Nuke the Energy Problem

BigRob

I thought you hydronics guys might like this:

http://energyfromthorium.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor

Talk about politics of heating..

SWEI

If we'd started on it in the 1950's, I suspect we'd be using it widely.

The Chinese and the Indians have both been pouring money into thorium for several years now.

BigRob

Have you read about the LFTR test reactor we made in the 60s? It worked and should have replaced all the LWPRs. Even Alvin Weinburg, the LWPR inventor, said the LWPR was a bad design for power production.

Steamhead

Well, they're trying to overcome the issues we have with current light-water reactor technology. Whether or not these designs will do it is still open to question.

Light-water reactors, as they now exist, really should never have been used to generate power. They are not self-limiting, since the chain reaction can run away very easily if someone doesn't actively work to slow or stop it. Compare this to the accelerator pedal in a vehicle- if your foot leaves the pedal, the vehicle slows down instead of speeding up. Think of how many more traffic accidents we'd have if it worked the other way.

There are several very good books on this subject, that simply tell the story without editorializing:

1- We Almost Lost Detroit, by John Fuller, regarding the Fermi 1 fast-breeder reactor that partially melted down in 1966. This book also traces the development of these reactors and details some of the accidents that occurred during their development:

http://www.amazon.com/Almost-Lost-Detroit-John-Fuller/dp/0425067009

2- The Warning: Accident at Three Mile Island, by Mike Gray and Ira Rosen. I grew up less than a hundred miles from there. This accident almost killed Babcock & Wilcox:

http://www.amazon.com/Warning-Accident-Island-Nuclear-Terror/dp/0393324699/ref=sr_1_1/190-6119114-7702137?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1463410438&sr=1-1&keywords=the+warning-+accident+at+three+mile+island

3- Final Warning: The Legacy of Chernobyl, by Robert Peter Gale and Thomas Hauser:

http://www.amazon.com/FINAL-WARNING-Robert-Peter-Gale/dp/0446514098/ref=sr_1_3/190-6119114-7702137?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1463410610&sr=1-3&keywords=Final+Warning+chernobyl

I'm not necessarily anti-nuke, but as you'll see, there were (and still are) lots of problems with this technology. It was definitely not ready for prime time. Kind of like software companies now, especially Microsoft- but in this case, the bugs and glitches had far more serious consequences.

hot_rod

http://www.popsci.com/fukushima-five-years-later

ratio

Still looks like trying to solve the wrong problem. No doubt we'd be better off with safer nukes, but if we're using too much, the solution isn't to safely use too much, it's to use less.

ChrisJ

ratio said:

Still looks like trying to solve the wrong problem. No doubt we'd be better off with safer nukes, but if we're using too much, the solution isn't to safely use too much, it's to use less.

How do you do that?

hot_rod

ChrisJ said:

ratio said:

Still looks like trying to solve the wrong problem. No doubt we'd be better off with safer nukes, but if we're using too much, the solution isn't to safely use too much, it's to use less.

How do you do that?

Pumps, of all sorts, consume around 30% of all electrical energy. Requiring ECM motors would go a long ways to reducing electricity needed.

The DOE has stated 1 hp and larger, I expect soon all pumps will be ECM mandated.

I guess the same would apply to ALL motors. Every hotel room I stay in has a small EMPTY refrigerator running. If that is a requirement, at least make them efficient. same for every coke machine.

ChrisJ

hot rod said:

ChrisJ said:

ratio said:

Still looks like trying to solve the wrong problem. No doubt we'd be better off with safer nukes, but if we're using too much, the solution isn't to safely use too much, it's to use less.

How do you do that?

Pumps, of all sorts, consume around 30% of all electrical energy. Requiring ECM motors would go a long ways to reducing electricity needed.

The DOE has stated 1 hp and larger, I expect soon all pumps will be ECM mandated.

