Nuclear Energy - I need to vent/rant

[Hindmost]

Let's imagine what's feasible. Germany is putting in 100 turbines monthly, averaging about 2 MW each. The population of the US is almost four-fold. More importantly the US has more land mass and much better winds. So at least 10,000 MW annually and maybe double that should be possible in a few years. Of course, that's not a steady 10,000 MW. It would probably average out at something like a quarter of that. So let's say 2,500 MW - 5,000 MW. Hmmm. That's pathetic. California's peak demand alone goes into the 50,000's. Over 20 years we get 50,000-100,000 MW. Over 30 we get 75,000-150,000. I suspect the higher end. Technology can only improve. That's only the demand from a few states. And while conservation will go a long way, we'll probably also be electrifying transportation.

We'd have to do something way more dramatic than Germany. Make wind a national priority. Convert existing factories to turbine making. I'm not advocating this, though something of the sort may eventually be done anyway. 3-6 nuclear plants a year is starting to look awfully tempting, I'll admit.

I foresee solar PV making a similar small contribution to peak. I see a bigger role for solar thermal. Throw in some biomass. I have no idea how much there is. You have to be really careful about it anyway, because you can make soil productivity go up in smoke. And soil productivity is going to be a big priority. I know biomass is significant, but I don't know how to assess it. Cogen is out there. Geothermal.

Coal? We need coal?

I guess that's what David Hughes says too. He says we need it all. He's confident that coal will never replace the decline in oil and natural gas anyway. How do you feel about generation from natural gas using cogen in areas where supply is not an issue for the foreseeable future? Can't agree with you on coal. We need to be getting rid of it as fast as we can. That's the point.

Carbon sequestration. Well, we need to stop wasting our time. That may be another pipe dream. It's been the rationale behind maintaining coal. I've been annoyed with energy planners in Ontario that basically use it as a lie to support continued use of coal. Because even a cursory review indicates that power plants built to burn coal conventionally are in no way equipped to sequester it. You need the proper siting to begin with. It's a lot more complicated and expensive to build a coal plant capable of sequestration. Sequestration reduces the efficiency of coal generation, too, so you burn even more. And you never capture it all.

I've seen one compelling opinion suggesting we need to fund one study intensely to look at the potential of sequestration at one study site and pull the plug on funding of coal in every other case. And yesterday, one analyst said that the sequestration sites in China are completely dwarfed by the immense lignite deposits. So it's not going to be a panacea either.

If it turns out, as is becoming increasingly likely, that we'll be driven to attempt to pull carbon out of the living environment to sequester it, we will feel a little stupid if all the sequestration sites are saturated with coal that we thought we could burn because it was safely sequestered.

As an engineer friend of mine put it, the absolutely cheapest form of sequestration is to keep it in the ground in the first place. And by that, he includes all the costs of more expensive energy/conservation or whatever to reduce the need. He has never encountered a case where this wasn't obvious at first glance.

I think the issues are coming clearer.

My opine:

Coal isn't going away anytime soon. Engineering clean coal is needed since it is such a large resource in the world. Engineers can be clever enough to come up with something that catches most of the CO2.

Build coal gasification plants to help with oil shortage.

Wind power needs to be harnessed quickly...however, the wind doesn't typically blow when need most in the summer.

abandon corn based ethanol as it is almost useless and work on switch grass enzymes to make it useable.

Immediately raise fuel standards on cars.

Start building about 5-6 nuclear plants in the states immediately and continue to build them over the next 30-40 years...other countries with the technology should do the same.

Eliminate natural gas electric plants over time so we don't use up this great resource to make electricity. In the states, that is what we have been building due to the problems with coal and nuclear being difficult to site and expensive in capital costs....it is truly short sighted.

Conservation will occur as heating homes becomes expensive...set new standards for construction that force improved thermal designs. Include reasonable addition of solar power in the standards as well as geothermal--for both residential and commercial.

