilled workers we need if and when industry is willing to pay to train them.The public schools in this country will not get the job done,because the prevailing philisophy is to put all the trouble makers in the vocational wing,out of the hair of the teachers preparing the next generation of lawyers and bankers.
"Nuclear reactors' cost: $17 billion"
For TWO 1150 MW reactors. Still expensive but actually HALF that number. In China they are build them at $1.5 billion. Big diff and worth looking at.
David
Are these the reactors made with Chinese drywall?
Nuclear proponents are the proof, themselves, that nuclear is dangerous: just look what it does to your brains!
;)
Let me say this real slow:
* He said they cost 6B each.
* I posted a current example of 7.5B each. (You see, the quote used a plural, so, um, yeah, I know it was for two. Besides, I actually read the link.)
* That's an increase of 25% over his stated costs.
* 25% is a significant increase, and, again, is exclusive of costs other than construction.
* This ain't China.
You people are in fantasy land if you think nuclear can come anywhere near to dealing with PO.
Cheers
PS: h/t to Alan.
Didn't you say $17B for two? I wonder whose brain is affected.
No, this is first half of 2008 with sky-high commodity and labour prices ... no, wait a minute, perhaps it isn't!
Jeppen,
I looked back at some of your early posts. Nothing has changed. You are rude, arrogant, childish and cannot or will not back up your claims. Among your first comments here was something along the lines of, "What kind of socialist crap is that?" Brilliant.
Yes, it should have been 8.5 billion. That weakens your case, Sherlock.
You're getting a bit obsessive, my friend. If the editors don't feel I contribute enough for them to put up with my "rude, arrogant and childish" ways, then they can kick me. Until then, I guess you'll just have to keep on whining endlessly about it.
Hi MoonWatcher.
Definitely NOT off-topic. The cap and trade idea is brilliant (probably too rational, but brilliant never the less). I have long hoped that some form of nuclear research would lead to safe and economical electrical power. Reliable and abundant electrical power could seriously mitigate many of the fossil fuel depletion issues we face. However, no technology will save humans unless we can reduce our population to some sustainable level (say 2B) - energy supply is just one issue - there are many more that overpopulation is seriously impacting.
They are not talking about 1000MW reactors but 100MW ones. Read it carefully. A 1000MW/1GW plant would be 10 of these suckers.
Load following is not as big an issue as people seem to think it is. In France they regularly do load following.
Minimum load capability is a function of turbine design primarily (minimum temp/steam/gas flow) and reactor design, which most reactors can handle with a few extra and elongated fuel rods (like in France).
Many Gen IV reactors especially the MSR usually noted as the LFTR, is very capable of rapid load changes.
The Soviet submarines mentioned, as well as US submarines are designed for extremely rapid (with in a few minutes) minimum to maximum to minimum load rates.
I want to echo what others have said about this essay: it's most interesting and, vital, that TOD have these sorts of articles about alternative energy fixes, even if they are decades away. It is precisely "decades away" that encourages the human mind to seek scientific solutions to our problems.
Well done.
David Walters
In France they regularly do load following.
It is my understanding that EDF tried load following with a handful of their reactors and with generally dismal results. Instead they sell power at a deep discount at 3 AM to Luxembourg (pumped storage), Switzerland (hold back hydro) and other nations that turn down their coal fired base load.
Alan
No, Alan, you are wrong. If you got the WNA site and look at their "France" page:
--From: http://world-nuclear.org/info/inf40.html
The French are quite good at this. They even shutdown NPP on weekends to give everyone a break, now and again.
All EPRs are designed in this load following ways, BTW.
David
Ontario once shut down a third of their CANDU reactors every spring and fall because the power was not needed. A different form of load following.
The new EPRs (one in Finland, one in France under construction) are designed for load following. Time will tell just how well.
The "real world" experience I was told was that load following did not work that well in practice. Thermal stress from changing temperatures was one medium issue, but very slow response times was another problem (massive thermal inertia, partially from decay of short lived isotopes).
Alan
I clicked on the French grid operator's website
Total demand
http://www.rte-france.com/htm/an/accueil/courbe.jsp
And the modest load following of nuke
http://www.rte-france.com/espace_clients/an/visiteurs/vie/prod/realisati...
Choose an earlier day, since it is just after mid-night in France.
The minimum nuke for May 17th was 08:00 to 09:00 and nuke was 35,132 MW, coal/gas 574 MW, hydro 5,983 MW for a total of 41,689 MW.
OTOH, near minimum demand was at 06:30 at 34,628 MW.
So load following nuke missed the minimum by about two hours and was much higher than demand.
France has a secondary minimum @ 16:00 and the nuke load following to that was zero/could not be discerned.
The maximum nuke generation on May 17th was, incredibly, from midnight to 01:00 ! 43,171 MW. NOT following demand at all.
So "load following" by French nukes just barely works, and does not work well. Quite frankly, after looking at the data, I could not even call it load following. Some new term is required (minimal daily cycling ?)
Alan
Is it possible that Candus have to go down every 18 months for refuelling? Onterio has more hydropower than they can use so I can't see them load following with nukes. Of course they refuel the nukes during low demand seasons.
Robert,
CANDU's can re-fuel continuously the fuel rods are horizontal, like the early graphite piles(X10).
the biggest issue for load following is the loss of revenue, fuel is a small cost, capital costs never sleep and need to be fed continuously, same for wind turbines.
I've consistantly maintained that this is the french just being flat out stupid. Its not like they have marginal costs for fuel that in anyway makes up for the extra work that goes into load following. If the french really wanted to do load following cheaply with nukes, they should just dump the excess load into resistor banks rather than roll the dice with plants designed for constant load.
The French did complete Grand Maison (1,070 MW) pumped storage in 1997 and several smaller units in the 1970s and 1980s.
# La Coche (1976), 285 MW
# Le Cheylas (1979), 485 MW
# Montézic (1983), 920 MW
# Rance (1966), 240 MW hybrid pumped water-tidal plant
# Revin (1976), 800 MW
# Super Bissorte (1978), 720 MW
for 4,280 MW (plus occasional tidal).
However, looking at their "load following", (max 43.171 MW, min 35,131 MW) on a mild spring day, they could use another 4 GW (and turn off that coal and/or gas plant).
OTOH, on January 17th, max nuke was 59,172 MW and 60,658 MW on January 13th. Coal/gas maxed at 5.881 MW and fuel oil at 1.032 MW on the 13th.
More nukes and more pumped storage would seem to be needed in the winter.
With larger transmission lines, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, UK and the Netherlands could idle coal plants for most of the year and import surplus French nuke all spring, summer and fall (with more pumped storage on either end).
Best Hopes for Rational Utility Planning and Dispatch,
Alan
Yes, yes I agree. All I'm saying is that playing with the power output of a reactor when there isn't any marginal cost savings is just dumb. That the french did this to demonstrate it doesn't save anything is nice, but people looking at this to argue that reactors can load follow is silly. Sure they can load follow, but they shouldn't.
These reactors are Adamov's work. Adamov was arrested in the US few years ago and then tried in Russia and found guilty of stealing a few millions dollars.
He was generally viewed as the US friend and big enemy of nuclear proliferation.
There is also a group nuclear scientists in Russia who were developing different designs. Haven't heard anything for about five years - perhaps because of secrecy.
Can't write more, only able to read DB on my way to/from work
Hope someone covers Adamov's story here in more detail.
Found surprisingly few links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yevgeny_Adamov
http://www.kommersant.com/p606616/r_1/Evgeny_Adamov_s_Secrets_May_Come_Out/
http://www.bellona.org/subjects/Adamov_case
It is strange that the US wanted to arrest for fraud and money laundering the head of the Russian Nuclear Agency. There are literally countless number of Madoffs living in the US. Trillions have already been stolen by these people and no one so far has been arrested.
It looks like that Adamov was targeted, perhaps because of his personality or more likely because of his work. Such operations are called character asasination.
What do we know about Adamov and what did Adamov for the Russian nuclear industry?
In 1988 after Chernobyl he insisted that the Russian reactors similar to the Chernobyl's are safe to run. We would have peaked much earlier if the reactors were stopped.
In 1990 he designed a plan for Russia to substitute export of oil and NG by exporting electricity from nuclear stations. Again this would have postponed peak oil.
He was behind Bushehr contract - it is still controversial and the project has enormous number of enemies.
He was behind the Russian nuclear projects in India and China.
SVBR-100 is his project and also he designed an underground nuclear station which could provide heat to a city with 500.000 people.
A lot of positive results.
My guess he suffered for Bushehr.
Some Random Notes related to Russian nuclear exports:
Currently the following article appeared on the Russian website -
http://www.atominfo.ru/en/index.html
123 agreement and Russian nuclear industry
In the series of articles by the American authors that appeared in the Russian press, some new directions of the collaboration are mentioned, that could be initiated if the 123 agreement will come into effect.
