DOE Digs Up Molten Salt Nuclear Reactor Tech, Los Alamos To Lead the Way Back (theregister.com) 223
After more than 50 years, molten salt nuclear reactors might be making a comeback. The US Department of Energy (DoE) has tapped Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) to lead a $9.25 million study into the structural properties and materials necessary to build them at scale. The Register reports: "The US needs projects like this one to advance nuclear technologies and help us achieve the Biden-Harris administration's goals of clean energy by 2035 and a net-zero economy by 2050," said Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, director of the office of science, in a statement. The study, conducted as part of the Scientific Discovery though Advanced Computing (SciDAC) program, seeks to gain a better understanding of the relationship between corrosion and irradiation effects at the atomic scale in metals exposed to molten salt reactors through simulation.
This isn't the first time the DoE has explored this reactor tech. In the middle of last century, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) took the lessons learned from the Aircraft Reactor experiment to build a functional nuclear aircraft power source and began construction of a molten salt test reactor. The experiments, conducted between 1957 and 1969, utilized a mixture of lithium, beryllium, zirconium, and uranium fluoride salts. Cooling was also achieved using a fluoride salt mixture, but it lacked the uranium and zirconium found in the fuel. The experiments proved promising, as molten salt reactors were generally smaller and considered safer compared to the pressurized water reactors still used today. But both proved too heavy for powered flight or materials design. Because cooling was achieved by circulating molten salt through a heat exchanger as opposed to water, the risk of a steam explosion is effectively nonexistent. However, as the Oak Ridge National Laboratory found during the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment, fluoride salts are incredibly corrosive and required hardened materials to safely contain them. "ORNL's Molten Salt Reactor Experiment utilized specialized materials fabricated from Hastelloy-N -- a nickel-molybdenum alloy developed by the lab with a high resistance to corrosion even at high temperatures," adds the reports. "The research program announced this week will revisit the material choices and examine a variety of metals using higher-performance compute resources to simulate how they'll perform at scale in these reactors."
This isn't the first time the DoE has explored this reactor tech. In the middle of last century, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) took the lessons learned from the Aircraft Reactor experiment to build a functional nuclear aircraft power source and began construction of a molten salt test reactor. The experiments, conducted between 1957 and 1969, utilized a mixture of lithium, beryllium, zirconium, and uranium fluoride salts. Cooling was also achieved using a fluoride salt mixture, but it lacked the uranium and zirconium found in the fuel. The experiments proved promising, as molten salt reactors were generally smaller and considered safer compared to the pressurized water reactors still used today. But both proved too heavy for powered flight or materials design. Because cooling was achieved by circulating molten salt through a heat exchanger as opposed to water, the risk of a steam explosion is effectively nonexistent. However, as the Oak Ridge National Laboratory found during the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment, fluoride salts are incredibly corrosive and required hardened materials to safely contain them. "ORNL's Molten Salt Reactor Experiment utilized specialized materials fabricated from Hastelloy-N -- a nickel-molybdenum alloy developed by the lab with a high resistance to corrosion even at high temperatures," adds the reports. "The research program announced this week will revisit the material choices and examine a variety of metals using higher-performance compute resources to simulate how they'll perform at scale in these reactors."
Short of fusion, this is the best path forward (Score:5, Insightful)
for sustainable energy at the quantities we need, at a reasonable risk and cost. LFTR used to be the tech I thought would win, but now I've been moving more towards the molten chloride salt fast reactor concept. Liquid fuels at reasonable temperatures, no massive containment vessel needed, no hydrogen explosion risk like at Fukushima, can even 'burn' existing PWR waste.
I really hope both sides of the political spectrum give this a chance and don't just shoot it down like the last few times it's been brought up.
Re:Short of fusion, this is the best path forward (Score:5, Insightful)
Short of fusion, this is the best path forward for sustainable energy at the quantities we need, at a reasonable risk and cost.
I'm on board with nuclear but I think some of the new approaches to geothermal energy could be contenders. The downsides of needing to be near the mantel and causing quakes no longer apply which makes it ideal for anywhere, including hostile nations.
