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."
Well, this is a good place to start (Score:5, Interesting)
And if something goes badly wrong, is anyone really going to trek through the snow and ice to check things out? Just kidding.
While the Japanese nuclear "industry" is one of the worst in the world in terms of safety, it's impressive that reactors are this small, and maybe this will eventually come to be the standard for electricity generation in places where the other fossil-friendly alternative - namely hydroelectric power - is not an option.
decentralization of the power grid (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:waste? (Score:3, Interesting)
A Pity Asimov is Dead (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:nuclear power is cleaner.... (Score:5, Interesting)
But my hometown lies 15 miles from Waste Control Services, and the plant sits right on top of the Ogalalla Aquifer from which the entire region pumps its water. The "corrosion proof containers" are metal barrels buried in a cement-lined pit. Along with the radioactive material are "non-corrosive" substances like old batteries and various forms of chemical, petroleum and medical waste. To top all this off, some "stabilized" napalm has been added to the mix as garnish.
Taken separately, these things are not harmful. Properly encased by well-trained robots in impervious material, these things are not harmful. But... packaged by overworked, underpaid, undereducated laborers in the cheapest material available with security checks run by firms hired out by the company to be yes-men, dumped together en masse in a cement pit, I'd say these things have the possibility for a big ka-boom.
So... to answer your question -- avoid West Texas at all costs.
TRIGA reactors (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Already been done (Score:3, Interesting)
It took a large team of men, working in short shifts most of a day to get it in a container. It did not look like something I would want to do, even if the pay was good, though I doubt it was.
They say the Russians built quite a few of these little self-powered navigation towers.
Re:Ignorance (Score:4, Interesting)
Nuclear energy is barely cost competitive now, and the only reason they are even close to competive is because of the heavy government subsidies that the industry gets. Without subsidies, nuclear energy wouldn't be cost effective at all, and the industry in every country is heavily subsidized. One of the biggest subsidies is governments acting as an insurer of last resort since regular insurance companies are not willing to offer policies against nuclear accidents.
I would rather see companies be penalized (via taxation) for the pollution they generate, which they can pass on to me in the form of higher prices, or they can switch to cleaner energy sources and offer me cheaper prices. At the same time, governments can stop subsidizing other forms of energy, which can be passed on to me in the form of lower taxes. As the markets rationalize, I suspect that I will see a net gain, while government tax income will be revenue neutral.
Sadly, this won't happen in America, since Republicans are mostly beholden to big oil, and Democrats are mostly beholden to the greens, neither of whom have my interests at heart.
Re:For everyone complaining about nuclear waste... (Score:2, Interesting)
That's one drum per 7.5 years per village of 700 people. And perhaps you'd check how much it costs to deal with one drum of high-level waste (i.e. store it for the 50000 or so years it will take to become safe).
Small portable reactors are nothing new (Score:3, Interesting)
Accoring to the headline, the reactors are about the size of a big spruce tree.
Why is this impressive? US subs and aircraft carriers are powered by nuke plants which are in the same rough size, if not smaller as a spruce (which, according to this [jaredsgarden.com] pages stats are roughly in the range of 30-60 ft tall and 20-30 ft wide). And the boat and ship nuke plants have been around for many years, too.
What would be impressive, though, is if they CAN indeed run trouble free for 30 years.
What's wrong with TMI? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:SL-1 Reactor, Idaho Falls (Score:5, Interesting)
About Time (Score:5, Interesting)
Because it had to be "certified" and documented, the cost was outrageous. Each section of pipe had to come from a certified company built by a certified company and using materials (ore, etc) from a certified place, all documented of course. Makes you feel better about the construction, but costs a lot and requires lots of maintenance.
At the time I saw some specs for a new, simple design to be used in Asia and submitted to the NRC. It used less people, more gravity fed pumps and flows, and should have lowered the cost of plants from billions to hundreds or even tens of millions.
Nothing came of it and it was a larger scale than this, but it was a good idea. Nuclear has a place when built well and conservatively, which it seems this design is.
Re:Another benefit of sub-critical fuel (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Villages? (Score:5, Interesting)
After 30 years, the reactor remains radioactive. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:nuclear power is cleaner.... (Score:5, Interesting)
And yes, coal is normally not considered radioactive. But it does contain traces of radioactive material, both in the coal itself and as waste rock from the mining process that isn't entirely separated. Not very much, of course -- but it takes thousands and thousands of tons of coal to produce the same power as a few pounds of uranium.
Of course, all radioactive waste eventually decays. We haven't even touched on the other stuff in coal ash that's highly toxic (like arsenic) that never decays.
I'll happily store the waste from the nuclear generated power I use in my backyard if you'll store the ash from the coal generated power you use in yours.
Re:Reactors evolution (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:nuclear power is cleaner.... (Score:2, Interesting)
If you were to break up the waste, mix it with glass, and bury the resultant big frigging block of glass in the desert, you're pretty much golden (or at least that's what the discovery channel told me). You just can't dig it up later and use it to kill people with.