First of all, it is the creation of the fast neutron reactors. It is very important, that in this direction Russia can play the role of a donor, and America, correspondingly be a receiver of the technologies.
Development of fast neutron reactors in USA was stopped during more than 20 years, and a main part of groundwork of American specialists was either lost or went out of date. Theoretically Russia could export to the United States its own technologies on commercial prices, but American politicians should overcome their own pride for that and take a principal decision on the possibility of buying the advanced technologies from the recent most probable enemy.
Less ambitious and faster realizable project could become the use on the commercial terms of the Russian experimental base - first of all possibilities of NIIAR - for the American program on creating of the fast burn-out reactor.
The other main Russian nuclear website is
Nuclear.Ru
which covers the huge commitment that the Russians are making in the area of nuclear exports. There have been several on again and off again efforts by the Russian Atomstroyexport and the French AREVA group to find common ground to work together.
Also on May 20-21 the Russians ran an interesting conference in London called
FINANCING NUCLEAR POWER
Wednesday 20th and Thursday 21st May 2009
Copthorne Tara, London
Visit us at http://www.smi-online.co.uk/events for more information!
As the nuclear renaissance moves from theory into reality there has never been a more crucial time for the industry to explore comprehensive and innovative financing options.
SMi’s second annual Financing Nuclear Power conference will this year take a technical and practical approach. By drawing on experience it will consider the realistic financing methods available to this high risk and high capital industry. Bringing together the government, utility companies and financiers to discuss the challenges this is an essential event for those involved in this thought-provoking sector including Heads of Nuclear Development, Chief Financial Officers and Heads of Energy Investment.
What is this? It all seems to be copy-pasted from some very poor marketing firm. Lets see:
(1) The first and most important problem in nuclear power is wastes disposal. While it is promised that the new reactor design would decrease storage life from 100,000 years to 550 years its still too much to actually plan, yet alone implement a safe and real storage plan. That is assuming the claim is right. How on earth any empire can plan for anything of such a long duration of time?
(2) It claims to increase 100 times the energy-per-kg extraction from natural uranium U-238. That sounds too good to be true. From where the number 100 came from, why its not some less convenient number like 87 or 124? Yet it demands to keep on putting fresh U-238, why?
(3) Since it not gain high temperatures it means there must be a lot of them to be built, that is, each plant would have a lower electric power production than the ones in use.
(4) Its not complete yet. All that design and tech is on paper only. We still have to wait till 2020 to see any real thing. The 10+ years delay in implementation is I think considerably above than the industry normal of new plants building. It shows the tech is still in its crude form and critical research is still pending. Why so quick in making claims prematurely. Do they found out its not much there they can improve so want to sale now whatever they have developed?
(5) Can we trust russian plants? Similar claims would had made about chernobyl.
(6) Isn't it too big a claim to make about a yet-to-develop and yet-to-implement tech that in case of an accident the damage would be limited to the confines of the building? Did the author forget to mention the radiations threat or do he not know that the bulk of all threats and damages in a nuclear accident is because of radiations, not the actual blasts at the dome?
(7) If the above was not enough, the design is based on using rare-earth metals limiting the large scale use of the design.
The only sensible claim made by the article is the increase in EROEI because the new design is supposed to "extract 100 times the energy from the same natural uranium as compare to usual plants"
It is reasonable to respond to each of the reader's seven (7) points.
(1) The waste disposal issue has several aspects that can be touched on briefly. First, countries and cities routinely commit to public works such as sewer and water systems that have useful lives of many hundreds of years which inevitably force succeeding generations to take care of them. Second, the total volume of waste generated by fast reactor systems would shrink on a per KWH basis, as the reactors' plutonium would be burned and not stored for burial.
(2) Professional estimates on the increases in the energy that can be extracted from a pound of uranium by fast reactors ranges from a low of 30 times to a high of 250 times. Since once through reactors primarily burn U-235 they tend to make very little use of the 99.3% of uranium that is U-238. The breed/burn cycle in fast reactors totally changes that. To better understand what is going on in a conventional reactor see pp.20-22, in Nifennecker's book, "Accelerator Driven Subcritical Reactors". The actual additions of U-238 in each re-fueling cycle are very small. The 5-8 year refueling cycle in the SVBR-100 is dictated by the neutronic damage to the metal tubes that are in the fuel assemblies. The reactor's structures actually suffer very little damage in part because they are being protected by the heavy metal coolant.
(3)The core outlet temperatures in the heavy metal SVBR-100 are actually higher than that of conventional pressurized water reactors. Yes it is true that the energy output of the individual SVBR-100 reactor is small (100MWe). However, when multiple units of the SVBR-100 reactor are used together, they can readily satisfy the steam volumes required by an electric power plant's turbine.
(4) Actually, the SVBR-100 is definitely not a paper only design. That reactor's design is based on the real world experience that was gained in building and operating the project 705 Alfa attack submarines which used a lead-bismuth cooled fast reactor.
(5) The Russian experience in designing and operating fast reactors has been very good. Witness the success of the BN-600. The Chernobyl accident involving the RMBK-1000 reactor was tragic. However, many if not most experts have concluded that it was a reactor type that should not have been built and deployed. It was a policial decision that was made to speed the production of plutonium for bombs.
(6)The simulations for the kinds of accidents that you are referencing have been made. The design of the reactor is very simple and has numerous fail-safe features. To understand this see A.V. Zrodnikov, et.al. "Nuclear Power Development in Market Conditions with Use of Multi-Purpose Modular Fast Reactor AVBR-75/100.
(7) Bismuth is not a rare earth. Bismuth is present in the earth's crust at about the same concentration as Silver. The combination of deep mining and a major rise in the price of Bismuth would together greatly expand the annual production of Bismuth.
(1) Maintaining public services works like sewers are in no comparison to storing nuclear waste over many hundreds of years. Sewers perform every day returning their investment, they are useful. Storing nuclear waste costs money, it does nothing in return. A sewage spill is not nearly as harmfull as nuclear waste, nor does it have attraction to terrorists. You simply cannot compare them. Providing a growing nuclear wastepile heritage to your grandchildren's grandchildren and think of it so lightly is almost criminal in my opinion.
(5 and 6) In hindsight it is always easy to say that the Chernobyl plant should not have been deployed in the first place. Unfortunately these types of decisions are always judged in hindsight but seem to have no influence to future decisions. In the last 60 years there have been uncountable small incidents, many incidents with little impact and a few large incidents (http://schema-root.org/technology/nuclear/power/accidents/). Whatever anyone tells you, nuclear power is not totally safe. Talk to your insurance company and ask if they will insure your SVBR-100 reactor against accidents. Why is it that they won't?
During the Chernobyl disaster only a few percent of its nuclear fuel was released into the atmosphere but it contaminated 1000nds of square km/miles. If these reactors are the future and 1000nds will be deployed then no simulation will show you what effects there will be if only one of them experiences a large incident.
(1) Maintaining public services works like sewers are in no comparison to storing nuclear waste over many hundreds of years. Sewers perform every day returning their investment, they are useful. Storing nuclear waste costs money, it does nothing in return. A sewage spill is not nearly as harmfull as nuclear waste, nor does it have attraction to terrorists. You simply cannot compare them. Providing a growing nuclear wastepile heritage to your grandchildren's grandchildren and think of it so lightly is almost criminal in my opinion.
(5 and 6) In hindsight it is always easy to say that the Chernobyl plant should not have been deployed in the first place. Unfortunately these types of decisions are always judged in hindsight but seem to have no influence to future decisions. In the last 60 years there have been uncountable small incidents, many incidents with little impact and a few large incidents (http://schema-root.org/technology/nuclear/power/accidents/). Whatever anyone tells you, nuclear power is not totally safe. Talk to your insurance company and ask if they will insure your SVBR-100 reactor against accidents. Why is it that they won't?
During the Chernobyl disaster only a few percent of its nuclear fuel was released into the atmosphere but it contaminated 1000nds of square km/miles. If these reactors are the future and 1000nds will be deployed then no simulation will show you what effects there will be if only one of them experiences a large incident.
Edit: I forgot (7). So Bismuth is as common as silver, let's evaluate it. The price of a material is dependent on it's abundance and the value we give it. Silver is rare and we value it, so it's price is high and thus we use as little as possible. Bismuth however is currently regarded as a waste product so it's relatively cheap. But we'll value it more if we start to use it in enormous amounts in our reactors (I believe it is around 50% Pb/Bi weight distribution) then the result will be a massive price increase. This will inevitably have serious impact on the kWh price.
No, waste disposal is not really a technical or economical problem of significance. (Deep burial works well.) It is only a political problem, currently, because some people obviously doesn't listen to the experts.
