India To Build A Thorium Reactor 277
In their first story, slowLearner writes "India will build a working Thorium reactor. [Quoting the Guardian] 'Officials are currently selecting a site for the reactor, which would be the first of its kind, using thorium for the bulk of its fuel instead of uranium – the fuel for conventional reactors. They plan to have the plant up and running by the end of the decade.'"
Before anyone gets too excited, this is only a modified Heavy Water Reactor and not one of those fancy Molten Salt Reactors folks like Kirk Sorenson have been evangelizing for a while now.
This makes sense! (Score:5, Funny)
"India will build a working Thorium reactor."
Building a non-working Thorium reactor would be an absurd plan.
Does happen (Score:5, Insightful)
Spain built a non-working nuclear reactor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemoniz_Nuclear_Power_Plant [wikipedia.org]
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so did Poland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ [wikipedia.org]arnowiec_Nuclear_Power_Plant
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Nice, cant link to wiki because Slashdot doesnt like Polish characters in URLs
http://www.mikofoto.net/album/index.php?folder=/zarnowiec1/ [mikofoto.net]
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To be fair, Spain are experts in "Non-working". For instance, a large portion of their populace is "Non-working".
Re:This makes sense! (Score:5, Insightful)
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"India will build a working Thorium reactor."
Building a non-working Thorium reactor would be an absurd plan.
Never heard of prototyping or simulations? I thought we were all geeks here. apt-get -s install $blah
Re:This makes sense! (Score:5, Funny)
Why do I never have mod points when I need them?
Why the hell do you people keep asking that stupid question?!?
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Damn, why don't I have mod points right now?
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Mod parent up!
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Mod parent up!
I can't, I don't have any mod points. Damn!
First yay then nay... (Score:2)
Too bad, a LFTR would have made my day.
Re:First yay then nay... (Score:5, Interesting)
Geeks interested in safe practical thorium power really need to read the history of molten salt reactors here [earthlink.net]. I hope India and China have the sense to invest in this path. The LFTR is the long term theoretical evolution of the molten salt reactor path. My only problem with the whole LFTR hype is it's pushing for massive research instead of building reactors we know how to build now. We should get back in the game now, first building a new MSR taking into account what we learned in the 60's and new advances since then, and then build a few commercial plants.
To be specific about some of the hype I don't like, check out the claimed advantages of LFTRs [energyfromthorium.com]. Some of the advantages that LFTR theoretically inherit from MSR I wont dispute, including inherent safety, small size, and low operational cost, as MSR research proved that already in the 60's. However, I take issue with "load following" which means ramping the reactor up and down to follow the load. That's what all our other generators are good for, but to get your investment out of a nuclear reactor, you want to take advantage of it's low fuel cost and run it at 100% capacity almost all the time. This also greatly simplifies the engineering involved, and given the economics, there's simply no way our early LFTRs will be designed for load following. Then they claim minimal end-of-life expense. Cleaning up the MSR plant turned out to be massively more expensive than anyone would have guessed, though with knowledge gained from that experience, we should be able to do a better job next time. Then, they assume that the first LFTRs will use a new turbine design, rather than standard steam turbines. That might be where we eventually get, but build the first plants using cheaply available and well understood technology! This sort of hype looks more like fishing for DARPA grants than solving the energy crisis.
Turbine engineer here (Score:5, Informative)
The turbine system believed best suited for its operation is a triple-reheat closed-cycle helium turbine system, which should convert 50% of the reactor heat into electricity compared to today's steam cycle (~25% to 33%).
Firstly, triple reheat turbines are more efficient from a thermodynamic point of view. But nobody builds them because the increased complexity and cost just aren't worth it. Double-reheat steam turbines were relatively rare for coal turbines- only a handful were built and the design concept was abandoned, but they may be common on the nuclear side.