It's either this type of action or sacrifice one heck of a lot of people. (although I can't give a timetable, within 50 years, this world has some real problems)

Everything depends on how fast one can implement them. Putting everything together is going to be tough in the US since engineering enrollments are not strong enough to support all the research and developoment. Plus the US govt is bankrupting the average person and feeding the top 1% of the population with tax breaks and has a 10 trillion dollar deficit. Therefore, in the near future, when subsidizing such items as wind solar clean coal and nuclear is necessary, the money won't be there. Add in global warming and perhaps some natural disasters such as the san adreas fault and we have one big mess--especially when we are adding 75 million people to the world's population each year. I'm with buzzo on this, it is really depressing.

glenn

 

[Lonewulf]

Hm, looking at Barack Obama's website, it looks like he supports nuclear energy.

Safe and Secure Nuclear Energy: Nuclear power represents more than 70 percent of our non-carbon generated electricity. It is unlikely that we can meet our aggressive climate goals if we eliminate nuclear power from the table. However, there is no future for expanded nuclear without first addressing four key issues: public right-to-know, security of nuclear fuel and waste, waste storage, and proliferation. Barack Obama introduced legislation in the U.S. Senate to establish guidelines for tracking, controlling and accounting for spent fuel at nuclear power plants.

To prevent international nuclear material from falling into terrorist hands abroad, Obama worked closely with Sen. Dick Lugar (R -- IN) to strengthen international efforts to identify and stop the smuggling of weapons of mass destruction. As president, Obama will make safeguarding nuclear material both abroad and in the U.S. a top anti-terrorism priority.

Obama will also lead federal efforts to look for a safe, long-term disposal solution based on objective, scientific analysis. In the meantime, Obama will develop requirements to ensure that the waste stored at current reactor sites is contained using the most advanced dry-cask storage technology available. Barack Obama believes that Yucca Mountain is not an option. Our government has spent billions of dollars on Yucca Mountain, and yet there are still significant questions about whether nuclear waste can be safely stored there.

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/energy/

I'm not making an argument here of any sort, just want to say that if this guy ends up nominated, that's where my vote is going.

 

[DRBUZZ0]

With oil peaking concerns, won't there come a point where plastics might become uneconomical?


Those two sound good enough, not sure about 2 though.


Hm, possible, but also possibly very very intensive...


This one will take some time to develop, at the least.

Hmm... I wonder if we can ever make carbon nanotubes easy to make and economical... wonder how long those things will last?

Well, world energy usage is not something the equivalent of 15 terawatts of continuous power usage. That's not just electricity. That's electricity, oil, gas, heating, transportation, manufacturing and so on.

So within the next few decades, I'll give the very liberal estimate that 100 terawatts of power would cover all forseable needs, invcuding increased use of power-hungry technologies to improve the enviornment (such as desalination to avoid depleting fresh water reserves, thermal decomposition of chemical waste and so on)

So 100 terawatts seems like a reasonable maximum for what would be needed, ok?

Looking at thorium reactors... the thorium-based breeder low-burnup reactors, which would be the ones with generally the highest effeciecy, it looks like you can reasonably expect to do one gigawatt year per metric ton of thorium oxide fuel at a 50% fuel burnup. In other words by the end of the year 50% of the fuel has been depleted, and in most current reactors you'd need to either reprocess or somehow supplement the fuel at that point.

Thus about 500 kg of thorium dioxide ceramic fuel pellets. That equates to about 460 kg of thorium per year, and about 200-300 tons of standard-grade thorium-baring ore which would need to be dug up per gigawatt year.


It *could* be higher, if higher thermal effeciency engines were used, and the reactor were made as effecient as theoretically possible. But in practice, you with current systems you can run a one gigawatt reactor for a year on about a ton.


So you'd need 46,000 metric tons maximum of thorium fuel to power a super energy-demanding world using 100 terawatts (nearly 10 times current demand)

World reserves based on a 2001 study for reasonably assured thorium reserves by conventional mining come out to about two million tons considered "easily obtainable" and about three million tons considered "Reasonably obtainable"

So that would be enough for 65 years at 100 terawatts assuming that energy demand increased drastically... almost as much as could be reasonably imagined and that 100% of needs were from thorium-based nuclear with no use of anything else, not even considering existing hydroelectric facilities or geothermal or anything...

Now, if you account for soil reserves, meaning throium in sands and soils and such, that's actually where most thorium is. It's recoverable but costs about five times more to recover. That would primarly done by seperating Monazite sand from silica sand. It's reasonably easy to do but requires a lot more material be processed than conventional mining...