I guess the same would apply to ALL motors. Every hotel room I stay in has a small EMPTY refrigerator running. If that is a requirement, at least make them efficient. same for every coke machine.

Ah,
So this is where I usually go on one of my "keeping parking lots and streets lit all night for no reason sucking down energy " rants?

hot_rod

ChrisJ said:

hot rod said:

ChrisJ said:

ratio said:

Still looks like trying to solve the wrong problem. No doubt we'd be better off with safer nukes, but if we're using too much, the solution isn't to safely use too much, it's to use less.

How do you do that?

Pumps, of all sorts, consume around 30% of all electrical energy. Requiring ECM motors would go a long ways to reducing electricity needed.

The DOE has stated 1 hp and larger, I expect soon all pumps will be ECM mandated.

I guess the same would apply to ALL motors. Every hotel room I stay in has a small EMPTY refrigerator running. If that is a requirement, at least make them efficient. same for every coke machine.

Ah,
So this is where I usually go on one of my "keeping parking lots and streets lit all night for no reason sucking down energy " rants?

If it is a must for public safety, consider LED bulbs. And turn them off during daylight hours. LEDs are along the same idea of ECM motors. Same amount of light or work, but much less energy consumption.

In sunny western climates those PV solar parking lot lights with batteries are showing up everywhere.

I think the SMA building near Denver has small wind spinners on the parking lot lights.

BigRob

hot rod said:

http://www.popsci.com/fukushima-five-years-later

Fukushima is a good example of why the light water pressurized reactor should have been phased out. The Greens really mean well, but inadvertently stunted the Nuclear Industry's growth, and now we have all these old plants still in operation.

ratio said:

Still looks like trying to solve the wrong problem. No doubt we'd be better off with safer nukes, but if we're using too much, the solution isn't to safely use too much, it's to use less.

I see where you are coming from. Efficiency is important, but what if you have cheap abundant energy? Lots of good things happen then. Mainly, everyone's quality of life increases. For example, when humans learned to burn wood, then whale blubber, then coal, then petrolatum, arguably, lots of side effects, but a lot of people have a better life. It's all about energy density. Nuclear fission is so power dense. It's interesting to think about all the land devastated by deforestation, strip mining, the devastation of whale populations, and all the 1000's of humans (VERY conservative estimate there) who have died directly and indirectly from the extraction and burning of traditional fuels. Compare that to the relatively small areas devastated by using the wrong nuclear technology. It really is an emotional issue. All the nuclear plants, and there are a ton of them, are LWPR's, and they have had a very good safety record, overall. Imagine using the right technology that effectively eliminates the large scale accidents we've seen to date. If the US did this, we would become a manufacturing power house again. I can go on and on about this stuff, but I hear you. You would still want some type of technology controls to keep everything in check. Transpiration and space operations will still a require a huge amount of energy.

BigRob

Regarding ECM pumps and LED lights - I always wondered why the government didn't give every citizen 10 LED bulbs. It would be so cost effective. ECM pumps are such a no-brainer, even so, it won't be enough. Not even close. Solar can't do it either. If memory serves you need something absurd, like 100k large scale solar plants, and the energy storage to buffer it all, just for the US at current growth levels. Imagine the effort required to plan all that. Possible, but unlikely. The only reasonable solution that's in the engineering phase of development and can be implemented quickly and safely is nuclear. We need to get on it ASAP. Unfortunately, the N word has not been sold well to the public.

I like this book, too:

http://www.amazon.com/THORIUM-energy-cheaper-than-coal/dp/1478161299

SWEI

BigRob said:

I always wondered why the government didn't give every citizen 10 LED bulbs. It would be so cost effective.

It is now, but that was not true as recently as two years ago. Our electric utility is currently working on a program for 2017.

The Greens really mean well, but inadvertently stunted the Nuclear Industry's growth, and now we have all these old plants still in operation.

