Toshiba Pushes Safe, Small Nuclear Reactor Design 965
core plexus writes "This article describes a proposal from a Japanese corporation that wants to thrust the Interior Alaska community of Galena into international limelight by donating a new, unconventional electricity-generating plant that would light and heat the Yukon River village pollution-free for 30 years. There's a catch, of course. It's a nuclear reactor. Not a huge, Three Mile Island-type power plant but a new generation of small nuclear reactor about the size of a big spruce tree. Designers say the technology is safe, simple and cheap enough to replace diesel-fired generators as the primary energy source for villages across rural Alaska."
Technology good. (Score:1, Insightful)
Ignorance (Score:5, Insightful)
There is soooo much less polution from nuclear reactors given the probability of worst case scenarios versus the diesel they are currently using. Why are we still burning fossel fuels!@!#@#!@!#
They arent in a location very suitable for wind/solar either, so nuclear seems like the best non-renewable solution.
Such a backwards society we live in, when technology is available and safe, and we delay in implementation.
Re:nuclear power is cleaner.... (Score:2, Insightful)
In addition, if you bury the waste in the desert, in containers that don't corrode, where's the harm?
The old dilemma (Score:2, Insightful)
- Safe.
- Small.
- Nuclear Reactor.
Pick two.People in Alasks don't HEART Nature. (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ignorance (Score:4, Insightful)
Clearly a name change is needed. Just like MRIs (magnetic resonance imaging) used to be called NRIs (nuclear ...). Maybe something like "elemental decay engines" would be less scary for the illiterate masses?
I can hear them now: "It has the word 'decay' in it. Is it like composting?"
Re:nuclear power is cleaner.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The old dilemma (Score:3, Insightful)
Pick two.
'Nuclear' doesn't actually enter into it; it's just one locus of possibilities within the 'Safe/Cheap/Small' domain.
Funny thing about the French (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, what to do with the spent fuel is a problem, but is the cost of storing the degrading material higher than what we pump into the air each year? Let's face it Solar and wind are not there yet. (Although if your looking to make a worth while investment in your home, consider adding solar cells if you live anywhere outside of the pacific northwest, my father did and uses it to heat water and some applices and its paid for itself in 3 years. Me I still rent, so someday)
I wish people would get over their nuclear phobias and NIMBY additudes because something needs to be done, and adding more gas turbines and coal plants are not the best solution.
Re:Nuclear material in remote, unsecured locations (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:nuclear power is cleaner.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, the most efficient way to kill people in the short term would be to just shut off the power and then we won't have to worry about the long term for much longer. But I suppose a percentage of the population could probably survive without power or fuel, not sure how to best get rid of them. Maybe your contamination plan might work.
Re:Ignorance (Score:2, Insightful)
Not a bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
The only problem I can see with it (aside from public perception) is that it involves a shaft dug into permafrost. I'd be somewhat worried that a wet fall followed by a sudden cold spell could lead to the shaft getting crushed.
Of course, it will be hard to sell people on, despite the fact that this is probably a much safer thing to have in your back yard than a gas main. I'd like one in my back yard, except for the fact that it's not cost-effective to run, unless you're in the middle of nowhere in a place without sunlight.
I want one in MY backyard (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pollution Free? (Score:3, Insightful)
And never forget about incidental pollution not related to burning... like the occasional oil spill.
Re:Funny thing about the French (Score:5, Insightful)
The actual proportion in France is 75% of electric power generation from nuclear. Another 15% is other "clean" power, such as hydro. The remaining 10% is evil dirty "burning stuff" electricity. I live pretty close to about five reactors here, and I feel pretty safe. It's preferable to having a bunch of coal plants dumping crap (including a fair amount of uranium!) into the air.
Nuclear really is the way to go. The only major accident, Chernobyl, was only possible due to the collusion of a horribly unsafe plant design, and moronic operators who decided to run an experiment (i.e. try something out that was way beyond the design specs) and turn off all of the safety systems while they were doing it. So, surprise surprise, the thing made a big KABOOM.
If coal plants had to live under the same radiation emission guidelines as nuclear power, they would never be able to operate. So I agree completely, get rid of nuclear phobias (in other countries, there doesn't seem to be a lot of it here!) and get rid of heavy pollution in electrical generation.
Re:I want one in MY backyard (Score:2, Insightful)
And what with the current terrorism-prone climate in the U.S., one must consider the worst-case scenario with such things. Worst-case scenario with a diesel-fired power plant (especially if it used biodiesel) is pretty nice compared with the worst-case scenario for a nuclear power plant.
Re:nuclear power is cleaner.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Dangerous nuclear waste hangs around for a couple of weeks. The 50,000 year stuff is all low-level stuff. People living in Colorado will get more radiation mowing their yards.
We're constantly bombarded with radiation NOW. Everywhere. In the food we eat, in the water we drink, in the air we breathe.
A major nuclear disaster would be, well, like Chernobyl. Really bad in the surrounding area, Nothing at all a hundred miles away.
But Chernobyl does bring out the biggest danger with nuclear power. idiot bureaucrats running the reactors.