The next problem is using helium for the working fluid. I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but the turbine would have to be enormous in order to work with helium. I'm talking so big that you need to install the blades on site because you can't move it by road or rail. This adds a huge amount of extra cost also- assuming you can find a material to make blades that long with. Currently the longest blades for steam turbines available are Titanium 52" or maybe 60" (for 50hz systems). A longer blade would probably require an even stronger material with the desired properties, which does not currently exist at anything approaching a reasonable price.
Re:Turbine engineer here (Score:4, Informative)
Well well (Score:2)
India.reputation++;
Belgium.reputation--;
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I understand: The only types of power plants in the world are coal and nuclear.
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No, just the biggest ones... and most of them
Well most of them, but "the biggest (by any measure) are hydro-electric [wikipedia.org]. I know that there are many issues, limited sites, etc. but where there are suitable locations the power output can be huge
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And I suppose hydroelectric is clean and safe and happy? Their construction techniques cost hundreds and in some cases thousands of lives. Hydroelectric plants are an ecological disaster that utterly destroys the natural environment of any river they are put on.
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Exactly. As a Belgian I can tell you, it's panic and green-huggers. Irrational conclussions, soap-like science.
I think there's also a political aspect: We get newscasts telling us we'll fall without electricity this winter bceause there isn't enough energy. The only way is to import energy at higher prices; whic
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Belgians are stupid.
It's not just Belgians. I'm pro-nuke too, but looking at the people out there who'd run this stuff today, I'd say they're not up to it.
Nuclear power should morph in the direction of "The Cloud." Amazon and Google focus on getting their stuff right and finding the right people to make that happen, and selling the result to those who need it. Not everyone can do that with the labour and management that's out there these days. Maybe it'd make sense to leave it to France to run the reactors with the best pe
Re:Well well (Score:5, Informative)
I worked on the control system for a nuclear plant maintenance robotic system back in 1990 (actually the controller was based on my design :) ). I learned something interesting about the nuclear power industry. The short version is - in France, nuclear power plants were considered machines, like airplanes. They were constructed and maintained like machines - they were all basically alike (in a given generation), and the differences were only in details of siting, etc. So each new one was just like the previous one, so everyone concerned knew pretty much how to avoid common problems like piping layout. And when a problem showed up in one, it would be fixed in all of them, much like FAA requires a problem in one 747 to be dealt with in every similar plane. (The paperwork for each 747, back when it was actual paper, weighed a significant fraction of the actual plane.)
In the US, these plants were considered buildings, and were designed (mostly in the 1960s and early 1970s) by architects (using components, but put together in different ways). So every facility is different. The architects generally weren't familiar in advance so had to learn while designing. As a result, many plants have things like pipes that go through a walkway at waist high, so the workers have to climb over or under it, and pipes that had to be re-routed on-site (often halting construction for a period of time) because they collided with another one in the design. (These were all designed before modern CAD systems had the capability to catch that.) And, because they are all different, a problem in one may or may not be found in any other, so there's no easy way to pro-actively fix problems that are found in one plant, because the design may not match in the correct way.
In an earlier job we were reviewing nuclear plant construction drawings with regard to the possibility of scanning them and generating CAD models. We found that the drawings in question were the worst engineering drawings we'd ever seen. They were essentially done without design rules, with multiple system layers all on one drawing - everything from concrete footers to electrical to plumbing all on one drawing, with pieces actually cut out and replaced by a redrawn section! I can't say that all plants were like this, but certainly this one was. It was unreadable by humans, much less computer scanners.
The plants we were working with also had radically different cleanliness standards - they are all run by independent companies, with different rules and traditions. One plant was so clean that the whole radon-in-houses problem was identified when a worker set off the radiation detectors going IN to the plant. The interior radiation level was maintained substantially lower than the ambient in the area - the place made 'hospital clean' look like a swamp. Others, based on what we heard, were more like that guy down the street with the cars in his yard.