The defense/utility/government obsession with uranium and plutonium had a lot to do with it as well. Thorium is plentiful enough that it might well work, but the nuclear industry has to stand on its own, without government backup/bailout on risk, before I will trust it.

Solar can't do it either. If memory serves you need something absurd, like 100k large scale solar plants, and the energy storage to buffer it all, just for the US at current growth levels.

Low hanging fruit first. Passive solar design and solar thermal DHW should be part of every house we build.

ChrisJ

SWEI said:

Low hanging fruit first. Passive solar design and solar thermal DHW should be part of every house we build.

You're right, but it's not going to happen.
I see Mcmansions popping up all over near where I work and the only thing standard is cheap windows, plain vinyl siding and forced hot air installed as cheaply as possible. Have to have the huge arched door way with the huge window over it though and very high ceilings......

3000sqft+ of garbage.

Paul48

We can only hope that a safe, renewable form of energy is discovered, before the "Big Money" becomes too invested in another form that will destroy the planet. Development has stagnated because we are only investing in ways of feeding the grid and ultimately the meters on our houses.

jumper

Fukishima bad stuff was from bad safety features not from water cooled/water moderated reactor. Subsequent problem (evacuation) also from safety people. Current work is also stupid there.

The primary problem with water/water nukes is that regulators have them unnecessarily expensive.

Molten salt reactor that so many are gushing over involves extensive reprocessing outside of containment vessel. If it's built envirowhackos will make up issues about it as well.We can count on that.

Eventually somebody,perhaps China or India,will commission a next generation nuke.Very high temperature gas cooled.Its economy will obsolete other sources of energy.

ChrisJ

jumper said:

Fukishima bad stuff was from bad safety features not from water cooled/water moderated reactor. Subsequent problem (evacuation) also from safety people. Current work is also stupid there.

The primary problem with water/water nukes is that regulators have them unnecessarily expensive.

Molten salt reactor that so many are gushing over involves extensive reprocessing outside of containment vessel. If it's built envirowhackos will make up issues about it as well.We can count on that.

Eventually somebody,perhaps China or India,will commission a next generation nuke.Very high temperature gas cooled.Its economy will obsolete other sources of energy.

"Envirowhackos"
Not everyone that is against destroying our home is a wacko.

BobC

Solid fuel reactors are a bad idea from both a safety and efficiency point of view. They were only supposed to be a stepping stone.

The tubes they put the solid pellets into are zirconium and if they over heat the swell (jamming them in place) and then they start to give off hydrogen (that is what caused the explosions at Fukushima).

The current pellet fuel only uses 3-4% of it's energy before the fuel rods have to be replaced, a liquid fueled reactor can use up to 97% of the fuel so the waste is orders of magnitude less. Liquid fuel can be chemically separated on site and the small amount of waste has to be stored for a few hundred years, not tens of thousands of years.

Liquid fueled reactors have several good characteristics. They can not melt down, they can be designed so they are self limiting (they can't run away) and there is no hydrogen production. They do not run at high pressure so EVERYTHING is smaller and cheaper. Although liquid reactors run at low pressure they run hotter so they are more efficient.

Thorium has problems that have to be solved but using a fuel that cannot be used to make bombs is worth a little research. We have put men on the moon, I don't think there is anything we can't do if we put our minds to it.

Bob

Paul48

"Envirowhackos" are part of the problem. They make intelligent opposition go unheard. When you protest with aluminum foil sticking out of your nose and ears, and talk about aliens, and the Illuminati, it tends to ruin the credibility of scientists that speak out against something.

BigRob

jumper said:

Fukishima bad stuff was from bad safety features not from water cooled/water moderated reactor. Subsequent problem (evacuation) also from safety people. Current work is also stupid there.

The primary problem with water/water nukes is that regulators have them unnecessarily expensive.

Molten salt reactor that so many are gushing over involves extensive reprocessing outside of containment vessel. If it's built envirowhackos will make up issues about it as well.We can count on that.