That would increase it roughtly 10-20 fold. So that would mean that by known minable reserves and extractable thorium sand reserves we'd be set for somewhere between 650 and 1300 years+

Now if we go from that to total known upper crust content, meaning the thorium distributed around the world but not necessarily concentrated enough to make extraction worthwhile by current methods... then we increase that by a factor of a good 200x. But... I'm not sure that's reasonable to dig up every inch of thorium-baring soil. So that would into the hundreds of thousands of years.

But I'm not sure it's reasonable to think that the total soil would be dug up and processed for thorium.

However... factor in sea water and also the estimated unknown reserves on the sea floor and elsewhere.. (based on what we know of the sea floor and the mineral distribution of thorium and extrapolating from there)...

That's... hard to really make a good estimate on.. but reasonably... it seems like a good million years... at least. To be honest, I'm not sure at all, but conservatively... at least a million years.


So therefore, by sticking to the most conservative numbers and being as reasonable as possible.

With current electriticy usage:

About 6 thousand years on easily minable deposits
About 6 million years on all known deposits
Millions to billions on estimated total earth depostis

At the highest reasonable power that mankind would need in the forseable future:

About a century, maybe less on known easily minable deposits
A few thousand years on all known deposits
On all estimated earth deposits.... millions??? Not sure.


This doubles if you change the reactor numbers to reflect the highest burn effeciency theoretically possible by known methods.

 

[Hindmost]

In spite of biase, there has to be some accurate assessment out there somewhere. People aren't in the habit of spending invisible "mystery money", unless they cook their books.

The question is, why should I accept the claim that wind energy is cheaper or more easy to put into place than nuclear? What estimate is there for such a claim?

this link is worth posting again as it is very comprehensive.

http://www.iea.org/textbase/nppdf/free/2005/ElecCost.pdf

It gives a big overview of electric energy production cost world wide.
And this link below is worth posting again as well as it shows how the US can save energy and where it is spent in terms of quads...

http://www.hubbertpeak.com/pimentel/...nservation.pdf


glenn

 

[Belz...]

Because we can't. At least we can't address global warming without dropping our energy demands dramatically, at the very least in the short term.

Of course we CAN. All we have to do is stop being afraid of the boogeyman and start working on those plants.

 

[Belz...]

I just did the math. You'd need about 50,000,000. Or to more specifically answer your question about how many hundreds of thousands, 500 of them. Good thing I like wind turbines.

Though keep in mind, that is 40 times what we need. So drop it down to 1,250,000. Then consider that I want to reduce demand to at least half and you get 625,000. And then throw in other sources to complement it and you get maybe 300,000? Or again to better answer your question about how many hundreds of thousands: 3.

That's one wind turbine for every 2000 cars.

Yeah, again you're asking us to live in huts.

This is reasonable. But there's an interesting point about the things of value you listed. Would you consider all animals larger than a cat, including yourself, a "thing of value"? Because the last time the climate heated up by 7 degrees was the Permian extinction, and that's where we're headed.

Which is why we need a power source that will stop contributing to this problem, if not turn it around.

keep in mind that there are 55 lbs of copper in the average car. There are 2000 cars on the road for every turbine needed, as previously calculated.

Yeah, and we sure don't need those damn wheeled things, do we ?

Okay that is emotion-based, because you can't really use facts or science to make a value judgment on something like what the worth of human society is.

Not sure what your point was, I have to admit.

Higher quality of life > lower quality of life.

 

[SilverBee]

Very well said, DrBuzzo. I've heard some of those comments, in part, from friends also "in the know." I would say this that environmentalists at least have their hearts and motives in the right place. They've been fighting a hard uphill battle with all their efforts to help to save the planet. I worry about politicians who, instead of taking positions based on real understanding and personal integrity, are influenced by ideology and lobbyists. The best and most sensible plans often go awry because of politics. We're just now experiencing the way an administration can exercise a policy of controlling what scientists can say. How would a nuclear energy plan overcome that danger?

 

[luddite]

Of course we CAN. All we have to do is stop being afraid of the boogeyman and start working on those plants.