Also, please consider that since fuel is utilized a hundred times better, waste production will be a hundred times smaller.
The other points you raise are not really correct either.
1. A political problem is still a real problem. People have any number of reasons (regularly shared here) for not listening to the Experts that Nuclear Advocates want them to listen to..
Waste disposal is clearly a problem, despite the promises of the Reprocessors and the Buriers.. cooling pools still linger with their growing loads, while leaks erupt and casings embrittle.
Yes, people have reasons, but no good ones. Burial is easy and safe.
The world uranium requirements are currently about 65,000 tons. Since we enrich five times, that means 12,000 tons of waste is produced each year and 53,000 tons of depleted uranium. Using fast breeder tech, that could be reduced to 1200 tons of waste and no depleted uranium production. Also, we wouldn't need any mining for such reactors, obviously.
Can you provide a source that claims nuclear waste burial is safe and easy? The only waste burial projects in Europe that I know of are failing miserably: http://www.bellona.org/articles/articles_2008/german_leak
There are more of those salt mines used for nuclear storage and they all suffer from the same problems (leakage, flooding, pollution of underground water, etc). How many years are we trying to find a long term solution to the nuclear waste problem? About 60 years and there is still no solution.
Your assessment about the amount of nuclear waste is also wrong. It is not only the core material you need to bury but also the reactor vessel, piping etc which have become heavily contaminated. Using many small reactors will certainly give not much less waste. Also, when I believe you that this is our future then we need at least 100 times more nuclear power that we have now, resulting in 1000nds of these small reactors. Where are we going to leave the waste of those 1000nds of nuclear plants? Where is the necessary Bismuth coming from, and will alternative power sources like water, wind and solar not be cheaper at that point?
Do I really need to? How long is 100,000 years in a geological perspective, really? I mean, we are debating this in an oil forum. Oil deposits have been separated from the biosphere for quite some time, and we are probably extracting a volume of oil each minute that is larger than the world's yearly production of high level nuclear waste.
The Swedish KSB-3 method is ridulously safe and unnecessarily expensive, but it is nevertheless financed by a measly 0.1 cent/kWh tax. And we are not even doing this large scale - we should probably bury other countries' waste for them to get some economy of scale, but unfortunately, it's tough to sell rational ideas to the voters these days, when so many FUD mongers are around.
That stuff can be buried shallowly without barriers, and the burial site will be an excellent mine after a few hundred years.
I doubt small will be the norm, actually, but we'll see. Current industrialised countries use about 5-6 kW per capita, all energy forms, except for North America which use twice that. Scale the 5-6 kW/capita to a probable world peak population of 10 billion people, and you need 50-60 TW, or 40,000 big reactors. That actually is about 100 times as many as today, and perhaps 150 times the power.
As I said, the waste streams from nuclear plants can never even begin to compete with the volumes of current fossil fuel extraction. We are talking about a difference of five orders of magnitude here, even if we include all radioactive waste.
Don't know how much we need. Also, as I said, I'm not sure this design is better than, for instance, LFTR.
No, probably not.
I cannot find any reference of KSB-3 prior to 2004 where it's said that field testing of that method will begin. So effectively the KSB-3 method has barely begun to prove itself, whereas the saltmines in Germany are in use for storing nuclear waste since 1967. Those saltmines were said to be the 'perfect solution' for storing nuclear waste much as KSB-3, but reality has shown that it was a grave mistake. Now 'new' safe storage solutions are under investigation, like deep underground clay masses and apparently KSB-3. History should teach us something but somehow the nuclear business seems to be able to find new promised lands every time and continue business as usual. The industry would be rational to say that perhaps it doesn't work that well afterall.
Dismissing arguments with FUD mongers or belittle others opinions will not strengthen your position in a discussions btw.
Sorry, but you do engage in FUD. Your whole post is FUD and your whining about mistakes of the 60-ies is plain silly. I can be nice and pretend that it is not, but it is. I don't care if it weakens my position; I simply tell it like it is.
KSB-3 is far fram a "promised land" - it obviously has much more safety and barriers than necessary, and has been researched far beyond any rational motivations to do so.
Geologic disposal is a giant waste of time and effort. Its simple enough to do dry cask storage and revisit the issue again in several centuries.
Nuclear power plants except heavy water CANDUs can't use natural uranium, so the claim is misleading.
The burn up rate of a normal LWR plant is 40 Gwd/MTU. The most wildly optimistic estimate is that a fast breeder could burn up at 1000 Gwd/MTU, or 25 times slower. A CANDU using natural uranium burns up at 7.5 Gwd/MTU, so applying 1000/7.5=133.33 times slower.
But 1000Gwd/MTU is way too high.
Compared to a regular nuclear power plant 1000 GWd/MTU fast breeders burn only 25 times slower.
Of course fast breeders don't use natural uranium but highly enriched uranium(20% U-235) and highly enriched uranium must be separated out of .7% U-235 natural uranium. To get 20% enriched uranium from natural uranium takes 6 times as much rock as LWR fuel enriched to 4% and 9 times the energy.
Fast breeders like the lead fast reactor(LFR) at 550 to 800 degree C would be more efficient(50% fast rather than 33%) as they run about twice as hot as an LWR at <300 degree C. Somehow this doesn't seem to faze the author.
At least sodium fast reactors are not so incredibly hot as LFRs; sodium metal melts at 100 degrees C.
I find VHTR and gas turbine reactors much more theoretically interesting.
Before we can build of these marvelous new plants it is likely that nuclear fuel supplies will already start to decline from demand of nuclear power plants--the LWRs.
The LFR is a design used in Soviet nuclear submarines. It sounds insane. You heat up a giant vat of molten lead and drop a reactor in it. In a shut down you'd have a big giant lead brick( or an explosion as uranium melts at 1100 degrees C. I can't imagine how they will get a 1 GWe plant out of this system.
The main way they 'sell' fast breeder reactors (FBR) is as a solution to the nuclear waste problem---about 1% of LWR waste is plutonium and transuranic elements that could be burnt. So you need to reprocess that nasty stuff to 20% to load into these nuke incinerators. Yucca Mountain is designed to hold 70000 tons of this waste which works out to 700 tons of actinides or 3500 tons of 'fuel'. Assuming a reasonable FBR rate of 200 Gwd/MTU, all that 'fuel' would amount to 5600 Twh of electricity( 7 years of US nuke powered electricity and then it's gone). The fact is we still don't have enough nuke waste to make this worth anyone's time.
The safety record of high temperature breeder reactors is terrible. In fact there is only one currently operating fast breeder in the world BNR-600 in Russia. Monju in Japan appear to be still non operational( was supposed to restart last year).
The only idea that makes the remotest sense is to use high temperature reactors to make hydrogen and to recover/liquify super-heavy oil with direct heat such as tar sands,bitumen, oil shale or super heavy crude. This would be net energy postive( create more energy than it uses) as the EROEI of in-situ oil is 2-5(+200% efficient).
There is a lot of heavy and super heavy oil and oil is the most energy dense storage material we have. It makes sense to use the huge thermal output of nuclear reactors for this rather than net energy negative electricity(50% efficient).
But the uranium in the LWR plant is enriched five times, while the fast breeder use depleted or natural uranium. Thus we get 25*5 = 125 times the energy in fast breeders for the same amount of natural uranium.
No, they typically use plutonium as a seed for a blanket of natural or depleted uranium. Then you burn it all and insert more depleted uranium as you go, while you reprocess the waste to get plutonium for more seeding in new reactors.
No, that is actually not likely. And even if true, it wouldn't be a problem for fast breeder reactors, which use so little fuel. They could run for thousands of years on current depleted uranium stockpiles, and when that runs out, mining wouldn't be a problem since the fuel requirements are so low.
Actually, no. 96% of the mass of spent fuel is uranium which can be burnt. That is the point of fast breeders - to burn U-238 efficiently.
Nonsense. Breeders make sense b/c they utilize fuel better, which make nuclear power a clean, cheap powersource without any practical limits.
The use of the word 'typically' is interesting as there is only one functioning fast breeder power plant in the world which uses...
U-235 at 17-26%.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-600_reactor
Interesting, there's a nuclear power plant that runs on depleted uranium?
Yes, there's a venture called Terrapower run by Microsoft polymath Mynvold that's peddling a 'traveling-wave' fast breeder reactor. (There are no designs of any kind. It's bullshit.)
http://www.intellectualventures.com/docs/terrappower/IV_Introducing%20Te...
This is sci-fi lunacy.
The other method is the Energy Amplifier of Rubbia. The problem is it has an EROEI of 1.25.
I think fusion energy(ITER) has a thousand times more likelihood of working and they actually have money. It's also likely that we won't run out deterium or tritium.
http://www.iter.org/default.aspx
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/16490
If you think U-238 is burnable fuel you need to read some books. U-238 has to be transformed to Pu-239 to be fissile.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enriched_uranium
'..without ANY practical limits.'