Re:Another benefit of sub-critical fuel (Score:2, Insightful)
On the other hand, plutonium, also used as a reactor fuel is 100% fissionable. The reactor fuel is the same material used in bombs. Plutonium is also highly toxic. I believe the lethal dose for human consumption is something on the order of a microgram.
Re:nuclear power is cleaner.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing like that. Heck, people still live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were subjected to far worse than what a nuclear powerplant would do. (Although it's possible that cancer incidence is still slightly higher there -- lots less than the equivalent risk from, say, smoking tobacco.)
Chernobyl was just about the worst case scenario for a nuclear plant -- and that was a really stupid design with a positive void coefficient and a graphite moderator -- which caught fire when the cooling water boiled away. Chernobyl still isn't the best place to hang out for very long, but there are other places that can be naturally more dangerous (such as downhill from a lake that occasionally bubbles toxic gases, such as the one that wiped out a village in Africa some years ago, or the valleys in geologically active regions that can collect lethal levels of sulfide gases and kill the occasional unwary hiker, and so on.)
Oh, and as for "Nuklear Power plant has a jet that flies into it.", in the US and Canada at least (and probably most other places), the result is a flattened jet and maybe a few scratches and scorch marks on the (many feet thick, reinforced, densified) concrete of the containment building.
Re:I want one in MY backyard (Score:5, Insightful)
What comes out of these reactors is much less radioactive, for a much shorter period of time. You can safely put it back in the ground, in a non-water soluble, non-concentrated form.
Yes, you can put that in my backyard too. I strongly suggest that people that consider this a problem not live near me. It will dramatically improve the intelligence in the area.
how long really? (Score:3, Insightful)
It looks like we may be able to break down the seriously radioactive stuff from nuclear fuel and turn it into the stuff that is only slightly radioactive (think dangerous for about 100 years.)
So we reprocess the spent fuel, which we aren't doing now. That's 90% of your mass right there that you extract and put back into the reaction.
Now take that 10% and extract the 2% plutonium that is in it and use that in one of the nuclear plant designs that can run on plutonium/uranium mix.
Now with the 8% that is left, process it in an actinide burner and you have a small amount of material that needs only to be kept for 100 years before it isn't really very radiactive. In practice, the closer you get to the 100 year mark the less dangerous it becomes.
It makes you wonder who ran the numbers (Score:2, Insightful)
Nuclear has the advantage that you can go completely fossil-free, but I'm not sure that it's the most cost-effective. For that matter, neither is hydrogen. When you compare the losses in powerplant -> battery -> motor with powerplant -> electrolyzer -> compression or hydride storage -> fuel cell -> motor, it's obvious that hydrogen is a losing proposition on the basics and needs some other advantage to bring it up to parity. Aside from the possibility of compatibility with current engines (though not vehicle designs due to inadequate size of fuel tank spaces), I don't see what that advantage could be.
It still comes down to economics (Score:2, Insightful)
Discussions like this usually begin with, "What is the best way to deliver x (well, okay, n) megawatts to this community? But as Amory Lovins and others [rmi.org] have pointed out, the starting point has to be determining how much energy is really needed. The least-cost approach would look at efficiency improvements first, because anything that reduces demand at a cost of less than $2000 per KW is a better buy than this power plant.
Re:Villages? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:SL-1 Reactor, Idaho Falls (Score:1, Insightful)
Reflector PR doesn't make sense... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm a bit skeptical about the reflector mechanism: certainly, it makes sense to use a neutron reflector to modulate reactor output. But the business about "if the sleeve moves too fast, then the reactor's lifespan is simply shorted" doesn't make any sense to me.
The lifetime of most reactors is determined by the buildup of "poisons" (neutron-absorbing waste products) in the fuel, which is why reprocessing plants work so well: unlike a coal plant, a nuclear plant generally doesn't get more than a small fraction of the available energy out of its fuel, so you can chemically repair the fuel and use it again.
But the buildup of poisons in the fuel is dependent on the total amount of energy released so far. So moving the reflector too fast should either (A) produce more heat or (B) not affect the lifetime of the core very much. Toshiba seems to be claiming (not-A) and (not-B), which doesn't jive (prima facie) with reactor physics.
Why not?? I say go for it... (Score:2, Insightful)
(I think this is a GOOD idea as long as they don't use Russian reactors...)
As I remember, they brought two aircraft carriers to New York to provide power after 9-11. I don't remember if they used them or not but they brought them in to do it. Two aircraft carriers could have provided enough electricity to handle a LOT of the city.
That's pretty amazing and damn, that's a LOT of power. Beats the hell out of burning fossil fuels and polluting the air we ALL breathe and posioning the land, sea and air, making plants, people and wildlife sick, some of it dying off forever and god knows what genetic damage is being done.
In 1,000 years, provided anyone is left alive, "people" are going to be so badly mutated that they won't be recognizable as humans...
I would like to see the total abandonment of fossil fuels in favor of non polluting technologies, solar being the prefered (where feasable) because it is silent and has minimal impact on the enviroment, provided that they are manufactured and installed with the enviroment in mind.
