Posted on 06/20/2002 12:01:31 PM PDT by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
Chinese scientists have developed atomic reactors to provide heating and desalinate sea water, by burning used fuel from nuclear power stations under normal pressure.
Insiders say that the breakthrough is significant for the world 's most populous country which now faces water shortages.
A cooperative memorandum of the project was signed Thursday in Dalian between the coastal city of Yingkou and China Beida Jadebird Group, a Beijing-based high-tech company.
Professor Tian Jiafu, chief engineer of the group, described it as a more economic and safer way to apply nuclear power. "What makes the project distinctive is that it operates under normal pressure," said the former head scientist of nuclear power at Qinghua University, often called China's equivalent of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
According to the agreement, a deep-water reactor under normal pressure of 200 megawatts will be established in Yingkou. The initial phase with 35 million yuan (four million U.S. dollars) investment would provide heating for a building area of five million square meters during winter. It can also desalinate 3,000 tons of sea water daily when no heating is required. The daily capacity is expected to amount to 80,000 tons.
He said north China's coastal areas had the facilities to develop the new technology. "It will be particularly useful for medium-sized cities," he added.
Such reactors have already been tested in some cities and labs in other countries where they had proved safe, but only in trials.
Professor Tian was optimistic that his team could ensure the safety and reliability of the reactor.
The application of used fuel from nuclear power stations lowers the cost and a reactor under normal pressure was less expensive than under high pressure.
The scientist and his company were upbeat about future applications. He said that besides the competitive cost, the energy would ease environment problems in north China where winter prevailed for four to six months.
The reactor in theory is able to replace about 130,000 tons of coal burned every year, reducing immensely waste gases.
In the meantime, the new project is being considered for water producing. China has the world's worst water shortages. More than 300 cities in this country face shortages with 110 reporting severe problems.
Here's another example of China's energy innovation:
China plant to convert coal to motor fuel
If we don't start freeing up our entrepenuers from the bureaucracy we're going to all be as behind as California.
"People's Daily" is not very good at providing English language translation.
Yet it is sufficient to "read between the lines" and understand what they are saying.
Normally, nuclear fuel used for power generation are considered "spent" when the energy they emit falls below a certain level, even though they are capable of still providing energy. Similarly, nuclear power plants gain efficiency by operating at high temperature/pressure levels.
What the Chinese are apparently doing is finding a way to economicly utilize the lower energy that is still given of by so called "spent" fuel, making use of the lower temperatures generated at a lower (perhaps even atmospheric) pressure. (Very hot water rather than steam) The lower temperature and pressures involved in turn lower the cost of constructing other components of the system.
Granted, it is difficult to tell exactly what they are doing from a technical perspective. But then, even our own journalists are generally technologicly imcompetent to communicate such information.
I wouldn't want to vist the storage area now that there's spent fuel.
We had another old experimental reactor onsite that we removed from service, but not until we were paid some extra money to run the fuel past the normal life as an experiment. It was a small reactor, and not really intended to be anything except a research facility.
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