Well, I can't top that!
Interesting - I didn't know that. Anyhow, the point of breeders is precisely what I stated. Let me counter your wikipedia link with another.
Eh - just about all of them get significant power from converting U-238 to plutonium and so on.
So, you think fast breeders is more of an engineering challenge than fusion tokamaks? Even though there has been a number of fast breeders actually producing power? Please be serious!
I know, but I call it "burning U-238" anyway. So sue me.
Do you realize the implications of a 100 times better fuel utilization? Since 10 times higher cost of uranium is known to increase reserves by 300 times, the possibility of accepting a 100 times higher cost increase uranium reserves 300*300 = 90,000 times, for a total of 100*90,000 = 9 million times more available nuclear energy in reserves than today - at less or equal fuel cost per kWh as today.
Its all a foolish debate. Any plan that want you to store and guard wastes for 500+ years should be rejected altogether. Nobody can guarantee such a long term thing. You should only plan for things that you can control, end of story. Assuming others will clean up your faults and pay for your sins relates to the following christian faith:
"we not have to pay for our sins because Jesus died for it"
Then I suppose we should reject any industries that produce chemical wastes, which are toxic forever.
Sounds good to me.
It's quite possible to make non-toxic most of our processes, for example our cloth dyes. It's just that most industries have not been asked to take the trouble to do so.
Sure we could. But elements like lead, cadmium, arsenic and the like all are far too useful to ignore.
Why?
Perhaps not, but so what? If there is a leak, a few dies and there needs to be an evacuation, so what? The pollution and deaths of coal is larger by orders of magnitude anyway. The risks and evacuations of hydro projects are larger. The costs of other "renewables" are very damaging in themselves. Terrorism is easier and more deadly through other venues. So why would you need guarantees here? Nuclear is simply better all around.
A working reactor fleet is an enormous gift to generations to come. Conversely, squandering money and destroying the environment with coal, hydro, wind and so on puts our offspring in a bad position.
squandering money and destroying the environment with coal, hydro, wind and so on puts our offspring in a bad position.
BS !!
We, as a society, have had a very valuable inheritance from Niagara Falls, Grand Coulee, Hoover Dam and more. Those three are worth MUCH more than eight nuclear power plants by ANY metric. They last centuries with minimal maintenance, very low operating costs, store water for human use (except Niagara), better for the grid than nukes (black start, reactive power, superb load following), no waste.
*SO* much better than nukes !
Alan
Yes, they are worth a bit more, but they have also destroyed much more. This is forgiveable for dams that were constructed before the era of nuclear power, but nowadays, there is not enough justifications for new hydro projects. Nuclear is far better from ecological and risk perspectives, and not that much worse from an economic standpoint.
Niagara destroyed nothing (less impact than a nuke on the site).
Grand Coulee and Lake Mead are in near desert and desert. Humans at the time put very little value on the submerged land (Lake Mead is now a recreational area when half full).
All three are substantially better than nukes economically. If such sites existed today, they should be developed before nukes are developed (Ontario is drilling a 14.5 m diameter tunnel to extract a couple of hundred more MW from Niagara).
Grand Inga, 40 GW, would be a good example. As is the 4 GW Lower Churchill Falls project now under development in Labrador.
Risks ? Less than from nukes. Hard to imagine a failure mode for Niagara. No one lives in the flood plain below Hoover and AFAIK, also true of Grand Coulee. They are both some of largest blocks of concrete on earth, and not going to collapse.
The pre-OSHA construction death toll was high for both Hoover and Grand Coulee.
Alan
Dam impact is just one of the environmental consequences. I know little of particular US dams, but a quick Wikipedia check indicate that US dams generally aren't exempt from the typical devastating environmental consequences.
Perhaps in a few instances, but river deltas and river banks are typically attractive for human settlement.
I agree, they probably won't. However, here is a list of dam failures. I think Banqiao was the worst, killing about 171,000 and displacing about 11 million. Three Gorges Dam, btw, is built on a fault line and will likely have big problems with sedimentation.
We probably won't agree on what is best here. We seem to value the eco-systems a little differently and I like the very low foot-print of nukes. But in pure economic terms, you are probably right.
Every hydropower station is different, while nukes are much alike (even from different manufacturers). So the risk varies.
Karahnjukar (700 MW) was built 40 km from the nearest sheep farm and the human risk is very close to zero. Some plants do not have dams (Niagara, Churchill Falls for two 4 GW class sites).
The profession (outside China) has been critical of 3 Gorges technical design at several levels. OTOH, no US Gov't dam has ever collapsed.
Grand Inga could produce massive power (40 GW for 50 weeks/year) with minimal environmental impact and human risk.
India plans to build one or two dams near the headwaters and then run-of-the-river powerplants downriver on new rivers.
Given the decreasing costs of TBM tunneling, many more such minimal dams and long tunnels projects are likely.
Alan
The Russians do not think in terms of choosing nuclear or hydro. They are planning on building both to address their future energy needs. In fact the Russians are aiming to have almost one-half of all of their electricity needs being met by nuclear and hydro by 2030. (See Nuclear Power in Russian - September 2008).
What is the time line for the electricity energy plan being developed for the United States by the same date? I don't know. Does anybody? Or is the magic of the market going to work it all out for the U.S?
Regarding Jesus, there are lots of churches here that has been standing for more then 500 years. A waste storage dont even need to be on the surface exposed to rain and frost and would not need continous maintainance.
The world has ~3 million tons of uranium metal (not counting sea water and huge deposits of uranium located at the earth's core).
The world has currently 400 Gwe of nukes using 12000 MTU.
If the world nukes increase by 5% per year on average(+50 units per year to reduce CO2 emissions), we would reach the peak around 2050, just when the FBRs would really come on line.
At that point 2400 nuclear reactors would produce about 21000 Twh , more energy than all the electricity produced today(16800 Twh).
In 2050, 10%--240 might be
fast breeder reactors capable of 2100 Twh with the rest being LWRs.
After peak the amount of LWR fuel will fall forcing the closing about 50 LWR plants per year for the next 50 years.
The price of highly enriched uranium needed for fast breeders will skyrocket but with little choice the world will persevere building another 10 per year so by 2100 there are maybe 750 fast breeders(6000 Twh) left chugging away for another 100 or so years on LWR waste from 50000 tons of plutonium from old spent fuel rods.
Let's hope ITER works.
What the hell are you talking about? Are you seriously peddling the mirage of uranium depletion again?
The pessimists say ~72 years till empty.
The nuke optimists(Bernard Cohen, who made a bet that he could eat plutonium) say HELL...NO LIMITS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_depletion
When Ralph Nader described plutonium as "the most toxic substance known to mankind", Cohen, then a tenured professor, offered to consume on camera as much plutonium oxide as Nader could consume of caffeine,the stimulant found in coffee and other beverages, which in its pure form has an oral (LD50) of 192 milligrams per kilogram in rats.
I said a Peak in 40 years and pretty much exhausted in 90 years so I guess I represent the middle estimate.
Did you even look at the link you posted? Pessimists on uranium depletion are simply ignorant. From the very link you posted under "Pessimistic uranium depletion outlook":
"The world's present measured resources of uranium, economically recoverable at a price of 130 USD/kg according to the industry groups OECD, NEA and IAEA, are enough to last for some 80 years at current consumption"
Where the keywords here are "measured" and "recoverable at a price"
Look, I understand you oppose nuclear power, but opposing it on grounds that there isn't enough fuel is just flat wrong. Pick another talking point, you'll do far better on cost or fear than something that is repeatedly demonstrably wrong.
You don't seem to understand what people here write, or how breeders work. Using breeders, there is no fuel problem. Evah! Even if we don't use the more abundant thorium. Please read up on breeders a bit.
You're off by quite a bit:
And at that price, uranium costs less than half a cent per kW·h, so obviously that's hardly the limit of exploitable resources.
Right, not 3 million tons but 4.7 million, excepts it's now 5.5 million but it will probably be 10.5 million.
We can get uranium out of granite and shale and yes, sea water! Those are uranium resources.
The Japanese have successfully harvested a kilogram or so!
And don't forget all those undiscovered resources!
Oh..oh..oh..
But wait, there's lots of He3 on the moon and what about other planets!
It's really intoxicating to think about all
the (im)possibilities!
Okay, let's suppose there are 10.5 million tons. That just delays the peak until 2075 instead of 2050. In that year we would make around 58000 Twh of electricity from 7200 nukes from 432 today.
Today we make 16800 Twh of electricity( but we use +50000 Twh of all energy types, oil natural gas, etc.). However that represents an annual increase in electricity demand is only 2% componded to cover all those geothermal pumps, electric cars and trains as well.