I don't care which non-emitting energy technology works best, we need to develop them all and displace old energy generation tech as fast as possible.
Re: Short of fusion, this is the best path forward (Score:2)
Without the as of yet unproven RF drilling the depth is commercially impossible. Also after a few decades you are going to start dropping ground temperatures, unless you use it as net zero heat storage with a poor electrical round trip efficiency.
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Without the as of yet unproven RF drilling the depth is commercially impossible.
There are multiple drilling technologies like plasma drilling. There is nothing better to prove a technology than a crisis. We have a crisis.
Also after a few decades you are going to start dropping ground temperatures,
The Earth is heated by our star and the Earth in turn emits energy it cannot hold. Our extremely minor energy extraction isn't going to even put a dent in the amount of energy that Earth is dumping into space.
Re: Short of fusion, this is the best path forward (Score:4, Interesting)
after a few decades you are going to start dropping ground temperatures
That's not how it works. It's not just leftover heat from when the earth was formed, after all. The earth's core would have cooled off ages ago if that were the case. Good old fashioned radioactive decay, thankfully, keeps the core nice and toasty.
Will we cool it anyway if we start seriously using it as a source of energy? It's estimated that about 44 terawatts of heat are continuously radiated into space from the earths core. How much is that? We currently consume about 15 terawatts.
Re:Short of fusion, this is the best path forward (Score:5, Interesting)
I really hope both sides of the political spectrum give this a chance and don't just shoot it down like the last few times it's been brought up.
In the party platform documents for both major political parties in the USA is a plank in support for nuclear fission power. One party added support only two years ago. I'll let people guess which. In practice though? It appears old habits are hard to break. We aren't seeing members of this party jump in with both feet. One tactic seen in the past is appointing openly anti-nuclear commissioners to the NRC. There's 5 members of this commission and the party with the most votes in the Senate gets to pick the tie breaker commissioner and the chairman is picked by POTUS, or something close to that. The other 4 commissioners are split so there's always 2 appointed by each party. Since the chairman has authority to hire those working at the NRC this can mean the NRC gets a bit "swampy". Get good commissioners and things apparently run fairly smoothly, for a government agency. Have a bad apple in charge of the swamp and... I'm mixing metaphors.
The DOE has the authority to issue grants or loans, set aside land for reactor construction on DOE facilities, provide reactor fuel, but the license to build and operate comes from the NRC.
There's been efforts to do away with the NRC and have the states handle licensing. That may not be a bad idea.
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One tactic seen in the past is appointing openly anti-nuclear commissioners to the NRC.
Ah, the openly-anti-nuclear NRC that allowed for relaxing of thickness standards for pipes in the Byron Nuclear Plant every time the thinning pipes were found outside of the previously acceptable standard? Until one pipe ruptured completely? *That* NRC?
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I really hope both sides of the political spectrum give this a chance and don't just shoot it down like the last few times it's been brought up.
In the party platform documents for both major political parties in the USA is a plank in support for nuclear fission power. One party added support only two years ago. I'll let people guess which. In practice though?
In practice, this shall-not-be-named party's base will almost certainly scream that Nuclear murders Mother Earth, and will return to the usual routine of splattering red paint on everything and chaining themselves across highways and halls and doorways to Save The Planet. As a bonus, old favorites from the 70's will be wheeled out to encourage the youngsters to keep fighting the good fight. The China Syndrome will suddenly be everywhere on HBO and Amazon and Netflix again.
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Cleanout (Score:4, Informative)
I read an article about a reactor design some company was trying to get approved. They were going to use a descaling agent in their steam lines, so multiple redundant lines were no longer required. IE you would need two failover backups for the primary steam lines, secondary steam lines for when you are cleaning out the primary steam lines, then two failover backups for the secondary steam lines, etc... So, the system would be greatly simplified, with fewer valves and monitors that could potentially fail. The descaler had been in use for decades in regular coal-fired power plants and was proven to work well.
The NRC denied their design, as they were alarmed that there was a reduction in backup lines and monitoring systems. Which, of course, was the whole point. The system as designed was safer than a more complex one, as there were fewer moving parts, and fewer things that could go wrong. There was just as much redundancy.