Eventually somebody,perhaps China or India,will commission a next generation nuke.Very high temperature gas cooled.Its economy will obsolete other sources of energy.

I would agree that LWPRs are safe, even though they are a complicated way to extract heat. I also agree TEPCO was dumb, but containing super critical water in a pressure vessel surrounded by a containment dome sized to capture all steam from a leak it just nutts. Not to mention all the high pressure tubing for the heat exchangers. The LWPR served it's purpose well, which was to create Plutonium as fast as possible to win WW2. It makes sense that knowledge would be used for power generation since it was known. Fuel rods are another crazy feature. The rods are poisoned by neutron absorbing isotopes (the elements created after Uranium has begun to fission) after only 3% of the energy has been extracted from the rod. At that point the rods need to be removed and placed into actively cooled containment pools, which is the picture you see all the time on TV. So all those rods are sitting there, piling up. To use them, they need to be reprocessed. $$ To create them is a big undertaking, too. The LWPRs are like a batch process that creates a ton of waste. What I like about the molten material concepts is the online processing and the "continuous process" of the designs. Once the process is running, you dissolve small amounts of fuel in the molten salts, which dissolve and fission as they pass through the graphite moderator. The fission reactions continue until they reach the stable isotope, which extracts over 90% of the energy. The whole while, you are continuously filtering out the byproducts through high temperature distillation and adding more fuel, so the total amount of fuel you have on site is lower- no stockpiling of poisoned rods. Some of those byproducts are useful and have short half-lives, like helium, material to power space probes, and medical materials. In the event of an emergency you don't have to actively cool the spent fuel pools and the decay heat can be cooled passively. The design is beautiful with no ugly band-aids, most importantly, very achievable in a short amount of time. Invest 500 billion and it's probably there. Peanuts. Shoot, the CA high speed rail will be 100 billion all said and done. The problem is this would really upset so many industry business models, that an act of god, or an epic American president would be needed - like a Teddy or Polk. I guess Polk wasn't that epic, but he was decisive. Seems unlikely these days.

Politics: fast neutron vs. molten types. Turns out Uranium isn't too scarce and the fast neutron types aren't needed, but Nixon was from California and favored the fast and sodium types being developed there. Plus, he didn't trust Jewish people (except for Kissinger), so Alvin Weinburg (inventor of the LWPR) was discounted and lost funding for the ORNL fluoride test reactor they built and tested in the 60's and 70's. That successful test reactor is the basis/inspiration for the Indian and Chinese designs. I read that ORNL gave a tour to Chinese nuclear scientists and talked about their development history. Soon after China announced the planned development of their own molten designs. Go USA.

Anyway, I write all this to peak the interest of anyone interested and not familiar. Take a read of the above books suggested. Very cool stuff.

ratio

@ChrisJ, not quite sure, as it turns out it's a hard question to answer. And not to say that efficiency is a bad thing, mind you, wastefulness isn't a good thing, but looking back, even as the efficiency of our usage has increased, total usage has outpaced it.

I think the drive for maximum efficiency (& it's obvious success) is masking the problem, that we just use to durn much. The steam to hydro is a good example: there may very be efficiency to be gained, but look at the cost.

jumper

Anybody seriously interested should read Megawatts&Megatons. Next generation nuke will be subcritical and no long term waste will be extracted.

People go whacko when they get emotional about stuff that they don't understand. Conservation organizations have long been suborned by whackos.

Leonard

light water pressurized reactors are everywhere because they were selected in the 50's since they allow civilian reactors to produce plutonium which gov needed for nuke war-heads.

Reactor safety was secondary to the national goal of plutonium production for warheads for national defense.

The breeder reactor was killed by president carter on grounds of plutonium proliferation would make it easier for enemies to get plutonium for bombs to threaten us with. Likely good that he killed it , thousands of pounds of flammable liquid sodium as the coolant.