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The plants we were working with also had radically different cleanliness standards - they are all run by independent companies, with different rules and traditions. One plant was so clean that the whole radon-in-houses problem was identified when a worker set off the radiation detectors going IN to the plant. ... Others, based on what we heard, were more like that guy down the street with the cars in his yard.
Interesting. Yet all of those plants were regulated by the NRC, correct? Proof that regulatory agencies aren't the solution. So, what is? Shareholder oversight? Or, can private enterprise not always be trusted to do nuclear adequately?
How the hell do the bone-yard plants manage to attract investors when there's others out there that make hospital operating rooms look like sewers? I want the former to be discovered and to quickly go out of business. What's missing here? Something's short-circuiting t
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Most of these were originally designed under the AEC, before it was split into two groups, one of which was NRC. Prior to that promotion of nuclear power, bomb making and regulation were all under one umbrella. The conflict of interest - promoting vs. regulating - was the reason to split them up.
The machine vs. building issue was a world view thing. The French did it right, we did it wrong.
Also, when most of these reactors were designed, the AEC assumption was that a nuke plant would last 20-30 years, th
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Start making movies about coal dust mutating lizards (Godzilla) and researchers (The Incredible Hulk), maybe a few spiders, etc. Oh and and come up with a coal bomb and use it in a world war.
Face it. Coal just isn't as photogenic as nuclear technologies.
Re:Well well (Score:4, Insightful)
People have largely forgotten the 'killer fog' of London, 1952. The combination of an inversion, humidity and coal-fired home heaters made for a 'fog' (we now call smog) that killed IIRC 1200 people.
And coal dust explosions are infamous - they are a type of fuel-air explosion [wikipedia.org]. I suppose that coal dust could be used anywhere that the combination diesel-ammonium nitrate explosives could be used. See also Minor Scale [wikipedia.org].
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Don't forget the massive amounts of radiation spewed out by coal plants.
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We have the technology to make coal pretty much completely clean (minus the CO2)
First of all, the CO2 is one of the primary concerns with coal. Secondly, while emissions into the air might be "clean", there is a massive amount of waste produced in the process of taking coal out of the ground and turning it into electricity. Your "clean" coal still produces massive amount of coal slurry and ash. Oh... and lets not forget that "Plant-emitted radiation carried by coal-derived fly ash delivers 100 times more radiation to the surrounding environment than does the normal operation of a simi
Re:Well well (Score:5, Interesting)
Half the reactors aren't in compliance with NRC regulations, because people like you stop us from replacing older, outdated reactors with newer more safe reactors. You can't on one hand decry the old reactors as being unsafe but then demand no new reactor be built to replace it. So is the old one more unsafe than the new one or not? If you don't like the old one let's build a new one that is safe.
And Chernobyl and Fukushima were both decades old designs, I believe, late 70s. Unless you think reactor design hasn't changed since, then India's reactor will be more safe by default especially considering how they have to "activate" Thorium to even make it fissile. Hint, it's not by itself.
Re:Well well (Score:4, Interesting)
Err, no. The old reactors are not unsafe because they're old, they're unsafe because the *designs* are old and are inherently unsafe. The newest designs cannot go into meltdown no matter how much you try.
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I used to live within sight of a nuclear power plant. I still spend time around there often.
Re:Well well (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do I keep having to say this? If you think that there are no problems with nuclear power, move to Chernobyl or Fukushima.
I will, but this double dare will include you moving right underneath a wind turbine, or moving into a houseboat in a large dam used for hydro-electric power. Why not move next to a coal mine / coal plant and tell me if you like that? Did you drive to work today? Try living next to a refinery, because 40tonnes of hydrofluoric acid, massive clouds of H2S, or the nightly sootblows are enough to ruin anyone's day. Maybe you prefer to simply not have power at night when you want it because no base-load energy source is pleasant and has zero environmental impact.
The problem here isn't that Fukushima and Chernobyl are irradiated, the problem here is that people were living within 20km of it to begin with. Pretty much every generating technology consumes large amounts of land / is not at all nice to live next to. But given the choice at least nuclear uses little land and doesn't put massive amounts of particulates into the air.