Economically obsolete (Score:2)
This.
Nuclear electricity, today, costs 4-6x more than any other form of electricity generation, be it fossil, or renewable.
it is literally economically obsolete.
Building new nuclear electricity plants today is just done for 2 main reasons :
1) maintain nuclear warheads. Yeah.
2) Get juicy subvention and corruption money. You pay those.
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Nuclear 6.4x times as expensive as offshore wind in the UK. New nuclear has a sweet deal where the guaranteed minimum price they get goes up by inflation, and inflation is running to 13% at the moment.
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The cost is because of the regulation. The regulation is needed because the plants were designed to need lots of supervision. (That was the quick and easy way to design them.)
Now the question is: " Is there a say to design them so that they *don't* need lots of supervision?" Molten salt reactors promise a way forward. but so far it's a promise rather than a fact. They need lots of development yet. And if they can actually accept spent fuel from other reactors and burn it, that's a really good bonus. B
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Molten salt is difficult to work with, and catches fire if exposed to air. Test reactors have shown that the corrosion and contamination of the reactor vessel is a major problem too.
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Yes. That a part of why it's "promise a way forward". Maybe the problems will be insoluble, or development will be so lengthy that some better competition will appear.
Fission costs (Score:2)
It's looking like SMRs will dramatically reduce the cost - building nuclear reactors on an assembly line is practically guaranteed to be dramatically cheaper than the current model of building (usually) one-off reactors on site. The fuel itself is dirt cheap, and the rest of the power plant is basically the same as for coal or anything else. Aside from the reactor vaults, which promise to be fairly straightforward (compared to a containment dome) holes in the ground.
And that's before you even consider the
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NuScale's SMRs don't look very cost effective. They need refuelling every 2 years. Building the reactor is only a small part of the cost, and they managed to increase costs in some areas.
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The NRC is the last of your problems. The massive cost of nuclear power, in the face of much cheaper renewables and storage, is why its a dying industry.
That's why getting rid of nuclear has worked out so well for Germany.
Re:Short of fusion, this is the best path forward (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, you asked.
Levelized cost of energy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Nuclear waste: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Great video, but I have no idea where these numbers come from. PV for instance, he puts at 6 to 56 cents. Let me quote NRELs most recent report (new one comes out in a couple of months):
"In 2021, PPAs for U.S. utility-scale PV systems are priced at $20/MWh for projects in CAISO/non-ISO West, and $30-$40/MWh for projects elsewhere in the continental United States."
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy22osti/81325.pdf
This is being quoted on signed-contract basis, or power-purchase agreement, PPA. PPAs include profit
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Are you going to tell them nuclear is cheaper based on a youtube video?
No, it is based on the sources used by the video creators. Should I tell people otherwise based on a comment posted on Slashdot? Or perhaps based on the source cited in that comment? That stupid argument cuts both ways.
I linked to that video because it appears to be from a neutral party that would not cherry pick sources. Why should I trust your single source when it appears you are biased? Can you cite more sources? Can you demonstrate that you and your sources are not biased?
Great video, but I have no idea where these numbers come from.
The sources are listed i
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You are going to show those number to all of your friends, right? I hope so. I'm sure some will remember that chart in a few months when winter comes, the war in Ukraine has still impeded the flow of fuel, and people are looking that their heat and light bills. How will nuclear power look then?
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That doesn't make the case you think it does. The war in the Ukraine gives us more reasons why we need to get off of fossil fuels and move to renewable and highlights the dangers of nuclear technologies in the wrong hands.
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You aren't serious are you?
When the sun sets, and not "if", all those solar panels stop producing power. When the wind stops blowing, not "if", then there's no power from all the windmills. Sure, the sun will rise again, and the wind will return, but in that time you can have a perfectly functional solar panel and windmill but not have power.
We build nuclear power plants in the middle of a desert and they handle the heat just fine. France going cheap on their cooling system is not a reflection on nuclear
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ask France who are temporarily shutting down 4 nuclear sites due to weather [independent.co.uk]
ask Texas who had a nuclear site off due to weather [washingtonexaminer.com]
Just how reliable is nuclear?
