Posted on 07/04/2021 7:44:36 AM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
This video tells about the new exciting sodium-cooled, high-assay-low-enrichment-uranium (HALEU) fueled small nuclear reactor that was one of the winners of the DOE Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program competition and will be built over the next few years. It utilizes molten-salt storage of the heat generated by the nuclear reactor, so it can "follow-the-load". This type of system could be the future of nuclear power. The demonstration reactor is planned to be constructed at a retired coal power plant site in Wyoming, so the electrical generation equipment can be re-used.
(Excerpt) Read more at youtu.be ...
He’s talking doing the job for 1 billion dollars How many retired coal plants are there? over 500. These reactors would be sited at retired coal plants where they could use the old boilers. Sounds good? What’s the bottom line? These reactors will produce electricity at a cost of.05@kwh.
The small mass produced floating reactors will produce electricity for starters at .02-.03@kwh
Gates’s reactor is already obsolete.
—”If it isn’t made with Thorium, then it is a stupid choice.”
You’ll have to take it up with the Prof and he is a heavy hitter in the field.
Try his irradiation of strawberries...you may enjoy it?
Also, he has nuke power cost analysis, but it makes my brain hurt.
Very interesting concept. I still think the molten salt reactor (MSR) approach is better because it completely avoids the need for manufacturing and shipping fuel rods around the country. The fission products can be continuously removed by chemical means and don’t require handling of enriched U235 fuel which improves the safety of the entire system.
They all are! Every last one!
—” small mass produced floating reactors “
Just like the Toshiba mini reactor.
The cost of security all but kills a mini installation.
Also, see #22.
Is this considered a double entente ?
—” I still think the molten salt reactor (MSR) approach is better “
IIRC it was molten salt problems that killed the massive solar collector?
Maybe the light water smr’s being designed in Russia and korea —but not the thorium reactors that the federal labs are doing test trials on—but will be built in indonesia.
“I still think the molten salt reactor (MSR) approach is better because it completely avoids the need for manufacturing and shipping fuel rods around the country.”
And why is that a problem?
If it’s any good there will never be one built until after the Great Reset.
Cheap energy would really help the plebeians prosper and multiply, and we can’t have that.
Thorium has to be mined and the U233 created is the most perfect bomb fuel. It has the very low critical mass if Pu239 but the low spontaneous fission rate of U235 lower actually. So you can make a gun type device with less than 10kg of materials and fit it in a real backpack. Thorium will never happen in the USA the proliferation risk is simply too great.
Second point fast fission reactors can use 100% of natural uranium U238 & U235 as fissile and fertile. The USA has 600,000+ tons of depleted uranium from our enrichment plants in storage that is enough fuel for a thousand years or more of 100% the total energy consumption of the USA in fast reactors spectrum with integrated reprocessing. The first reactor to produce power was not a pwr it was the IFR number one in Idaho at the National lab there. It proved that with integrated out I processing you one can burn all of natural uranium down to fission ash, two that the breed ratio is positive allowing you to spawn daughter reactors, and three the only waste coming out is fission products with half lives of under 300 years. All the actinides are fissile in a fast spectrum reactor and are recycled into the fresh fuel. Id,Tc and Cs have long lived fission products those are also recycled into fresh fuel and in the fast spectrum undergo transmutation in to short lived fission products. The waste form from pyro processing is solid ceramic glass with zero potential for geological mobility under hydrates conditions. The other form is a none water soluble rock.salt again with zero geological mobility in bore hole disposal or rock vaults.
This natirum reactor is a fast spectrum reactor with integrated processing to follow. The innovation is removing the sodium to steam generator. By using a molten salt intermediate as a heat transfer fluid they eliminate the possibility of a molten sodium water reaction. The chosen Molten salt is inert in molten sodium. Using a molten salt also allows them to very cheaply store heat on a gigawatt scale. This means they can run the reactor flat out at 100% power 24/7 which is how a reactor is designed and it’s peak efficacy point. When grid demand is low you bank the molten salt in cheap tanks, when peak demand is on you pull the salt out of the tanks and run your peaker turbines it’s genius. You could also use the 600C+ degree salt for process heat such as the iodine sulfur cycle to generate hydrogen from water on a scale measured in the millions of kg per year
. Hydrogen is needed in massive amounts for oil refiners to meet sulfur regs and to crack heavy oils and visbreaker residues into petrol, gas oil, and lpg. The heat on the bottoming cycle at 100C can drive seawater desal for a fraction of the cost of RO membranes. Isreal has got RO down to 58 cents or less a cubic meter. Nuke bulk heat would be even cheaper. For point of comparison water in DFW is $4.50 per 1000 yank units er gallons. There is 264 USG in a M^3 so $1.18 per cubic metre which means Israel desal water is already half the cost of water in North Texas. DFW also charges $5 per 1000 for wastewater treatment up to your first 8,000 gal or the avg use for the months of Dec, Jan, Feb the prior year whichever is less. Point is once you have massive amounts of heat stored and available you can do lots of industrial things with it cheaply.
It’s pushing my luck here, is what it is.
;D
LOL!
Stealing that
This post smelt of elderberries.
Also, that they avoided graphite and used hex boron nitride instead.
India has by far the largest Thorium reserves in the form of beach sand.
For all of the thoriated tungsten heads...
What You Need to Know: Thorium Nuclear Power
Nuclear energy was vilified in the 70’s because the Deep State saw with horror how relatively clean, compact, and powerful they were in comparison to the established coal-burning and other fossil fuel plants, and its implication in driving down real energy costs over time. So they concocted the massive danger those plants presented, successfully convincing the average normie that nuclear = bad, bad, bad.
At the time of the vilification, smog was at its highest levels in the United States, so the big technological development was directed toward cleaning up fossil fuel emissions. They were very successful over the last four decades to doing so, to the point where the emissions of vehicles are rated at well over 99% conversion efficiency, compared to the low nineties in the 70’s.
My point is that if nuclear energy plant development and implementation wasn’t cut off at the pass in the 70’s, by diverting the same R&D resources as it did for the fossil fuel technology, energy companies could have literally created community sized “micro-plants” that provide all the energy needed for cities for normal use in facilities the size of high-school gym. The waste problem (expended rods, water) would have been solved and even created more opportunities with the ability to recycle that waste into different energy or product.
The effort to convert regional mega-sized nuclear plants to localized mini-plants would have been easier than the R&D to minimize the fossil fuel impact on the environment. I would even venture to say that completely-encased nuclear energy devices could have been used for mobile or even house energy needs, with each encased device providing enough power for a typical house for years.
Forget the “100-mile to the gallon carburetor” conspiracy theories: the developed nuclear fission engine would have created a car that ran until it wore out, let alone needed refueling. But I digress.
LOL!
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