Let's not forget the munitions that can be de-enriched and burned for fuel.
The United States had depleted uranium inventories of 480,000 tons in 2001. (Look at table 8.2.)
The energy contents of this uranium in a fast breeder reactor is about 24 TJ/kg, or 6.7 GWh/kg. Thus 480,000 tons of inventories represent 6.7 GWh/kg * 480e6 kg = 3.2 million TWh. That is thermal effect, so let's say 1 million TWh electric. That is 250 times the current US yearly consumption of electricity.
It will certainly LOOK like "peak uranium" when we don't have to mine any for 250 years, after which mining can resume at a few percent of current levels.
Sea water uranium will allways be only a rhetorical tool. Phosphate uranium coproduction is much more likely, which is what we did decades ago before the price of uranium crashed. They wouldn't be listed in the IAEA estimates because their production price is above $130/kg.
We certainly shouldn't, seeing the reserve base at the same price point grew over 50% inside five years. Its important to remember uranium exploration has been scant at best over the past 50 years.
The safety record of the Russian sodium reactor BN-600 has been excellent. However, as is well known the chemistry and physical properties of the sodium coolant make it potentially very dangerous. If deployed in large numbers the statistical likelihood of a severe accident would become a near certainty. The much greater safety of heavy metal cooled reactors is clearly spelled out in K. Tucek, J. Carlsson, and H. Wider's "Comparison of Sodium and Lead-cooled Fast Reactors Regarding Severe Safety and Economical Issues."
As regards the Lead-Brick large BREST reactors, the decommissioning issue would become much more manageable if the lead coolant were to be highly enriched in Pb-206 which has activation products that reach tolerable levels within manageable time periods. See G. Khorasanoav, et.al. "Isotopically Tailored Lead Target with Reduced Polonium and Bismuth Radiowaster". The Kurchatov Institute has already used centrifuge cascades and tetrametyl of lead to enrich lead to 95% Pb-206. It is doable.
The spectrum of the heavy metal reactors is very broad, so that the transmutation and burning of actinides is efficiently carried out in that class of machines, so that sub-critical accelerator
reactors do not have to be built to deal with reactor waste products. See A. Lopatickin, V. Orlov, and A. Filin's "Transmutation of long-lived nuclides in the fuel cycle of brest-type reactors".
The SVBR-100 does not burn natural uranium, in contrast with the CANDU reactor which does. The SVBR-100 as well as the other heavey metal reactors can burn a variety of "potent" fuels. The first fuel loading of the SVBR-100 contains a fuel that is enriched to somewhat less than 20% of U-235 (as one option). However, in the second and subsequent loadings of fuel to that reactor, replacement fuels are derived from the reprocessing of the spent fuels from other heavy reactors. Those spent fuels are still very "potent" in U-235 as well as in previously generated Pu-239 and the various retained actinides. In those second a subsequent loadings, very small amounts of natural uranium are added to compensate for the using up of U-238 that was consumed in prior breed/burn cycles of the heavy metal reactors.
The higher operating temperatures of the heavy metal reactors is not a negative, since their operating temperatures improve their thermal efficiencies, and as it happens are still below those of most fossil fuel fired power plants. See U. Harmut, J. Carlson, K. Dietze, "Heavy Metal - Cooled Reactors: Pros and Cons" p. 4.
In heavy metal reactors the high boiling temperatures of the coolants eliminate concerns about coolant boil-outs, since lead boils at 1745 degrees centigrade and lead-bismuth eutectic boils at 1670 degrees centigrade. As long as the passive heat removal systems are operating and the active oxygen control systems are working, the risks of any reactor "melt-down" are deterministically excluded.
The densities of lead, bismuth and uranium are so similar that simulations of the consequences of any failures in the fuel assemblies have shown that there is no tendency for the fragmented fuel elements to agglomerate together into mass that could cause a run-away chain reaction.
The heavy metal breeder reactors are being put forward as a technical means of providing an almost unlimited amounts of electrical energy. The fact that heavy metal reactors can burn up wastes generated by the current generation of thermal reactors is a side benefit. The fuels contents of thermal reactors wastes is irrelevant to the longer term fuel needs of the heavy metal breeder reactors. Of course burning up the plutonium contained in the thermal reactor wastes is a big benefit to society, as relates to eventually eliminating the costs of storing those wastes. Over the long haul, it is the breed/burn process of converting the fertile U-238 into the fissile Pu-239 that is at the heart of supporing the deployment of the heavy metal reactors.
One of the great merits of the SVBR-100 is that it can safely burn a very wide variety of different fuels which significantly supports the available options for smoothly moving toward a quasi-sustainable nuclear economy. Two articles in particular, are relevant to this issue.
N. Novikova, O. Komlev, and G. Toshinsky, "Neutronic and Physical Characteristics of Reactor SVBR-100 with Different Types of Fuel",
and
G. Toshinsky,O. Komlev, K. Melnikov, N. Novikova, "Opportunities to reduce concumption of natural uranium in reactor SVBR-75/100 when changing over to the closed fuel cycle".
The checkered safety records of the sodium cooled breeder reactors does not constitute an argument against deploying the heavy metal reactors. In fact, just the opposite is true, as is made clear in the article itself.
Chris,
Thanks for a very interesting post. What is the %bismuth and could a lower bismuth/lead ratio still give a lower melting point than lead, say 150C. How much bismuth/lead is actually used per 100MW? Are there problems with impurities ( such as silver and tin) having a large neutron capture? Could replacing the primary coolant with CO2 or argon allow more flexible inlet temperatures with 100% lead? Does lead corrode all metals or is it stainless steels that are sensitive?
I see the small size(100MW) as an advantage, allowing a smaller investment and it would seem the reactors could be shipped anywhere with access to barge water transport. It's the large capital cost and long construction times that are increasing the costs of nuclear power in US. This design appears to avoid both of these problems, lower efficiency is less of an issue if fuel is X100 less expensive.
Hi,
I'm not Chris, but I am a materials scientist.
I posted a phase diagram for the Bi-Pb system at http://web.mit.edu/neltnerb/www/bi-pb.png
An eutectic mixture means that it is at the lowest possible melting point, which in the case of Bi-Pb is at 44.8 wt% Pb (55.6 wt% Bi). This melting temperature is 125.5C, so it should be readily possible to keep the coolant at 150C and still have it stay liquid. With pure lead, the melting temperature is 327.5C and for pure bismuth is 271.4C. Lead corrodes many metals, and there aren't really many other good choices besides steels when you're talking about a fairly high temperature application like this. You need a system that will retain structural integrity at high temperatures and pressures, and that leaves steels and perhaps titanium or aluminum.
From doing a bit of looking on the ASM handbook and other sources, lead is mostly corrosive because the walls dissolve in it -- i.e. it's energetically favorable for the melt to have a little bit of iron in it versus being totally phase separated, mostly due to the large entropy increase as the materials diffuse into each other. Nickel is apparently particularly bad, and steels/cast irons are very commonly used for holding molten lead. It looks like there is a very extensive body of work in how to use steels to contain molten lead. Most likely a small dopant will increase resistance to molten lead, but I don't know what it would be -- it has worked well for corrosion resistance in many other applications (304/316 stainless, silicon coated 304, etc, etc). We know a lot about steels.
As far as the nuclear engineering questions, I'm afraid I'm at a loss =) However, I would expect that from a materials standpoint, it should not be very difficult to get pure enough metal to avoid any issues with silver/tin (although doesn't lead have a pretty big neutron absorption cross section anyway?).
neltnerb,
thanks,
my understanding is that lead has a very low neutron capture cross section, but is great for stopping gamma rays and because of its high atomic mass, would not slow down fast neutrons.
Yeah, Pb-Bi is a great fast reactor coolant. Unfortunately Bismuth captures neutrons and becomes Po-210, just about the most radiotoxic crap we've ever run into. I hate these reactors, even though I used to be a fan. They're expensive and unnecissary. For a new reactor regime to compete its got to outpeform LWRs on capital cost. Fuel efficiency is fun for rhetorical analysis of how many millions of years you can support a reactor infrastructure, but totally pointless for policy in the next several centuries.
I do like LFTRs however, because they can be significantly lower on capital costs as well as marginal operational costs.
The Polonium-210 hazard is greatly over rated hazard for two reason.
First, inside the lead-bismuth coolant it forms lead-polonide. After decaying the Poloium-210 turns into Pb-206 which melds into the coolant with no problem. In closed systems Polonium-210 presents no problem. If leaks occur into the steam loop, then Polonium hydride can become a "manageable" problem. See D. Pankratov, et.al. "Analysis of Polonium Hazard in Nuclear Power Systems with Lead-Bismuth Coolant".