By the way I spent 5 years living in a house from which I could see the cooling towers of a nuclear reactor. I wasn't worried then, and I wouldn't be worried now. I work in a plant that would level a city block if so much as a spark ignited our products. Yet statistically I'm more likely to die in a car accident on the way home than due to a chemical release / explosion at work.
Statistically nuclear power is also the safest technology we have in deaths per GWh of generation, more so when you take into account mining of resources needed for the fuel. Please send your fearmongering back to the US government where it belongs.
Re:Well well (Score:4, Interesting)
I wouldn't mind living under a roof with solar panels on it though. Solar is still quite a bit more expensive than coal, but is now cheaper than nuclear [theenergycollective.com], according to some.
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According to your link, solar is cheaper in North Carolina. IF you include the solar subsidies from State and Federal governments.
If you don't include the subsidies, it won't be cheaper until 2020, at the earliest.
Note that subsidies do not make for widescale adoption. If you get 40% of your home solar system
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The end-game of a majority of people putting solar on their homes is higher utility rates for everyone. Utilities buy back the electricity that the solar panels overproduce at a high price. The production from the solar panels is intermittent and so the utilities cannot rely on them. This creates even greater swing in the demand that utilities see, yet they still have to to be able to produce enough to cover eve
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U != Th (Score:3, Informative)
You are being too generic. Thorium doesn't have many of the disadvantages that Uranium has:
location, location, location (Score:2)
Set up a military reservation and let them run breeder reactors. The military prevents proliferation, assuming you have a professional, non-corrupt military.
What's the worst that can happen? Your "engineers" engage in unauthorized experiments and blow up the reactor? The plant is hit by a 500-year earthquake soon followed by a
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That'd be fine for Chernobyl. Russia has vast tracts of land. Japan, not so much.
http://earthtrends.wri.org/text/population-health/map-192.html [wri.org]
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I started out moaning reading your post as yet another defeatist anti-nuke greenie, but eventually came to essentially agree. However, it's not the regulatory lapses, I think. Instead, it's 21st Century stupidity and management ineptitude we need to fear. People today, in general, can't do what's necessary to make things like nuclear safe. We're slip-sliding back into the Dark Ages. We shouldn't be fiddling with stuff like ubiquitous nuclear power when all we have to work with is the iPod generation.
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Nobody's saying there are no problems with nuclear power. The position is usually that there are fewer problems with nuclear power, compared to its most popular alternatives. If you think nuclear power's rivals are so great, move to Earth and live within its poisoned atmosphere, changing weather patterns, and torn-off mountain peaks.
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How about you move next to coal fired plant or a natural gas storage facility or pipeline or refinery. We are talking about realistic ways to replace that stuff which has all sorts of safety and environmental issues. Please take your head out of the clouds come back to reality and have a grown up conversation about power generation. Because turning off the lights when you leave a room and riding your bike everywhere and unicorn farts aren't real solutions.
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Why do I keep having to say this? If you think that there are no problems with nuclear power, move to Chernobyl or Fukushima.
Forgive me if I fail to see what you mean by this. Do you mean that I should be scared about living in Chernobyl or Fukushima because of radiation? The truth is, there are those of us who do research who regularly get higher doses than what you would receive by living in those areas. There are also people around the world who live with higher background doses. If your fear is radiation then there are other places in the world/occupations that you could tell a person to go that would result in them rece
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too bad that one of those accidents is making a large area dangerous to live in. that's always been the argument against nuclear. it's not that it's "more dangerous" day to day. it's that the CONSEQUENCES OF FAILURE are so bad. That, and how to sequester the waste effectively for timescales that exceed the lifespan of most countries.
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Do you have a better idea as to how supply the power needs of 1.2 billion people? I don't believe they have enough places to put solar and wind to power their entire country without C02. As far as Japan goes they have little choice but to put these things on earthquake faults and in area subject to tsunami's. I think it fare just as good as a refinery or a chemical plant in the same location.
