Posted on 04/01/2021 1:40:14 PM PDT by shotgun
I have no use for enviro wackos myself. I guess I’m a little leery of communist reactor designs. Maybe they’ve learned their lessons from the soviet’s misadventures. But they’re famous for cutting corners on other industrial designs when it suits their purposes. I would hope they don’t on their reactors.
CC
If the design is sound and has a negative void coefficient and is built within specs, it is a win for the environment and more importantly humans.
The issues arise when we go down this path of having to hire people to run it not based on their skills but other factors like race and gender.
Some jobs like flying planes, wrenching an peoples brains, operating nuke plants, for example, only should be performed by those who are truly qualified. No exceptions. No quotas, no affirmative action hiring.
Tri-Cities airport (TRI) is pretty close to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Pasco, Washington (PSC) appears to be trying to muddy the waters.
Because a significant part of the Greens are funded by our enemies to weaken us.
You didn’t know about ouf love of all thing nuclear before you moved here?
It’s been that way since I moved here in 78.
The moronic Left wants to switch from oil to nuclear energy for safety. What could go wrong?!
“ I have never completely understood why the Greens fight so hard against nukes.”
Because lots of energy won’t help destroy America.
I doubt the folks on the wetside did or do know. They pay very little attention to the dryside.
But those of us who grew up in the surrounding area and still live here have always known because it’s always in our newspapers. Plus we had shelter in place drills in school not just for radiation, but for chemical release drills for the WWI chemical agents stored at the Umatilla Army Depot since forever.
It’s cleaned up now and being redeveloped as an industrial park.
Ever hear of the Cascade mountain range? It is between the subduction zone and Hanford.
Eastern Washington is not known to have earthquakes.
The next generation of liquid salt nuclear reactors are nothing like the old breeder reactors. Nor do they have any relation with soviet designs.
You want to drive a model T daily as main mode of transportation? Yes, that is as stupid of statement as your comment.
Yep, that Washington.
The problems at Hanford were directly related to the Manhattan project. Currently the magnitude of the radioactive contamination at Hanford is staggering. Much of the waste is liquid — about 53 million gallons — as the chemical extraction process used at Hanford involved soaking the spent uranium fuel rods from the reactors in nitric acid to separate the plutonium. Liquid wastes are stored in 177 underground tanks; 70 are leaking, and a plume of radioactivity is seeping toward the Columbia River. There are 1,700 waste sites and about 500 contaminated buildings. NBC called it the most toxic place in American in 2016.
But there’s more. Years ago the river was polluted by the cooling system that diverted its water and by accidental spills, which were never fully recorded at Hanford so their scale is hard to know. Radiation reached the Pacific Ocean 200 miles away and contaminated fish and soil on its way. In 2013, Governor Inslee admitted that one tank was leaking up to 300 gallons a year; the contracted cleanup company knew–and did nothing. Still, authorities claim that none of the radiation is dangerous to public health. Local residents and workers disagree.
Around Hanford, people report unusually high rates of thyroid disorders, cancer, and handicaps, because of river pollution. In particular, Native American communities who rely on the river and salmon fishing to support their cultural way of life have been affected. On Hanford’s grounds, the Dept. of Energy “reported toxins in the air ‘far exceeding occupational limits’ and a ‘causal link’ between vapor exposure and lung and brain damage.”
Today, you can take a guided tour of the cleanup efforts at Hanford. But it won’t include these stories. And the people that take it aren’t aware they are walking into high amounts of vapor with roentgens that are raising their possibility of reaction. Had my share of them with the military....I’ll pass.
wy69
I don’t know what this design is. But if you can’t shut them down and walk away without having them overheat and blow up then they are nothing short of insanity.
LFTR technology will be there when we need it, but we don’t have to wait for that.
This particular company has a 200MW SMR high-temp gas reactor design that is pretty much ready to go. The challenge is the regulatory hurdle, which remains very high.
The original question wasn’t directed at you and insults make me less inclined to interact in a positive manner. You may very well be right about modern reactors. But your inability to deliver your point without being degrading causes your message to suffer.
CC
The neurotics are very good with Thorium but Thorium reactors produce copious quantities of Tritium which is a REAL PROBLEM that nobody has yet solved.