Jamie Hall

One minor item ... well, two... I'd like to add. First, our Navy has been using reactors rather successfully for the last 60 plus years. Granted, most of the Navy nukes are pretty sharp -- but the fact remains that they have been, with no directly nuclear related problems (the Russians haven't been quite so successful -- but that's another story).

The other thing, though, really has to be considered. It's all very well for us in this country and most of Europe to preach that conservation is very important and the way to go, and we do use more energy than needed (although a lot of the waste is in transportation...). However, that script doesn't play very well in much of the rest of the world, where a flashlight D battery is regarded as a big power source. This isn't only an enegy things; there are a number of first world environmental concerns which are not well received in places where there is no energy and not enough food. Worth thinking about.

Jack

I’ve worked on a few shutdowns, one pre 3 mile and one after. Big difference. My first shutdown was a weapons plant resulting in a bit of retained cobalt. I have a half-life of my own. I am not opposed to nukes and perhaps technology will come up with something. I am opposed to a process that makes waste that can last 25,000 years. I am opposed to a system that is unwilling to regulate that waste in a sensible manner. I am also opposed to construction methods that allow the types of leakage of radioactive material like we are seeing at Hanford. The failure to handle these types of issues dooms any technology that says “nuclear” to at best, a slow start. In the mean time I’ll take wind and solar in abundance in the mean time, but it looks like there are a few people who disagree with that too.

Paul48

I think that part of the problem, is, that we have been focused on creating huge sources of power. We want to be able to feed that grid, and ultimately those meters. Where would we be today, if Tesla was allowed to give free electricity to the world?

ChrisJ

> @Paul48 said:
> I think that part of the problem, is, that we have been focused on creating huge sources of power. We want to be able to feed that grid, and ultimately those meters. Where would we be today, if Tesla was allowed to give free electricity to the world?

Exactly where we are now because that was baloney. Unless someone can explain where this free energy was going to come from.

Jamie Hall

Jack -- sorry, but I'm one of those who has problems with indiscriminate endorsement of solar and wind. When I see solar farms being set up on prime agricultural land where it is out of sight and mind of the greenies in the cities (what do they expect to eat?) or wind turbines on the crest of a ridge which was -- until they wiped it out -- one of the prime hawk soaring and migration sites on the east coast (no hawks there now -- but the city which got the land by eminent domain and built the turbines but can't see them doesn't care about that) seems to me that something is wrong...

These projects are indiscriminately categorised as green and environmentally friendly (which most of them aren't), and the political and siting procedures are set up so that the local people -- whom they actually matter to -- have no say at all. Not impressed.

I could go on, but I won't.

Paul48

Tesla held hundreds of patents for bologna...........crazy things, like the electric motor and radio.

BigRob

For me, it’s all about energy density. The power we generate now is a fraction of what we’ll need in the future. Solar is great and plays a part. Wind, too, but the bulk will need to be something else. Imagine maintaining solar fields the size of an African country. This is the scale you are talking with solar and wind.

The waste argument I get. Hanford is dirty. Safety was second in those days. When you look at the new designs they are so vastly superior to the light water reactor, which is a terrible design. It’s what they had that worked at the time. Even the inventor of the light water reactor said it was the wrong design for power generation. Thanks to organizational momentum, Greenpeace, and poor education at the political level, the existing plants were never phased out. Molten designs make a lot of sense, except sodium. An integrated system of a couple flavors of molten designs will burn all the waste we have, power the planet for 1000’s of years, and be safe. Look at the safety record of the industry now. Nuclear is the safest bulk generation method in history considering CO2 generated, land fallowed, lives lost, etc... and this is all with plants using the dumbest design possible: the pressurized light water reactor and it’s current dumb fuel cycle. Those fuel rods are unusable after only 3% of the energy is extracted, then they go to the cooling pools in the plant- great news if you make fuel rods. The issue takes a lot of reading to wrap ones head around all the factors. In the final analysis: it’s a clean and scalable method that works with just engineering effort, now. And, the US is an industrial leader in the technology. Imagine all the good jobs from a nuclear energy industrial complex.