I believe Thorium is actually supposed to be safer producing less high level waste but we shall see.
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Maybe I should say that cars are bad because a whole bunch of people are dying in car crashes as we speak.
Fukushima was located in Natural Disaster Central and was hit with a huge earthquake followed by a monster tsunami. Hardly regular circumstances.
You know who else is cool and uses nuclear power? All these guys. [wikipedia.org] All this and only a small handful of accidents, the most notable ones caused by an incredibly stupid experiment and an incredibly powerful natural disaster. Who's posing like an idiot now?
How much does this resemble (Score:2)
How much does this resemble the Molten Salt Reactors everyone's talking about?
Will experience from this reactor be able to be applied to the new-style reactors?
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But that's already about it. Canada's CANDU reactor design is also capable of using theorium for fuel source and is really close to India's design; so not very 'new'.
LFTR have 2 distinct advantages over this (more or less) proven design; they do NOT have a solid fuel source and thus can be designed to be passive-shutdown,
and they require nearly no chemical pre- nor post-processing of the fuel source. Additionally,
Why solid? (Score:2)
Re:Why solid? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Either I misunderstand you or you misunderstood your parent poster:
A LFTR reactor is still powered by Thorium... I believe even more so than this setup India i doing now, since a LFTR only needs a bit of uranium or plutonium to start the chain reaction.
But the really big difference is that the design of a LFTR is much less expensive and less dangerous.
The question remains: What keeps us from building them? The fact that they do not produce waste than can be weaponized? For a nuclear power like India, perhap
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But the really big difference is that the design of a LFTR is much less expensive and less dangerous.
Eh? The heavy water design used by India (Derived from the CANDU technology we sold them) is a comparatively simple and safe design. It doesn't require any heavy machining (as the majority of the reactor operates at low pressure) and is an inherently stable design. Managing hot, corrosive liquids that have to be kept molten once the reactor is started up, is just asking for trouble, and horridly complicated. In effect, once you turn it on you can never turn it off again until you shutter it.
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If you are referring to the US as us, I'd assume that the thing stopping us from building them is the same that is stopping us from building any other kind of nuclear reactor. Such projects lack the popular support necessary to gain needed subsidies and permits for construction.
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Nothing to do with subsidies. A lot to do with lawsuits.
You announce plans to build a nuclear power plant in the USA, and before you get back to your desk, you've been sued by every anti-nuke group in the country.
You pick a site,
EXACTLY (Score:2)
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The original reason the US didn't build Thorium reactors is they weren't useful for military purposes. So the military had no interest in them. Now it's because the path we *did* take left a very bad taste in the mouths of a very large number of people. It wasn't mainly technical problems, it was mainly political and managerial problems. This doesn't keep them from being very important problems.
*I* wouldn't be in favor of a new nuclear plant. And it's not because I think the technology isn't worth it,
What keeps us from building them (Score:2)
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Because they already have the heavy water reactors (They're basically a CANDU derivative, so getting them to run on thorium is pretty simple), as opposed to having to build a new system from scratch.
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Probably because there are some *dis*advantages as well - like the need for a complex continuous reprocessing system to clean the salt of fission daughter products, chemical reaction byproducts and various contaminants. Or the extreme toxicity and handling hazards of the fuel salts. Or their tendency to breed corrosive
Fancy? (Score:2)
Not sure what the poster means by "fancy" when referring to the liquid flouride thorium reactor. It may be a novel concept to many folks, but if anything it's simpler compared to a light water or pressurized water reactor design. (Or any other solid fuel design, for that matter.)
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Meltdown? A LFTR runs with the fuel in a molten state. That's why they call it a MOLTEN salt reactor. So maybe you were trying to be cute, but it was cute and ignorant.
Salt Schmalt. Who cares? (Score:2)
If it works, and we finally develop batteries worth a crap, then humans may just survive the next centuries without a 90% die-off.