This is the main argument FOR molten salt as a coolant. Your shutdowns are occurring when the heat sink for the plant, usually a river, is too warm for there to be a good Carnot differential from the reactor output temperature.
Molten salt allows a higher operating temperature for reactors, and at ambient pressure. Simpler, safer plumbing, and the higher temperature allows plants to be operated in places where the external heat sink is warmer. It can even be dry desert air.
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The wind is always blowing somewhere within driving distance, you just have to build a transmission line to it.
Economic suicide (Score:2)
Yep. Building new nuke plants in 2022 is economic suicide. Plain and simple.
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What is the un-subsidised cost of Wind when it only contributes 10 to 40 percent of it's installed capacity to the ERCOT grid?
Got an answer for that one?
The 10 to 40 percent number can be learned by reading the multitude of graphs that are published by ERCOT.
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At current prices and my usage my new solar system has a 13+ year pay back time. The batteries have a 10year warranty... sigh. But I did it to have emergency power not to reduce my long term costs.
I could have installed a generator and fuel tank for less but that guarantees it will never pay for itself, is emergency only, and has other issues and expenses. At least with solar I might get pay back if I'm lucky or power costs continue to rise. My house/roof is perfect for solar. Doesn't get much better w
Re:Short of fusion, this is the best path forward (Score:5, Interesting)
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> Short of fusion, this is the best path forward
So you're saying the best path forward is fusion, which has been under development for over 80 years and still doesn't work and won't for at least decades?
And you want us to believe your opinion on the second best solution?
Ok, sure.
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Now that multiple sources have confirmed that we can reach 100% renewable energy with existing solar, wind and battery technology, one has to question whether or not we need nuclear which continues to get more expensive and has unresolved issues with nuclear waste, safety, and nuclear proliferation.
https://innovationorigins.com/... [innovationorigins.com]
An energy system that is 100% based on renewables has emerged to become the scientific mainstream. Hundreds of scientific studies have proven that 100% renewable energy sy
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You mean like a commercial space program?
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You know as well as everyone that the average politician has the same long term planning ability as any other toddler. So expecting them to fund something just because it will be necessary a decade down the road is probably hoping for too much.
Re:Short of fusion, this is the best path forward (Score:5, Insightful)
That reminds me of the debate on drilling in ANWR. The claim was that by the time the drilling was complete in about 5 years the cost of petroleum would have come down. Crude oil prices did come down a few months later, but 5 years later crude prices hit record highs.
With Representatives running for election every 2 years and Senators every 6 years a 5 year project may as well be 500 years. If the result of a vote isn't felt before the election then it effectively did not happen.
Not all elected officials think on election cycles. Some have genuine concern for the wellbeing of their constituents beyond their time in office, or even their time on this planet. By my observation these tend to have children of their own and had jobs outside of politics at some point in their life, especially continuing to work their "day job" in some capacity while in office. These people have a life outside of politics and so aren't reliant on getting elected to have an income. They care more about making things better than getting elected. Think about that as you consider who to vote for.
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The issue with ANWR is that Joe Biden became President. Much of what he did wrt new pipeline construction, suspending new drilling leases, suspending offshore exploration, and openly threatening the entire petroleum industry (thereby scaring off investors) helped to bring up prices. Without that political interference, price increases of this magnitude likely would not have happened. He could have further stabilized prices by never taking sanctions off of Nordstream 2 and by sending weapons systems and "
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The debate about drilling in ANWR was before Biden was President, or VP. This has been going on for a long time.
I'm reminded of another argument used to not drill in ANWR at the time. The claim was that if we drilled that the amount of oil produced would not impact prices anyway. If that's the argument then we could just point to any well any where and say closing that well won't impact prices. You do that enough times and it does impact prices. People know that there's a lot of oil up there, and so dr
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And no matter how quickly we can stop burning petroleum, there will always be a petrochemical industry.
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Oil is a world wide market, any price shock hits world wide. If the production in any place goes down, it causes prices to rise over the whole world. It is supply and demand, reduced supply due to hostile presidents causes the whole world to feel the pain.