No, Belz, what I've been saying for some time now is that we've run out of time. We can start working on the nuclear plants. That won't be enough. There is enough potential to build wind turbines for all our needs eventually. I'm more confident of that than nuclear fission. But we simply don't have the skilled manpower or manufacturing capacity to transform all the world's coal plants to wind nor nuclear in time. It is apparent that a lion's share of the effort will now have to fall on conservation.

Now, when we lower emissions down to a tiny level, we may be able to slowly ramp up to a higher energy level again. And we can have the discussion about how we're going to do that. But we're in real trouble now. And survival will call for drastic reductions that need to come too quickly to build the thousands of nuclear power plants required, even if we assume we have the fuel to power them all.

Again, the narrow discussion now is not about nuclear vs renewables. The discussion now is about tightening our belts or committing collective suicide.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/02/050223130549.htm

 

[DRBUZZ0]

No, Belz, what I've been saying for some time now is that we've run out of time. We can start working on the nuclear plants. That won't be enough. There is enough potential to build wind turbines for all our needs eventually. I'm more confident of that than nuclear fission.

Eventually? So this is basically back to the whole "We need a source of power that isn't CO2 and we may already be too late to implement it and wind turbines are going to be able to produce energy without CO2 much better than nuclear"

How many times does this need to be addressed? yes, we're running out of time if we haven't already. Yes, we need another power source. That much is agreed.

Now comes the obvious fact that really can't be escaped no matter how "confident" you are of anything.

IRREFUTABLE ABSOLUTELY CONFORMABLE FACT: REACTORS MAKE GIGAWATTS AND CAN BE BUILT IN SHORT ORDER FOR REASONABLE PRICES

It takes ten years to build a power plant with the current system from proposal to operations. It takes less than ONE year to build a modular nuclear reactor from existing blue prints to add to an existing power plant. It takes less than TWO TO THREE years to construct a nuclear plant.

ENERGY OUTPUT = EASILY TWO GIGAWATTS


CAPE WIND PROJECT PROPOSAL: TWO YEARS TO OPERATIONAL STATUS
FOUR TO FIVE FOR FULL CAPACITY OUTPUT

130 Turbines (plus pilons transmission equipment, and so on)

PEAK Power output 430 Megawatts.
EXPECTED AVERAGE: ~130 Megawatts.

AND THIS IS BEING BUILT IN THE MOST FAVORABLE LOCATION ON THE EAST COAST OF THE UNITED STATES.


This is not a matter of contention. It's the way it is. You can do all the "well if we cut our needs in half" and "maybe we could get the wind generator effeciency up 20%" It doesn't matter how much you fudge the numbers or try to make it fit. Nuclear produces so much vastly, ridiculously more energy that you simply cannot argue with any credibility that a wind turbine system could EVER be match that in terms of cost and time to build.

But we simply don't have the skilled manpower or manufacturing capacity to transform all the world's coal plants to wind nor nuclear in time.

Convert our generating capacity from coal to nuclear in time? Maybe not. But if we can't convert it from coal to nuclear in time then we sure as hell can't convert it to wind! And we sure as hell can convert a lot more of it in a lot shorter time to nuclear and actually make a difference, if we STOP WITH THE WHINING AND START WITH THE BUILDING.

Saying that we cannot convert them from coal to nuclear fast enough and therefore we should go to wind instead is like saying "Gee, I'm not sure that this SR-17 is going to get me there fast enough, because it's only capable of going at mach 3.3 and.. that might not be enough. So I think I'll take this piper cub instead and go at 60 naughts. Actually... even better... i'll walk. No... I'll crawl on my belly instead. That will certainly have a better chance of getting me there in time, since mach 3.3 just might not cut it."

It is apparent that a lion's share of the effort will now have to fall on conservation.

Okay, so lets say we cut the energy needs by 40%.. Now we're talking an effort like world war II + The Marshal Plan + Moonshot combined and multiplied by ten. But lets just say that somehow, mankind is able to cut energy needs dramatically reversing the centuries long trend of rising needs...

Now where is the remaining 60 percent going to come from? Hmm??? Coal?