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Umm, in a century, the die off rate is nearly 100%. Regardless of the sources of power and the accessibility of good batteries.
The Retreat Continues? (Score:2)
Is it my imagination, or does nuclear-power advocacy have a moving-goalposts problem? For myself, I guess I'm like most folks here, I'd love it if there were a technologically advanced carbon-free power source we could all use, so we could all be techno-optimists, and superficially, it seems that nuclear power could be that power source.
But at this point, even fission-power advocates seem to be betting the farm on future designs, rather than trying to convince anyone that any actually operational system is
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"we've heard for a while that thorium reactors will be better, but now that someone's actually building one, it turns out to be the wrong kind of thorium reactor."
Well, you probably heard that mentioned reactor is *not* this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LFTR [wikipedia.org]
It's called "Liquid fluoride thorium reactor" and it is quite tested for almost 10 years already in scientist reactors. More, it's designs has been improved more and more. Problem is - big powers are more interested in burning Plutonium and friends (
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I want this to work, but I'm having trouble shaking the sense that fission power is only safe when it's confined to PowerPoint slides, and becomes dangerous when it collides with reality.
The record of operating plants says differently.
The problem in some ways is similar to airplanes vs. cars. Without questions cars are more dangerous than airplanes. However airplanes are almost universally perceived as more risky because when an accident occurs it is highly visible in the news, involves dozens or even hundreds of people, and was completely out of the control of nearly everyone involved. It's a psychological truth that people feel safer when they feel in control of their destiny, even if
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"we've heard for a while that thorium reactors will be better, but now that someone's actually building one, it turns out to be the wrong kind of thorium reactor."
If the reactor is almost exactly the same as the old kind of reactor, but you just fill it with a different fuel, why would you expect to get the benefits of a new reactor design?
Just about everyone talking about the benefits of Thorium (at least outside of India) is talking about molten salt reactor/liquid fluoride thorium reactor technology.
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Really obsolete technology (Score:2)
If they were smart, they would have saved their gold and bought a fel iron reactor in a few levels.
First of its kind? The OP should be shot (Score:2)
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An alternative approach is to use an accelerator to add neutrons, but yes using the uranium as you say is what the plan is here.
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Thorium is the way to go. (Score:2)
Breaking News (Score:2)
Indian engineers have been reported camping known spawn points in Ungoro. News at 11.
Lots of opposition can be expected. (Score:2)
Almost
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http://www.cathnewsindia.com/tag/koodankulam-nuclear-plant/ [cathnewsindia.com]
http://expressbuzz.com/states/tamilnadu/has-church-hijacked-tn-anti-nuclear-stir/327707.html [expressbuzz.com]
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The nuke waste problem still hasn't gone away. Building new plants is insane.
Pouring it into the gutter outside the plant would be safer than the way waste is handled in a coal plant, i.e., thrown into the atmosphere. Yes, nuclear waste is very dangerous, but the fact that the danger is so concentrated is a good thing. It means we can feasibly contain it all.
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Would you rather them build a coal plant instead?
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Solved Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
If we start reprocessing our fuel using techniques that the French have been using since the 70's then the majority of our waste will be recycled. If we further start using modern reprocessing systems (like breeder reactors), then the majority of the waste that is left will also be recycled.
Then for what is left, the Yucca Mountain storage plan is capable of safely storing nuclear waste for hundreds (if not thousands) of years with no maintenance. You add in a little bit of maintenance and we can safely store the waste indefinitely.
Compare that to coal where we have no practical means for collecting let alone storing all the pollution which they create. And whose pollution is causing much more immediate problems. And whose normal operation causes far more more deaths per MWh than nuclear. Building more coal plants is what is insane.
