Nuclear Power Stations - Yes or No

[Sword_Of_Truth]

I would say yes to Oz using nuclear power. I also think that a lot of the public's trepidation could be overcome pretty simply.

Oh it can be overcome very easily. So much so in fact that the debate is effectively already over.

The ultra-whacko tree-huggers whine that we have allowed our desire for comfort to override our duty to Gaia and to an extent, correct. We do love our modern conveniences very much. Blank plasma TVs and dormant X-Boxes speak a powerful language of their own. One that the anti-nuke crowd will never be able to match.

We are running out of fossil fuels. It will likely not come in our lifetimes, but probably soon thereafter. And the people will be faced with a choice of either go nuclear, or get medieval. Our descendants will either have a nuclear civilization or a pre-industrial one.

I am confident that the fringe enviro-kooks will be whining about human nature for centuries to come.

 

[Cynic]

I think that is perhaps one of the most moronic, asinine and wasteful disposal plans I've ever heard of.

More than 90% of so-called "spent" nuclear fuel is actually fertile U-238. It can be converted into Pu-239 and sent back to the reactor for another round. And this can be done to almost any nuclear fuel 10 to 20 times over.

There's no mention in that article of reprocessing, recycling or breeder reactors. Instead they talk of taking fuel on a once-through cycle and then just throwing it away.

The thought of having such a tremendous abundance in your hands and then just tossing it aside is the one thing in the nuclear industry that truly is insane.

From the standpoint waste of resources, I hear you. I wonder about the cost advantages, however. One of the selling points of nuclear is how cost effective it is. If add in all the storage and reprocessing and regulatory overhead in and pass that along to the customer in the same way those things are factored into coal power, what would we get? (I don't know -- I'm asking.)

There might be an opportunity for a third-party industry, however. If regulations required plants to have the capability to use and give preferential business to various types of reprocessed nuclear fuel, it might add cost to the customers, but might have the potential to mitigate storage and waste issues.

 

[KingMerv00]

This statement is nonsensical.

This photograph was taken out my front window less than ten minutes ago (1315 hrs local time).
http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c345/Kilstryke/PIC-0015.jpg

That white crap you see is about 6 or 7 inches deep by now. Solar energy isn't enough to clear our streets or warm our houses let alone fuel our cars, provide light or wash clothes and dishes, power TVs and computers or hospital medical equipment, traffic lights or... shall I go on?

Oh yeah, the flakes are coming straight down... so there's no wind energy available either.

How did this comment slip by without a snarky remark (excluding this one naturally)?

 

[daenku32]

I think that is perhaps one of the most moronic, asinine and wasteful disposal plans I've ever heard of.

More than 90% of so-called "spent" nuclear fuel is actually fertile U-238. It can be converted into Pu-239 and sent back to the reactor for another round. And this can be done to almost any nuclear fuel 10 to 20 times over.

There's no mention in that article of reprocessing, recycling or breeder reactors. Instead they talk of taking fuel on a once-through cycle and then just throwing it away.

The thought of having such a tremendous abundance in your hands and then just tossing it aside is the one thing in the nuclear industry that truly is insane.

The article still highlights the need to have permanent storage, because you are still going to end up having lots of highly radioactive and toxic waste. And that such storage has to take into account very long storage times. You can't just rely on technology coming to save you.

 

[Wildy]

Before Australia builds a power plant it should

a. Be able to extract uranium from the rock.
b. build a uranium enrichment plant and sell the uranium.

Once it has done that then build a plant.

An alternative is to use uranium 233 made from Thorium. A much better option.

Well we've done a. We're mining the stuff, but it's going to Canada for enrichment.

 

[Sword_Of_Truth]

Well we've done a. We're mining the stuff, but it's going to Canada for enrichment.

Which is kinda funny because our CANDUs have such high neutron economy that they can run on unenriched uranium.

 

[Hindmost]

Well we've done a. We're mining the stuff, but it's going to Canada for enrichment.

Canada does not have any uranium enrichment facilities. They do process the raw ore into yellowcake and subsequently into Uranium hexafloride. But they send that to other countries for enrichment of U235.

glenn

FYI: The candu plant can use natural uranium because they use heavy water as a moderator. This gives reactor good neutron economy as the heavy water doesn't absorb neutrons as light water does. Anyhow, the plant needs be refueled while operating as there is not much U235 in the fuel. As a result burnup rates are low. It actually makes the plant a viable pu239 production reactor.