The proposed reactor is a pebble bed gas cooled super complicated.
The only way to go is with a Molted Salt Reactor (fuel dissolved on the salt) along the design put forth by www.terrestrialenergy. They are doing things right. https://www.terrestrialenergy.com/category/press-release/
https://www.terrestrialenergy.com/technology/
But they don’t coddle the environmentalist wackos like we do
—
There are no environmentalist wackos in China ... any more.
I sure miss the days when we had Governor Dixie Lee Ray:
—
And hated commercial salmon fishermen with a passion seldom seen in those days ...
Be Leary of wikipedia nukes!
Your concern is not entirely wrong. I apologize if you are somebody who already knows this, but at least I can say that I have worked as a nuclear operator and am licensed for both power and shut down operations. The main concern besides containment is something we Navy Nukes call “Alpha-T” or reactivity coefficient of the moderator.
A moderator is nothing more than something that cools the reactor (removes heat for convection), projects neutrons back inside the reactor, and slows down any fission components. Water, what we use on US Navy ships for pressurized reactors, is nice. It’s cheap, it’s abundant, and it does a pretty darn job of cooling the reactor, projecting fissionable materials back into the core, and slowing down things like fast and slow neutrons, betas, alphas, and even gammas. There are special properties to water and make it highly effective at removing heat. Also, being an element that has hydrogen in it, it is highly effective at slowing down neutrons. It does this by absorbing the energy from the fissionable materials as they leave the reactor. Think of a shot put and two ping pong balls. If you throw the ping pong ball against the shot put, the shot put isn’t going to absorb any of the energy. Hence the ping pong ball will go flying, just like neutrons bouncing off larger elements. But take that same ping pong ball and knock it against another ping pong ball, and the moving ping pong ball give some of its energy to the other one. In the case of neutrons with hydrogen (bonded with oxygen) this energy is transferred in the form of heat.
With water, as it warms up it expands. This means that because it’s more spread out (it doesn’t turn to steam bc it’s under immense pressure) it absorbs less neutrons. As less neutrons are absorbed, less are pushed back into the reactor, meaning there’s less reactivity. As reactivity decreases, temperatures in the reactor decrease. This is why water reactors are inherently safe, because as they increase in temperature they become less reactive. Unlike the graphite moderated reactors of the Soviet countries. Graphite as it gets warmer absorbs more neutrons, thus becoming more reactive. As Chernobyl became warmer the reactor became more reactive. This is called a positive coefficient of reactivity meaning that as the reactor heats up it becomes more reactive, and is very dangerous. The Soviets use graphite because it was plentiful, and it is very effective as a moderator so long as you have your cooling systems, and your emergency cooling systems online.
Remember, the goal is to generate lots of electricity and keep all the bad stuff inside away from the people. Reactors that get too hot can melt down in the hottest part of the core (melt the metal and zircaloy that holds it together). That is bad. Another thing that can happen is there gases that build up, and if you don’t vent those gases off, you can get an explosion. For example Fukushima was not a nuclear explosion, it was a hydrogen explosion when the idiots forgot to vent off hydrogen as the reactor was shut down. Normally hydrogen recombines with the oxygen in the water as it passes by the reactor and absorbs a gamma. A shutdown means you don’t have the gammas being released to do this, and after a while if hydrogen builds too high it becomes explosive. This is still bad because we want all the bad stuff to stay inside the reactor and not be broken out all over the people. Containment is always the goal of the game
Thorium reactors using liquid salt or fluoride salts seem to be safe. However they do have graphite rods which bring into question the issue of positive coefficient of reactivity issues that could arise when the reactor is shut down. Furthermore thorium has the problem of not having enough dense radioactive materials to allow the reactor to reach a critical State and maintain a critical state. Currently they are economically inefficient and also carry some dangers such as instability of liquid components. However the future looks bright for these reactors.
Thorium is how we date the universe and we date the earth. It may be a very great solution to many of our problems.
Also remember everyone, nuclear bombs are not nuclear power plants. They don’t operate the same nor do they have the same containment issues. Nuclear power can be scary, you can’t see it, and you only know the dangers after it’s too late. It also makes for really good TV and drama in film. However with the right procedures and protocol this really could be a way to have an extensive amount of energy with minimal pollution.
CC
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.