China is already taking it in production (Score:4, Interesting)
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It's a 2MWt unit, a tiny research reactor. Commercial scale would be 1000x larger.
Which shows where this technology is: still at the early research phase where they are trying to solve the basic problems.
Bigger isn't always better (Score:2)
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Basically the DOE has to subsidize the construction of a commercial scale MSR (with all the new safety design features built into it), and after two years, evaluate its effectiveness. Once that's accomplished, the US nuclear industry can standardize on that design, and "scale" its use to replace decommissioned reactors, enough to cover regional nighttime electric consumption. If there's a nuclear power future, it will be small (compared to Gen 3), but numberous MSR designs, that will be coordinated to ra
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It's a 2MWt unit, a tiny research reactor. Commercial scale would be 1000x larger.
Which shows where this technology is: still at the early research phase where they are trying to solve the basic problems.
Not only that, they've been trying to solve the basic problems since the 1950s.
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> The idea for these reactors were more or less shelved in the 60s
For good reasons. The companies who actually run plants told them in no uncertain terms they were not interested in building them. They had real reasons for this: no one could figure out a way to keep the running for a reasonable price, even basic maintenance on the first loop was going to cost several fortunes.
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MSR's aren't "required" to be breeder reactors, can potentially use alternate nuclear fuels (like thorium), and eventually be used to "reclaim" spent nuclear fuel rods from older generation nuclear plants. When designed properly, the risk of a meltdown level accident is near zero, and along with not requiring pressurized hydralic equipment, should make those reactors much, much more economical to operate than previous generation reactors.
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It's a 2MWt unit, a tiny research reactor. Commercial scale would be 1000x larger.
Which shows where this technology is: still at the early research phase where they are trying to solve the basic problems.
I wonder where we would be now, if, 20 years ago, idiots like you screaming "don't invest in photovoltaics research, they will never work outside of space stations, we need solutions NAAOOOWW" managed to get their way.
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20 years ago solar PV was already a proven technology. The only thing that needed to happen was to optimize manufacturing to reduce cost, and that had already started happening.
Thorium reactors have been around since the 1960s. It's getting on for 60 year old technology, and it's still decades away from commercial viability even if we assume that these basic research projects are going to succeed.
We can't wait that long to reduce our emissions or reach net zero, and we need to direct the money where it will
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20 years ago panel efficiency was so low that solar was not economically viable. The math was terrible. I really wanted solar because my bills were so high but it made no sense.
Today's much better panels make it almost viable for homes in sunny places. Almost. Next gen panels we'll be there. So, we're talking 30-40 years for solar to become economically viable for enough people to sustain the industry on financial math instead of feel goodism. That feels about right.
We should put in the same or more e
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In the UK the government started the Renewables Obligation in 2002. That included requirements for energy companies to install solar PV, and a decent feed-in tariff for domestic installations. Clearly they thought that solar PV was adequate for installations back then, and that it would continue to improve rapidly.
IIRC part of the deal for domestic installations was that the panels had to meet certain criteria for efficiency, and have a minimum 20 year warranty.
It's just coincidence that it happens to be ex
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20 years ago the efficiency of solar panels was pretty much where it is today: 16-22%, depending on the quality, mono- vs polycrystalline, etc. (I was using good-but-not-extraordinary silicon PV cells at the time for some research.)
What has changed the economic viability hasn't been any revolutionary advance in the panels them
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Also, planners correctly surmised you cannot generate power from solar panels at night, nor develop battery designs that can store excess solar power to cover nighttime electricity consumption. Wind power is feasible, not 100% reliable at all hours. There needs to be some form of energy production at night, and if its not nuclear, its going to be fossil fuels.
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> 20 years ago panel efficiency was so low that solar was not economically viable
Sure it was, it was on the order of 18% and is around 22% now for typical poly-Si tech. That's not zero, but it's also not the reason PV is or is not economically viable.
The reason PV is economically viable today is that the Chinese government gave out enormous grants to build out the silicon production infrastructure. A number of other countries followed suit, so today we have a somewhat robust supply chain at costs that ar
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It already makes financial sense with time of use pricing. What doesn't make financial sense yet is full house battery storage, unless your utility pays you to help stabilize the electric grid [slashdot.org].