The reactors, handled PROPERLY and responsibly are a damn sight better choice than fossil fuels..
Re:nuclear power is cleaner.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of what messed up Western Europe was the hysteria whipped up by the media. Please show me the mass cases of sterility, mutation, birth defects, etc. rampaging across that continent right now.
The fact is, the radioactivity in the atmosphere of Western Europe matched that of western Montanan for a few weeks after the disaster. That's it. End of story.
What causes fear is ignorant people like you who don't have a clue what you are talking about.
Nuking Nukes (Score:3, Insightful)
Listen to grenade go *BOOM*. Realize that one needs to read up on nuclear reactors.
You really don't know the first thing about how these things work, do you? What would you possibly hope to accomplish by dropping a grenade into the secondary coolant loop, other than stopping power output, which would be accomplished by the truck hitting the pipes?
Virg
Re:Reflector PR doesn't make sense...[ (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course the article isn't very clear, but I don't really see either not-A or not-B claimed as such.
It seems to me that the reflector is a ring moving down the rod, and at any time you have completely clean fuel at the head end of the ring and progressively more poisoned fuel toward the tail.
If the reflector moves too fast, the fuel within will be proportionally less poisoned, and though the output may be greater, it still won't be more than when the reflector started out on 100% clean fuel.
The reflector gets to the end sooner ("the reactor's lifetime is simply shortened") and the fuel ends up less poisoned than it would ideally have been.
Re:nuclear power is cleaner.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Do read about Hiroshima some time. Se how precisely the timing had to be constructed. Check the purity and mass and density specifications. Then try to construct a scenario in which a nuclear plant could even vaguly resemgle that.
Chernobyl is pretty much the worst that could happen, and there are plenty of safety precautions that could have prevented it.
Solution to the problem of guarding these things (Score:2, Insightful)
This is so simple it hurts when it hits you in the fase.
Assuming these reactors really dont have a footprint much bigger than a warehouse, put them in places that are ALREADY heavily guarded.
Military bases, Prisons, and maybe some of the bigger Airports.
The actual core is buried in the ground (bury it DEEP, who fucking cares) and surrounded by dirt and concrete, so unless the Mole-Men get a bug up their ass, its doubtful an underground attack would go unnoticed. [all you'd need is a cheap seismograph and voila! You can pick up unusual digging.]
The surface building is in an area thats heavily guarded anyway, so all we really would need to do is make sure the current guards are doign their fucking job, which they're supposed to be doing in the first place.
Also, maybe the the death row inmates and the multiple-lifers can work on the crews in the buildings. Make that a trade off for big screen TVs or less shitty cells or something. These would be the same guys that got their shit together and now work the scared straight programs and do other truly useful functions in the prisons already.
As far as dealing with the waste products, I'd personally rather have to truck a treetrunk sized core to some bigass site in the middle of the desert every 20 years than belch a few more hundred thousand tons of shit into the air over that same time period. For fucks sake, we can protect 635 legislators and their staffs form terrorists, I'd think the logistics of a truck going one way slowly wouldn't be too hard.
This might be tough in Alaska, where folks are spread out all over the place, but should be fairly easy in the lower 48, and who says you cant put in a bank of four of these little cores in more densely populated areas? One AA battery is good, four is better, and only slightly harder to add in.
another thought: To make it even more idiot proof, take as many of the computers out amd make all the controlls big analog levers and handles, computers can do the monitoring. Remove the chance of the system itself being flummoxed by a busted motherboard, adn everyones happier (and busier!)
Re:Villages? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I want one in MY backyard (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:nuclear power is cleaner.... (Score:2, Insightful)
>>what a bad nuclear accident will look like.
As others have pointed out, a nuclear power disaster would be *nothing* like Hiroshima. But even if it were... you know, i went to Hiroshima a couple of years ago. It's a thriving, growing metropolis. So is Nagasaki, for that matter.
Large scale reconstruction of Hiroshima had started by 1950. That's 5 years after the blast - which yeah, is bad, but it's certainly not 50,000 years. And, good grief, that's an actual nuclear bomb. Even the worst case nuclear accident is several *orders* of magnitude less severe. Yeah, radiation is dangerous, but the irrational fear far outstrips the reality.
What about the nuclear waste? (Score:2, Insightful)
The United States has not yet been able to find the permanent resting place for all of these spent nuclear materials. Currently all are on hold in temporary storage ponds etc at the various and sundry reactor sites around the world.
When someone solves the waste problem we'll be on to something. Until then I think we should wait.
Liquid sodium as coolant? (Score:2, Insightful)
Okay, help me out here. The article says that cooling with water leads to corrosion, so they're using liquid sodium instead. Then they use the sodium to boil water.
I can understand why they don't want water corroding away at the area around the uranium, thereby releasing U into the surroundings. What I don't understand is why they're not worried about the water corroding a hole in the heat exchanger and coming into contact with the sodium, causing an explosion.
You'd think they'd rather have uranium-contaminated water slowly leaking out of the reactor, rather than a large explosion scattering uranium dust all over the surrounding countryside. Can somebody clarify why the latter isn't a problem?