Actually, if you cut energy needs by that much it would still not necesserily mean a drop in electrical demand. Remember how it was discussed that electricity is the best choice for moving the transportation and industrial needs to?

So I guess in addition to cutting energy we also don't care about not in any way addressing the sources of energy...

Oh wait I forgot... wind power... Oh wait I forgot... Math.


[/quote]
Now, when we lower emissions down to a tiny level, we may be able to slowly ramp up to a higher energy level again. And we can have the discussion about how we're going to do that. But we're in real trouble now. And survival will call for drastic reductions that need to come too quickly to build the thousands of nuclear power plants required, even if we assume we have the fuel to power them all.

Assume we have the fuel to power them? That's like debating whether or not we would have enough oil for the foeseable future if all cars required a half liter of gasoline to drive for five years. (In which case... we would... just trust me on this one... seriously... I'm not even going to try the math)

Aircraft carrier... big, right? Big and powerful, right? Big radar.. big catapults... goes really fast...

The AMOUNT OF NUCLEAR FUEL TO RUN IT FOR IT"S ENTIRE LIFETIME (DECADES) WOULD FIT IN THE POCKETS OF A PAIR OF JEANS!

Again, the narrow discussion now is not about nuclear vs renewables. The discussion now is about tightening our belts or committing collective suicide.

No the discussion is equivalent as to whether you can meet energy needs using Niagra Falls or a hamster in an exercise wheel.

And I do not want to hear again how there is enough wind energy in the world to meet our needs many times over. YES YES YES, I KNOW, If you COULD EXTRACT THE ENERGY FROM EVERY CUBIC METER OF ATMOSPHERE IN THE ENTIRITY OF THE EARTH WE WOULD HAVE ALL THE ENERGY WE NEED

You know where else there is plenty of energy?

The Orbit of the moon
The charged particles in the inosphere
The potential energy that you could convert to kenitic by knocking several mountain ranges over
The neutrinos that pass through everything constantly and almost never collide with matter
The cosmic rays that get deflected by the magnetic field of the earth
The magnetic potential in the earth's field
The RF energy produced by the vibrations of atoms around the solar system


YES YES YES... The energy is there AND JUST AS ABSOLUTELY ABSURD TO THINK YOU COULD ACTUALLY TAP

 

[DRBUZZ0]

Okay I just got off the phone with my friend's father who is an engineer at the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory.

Asked the following questions after describing this and recorded it:

How long would it take to build a naval reactor, steam generator, turbines, support equipment?

"Depends if they're tooled for it, because we build them every now and then. But start to finish? A couple months maybe. Not long. The timetable is dictated by the hull construction"


Could you build the big reactor system such as on a Nimitz class carrier in under a month?

"Well, the propulsion system actually has two reactors, but if you're tooled for it, you could probably do it in under a month"

How much electrical power can you get from that?

"You get better than a couple hundred megawatts"

So you think you could put a 200+ megawatt power plant together like this?

"Sure. The Russians actually are building a floating nuclear power plant prototype. It's an idea that has come up before. The Army operated one a while ago and we had a couple of these sort of things on barges that powered the panama canal zone base and also in Alaska. I think the mobile power plant idea is great. I'd love to see them bring that back"

So could you build a mobile power plant in a month?

"I really don't know. That would depend very much on the hull you put it in or where you put it and the generators and turbines. If you're tooled for it and, probably could be done. On short order that would take longer."

What if you had a production line could you crank these out one a month or so, reasonably speaking?

"Oh, if you're set up for that you can sure. If you can do the hull or whatever, then the reactor system isn't going to be the problem."

Is there any reason why you couldn't mass produce these at a rate similar to other large industrial equipment?

"I don't see why not. Yes, it's a standard design like that if you're set for that you could."

What about scaling it up to more power?

"You could add more reactors and combine them yes"

What about building larger reactors?

"The largest we currently make is the one I told you about, but you could scale it up, yes. You'd need to redesign the reactor though, but you can do this at any size."

How long would it take to design a new reactor?

"Depends, but if it's a fairly standard design not long. They did the SG9 in a couple years. If it's based on something that's not new it would be pretty fast."

Reasonably speaking, do you think that it would be feisable to mass produce medium to large power plant systems as I described?