Re:nuclear power is cleaner.... (Score:3, Interesting)
At about 95 pounds per cubic foot, this power cell alone would weigh just shy of 3/4 ton.
Then add in the fact that the cell is welded to the end of a 70 foot long steel tube filled with liquid sodium - with no way to access the core except for:
a) Lifting the 76 foot rod out of the ground via crane (required disconnecting everything first of course - probably some noticable downtime)
or b) digging a tunnel down about 70-80 feet, busting through the reinforced concrete outer shell, the steel inner shell, somehow not dying from the 900+ degree heat and radiation, cutting the red-hot power cell off the end of the steel tube (risk spilling high pressure liquid sodium!), then hauling the 3/4 ton cell back up to the surface.
Both a and b require that this operation be done without anyone getting suspicious.
Somehow I don't think some guy is just going to waltz in and pilfer the core.
The only time it would be vulnerable would be during routine maintenance - once every 30 years - and then it would probably be a fairly secure location similar to any other nuke plant refuling.
=Smidge=
Re:Reflector PR doesn't make sense... (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, unless I'm totally mistaken, the reflector sleeve will only travel down the core *once* in those 30 years, i.e. it's not meant to be moved up again. If it suddenly falls down to the bottom, I doubt there'll be much of a reaction (Disclaimer: I'm a computer scientist, not a physics major) in that short a timespan, and after that the sleeve is completely out of the picture.
I'd also hazard a guess that the speed of the sleeve travelling along the core is calculated to get the most out of the parts of the core it comes by, so I guess the most you could do is reset it to the position it fell down from once you fixed the problem, but it's probably safer to just replace the whole thing...
np: Tied & Tickled Trio - Radio Jovian (Observing Systems)
Re:nuclear power is cleaner.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Big article on this in Scientific American many years ago, in opposition to the Nevada waste site. Again the greatest danger is in transportation, but once entombed there is really no way for the material to harm anyone. You put a core dirlling ship in the ocean and dril a hole 2-3 kilometers into the ocean floor. You then drop barrels of waste into the hole separated by a few meters of the sediment. Even if the conatiners were to breach the material would at most disperse a few meters into the surrounding sediment over thousands of years. There is no worry of ground water contamination or even human contaimination once entombed, and eventually the material ends up melted into the mantle.
But, there is the threat of an accident during transportation, which is a worry for any nuclear waste disposal method.
Re:SL-1 Reactor, Idaho Falls (Score:2, Interesting)
Are you a reporter? Nicely sensationalized piece here. You even got moderated up to 5; good job (but woefully overrated)!
The SL-1 accident occurred almost completely due to operator error and lack of knowledge/respect of the system being "operated" (and I use that term loosely).
When you climb up on top of a reactor, override operating mechanisms (however crude they were) and pull a rod out by hand, bad things tend to happen. What happened in that case was the rapid increase in reactivity caused a localized steam explosion that ejected the rod completely (giving the operator a ride to the roof in the process). Needless to say, it was a very stupid move made in an age where operating procedures were loose and effective safety mechanisms were rare.
Yeah, it was a bad accident. The only nuclear accident in U.S. history directly causing deaths. But it's silly to even begin to suggest that history can repeat itself, because there is virtually no similarity between the modern reactor being discussed and the SL-1 reactor.
--CP
Re:Ignorance (Score:4, Interesting)
Those expenses are hard to enumerate. I'd go ahead and try to estimate them and apply a tax to gas accordingly, but there is another cost which is easy to enumerate. How about the cost of interventions in the Middle East? The only reason we launch cruise missles like they were practice rounds on the target range is because of the oil under the ground. If the cost of Middle East wars were tacked onto gas, you can bet that alternative energy would look more attractive.
It's a win-win too. Anti-war protesters can't complain about the wars over there if they buy gas for their car. If they want to set an example and use other sources of power, then they can rest assured they aren't spending their tax dollars on bullets. If the true cost of oil is high enough people will stop buying it, and we won't end up invading the middle east every 5-10 years. Without the huge flow of cash and the US state department pushing the status quo you can bet that democracy is a lot more likely to fluorish over there as well.
Plus, this would all be sustainable in the long run.
Let people buy oil, nuclear, or whatever. Leave it up to each individual to decide what makes the most sense. Just make sure each option is priced with all its associated costs factored in. If it costs less to clean up after one source of power, then make sure it is taxed correspondingly less.
Re:nuclear power is cleaner.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Keep in mind that:
Re:nuclear power is cleaner.... (Score:4, Interesting)
As far as the heavy metal runoff from uranium mining, it is no worse than that at any other heavy metal mine. Or a gold mine for that matter.
Permafrost? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll have to ask my uncle. He helped Bechtel build an oil refinery in northern Alberta...
Prediction: The politics will be vicious. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a must win for the antinuclear movement.
They'll view with alarm the small size, and especially the very low installation cost which makes it hard for long delays to bankrupt by increasing the cost of working capital.
That no plant has been ordered in the US for decades is a huge political point for them, and they'd see this as the camel getting a nose into the tent. I expect a bitter fight by them.