Regarding the long term radiation, for me, I don’t mind it. Decay happens anyway, for example, granite. Either it’s fast or slow decay. As long as we use an efficient fuel cycle and have reasonable long term storage it is a safely manageable problem.

Jamie Hall

Amen, brother @BigRob !

hot_rod

Regarding the long term radiation, for me, I don’t mind it. Decay happens anyway, for example, granite. Either it’s fast or slow decay. As long as we use an efficient fuel cycle and have reasonable long term storage it is a safely manageable problem.

This seems to be the biggest stumbling block, there is no current safe disposal. Yucca Mountain was supposed to be the safe catch all facility, it seems to have fizzled. Many of the temporary storage facilities around the country are decaying and or failing. They get "band aid" repairs every so many years. Does the DOE even have a handle on where leaks are currently occurring?
We need to address the current storage issues as part of a nuke plan.

Jamie Hall

Storage is an entirely political problem. There are known engineering and scientific solutions. Several decades ago an associate of mine (professor at a major state university) was working on approaches to handle the problem of leakage by simply creating artificial zeolites to trap -- permanently, as in geologic time permanently -- radioactive waste. The process worked spectacularly well, and was cheap. Shielding was necessary, of course -- but that's easy. What happened to his project? It was canned by DOE and he was fired by the university because it didn't fit the narrative of the environmental folks.

hot_rod

Regardless Jamie, the storage needs to be addressed and a more permanent solution arrived at.

If ever there was a time for that to happen.... You have an energy guy as DOE head, and one party in almost complete control politically. It doesn't even seem like this subject is a blip on the radar?

So build a multi billion dollar wall or some solutions to storage of waste that has been piled for decades. Which is a better use of taxpayer $$?

Paul48

Neither................We've paid for proper waste storage already.

hot_rod

Paul48 said:

Neither................We've paid for proper waste storage already.

Actually we have paid for improper, short term, kick the ball storage according to what we have seen and continue to learn.

I'm not sure technology exists to deal with the nuke waste we have for as long as it needs to be protected safely? If rail cars in a dirt tunnel are the current solution. Sounds Flintstone era, Homer Simpson level technology to me

ChrisJ

> @Paul48 said:
> Tesla held hundreds of patents for bologna...........crazy things, like the electric motor and radio.

I know all about Tesla. My point was there is and was no such thing as free energy. Can you show us his patent on this? I'm betting no.

Jamie Hall

hot rod said:

Paul48 said:

Neither................We've paid for proper waste storage already.

...I'm not sure technology exists to deal with the nuke waste we have for as long as it needs to be protected safely? If rail cars in a dirt tunnel are the current solution. Sounds Flintstone era, Homer Simpson level technology to me

It does. And it's far more sophisticated than rail cars!

Paul48

@ChrisJ

No...........Tesla saw electricity as his gift to mankind. Once the robber barons saw that they could not make money on it, they cut his funding. If anyone could have figured it out, it would have been Tesla. Who knows how far mankind would have advanced, had electricity been available to the whole world, for the last 100+ years.

ChrisJ

> @Paul48 said:
> @ChrisJ
>
> No...........Tesla saw electricity as his gift to mankind. Once the robber barons saw that they could not make money on it, they cut his funding. If anyone could have figured it out, it would have been Tesla. Who knows how far mankind would have advanced, had electricity been available to the whole world, for the last 100+ years.

Yes but he didn't.

BobC

You want to use a reactor that does not create waste out of 93% of the fuel rods and some significant amount of VERY long lived waste )ten thousand years and more).

Liquid fueled reactors create magnitudes less waste and the overs\whelming bulk of that only has to be looked after for 300 years max, that's a lot more doable than 10,000 years.

Bob