Re:Nuclear waste (Score:5, Interesting)
So we need to stop burning coal ASAP, because with nuke plants we can contain the waste, with coal burning we just spread it nice and even across the planet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#Coal [wikipedia.org]
According to U.S. NCRP reports, population exposure from 1000-MWe power plants amounts to 490 person-rem/year for coal power plants and 4.8 person-rem/year for nuclear plants during normal operation, the latter being 136 person-rem/year for the complete nuclear fuel cycle.
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The nuke waste problem still hasn't gone away. Building new plants is insane.
Yes it has. [wikipedia.org]
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Look, there is ZERO chance that AE can replace all power in the USA, let alone the world over the next 20-30 years. Not going to happen. Esp. while we focus on Solar PV and Wind and pretty much ignore storage or geo-thermal. In addition, we need to get small nuke plants going for use in space, on the moon, and mars. We NEED nukes.
And when it comes to worrying about nuke waste, well, even more insane to having it stored in one place, is
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Yeah that's the real problem. People need energy. You have a bunch of bad choices here. Pick one that doesn't produce CO2 and has enough power to handle base load which leaves out solar and wind because the sun doesn't shine constantly, wind doesn't blow all of the time, batteries aren't yet capable of storing this base load and do it because doing nothing is worse OR maybe we could spend all of our time on carbon sequestration which wont work on cars unless they are electric.
It's a big complicated problem
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Photovoltaic can't produce base load, but solar thermal can. Several tons of liquid salt at 800 degrees can run a steam turbine all night long. It just doesn't scale down below the industrial scale, and solar power is currently used for smaller scale production almost exclusively.
Yes, I am very much pro nuclear. And that includes taking advantage of that giant thermonuclear furnace in the sky.
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Very true. I have heard that is hard to get a permit on one of these because of the area of land they consume and might hurt some desert creature. This king of thing may work out west, but what about back east? Here we weren't even allowed to put wind up on top of the Appalachian Mountains. It might hurt the scenery. Yet while all of the debate another coal fired plant came online. It is built on top of old mine works and one day they plan on pumping the CO@ back back where it came from. As the water table
Relax your requirements (Score:2)
Sorry, but if you really want to solve the problem, then you're going to need to fix two (or three, depending on how you look at it) strategic mistakes in that one sentence fragment!
First, lose the "pick one" part. It's ok if you use different techs in different places. Hudson Bay area residents and Sahara dwellers probably should be using totally different
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That is already being done but it seems to be happening at such a slow pace. There have been plenty of coal plants put online at the same time. OK what should Hudson Bay do or New Jersey? I'm not saying you should build wind solar, etc. but it isn't enough and if global warming has to be dealt with swiftly I think a Nuclear power plant would be safer to more people than a coal fired one.
And another one comes online.
http://www.dom.com/about/stations/fossil/virginia-city-hybrid-energy-center.jsp [dom.com]
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What 'toxic chemicals' are in solar panels besides the little plastic electronics box? This has to be some fresh-made right-wing bull****. It is mostly sand, silicon, and aluminum...
Cadmium telluride is a popular alternative as it's cheaper than silicon panels. Also, refining the high purity silicon to make crystalline silicon panels is hardly a tidy process, such as the production of silicon tetrachloride.
Ask BP how cheap that was. . . (Score:2)
I don't think BP really sees skimping on safety as a way to save money, not anymore. Reality has a way of asserting itself.
Companies will spend the money they need to in order to avoid spending more, at least if they're held accountable.
There's always the problem of the under-funded company which does something dangerous, causes an expensive mess, then declares bankruptcy, leaving the bill for others to pay. That is avoidable through responsible regulation - such as requiring a sufficient level of bonding o
Re: (Score:2)
And if you build new feeder/breeder reactors you can use all that "waste" as fuel and go from a half million year problem to a 0 year problem because the actual waste from a feeder/breeder are either elements about as radioactive as natural granite or elements radioactive enough that they can be cast in a concrete coffin and will burn through their radioactive period in a century or two. That is a waste problem that can be managed without having to plan for time periods beyond the existence of the human rac