"Yes"

How many could you produce in a year?

"Depends on how big an operation you have. If asking if you could make them one a month, that would be doable. If need be, you could do more than one at once."

So lets say you do a gigawatt plant in a box, could you do that in a month?

"Probably, if you had an operation for that. That wouldn't be too hard. You could do that with a few of the reactors, yes, but you'd be easier to go with a scaled up one."

So if it's an issue of the hull size to fit this, how big would you need for a theoretical self-contained gigawatt-level power plant? The size of maybe a big cruise ship?

"No. Wouldn't need to be that big I don't think. If that's all it is then no. If you mean you want support and the distribution.. I don't know. But for generating. No, wouldn't need to be that big."

So in closing, would it be financially possible and technically possible to build many, perhaps a dozen gigawatt-level nuclear power plants using such a design method within a year?

"Financially? If it's the navy that'd be no problem. The reactor isn't that expensive compared to the rest of the ship. If you're talking about a budget to build a carrier, then yes, you could do that if you had to."

And finally...the US could be converted entirely to nuclear in a short time, like a decade if such modular methods were put to use?

"Sure, if they left it up to us we'd have that done. You could do that. Engineering wise, sure you could do that. You'd have to get the politicians to pull their heads out of their asses, that's the only problem. Engineering's never the problem. If you let the guys who know this run things then we'd have been all nuclear a long time ago"

I hope we do soon

"Don't hold your breath there. They have a bunch of idiots who have no idea what they're talking about yelling about how it'll blow up like bomb."

I'm engaged in a debate as I mentioned about whether you could run the country and the world's power needs on wind energy as an alternative.

"Run the country on windmills. ********"

 

[robinson]

I'm going to have to step out of this for a bit. This thread is making my concern about the future and climate change increase a lot... to the point of near panic.

Right.

 

[DRBUZZ0]

ETA: The stared out word at the end of the quote is the name of a Penn and Teller show on Showtime.

 

[Lonewulf]

this link is worth posting again as it is very comprehensive.

http://www.iea.org/textbase/nppdf/free/2005/ElecCost.pdf

My recording of the estimates:

All 5% Discount Rate

Nuclear:
CAN-N: $25 per MWh
USA-N: $30 per MWh
CZE-N: $22 per MWh
FIN-N: $27 per MWh
FRA-N: $25 per MWh

Highest:
JPN-N: $48 per MWh

Nuclear Fuel:
Per MWh Total: $3.57 for Canada, $4.64 for U.S. at 5% discount rate (NOTE: According to the report, the fuel costs are included with overall costs, so don't bother adding the fuel to the cost above).

Wind Energy:
Highest: $84 per MWh in AUT-W, $90 CZE-W, $82 DEU-W2, $95 NLD-W

Lowest:
$30 in USA-W, $33 in GRC-W3, around $40 in GRC-W1, GRC-W2, and GRC-W4

Hydroelectric:
Cheapest: AUT-H2 and SVK-H: $40 per MWh
Second Highest, EU-H: 75$ per MWh
Highest: JPN-H: 140$ per MWh

Solar Power:

Lowest:
USA-S1: $180 MWh
USA-S2: $100 per MWh

Highest:
CZE-S: $1500 per MWh

Mid-Range: DNK-S: $460 per MWh



So, the HIGHEST in nuclear energy costs is about equal to the mid-range of wind, and about the lowest of hydro-electric. And the ever-touted life-saving solar energy is off the charts. (Yes, I know, peak is great and all, but I do like having my energy available to me when I need it).

Well, I know which horse I'm betting on.



EDIT!

I missed the bit on Geothermal. There's *one* estimate of Geothermal, that pegs the cost at about $27 per MWh and gives it an assumed lifetime of 40 years. Yes, geothermal is cheap! However, it's also only usable in certain areas.

Question: What's kWe mean?

EDIT: THE SEQUEL

If we used breeder reactors and reactors that used thorium, would the price go up substantially?

 

[DRBUZZ0]

KiloWatt (electrical). You see it sometimes when denoting power produced by something like a reactor or a boiler or whatever. It just means that you actually get a kilowatt of electricity from the system, as opposed to the thermal energy of the reactor or the mechanical energy of a windmill or whatever.