In sum, after several early systems failures and malfunctions in the Alfa reactor systems, effective safety and cleanup systems were developed to cope with the Po-210 problem. It is not a show-stopper.
The LBE reactors are not expensive by any reasonable measure. Their design is very simple by comparison with that of the standard PWR's.
I believe you, I do. But its a regulatory nightmare when you consider how much effort goes into the problem of mere tritium management from CANDUs... Tritium! Where the decay is a mere 12 keV beta. To think that Po-210 management is going to tractable in any regulatory framework is terribly naive.
They're solid core fast reactors. Thats bad news for regulatory frameworks and safety issues. You have high reactivity flux and low delayed neutron components making control a problem. And most importantly they dont solve any problems we actually have. They're great at producing plutonium fast though, so if we ever have a shortage of it, they're good for that. Liquid chloride fast reactors would be better, but thats another story for another day.
The Russians have developed a very effective method of handling the corrosion problem using active oxygen control. See Chapter 4 of "Handbook of Lead-bismuth Eutectic Alloy and Lead Properties, Materials Compatibility, Thermal-hydraulics and Technologies". The general method is to maintain a stable and self-healing oxide on the steels that are used in the reactor vessel. The circulation of the coolant in the SVBR-100 is effective in maintaining a uniform oxygen concentration.
Active oxygen control is used to prevent the LBE coolant from causing corrosion problems for the reactor’s steel vessel and fuel cladding. Oxygen concentrations in the LBE are maintained in the range of 0.0005 wt-ppm and 0.01 wt-ppm [Rosen, 2002, 99]. The presence of oxygen in the coolant creates a protective oxide layer that inhibits further corrosion. Methods used to keep oxygen in range are as follows: (1) to add oxygen the coolant is passed through a canister of PbO balls. To remove oxygen, micro-bubbles of hydrogen and helium gas are added and the resultant formation of H2O vapor is removed from the reactor’s cover gas. The constant 1-3 m/s flow of the coolant is combined with a mechanism to constantly filter a fraction of the coolant to remove any precipitates and solids. (From an unpublished paper by the author.)
The lead-bismuth eutectic is made up of a mix of 56% bismuth and 44% lead. If an alloy of 10% bismuth and 90% lead is used instead, then the melting point of that alloy is 250 degrees centigrade. The Russians are seriously considering that mix as a way to greatly increase the volume of new power plants being constructed. See A. Zraodnikov et.al. "Innovative Nuclear Technology Based on Modular Multipurpose Lead-Bismuth Cooled Fast Reactors."
The lead-bismuth coolant in the primary circuit for the SVBR-100 is 18 cubic meters which works out to 104,895 kilograms of bismuth.
Many of the researcher involved in the lead cooled reactors of the Generation IV program are assuming the supercritical CO2 will be used with the lead reactors in a closed Brayton cycle. That combination can support very high thermal efficiencies. (See the references in the posted article.)
280 MW thermal and 100 MW electrical power is a good size for district heating systems and since it is a high temperature cycle I expect that you could get close to 100 % efficiency with 180 MW of usable heat.
The four garbage incinerators that provide a lot of my home towns heating output a maximum of 180 MW of district heating and 20-60 MW of electricty. Our old CHP plant with three oil boilers where one now uses oil, one coal and one biomass has a maximum output of 225 MW district heating and 77 MW electricity. The pipe and wire infrastructure could more or less recieve two SVBR-100:s as drop in replacements but then we would have excess garbage...
I would even expect that it could be possible to fit an intermediate industrial use of the exergy like ethanol distillation and then district heating for a system efficiency "above" 100 %.
If a town with about 90 000 people could use two units I expect that the Swedish market in a few decades could recieve around 50 units within the excisting infrastructure and release a small yearly mountain of biomass that can be turned into biofuels.
I hope this technology works out ok! It would be very good to have it available when oil gets scarce and expensive.
You say that these reactors could be used to power ships. I am wondering about locomotives, which are a bit smaller than ships: could these reactors fit inside a small locomotive? There are countries like China and Pakistan (and India, for that matter) that rely heavily on trains for transportation of people, goods, and materials.
% of railroads electrified
Nation - total km railroads - km electrified - %
Switzerland 3,284 3,057 93%
Japan 12,668 8,939 71%
Sweden 11,797 7,440 63%
Italy 16,146 10,030 62%
Germany 40,710 16,202 40%
France 34,837 12,611 36%
Russia 88,716 38,600 43%
Ukraine 22,631 8,348 37%
U.K. 16,938 4,911 29%
Portugal 3,068 2,132 69%
South Africa 20,319 8,976 44%
India 63,140 16,986 27%
China 61,539 16,000 26%
from
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4301
No need for nuclear locomotives, just string some wires :-)
Best Hopes for proven solutions,
Alan
Good point Alan. Much better to leave the heavy and management intensive bits of the operation off to the side.
Electrified rail also opens up possibilities of N-wheel drive for trains.
So, the project has slipped either two or five years in four months.
I don't know about heavy engineering projects, but in software, the slippage tends to remain a multiple of the elapsed time, not a simple addition to the original schedule. If that hold true here, this project is slipping at least six years for every year that goes by.
I hope it succeeds, though - this could be the "Model T" of nuclear reactors: simple, robust, cheap, maintainable, adaptable.
How many more times are we to hear the refrain "Elecricity so cheap that we have no need to worry about conservation"? This was lauded as the result of adopting nuclear power in every decade since the sixties and yet remarkably it has never turned out to be true, nuclear generated electricity being substantially more expensive than its contemporary alternatives (coal, natural gas, wind, tidal) with the possible exception (currently) of solar pv.
Along with the generation of electricity, we also generate a substantial amount of nuclear waste which is dangerous for several thousand years. Who will rid us of this turbulent priest, worshipping on the alter of nuclear power?
nuclear generated electricity being substantially more expensive than its contemporary alternatives (coal, natural gas, wind, tidal)
Today, operating nuclear power plants are the cheapest source of electricity after hydro.
Alan
Alan ..
Any thoughts on the cost of nuke power if a plant
could be brought online without any extraneous delays
caused by those groups opposed to nukes ..
Triff ..
any extraneous delays caused by those groups opposed to nuke
Straw man/scape goat used by pro-nuke advocates.
The US nuke building industry committed hari kari; they did it to themselves !
Too fast build rate, costs got out of control for a variety of reasons, but nuke opponents were a trivial one. Lack of experienced construction personnel was a MUCH bigger issue.
TVA canceled 11 nukes (and stopped repairing Browns Ferry I) because the program got out of control on costs !
WHOOPS 1,3,4 and 5 were also canceled because of out of control costs.
Zimmer built, but could not open because of QA/QC issues.
And many, many more examples.
Alan
How about costs for:
* Construction
* Destruction
* Fuel
* Maintenance
* Spent fuel storage over the life of the storage
* accidents (honestly reported, unlike TMI)
* Replacement
Bet it's not so cheap.
Cheers
Construction costs are deemed to be about 70% of the total lifetime costs of nuclear power.
Decommissioning costs for Trojan (largest nuke to date AFAIK) are expected to be larger than construction costs.
Admittedly two decades of inflation affect those #s.
Alan
Well, then. We've got nukes coming in at @10 billion, all considered, and likely half again more.
Like I said, $12 billion, conservatively.
Troll.
If you don't know what a word means, best not to use it in public.
I agree.
Although ccpo and I have differed on some issues, he is VERY far from being a troll. Jeppen is far closer to being a troll, but he (?) is not one either.
Alan
12B for one reactor is not a serious estimate - that's only vying for attention. (So I probably shouldn't have given him any, sorry.)
12 B (including construction finance charges, design review, etc. etc.) is about what I expect for the first all new US nuke. Cost overruns included.
Alan
I hate to agree with Alan on this depressing figure, but I'm afraid I do. After getting the skillset up (and regulatory obstacles not navigated for the past three decades) I expect this figure to drop significantly however.
The cost for the next generation of nukes should be significantly lower however.
In the best of all worlds, I could see the 20th new US nuke coming in at $2 billion (2009 $) (all costs except new transmission lines).
My ideal, complete 6 new nukes + finish WB2 by 2020, two different designs. Complete 6 or 7 more (some to a 3rd design) by 2024 or 2025. And then 20 (or more) by 2030 of at least 3 different designs. 33+ new nukes by 2030 and many more after that.
The costs to get into the game are so high I worry about too few players and common design flaws. I would prefer 5 new designs to spread the risks and encourage competition, but I think that we will be lucky to have 3 different designs.
Best Hopes for a Rush to Wind and a steady build out of nuke,
Alan
Dezakin and I have clashed over nukes for some time, but by sticking to arguing facts we are SLOWLY coming to a consensus (of sorts).
I do respect him (?) and his position. I just have a different POV and conclusions.