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All thorium reactors are breeder reactors. The Carter administration effectively made breeder technology illegal, because breeder reactors are scary and new. This was reversed by Reagan a few years later but the damage was already done. The people working on the technology found different jobs, and many prototypes (not all were nuclear, some were testing the salt chemistry only) were scrapped for their nickel content.
The solar PV industry grows and shrinks with the amount of government subsidies. Remove
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The nuclear industry is reliant on subsidies to survive. France just had to nationalize EDF, which owns and operates its nuclear power stations. In Japan, TEPCO is basically government owned now.
Solar is already subsidy free for large installations. It's only home installations where money is sometimes available, because individuals often don't have the cash up front for it. Any business can simply get a loan based on the solid business plan of selling electricity.
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The nuclear industry is reliant on subsidies to survive.
Be sure to tell people that too.
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The nuclear industry is reliant on subsidies to survive. France just had to nationalize EDF, which owns and operates its nuclear power stations. In Japan, TEPCO is basically government owned now.
Solar is already subsidy free for large installations. It's only home installations where money is sometimes available, because individuals often don't have the cash up front for it. Any business can simply get a loan based on the solid business plan of selling electricity.
If it were true you greenies would be simply outcompeting everyone else instead of whining for even more subsidies, and banning/taxing to death any competitors. Yet somehow we do not see this happening. How strange.
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We are. Look at the latest auctions for offshore wind in the UK. Zero subsidies. In fact, the bidding was to see how low the developers were willing to go.
Subsidy free solar in the UK is so profitable that farmers are turning over land to it. Brexit helps by wrecking exports, but still, they make money without any subsidy at all.
As for bans, there isn't one in the UK on nuclear. In fact the government is trying to get two new nuclear plants built and wants more. They are failing entirely of their own accord
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> The Carter administration effectively made breeder technology illegal, because breeder reactors are scary and new.
No, because they are horribly expensive and the USA was incapable of managing their existing limited plutonium supply and the idea of increasing that supply thousands of times and putting it on the civilian side seemed like an extremely stupid idea.
Horribly expensive I said? Yes, *horribly*:
https://sgp.fas.org/othergov/doe/lanl/lib-www/la-pubs/00315989.pdf
Check out page 19. A breeder become
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All thorium reactors are breeder reactors.
And so what? Thorium is not fissile, in the sense that you can make a thermonuclear bomb out of it.
because breeder reactors are scary and new.
No, breeder reactors designs were at the beginning of the nuclear weapons age, because that's how you make plutonium, the preferred nuclear material to make thermonuclear bombs. The reason why thorium powered plant development was killed was because it couldn't produce fissile material, and light water reactors was an easier, cheaper way of producing nuclear power. Also, the mindset which killed thorium dev
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I want people talking about nuclear power, even if it is to say bad things about it. It seems to me the biggest problem was nobody even mentioned nuclear power for so long. Either people didn't even know it existed, or they just assumed it was not an option because it never came up.
If people everywhere are saying "nuclear power costs too much" then someone is going to look at their electric bill and ask, "Just how expensive is nuclear power?" If people don't know then they can look it up on the web. The
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20 years ago solar PV was already a proven technology. The only thing that needed to happen was to optimize manufacturing to reduce cost, and that had already started happening.
LOL. Were you born yesterday or do you think I was and you can sell me BS like that? No, 20 years ago was the very beginning of "hey, maybe we can use this for actual electricity production, and not just calculators", not "proven technology".
Thorium reactors have been around since the 1960s. It's getting on for 60 year old technology, and it's still decades away from commercial viability even if we assume that these basic research projects are going to succeed.
Don't you worry, they will. It's the Chinese doing this, and they don't have greens that will force them to cut funding the moment it looks "dangerously" close to working, like they did here. And the screaming of people like you won't achieve a non-nuclear world, so don
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20 years ago we had the start of the free-in tariff for domestic solar installations in the UK. It was also the start of the requirement for energy companies to start investing in commercial scale solar.