Prolly just to avoid confusion because you sometimes see a plant rated in Kw(t) which tells what the net total energy it creates thermally, which really isn't what matters.

 

[DRBUZZ0]

Perhaps the difference in energy which can be provided can be demonstrated by a simple visual example of real world nuclear versus wind power usage:

Nuclear powered:

Wind powered:

Which one would you want on your side?

 

[Hindmost]

Okay I just got off the phone with my friend's father who is an engineer at the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory.

Asked the following questions after describing this and recorded it:

How long would it take to build a naval reactor, steam generator, turbines, support equipment?

"Depends if they're tooled for it, because we build them every now and then. But start to finish? A couple months maybe. Not long. The timetable is dictated by the hull construction"


Could you build the big reactor system such as on a Nimitz class carrier in under a month?

"Well, the propulsion system actually has two reactors, but if you're tooled for it, you could probably do it in under a month"

How much electrical power can you get from that?

"You get better than a couple hundred megawatts"

So you think you could put a 200+ megawatt power plant together like this?

"Sure. The Russians actually are building a floating nuclear power plant prototype. It's an idea that has come up before. The Army operated one a while ago and we had a couple of these sort of things on barges that powered the panama canal zone base and also in Alaska. I think the mobile power plant idea is great. I'd love to see them bring that back"

So could you build a mobile power plant in a month?

"I really don't know. That would depend very much on the hull you put it in or where you put it and the generators and turbines. If you're tooled for it and, probably could be done. On short order that would take longer."

What if you had a production line could you crank these out one a month or so, reasonably speaking?

"Oh, if you're set up for that you can sure. If you can do the hull or whatever, then the reactor system isn't going to be the problem."

Is there any reason why you couldn't mass produce these at a rate similar to other large industrial equipment?

"I don't see why not. Yes, it's a standard design like that if you're set for that you could."

What about scaling it up to more power?

"You could add more reactors and combine them yes"

What about building larger reactors?

"The largest we currently make is the one I told you about, but you could scale it up, yes. You'd need to redesign the reactor though, but you can do this at any size."

How long would it take to design a new reactor?

"Depends, but if it's a fairly standard design not long. They did the SG9 in a couple years. If it's based on something that's not new it would be pretty fast."

Reasonably speaking, do you think that it would be feisable to mass produce medium to large power plant systems as I described?

"Yes"

How many could you produce in a year?

"Depends on how big an operation you have. If asking if you could make them one a month, that would be doable. If need be, you could do more than one at once."

So lets say you do a gigawatt plant in a box, could you do that in a month?

"Probably, if you had an operation for that. That wouldn't be too hard. You could do that with a few of the reactors, yes, but you'd be easier to go with a scaled up one."

So if it's an issue of the hull size to fit this, how big would you need for a theoretical self-contained gigawatt-level power plant? The size of maybe a big cruise ship?

"No. Wouldn't need to be that big I don't think. If that's all it is then no. If you mean you want support and the distribution.. I don't know. But for generating. No, wouldn't need to be that big."

So in closing, would it be financially possible and technically possible to build many, perhaps a dozen gigawatt-level nuclear power plants using such a design method within a year?

"Financially? If it's the navy that'd be no problem. The reactor isn't that expensive compared to the rest of the ship. If you're talking about a budget to build a carrier, then yes, you could do that if you had to."

And finally...the US could be converted entirely to nuclear in a short time, like a decade if such modular methods were put to use?

"Sure, if they left it up to us we'd have that done. You could do that. Engineering wise, sure you could do that. You'd have to get the politicians to pull their heads out of their asses, that's the only problem. Engineering's never the problem. If you let the guys who know this run things then we'd have been all nuclear a long time ago"

I hope we do soon

"Don't hold your breath there. They have a bunch of idiots who have no idea what they're talking about yelling about how it'll blow up like bomb."

I'm engaged in a debate as I mentioned about whether you could run the country and the world's power needs on wind energy as an alternative.