Best Hopes for comity and fact based arguments,
Alan
My take is 7B for the first, 5B for subsequent ones (at each site). I guess we will see, it seems like you are going to build a number of AP1000.
That example is not really plausible to me. Wikipedia states: "In the United States, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) requires plants to finish the process within 60 years of closing. Since it may cost $300 million or more to shut down and decommission a plant, the NRC requires plant owners to set aside money when the plant is still operating to pay for the future shutdown costs.[28]"
Anyhow, I should have said "capital costs" is 70%. Capital costs are construction costs (overnight) plus, typically, a 10% discount rate. The discount rate adds a lot to the cost of nuclear power. Decommissioning and waste handling is insignificant for that same reason.
I gave a real world example of the largest (AFAIK) nuclear reactor decommissioned to date. You counter with some theory from the NRC.
Alan
Construction costs were $450 million (which is fairly close to the NRC's "$300 or more" for decommissioning), while todays' construction cost is about ten times that, so I gather real decommissioning costs are about a tenth of construction costs.
I (without great consideration of the issue) favor the "century & wait" approach.
Dismantle all the peripheral parts and keep the containment & reactor isolated, under guard (perhaps pour some concrete) for about 100 years. Let radioactive decay go ahead.
Then cut up for scrap (using for special applications, isolated from people). Concrete rebar for specific jobs comes to mind.
Trojan just floated the containment structure over the river whole and buried it in the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Come back in 100+ years ...
But (more later)
As construction costs have increased, so have decommissioning costs. After a 1992 shutdown (memory), Trojan still has a lot of decommissioning left to do. The final bill is not in yet.
Alan
Of course, but viewed at the same point in time, they seem to be related about 15:1 or something like that.
I guess that's why the price you quoted ("as much as construction") was an estimate?
they seem to be related about 15:1 or something like that.
A WILD guestimate !
I drove past the site a few months after they dropped the cooling tower (still cleaning up broken concrete). AFAIK, the main work left is the underground stuff, a few support buildings and infrastructure (roads, sewers, etc,).
The main items are cleared now.
A reasonable SWAG is that decommissioning Trojan took a third or a quarter of the effort to build it.
Alan
So, decommissioning in this case isn't decommissioning the reactors, but decommissioning the whole plant.
Is it just me or does this seem horrendously wasteful?
Even given that after a certain period of time the core reactor loop needs to be replaced for safety reasons, it would seem logical to preserve the equally expensive to produce (and not subject to intensive radiation exposure) containment facility for a replacement reactor.
I could see a teardown in such a case only if it is deemed that the containment vessel doesn't meet safety standards and cannot be updated to meet those standards for less than teardown+rebuild.
Not to mention the power switching facility a plant that size needs, I would hope that they have another power plant planned for the site or that goes to waste as well.
Then why is the cost only a tenth?
Thats weird but researching for low cost decomissioning and taking it slow and methodical might explain why treating decomissioned reactor parts is turning into a new Swedish export industry. Last month Studsvik contracted treatment of 32 used steam generators from Bruce power in Canada, a $25 million contract for all 32. They expect to reclaim close 90% of the steel as regular scrap and return the rest to Canada as compacted waste. (Imagines a gold plated cast steel cube with a large rosett in greenpeace rainbowed silk, I better get some sleep. )
Its cheaper to manufacture about 3000 tons of new steel but it is elegant that most of even the "hot" parts are immediately recycleable.
You are purely referring to the cost of a kWh as you see it on your energy bill. But what would happen with that price if nuclear power plant operators actually had to insure themselves against accidents, organize all their security, pay for construction, destruction of the plant and long term storage of it's waste without government incentives. Those costs are not in your electricity bill but are shared among all tax payers.
The nuclear industry historically has many favorable government legislation and subsidies on it's side that new (renewable) solutions don't. The result is that the price of a nuclear kWh is kept artificially low and the energy market is not a level playingfield.
Insurance - why don't you do the math yourself? Decide how much money an average accident would cost, divide with the time between accidents world wide and divide by the 2600 billion kWhs produced per year. Then you get the amount that needs to be added to each kWh to cover for insurance.
Example: ($100 billion / 100 years) / 2600 billion kWh/year = $0.00038/kWh.
The rest of the stuff you mention is actually paid by the energy companies, either by taxation or directly.
So if you're so simply able to calculate the risk for an insurance company and the cost it adds to a kWh, why aren't the insurance company's able to do so as well and see a huge profit lying there when they charge say $0.001/kWh? It should be simple to make the decision but the reality is that, instead of the plant operators, the society as a whole takes the financial risk while other means of power generation has to pay the insurance bill themselves.
And these are only figures. Behind the desk talk. What scale of destruction and human suffering would be caused by a 100 billion dollar nuclear disaster? Besides nuclear bombs only nuclear power is capable of doing such damage. If the (lets say once in a 100 year) Chernobyl disaster happened in a densely populated and industrialized area like western Europe, East/West America, SouthEast Asia, then this figure might very well have become truth. Is nuclear power the lives of millions worth? I don't think so. So why not look further and leave such technology behind, there are plenty alternatives.
You're also missing the point about the tax payer paying a lot of the nuclear bills instead of the energy consumer. It puts nuclear in a favorable position over sustainable alternatives.
Same reason insurance companies don't insure against asteroid strikes. We may get hit by a dinosaur killer every hundred million years or so but nobody has the scratch to pay the claims if it happens.
Indeed. Only thing is that we can't control asteroids, but we have the choice to abandon nuclear ;-)
They are able to do this, but it is hard to get all countries to agree, and it takes some time before the fund has been filled. Therefore governments have stepped in instead (often taxing the nuclear power much, much higher than that), for practical reasons.
If you are more market fundamentalist than I am (which is quite a lot), you may of course object to this way of handling it. But if you feel it is ok for governments to contribute to some practical solutions in special cases, you should welcome this one.
Actually, the 100 billion dollars would be it, basically, and it would be that expensive because we would overdo cleanup and compensation by orders of magnitude. Hey, traffic kills about a million people each year. Chernobyl, 26 years ago, killed 50 right away and arguably long term global effects are 4,000 extra deaths. Dam breaks have caused many times more deaths. Coal has caused many times more deaths. It has all been worth it - human suffering would have been much worse without this energy, but nuclear is actually very low risk and low cost.
Actually, modern reactors, if they fail, won't release the fraction of the radioactivity Chernobyl let loose. Chernobyl was badly built, had no containment and was moderated by graphite, which burnt and helped spread the radioactivity. TMI showed how core meltdowns look in western reactors (zero dead, almost zero pollution outside), and current designs have improved a lot since then, making them orders of magnitude more safe than TMI.
The only alternatives are coal and NG, which both kill more and do more environmental harm.
Because this is simply not true.
Styno
Please look over the total number of deaths due to oil (directly and indirectly)
Then look over the total number of deaths due to coal (directly and indirectly)
Don't forget to factor in greenhouse gases.
Now include the number of deaths due to Nuclear....
I think you will have your answer.
Stop frightening yourself and consider the big picture. I'm guessing you were glued to the screen when they showed the China Syndrome....even tho it had nothing to do with the reality of TMI.
If you are so afraid of Nuclear - don't fly across the US in a commercial airliner....don't go to the dentist and get x-rays, and certainly don't sign up for an MRI or CAT scan. And be careful around those smoke detectors....at least the older ones....
airline exposure
The key concept in pushing for the development and construction of heavy metal reactors is that serious accidents are prevented, not by installing layer upon layer of safety systems, but by choosing a technology that in and of itself excludes serious accidents that involve radiation releases.
The evaluations of the accident potentials of that new class of reactors is based upon deterministic calculations relating to the full range of "within design" and "beyond design" accidents.
In planning for the introduction of heavy metal reactors, it is assumed that there will be malfunctions that can and will need to be insured against.
Short of setting off powerfull bombs inside the reactor's containmant vessel, it is not possible to generate radiation releases that impact people located beyond the confines of the nuclear plant.
Hello Chris,
Thxs for this keypost & following thread discussion.
I don't have the eng/sci background to adequately debate the finer points, but I do have one huge safety concern question regarding surface ships being powered by nuke reactors, especially postPeak LNG supertankers or ships carrying potentially explosive contents like ammonium nitrate fertilizers.
**********
Perhaps, these potentially explosive cargo surface ships might have a Murphy's Law, Last Chance fail-safe measure.
***********
If the Captain thinks an eminent collision is coming with another ship [as these ships take huge distances to even turn or stop]: just shortly before the collision actually occurs, the Captain can detonate some specially designed explosive charges that would drop the shutdown reactor through the bottom of the ship. This way it would be protected from the huge explosion and/or supergiant LNG firestorm on the surface above [which would be horrific just by itself].