So clearly it was quite viable back then, just not cost effective. It's pure coincidence that you said 20 years, and that scheme started in 2002.
Your faith in the Chinese is misplaced. They aren't going to be turning this tiny research reactor into a commercial product in the next couple of decades.
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Your faith in the Chinese is misplaced. They aren't going to be turning this tiny research reactor into a commercial product in the next couple of decades.
LOL, yes. And the Japanese will never make a car that anyone'd want to buy.
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The only thing you get to decide is whether we will have our own modern nuclear technology
They also get to decide the extent of climactic damage, because even if they succeed in subsidizing solar power (making the Chinese rich, because they actively discourage development of US production of solar panels), they still won't be able to produce solar power at night, so they'll just continue the use of fossil fuels (at night).
if we'll be forced to buy it from the Chinese
The Chinese won't sell it (directly) to us, because its not economically feasible to build an electric grid which brings electricity to North America, and more likely we'll be
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and it's still decades away from commercial viability even if we assume that these basic research projects are going to succeed.
Only because working plant development was deliberately defunded by the 1970's, based on a totally different perspective and goals on nuclear power generation. If the development is subsidized and aggressively pursued, there's nothing about the technology that isn't beyond an implementable timetable (unlike fusion).
Can you imagine if, 20 years ago, we hadn't been wasting money on nuclear and had invested it all in renewables and in upgrading homes with insulation?
We weren't wasting our money twenty years ago on nuclear. We basically decided after the 1980's to kill nuclear power production, and almost no new nuclear plants were built in the US subsequen
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I wonder where we would be if 20 years ago you took a basic english comprehension course and realised that the GP didn't say any of the things you put in your quotes, or even imply them.
Were you responding to a different post? Were you triggered to the point where your brain ceased all logical function? How can we help you join the discussion we are having rather than the one you are having with an imaginary enemy in your head?
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I wonder where we would be now, if, 20 years ago, idiots like you screaming "don't invest in photovoltaics research, they will never work outside of space stations, we need solutions NAAOOOWW" managed to get their way.
PV solar was viable literally fifty years ago. The panels of that time took 7 years to pay off their energy investment, and would last at least 20 with typical degradation under 10%. The idiots are the ones who have promoted coal, oil, and nuclear since then.
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China announced the launch of a liquid-salt thorium reactor yesterday.
Given the history of launches of new technologies out of China we can expect a launch out of the USA of a demonstration of a similar technology about one year later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Not production. (Score:3)
China announced the launch of a liquid-salt thorium reactor [neimagazine.com] yesterday.
Don't get me wrong, it's great and all but they are merely constructing an experimental reactor for R&D. If all goes to plan then they are hoping to build a production level reactor in 2030.
Re: China is already taking it in production (Score:2)
Just a research reactor.
AFAICS lead cooled fast reactor is a proven concept in military use, further along for commercial use and has better technological readiness.
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China isn't taking anything into production. They are very much in the R&D stage and this is a small experimental reactor of 2MWt which would electrically generate less than 700kW.
There are car engines which produce more power than that.
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> There are car engines which produce more power than that.
Wow, I never thought of that. But indeed, there are. Nice perspective!
9.25 million for simulations (Score:2)
This project seems like a sacrificial anode (Score:4, Funny)
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It largely depends how many mod points MacMann's sock puppet accounts have.
I trust... (Score:2)
Another thing: How long will they actually take & how much will they actually cost to build? It seems that these days Americans can't even lay train tracks on time & under budget.
Re: I trust... (Score:2)
There's a big difference in budget overruns between trying to bulldoze through populated areas where train passengers live and setting up a distance from urban centers where everyone wants nuke power to go.
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Great for solar thermal (Score:2)
Will be much better than dirty fission power.
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Already there: Alphatech Research (Score:2)
https://alphatechresearchcorp.... [alphatechr...chcorp.com]
salt vs. liquid metal (Score:2)
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I cannot imagine the difficulty and safety precautions you'd need to take to work with a tub molten sodium. Don't let it leak or you'll have a raging fire or explosion!