Canada is considering switching to light water technology.

 

[Furcifer]

The thought of having such a tremendous abundance in your hands and then just tossing it aside is the one thing in the nuclear industry that truly is insane.

The more you handle it, the more likely you are to have an accident. They like to keep their probabilities as close to zero as possible.

 

[Sword_Of_Truth]

The more you handle it, the more likely you are to have an accident.

Do you want to reduce nuclear waste or not?

If you really think that it's smarter to bury 10,000 tons of waste that will last a million years when there is a way to reduce it to 100 tons or less that will only last 300 years and generate 100 times more energy with that same fuel because you are afraid of accidents that don't occur when you keep commies from running the system then you are reacting on a pure emotional level and are not addressing the issue logically.

 

[Sword_Of_Truth]

FYI: The candu plant can use natural uranium because they use heavy water as a moderator. This gives reactor good neutron economy as the heavy water doesn't absorb neutrons as light water does. Anyhow, the plant needs be refueled while operating as there is not much U235 in the fuel. As a result burnup rates are low. It actually makes the plant a viable pu239 production reactor.

Canada is considering switching to light water technology.

Geeze, enough with the plutonium fear mongering. Plutonium breeding is a good thing. This is what allows us to take a fuel supply that Kevin Lowe with his fear mongering wants us to believe will run out faster than oil and stretch it out to 10,000 years.

And the ACR-1000 wasn't designed because we're afraid of of turning U-238 into something useful. It was designed to take maximum advantage of the "once-through" cycle because it's cheap right now. Even then, the nuclear industry is still expecting more breeders to be built in the future to recycle fuel for once-through reactors.

That's the kind of thing you can do with an energy source that uses a pick-up truck full of fuel every 6 months instead of a trainload every week.

 

[Hindmost]

Geeze, enough with the plutonium fear mongering. Plutonium breeding is a good thing. This is what allows us to take a fuel supply that Kevin Lowe with his fear mongering wants us to believe will run out faster than oil and stretch it out to 10,000 years.

And the ACR-1000 wasn't designed because we're afraid of of turning U-238 into something useful. It was designed to take maximum advantage of the "once-through" cycle because it's cheap right now. Even then, the nuclear industry is still expecting more breeders to be built in the future to recycle fuel for once-through reactors.

That's the kind of thing you can do with an energy source that uses a pick-up truck full of fuel every 6 months instead of a trainload every week.

I didn't mean to suggest the ACR-1000 was meant to be a production reactor, I was just pointing that it happens to make some Pu. Sorry for the confusion.

Too many people think breeders are more dangerous than regular LWRs or PHWRs...the low pressure sodium is nice and safe...high boiling point, great heat transfer and bunches of energy for a long time.

I have alway felt that countries like the US, Canada, France etc...burning up all the uranium and plutonium was a good thing as far as proliferation is concerned.

The reactor I am working on now will have a 24 month cycle. (burnup is getting fairly high and 40% of the power comes from plutonium at end of life.) The elegance of that compared with burning 150 tons of coal an hour seems to be lost in translation somewhere.

glenn

 

[Sword_Of_Truth]

Modular ... French ...

Finnish new generation reactor

... expensive ... slow

They should have gone CANDU:

In-Service Date, Plant, Country, Status

1996 Cernavoda-1 Romania On budget, on schedule
1997 Wolsong-2 South Korea On budget, on schedule
1998 Wolsong-3 South Korea On budget, on schedule
1999 Wolsong-4 South Korea On budget, on schedule
2002 Qinshan-4 China On budget, 6 weeks ahead of schedule
2003 Qinshan-5 China On budget, 4 months ahead of schedule
2007 Cernavoda-2 Romania On budget, on schedule

While Atomic Energy of Canada Limited is the primary contractor on these projects, they oversee and manage as many as 150 subcontractors. Pulling all these efforts together and getting them in on time and on budget is no mean feat.

 

[Furcifer]

Do you want to reduce nuclear waste or not?

I'm not sure that's even an issue. The current disposal methods are more than sufficient for the quantities generated.

If it ever became an issue of reducing the amount of waste, not generating it is better than trying to recycle it.