The same thing could also be done by the Captain even if something went terribly wrong without a seaborne collision. I was thinking like a small fire potentially becoming a huge fire/explosion while the ship was tied up at dock [see links below], or it ran aground like the Exxon Valdez, or it somehow became disabled and the tide/wind/waves threatened to bust it all up on some heavily populated shoreline.
This ability to safely discharge the reactor, in one piece, to sea-bottom would make it easy to later recover, but more importantly: while the giant Cluster***k is wreaking total havoc on the sea-surface==>at least we wouldn't have to worry about radioactive fallout being mixed into this giant mess, too.
Recall the recent US Navy collision of our surface ship and our nuke attack sub in the Hormuz Strait. IMO, they were awfully damn lucky the sub didn't sink because the conning tower was nearly torn off. The good news is that if it did sink [although real bad for the sailors aboard], it generally doesn't result in a nasty leak of radioactive nasties as the Captain and crew make every effort to shut the reactor down and seal her off.
Shouldn't we have the same 'LAST GASP' option if we might have potentially hundreds of nuke powered surface ships?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TworcINhDhQ
----------------------------
Texas City Explosion [3:28]
----------------------------
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_Disaster
-------------------------
The Texas City Disaster of April 16, 1947, started with the mid-morning fire and detonation of approximately 2,300 tons[1] of ammonium nitrate on board the French-registered vessel SS Grandcamp in the port at Texas City, Texas, killing at least 581 people...
..At 09:12, the ammonium nitrate reached an explosive threshold of 850°F (454°C). The vessel then detonated, causing great destruction and damage throughout the port. The tremendous blast sent a 15-foot (4.5 m) tsunami/tidal wave surging over nearly 100 miles (160 km) of the Texas shoreline, leveled nearly 1,000 buildings on land, and sunk virtually every ship within the harbor.
The Texas City Disaster is generally considered the worst industrial accident in American history.
-------------------------------
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_East_Ohio_Gas_Explosion
-------------------
At 2:30 p.m. on the afternoon on Friday, October 20, 1944, above ground storage tank number 4, holding liquefied natural gas [LNG] in the East Ohio Gas Company's tank farm, began to emit a vapor that poured from a seam on the side of the tank..
..Cuyahoga County Coroner Dr. Samuel Gerber estimated that the initial death toll stood at 200; however, Gerber was quoted in newspaper wire stories stating the magnitude of the fire and the intense temperatures had the power to vaporize human flesh and bone, making an exact count impossible until weeks after the disaster.
-----------------------
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/2202
--------------------------
Lloyd's executive likens LNG attack to nuclear explosion
..One report does describe hypothetical fires that might erupt if gas leaks from a tanker in its liquid form changes into a gaseous form and ignites when it comes into contact with a flame.
In one instance, the blaze, in less than a minute, would be capable of inflicting third-degree burns a little less than a mile away.
-------------------------
http://www.iomosaic.com/docs/training/Managing_LNG_Risks.pdf
Interestingly enough, those are all rather good arguments for using something other than a conventional diesel engine that is itself a potential source of ignition.
I personally have my own doubts about merchant ships powered by nukes, but those are more on the "let's run this puppy into a bridge and make a cleanup headache for as many expensive specialists as we can" variety.
Speaking of breeder reactors, BN-800 construction is progressing well.
BN-800, 2005
BN-800, 2007
BN-800, 2009
Of the three types of fast reactors under development, sodium technology is mature, lead technology is close to mature, and helium technology is a few decades off. Helium cooled reactors could be even more efficient by operating under very high temperatures.
http://www.ne.doe.gov/pdfFiles/genIvFastReactorRptToCongressDec2006.pdf
Sodium is still on the drawing board, and Russia is now building its new BN-800 sodium fast reactor as we speak.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/russia/2005/russia-050317...
There are 300 years of reactor experience with sodium cooled technology around the world, and the technical challenges have been largely worked out. The Integral Fast Reactor is an example of a walk-away-safe sodium fast reactor that shuts itself down after loss of coolant due to a strong negative temperature coefficient and advanced metal-alloy fuel form that expands when it overheats. A chernobyl accident is not possible; that reactor didn't even have a containment dome.
A chernobyl accident is not possible; that reactor didn't even have a containment dome.
Just like Chernobyl.
Water and sodium react violently. Postulate, say, severe earthquake with heavy rain storm.
BTW, "300 years operating experience" with a unique type of reactor is *FAR* too little to get any confidence in it's operating safety.
Alan
I would guess it would make a giant mess inside the containment building. They're sort of designed for that.
Not that I advocate sodium cooled fast reactors. Its not like we'll need them anytime... well ever, unless we need to make tens of millions of bombs real fast for some reason, but you can design safe systems building on our experience with LWRs.
You should read "Prescription for the Planet," by Tom Blees, for more info about the sodium-cooled Integral Fast Reactor. It does not produce bomb-grade plutonium. Its pyrometallurgical fuel cycle segregates and consumes plutonium at a rate equal to the rate it is produced, or faster if you want to make more fuel to fuel another such reactor (which still isn't bomb grade, it is mixed with other materials and dangerous to handle). This type of Gen IV reactor is markedly different from fast breeders of the past.
http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA378.html
I'm quite familiar with the IFR. Its a great concept if there werent better ones out there and we actually were short on uranium.
1. There are far better concepts out there without going into fast reactor territory (LFTRs)
2. We will never need breeders because uranium is as common as dirt. So any new reactor regime better compete on cost. Doing fuel fabrication/manipulation on stuff just out of the reactor is not a good way to lower costs. It can work if your fuel is allready liquid anyways so your processing plant is just plumbing (LFTR again)
Sodium cooled reactors are a great solution to a problem we'll never have.
What about the Po-210/209/208 waste you'll be making from the bismuth? Or is this magic bismuth that lets alpha particles through?
What is this mysterious cycle by which you don't have to remove the caesium, xenon, etc to prevent their poisoning and damping the U-235/U-238/Pu-239 cycle? Because of course the same reprocessing of the fuel rods which removes the poison also gives us... plutonium. Yay, bombs for everyone!
A nuclear reactor with little or no waste, completely safe design, and no proliferation risk... when things sound too good to be true, they usually are. And what do you know, nothing will be built until 2020 at least. Amazing how wonderful projects look on paper, and how much more difficult they are in practice. Tell us about it again when it's built.
The Russians want to produce Po-210. What if they have to poison more ex-spies?
To approach the issue of nuclear waste from heavy metal reactors in a logical and non-emotional way, I would suggest that readers study the following two papers.
A. Lopatkin, V. Orlov, and A. Filin, "Transmutation of long-lived nuclides in the fuel cycle of brest-type reactors". And, also
A. Glazov, et.al. "Fuel cycle of brest-reactors. Solutions of the radwaste and nonproliveration problems."
Plutonium is part of the fuel that is reprocessed: these reactors are meant to be part of a chain, with fuel reprocessing being part. Will it be possible to extract plutonium? of course!! but dont get nervous about it.. it is not so easy to reprocess posioned fuel, and the coiuntries who know how to do it and have the capability, they already have nuclear plants, and can make bombs if they wan.. maybe more expensive ones, but bombs anyway..
That would be the LFTR of course.
An LFTR does remove the U-234 to U-238. It can't afford the neutron loss from leaving them in there.
Where would you get that idea? The neutronics of the LFTR are fairly well documented. Perhaps you could elaborate on your argument and why you think its the case. It certainly doesn't remove U-234 or U238 (it couldn't without an onsite enrichment facility). U238 is put in in the first place (in some configurations) to denature the uranium as a proliferation resistance option.
Perhaps you mean something different?
I don't expect any LNG tankers to be rebuilt as with nuclear engines. If you designed them from scratch, maybe but...
LNG Tankers have liquid natural gas, (which is approximately -160 C,) in heavily insulated tanks. Some of this boils off in transit. They collect it, (with a pipe in the top of the tanks,) and feed it to the engines, which are normally natural gas turbines. The approprate amount of insulation for the tanks is therefore based on how big the engines are. Insulating the tanks any more than that is a waste because then you have to pull LNG out of the bottom of the tanks and heat it and feed it to the engine. In theory, they could collect the boiled off LNG, cool it, and put it back in the tanks, but they'd need fuel to run the compressors to cool it, and that fuel would be: Natural Gas, so they don't do that, and the ships are not designed for it.
If you just dropped in a reactor for the existing engines, you wouldn't get anything out of it because they'd have to flare the boiled off LNG. And putting a compressor on board, powered by the reactor (with the appropriate heat exchanger so that you didn't heat up more gas in the process,) would be very expensive, at the same time that the economics of how much insulation to put on the tanks would have changed dramatically, (since boiling would no longer be something that had a target level, but something that should be avoided completely.) You probably wouldn't bother with all that, you'd just build a new ship.