Shoot, just dealing with molten salts seems difficult enough. I don't know how one designs a pump, heat exchanger, and whatnot where if it cools down, all the liquid freezes. Plus, a fluoride salt sounds pretty darn toxic. Maybe not as toxic as uranium but it can't be good for you.
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Already been done. See EBR II.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
To the anti-nuclear people, (Score:2)
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Molten salt reactors don't generate plutonium needed for weapons.
I recall a conversation online, in a forum much like this one, a member posted what he thought would be a molten salt reactor that could produce Pu-238 by siphoning off plutonium in a continuous chemical process. It had to be continuous to prevent contamination with heavier isotopes. Pu-238 is the isotope NASA uses in radio-thermal generators on deep space probes so if it worked then NASA would be very interested. I thought his math looked funny and double checked them myself. I told him that the Pu-238
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> So, molten salt reactors could make plutonium for weapons, but that reactor would be worthless for making power
I'm not sure where this conclusion comes from given the statements preceding, perhaps you can explain this a bit more? I ask because:
> To make weapon grade plutonium requires feeding in fissile material.
But just above you say the feedstock is U238, "What it did do was consume U-238 as fuel."
I assume you mean it also needs some *other* fissile feedstock as well, but you don't mention what th
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But just above you say the feedstock is U238, "What it did do was consume U-238 as fuel."
I assume you mean it also needs some *other* fissile feedstock as well, but you don't mention what that might be. Nor do you mention the enrichment level required. I'm not sure of the neutron economy or spectrum of the proposal, is it possible to run such a system on LEU?
Yes, the reactor required fissile material for fuel, something other than U-238. U-238 is not fissile, it is fertile.
I don't recall the specifics but the salt carrying the fissile fuel also contained some U-238. I believe the U-238 was there just because it was a cheap way to get fuel, it was certainly not required for the reactor to function. Because it was in the salt with other isotopes of uranium it could not be easily removed. U-238 was transmuted into plutonium at a much higher rate than other iso
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There's basically zero need for new plutonium for weapons.
After the Cold War, the US and Russia had tens of thousands of nuclear weapons PLUS a large stockpile of plutonium they never used.
Following the reduction in nuclear arsenals, both sides ended up either storing the plutonium, or burning it up a lot of it in reactors.
In the 60s and 70s, the US didn't go with molten salt reactors because they were still in full nuke production, but that was a half-century ago.
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Promising tech but it won't go anywhere due to MIC.
Molten salt reactors don't generate plutonium needed for weapons.
That, to my understanding, is why we worked on light water reactors in the '50s and why we have them today. Essentially, we could only fund development of one reactor type, that's the type the Pentagon was willing to fund, and here we are.
Since we now have the light water designs and operating reactors, hopefully those produce enough plutonium for all the nukes we'll need, which means the Pentagon shouldn't have any reason to object to new reactor designs.
That leaves the question, would the DoD need to help
Re: Give me a fucking break already... (Score:4, Informative)
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I see, so if yer Ma gets wacked, you'll be wanting to reject any FBI involvement in discovering the perp. And if want to sue for some injustice like your bank account getting zerored, you'll be forgetting that. And you'll be wanting to reject the $200K FDIC insurance compensation. And those drugs you took from Joe's Bait and Really Good Painrelievers which destroyed your liver because you won't pay for the feds to watch over the drug supply, them's just the risks you are prepared to take.
I'd go on, but time
FDIC [Re: Give me a fucking break already...] (Score:3)
FDIC isn't insurance. They claim to be, but there is a moral hazard with the banks that they are not on the hook for anything.
That is an intrinsic attribute of insurance.
When you're insured against damage, you are not on the hook for the damage. That's the way insurance works.
It is poorly funded and couldn't handle a real banking crisis if a bunch of banks went under.
Saying "FDIC is poorly funded" is not the same as saying "FDIC is not insurance".
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Printed? You don't seem to know how banks work...
libertarian utopia can't exist (Score:2)
It's not even your money. The money has your government's name printed on it, not yours. Any property you own is only yours because your government agreed to defend it. Social contract and all that.
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Too bad for you. Early adopters always get shafted. This may surprise you, but the government doesn't track your brownie points and exempt you for being a good little boy/girl.