 

[Furcifer]

They should have gone CANDU:

In-Service Date, Plant, Country, Status

1996 Cernavoda-1 Romania On budget, on schedule
1997 Wolsong-2 South Korea On budget, on schedule
1998 Wolsong-3 South Korea On budget, on schedule
1999 Wolsong-4 South Korea On budget, on schedule
2002 Qinshan-4 China On budget, 6 weeks ahead of schedule
2003 Qinshan-5 China On budget, 4 months ahead of schedule
2007 Cernavoda-2 Romania On budget, on schedule

While Atomic Energy of Canada Limited is the primary contractor on these projects, they oversee and manage as many as 150 subcontractors. Pulling all these efforts together and getting them in on time and on budget is no mean feat.

I forget where I read it, but CANDU reactors have been running at something like 99.7% capacity since going online. Nuclear work horses

 

[Sword_Of_Truth]

If it ever became an issue of reducing the amount of waste, not generating it is better than trying to recycle it.

No it isn't.

The choice before us, as oil and gas run out, is to stay a high tech civilization and hopefully evolve into a space-faring one, or to decay into a pre-industrial society.

How immoral and hypocritical is it to tell our grandchildren that they can't have x-boxes and flat screen TVs (or TVs of any kind) because it was ok for their ancestors to fill the skies with C02 but it is wrong for them to fill an an soccer field with something that will be non toxic after a couple hundred years?

The morally correct choice is to leave for our inheritors a life as good as we have, or even a better one.

 

[Sword_Of_Truth]

I forget where I read it, but CANDU reactors have been running at something like 99.7% capacity since going online. Nuclear work horses

CANDUs have the almost unique* ability to refuel "on the fly". Most other reactors require shutdown while refuelling.



*I don't know of any other reactor that has this ability, but if Hindmost or someone else knows of one, please feel free to correct me.

 

[Furcifer]

No it isn't.

The choice before us, as oil and gas run out, is to stay a high tech civilization and hopefully evolve into a space-faring one, or to decay into a pre-industrial society.

How immoral and hypocritical is it to tell our grandchildren that they can't have x-boxes and flat screen TVs (or TVs of any kind) because it was ok for their ancestors to fill the skies with C02 but it is wrong for them to fill an an soccer field with something that will be non toxic after a couple hundred years?

The morally correct choice is to leave for our inheritors a life as good as we have, or even a better one.

I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying there's currently very little risk with using and disposing of the waste. Reprocessing it isn't as safe as we would like it too be. It involves additional handling that isn't prudent.

I mean not generating waste that needs to be reprocessed. The once through system is very safe. I'd say attention need to be focused on this rather than tapping all the energy in the current byproduct.

 

[Kestrel]

CANDUs have the almost unique* ability to refuel "on the fly". Most other reactors require shutdown while refuelling.



*I don't know of any other reactor that has this ability, but if Hindmost or someone else knows of one, please feel free to correct me.

Some pebble bed reactor^WP designs use continuous refueling.

 

[Hindmost]

CANDUs have the almost unique* ability to refuel "on the fly". Most other reactors require shutdown while refuelling.



*I don't know of any other reactor that has this ability, but if Hindmost or someone else knows of one, please feel free to correct me.

I am fairly sure the Candu is unique in this....it does help capacity factor.

http://www.cns-snc.ca/nuclear_info/candu_performance.html

Pu production reactors benefit from online refueling...but I don't think the Hanford reactors in the US had this capabilty--and I don't know about other countries. The US plant were early generation plants and not sophisticated. Pebble bed reactors can be refueled online...just remove and replace the "pebbles." But they are still rare in the world; next generation pebble beds are being developed now and they may be common in the future as they can be modularized and are inherently safe. The pebbles fall into a configuration that is subcritical when a situation requiring a trip occurs.

didn't realize Kestrel had already posted the pebble thingy...sorry.

glenn

 

[Furcifer]

I am fairly sure the Candu is unique in this....it does help capacity factor.

http://www.cns-snc.ca/nuclear_info/candu_performance.html

Thanks for that link. It appears I've misquoted the capacity factor. I believe I read this on the OPG website a few months ago. It may have only been in regards to Darlington or Pickering, or simply a snippet like "Over the last 10 years..."

The link you provided clearly indicates this isn't the case for all comissioned CANDU reactors.