"Run the country on windmills. ********"

I don't think the months time period to construct reactor components is accurate. It would take months just to forge the materials. The schedule for the Korean units I worked on was 46-48 months for two steam generators. The goal in advanced designs is to reduce the construction time to about 30 months--from purchase order to ready to ship. That is with robotic welding and working 3 shifts. The reactor vessel schedule is a bit shorter.

glenn

 

[Lonewulf]

How would that compare to erecting wind or solar, though, for the equivalent energy capacity?

 

[DRBUZZ0]

I don't think the months time period to construct reactor components is accurate. It would take months just to forge the materials. The schedule for the Korean units I worked on was 46-48 months for two steam generators. The goal in advanced designs is to reduce the construction time to about 30 months--from purchase order to ready to ship. That is with robotic welding and working 3 shifts. The reactor vessel schedule is a bit shorter.

glenn

Well this guy designs but does not build them. Well, I don't know that he designs them top to bottom. He works in support for reactors in the field. I suppose it's the context of the thing. It's a question of turning it from steel ingot into a reactor or putting the pieces together.

Naval reactors of course are considerably smaller than those for power generation.

And these are generally not really "built" from the top to bottom in one place. The vessel would be ordered from a steel producer. It's just a big pressure tank. Then it comes in and is mated with the other pieces. The steam generator is probably assembled from prefab ordered tubing and such.

There are many subcontractors. So it seems the question was taken to mean something like assembling a car in the factory if you are brining in the engine from another facility and such.

But the end question is "could you crank these out mass production style" maybe that's what he means by "tooled for it."

The technique for building a reactor at the moment is basically per-order. They're not cranked out. It takes many months to forge a vessel, but you could have a few of them going at once.

Comparing to a ship - another very large and complicated system involving a lot of metal working, subsystems and such. Building your average nominal sized cargo vessel is going to be a rather big undertaking. It will take a couple years from laying the keel to commission.

But during the second world war we cranked out large merchant vessels at a rate of several per month. Sure, each hull might take months to complete, but there were many in line being assembled simultaneously.

The way reactors are built now, it wouldn't make sense to have a continuous run production system.

I don't see why this couldn't be done though...

 

[Belz...]

No, Belz, what I've been saying for some time now is that we've run out of time. We can start working on the nuclear plants. That won't be enough.

Of course it won't. It's too late to prevent global warming.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't do what we can to limit the damage as best we can.

There is enough potential to build wind turbines for all our needs eventually.

Again, why would you want to have it "eventually" and later rather than "eventually" and sooner ?

I'm more confident of that than nuclear fission.

Yes, you've made that abundantly clear, but I still have no idea of why. As I said before, you seem to have a highly irrational fear of nuclear energy. You're flooded with facts about how safe and abundant it is, and yet you desperatly try to find ways to cling to other forms of energy.

Personally, I don't think you can be convinced.

But we simply don't have the skilled manpower or manufacturing capacity to transform all the world's coal plants to wind nor nuclear in time.

It's not a good reason to stop trying. It ain't over 'till it's over.

It is apparent that a lion's share of the effort will now have to fall on conservation.

There's that ugly word, again. Long live the dark ages, eh ?

But we're in real trouble now.

Not in small part because of your fear for nuclear energy...

And survival will call for drastic reductions that need to come too quickly to build the thousands of nuclear power plants required, even if we assume we have the fuel to power them all.

Yeah, it's much more reasonable to kill billions of people in the process...

Again, the narrow discussion now is not about nuclear vs renewables. The discussion now is about tightening our belts or committing collective suicide.

You know, conservation won't stop global warming, either. Maybe you should think about that. It's a lose-lose proposition.

 

[Lonewulf]

Y'know, I hate to say it, but if it was shown that global warming would lead to the death of all 6+ billion people on Earth, I'd be willing to allow certain draconian measure be taken that WOULD result in the deaths of millions to one or two billion people. But only if I KNEW that the other result would lead to the death of all of humanity. I'm willing to take the route that leads to less destruction here.

However, I DON'T think that global warming will kill everyone. But I do think that it will have disastrous consequences that will be difficult to recover from... but not impossible.

As it is, we have to limit the damage done, but ALSO allow ourselves to be able to progress. Which is why extreme conservation to the point of stepping back in time isn't what I desire. I'm all for conservation, but the amount that Luddite suggests is ludicrous.