Posted on 08/25/2005 4:11:34 AM PDT by CarrotAndStick
NEW DELHI: India unveiled before the international community on Thursday, its revolutionary design of a 'Thorium breeder reactor' that can produce 600 MW of electricity for two years 'with no refuelling and practically no control manoeuvres.'
Designed by scientists of the Mumbai-based Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, the ATBR is claimed to be far more economical and safer than any power reactor in the world.
Most significantly for India, ATBR does not require natural or enriched uranium which the country is finding difficult to import. It uses thorium -- which India has in plenty -- and only requires plutonium as 'seed' to ignite the reactor core initially.
Eventually, the ATBR can run entirely with thorium and fissile uranium-233 bred inside the reactor (or obtained externally by converting fertile thorium into fissile Uranium-233 by neutron bombardment).
BARC scientists V Jagannathan and Usha Pal revealed the ATBR design in their paper presented at the week-long 'international conference on emerging nuclear energy systems' in Brussels. The design has been in the making for over seven years.
According to the scientists, the ATBR while annually consuming 880 kg of plutonium for energy production from 'seed' rods, converts 1,100 kg of thorium into fissionable uranium-233. This diffrential gain in fissile formation makes ATBR a kind of thorium breeder.
The uniqueness of the ATBR design is that there is almost a perfect 'balance' between fissile depletion and production that allows in-bred U-233 to take part in energy generation thereby extending the core life to two years.
This does not happen in the present day power reactors because fissile depletion takes place much faster than production of new fissile ones.
BARC scientists say that the ATBR with plutonium feed can be regarded as plutonium incinerator and it produces the intrinsically proliferation resistant U-233 for sustenance of the future reactor programme.
They say that long fuel cycle length of two years with no external absorber management or control manoeuvres "does not exist in any operating reactor."
The ATBR annually requires 2.2 tonnes of plutonium as 'seed'. Although India has facilities to recover plutonium by reprocessing spent fuel, it requires plutonium for its Fast Breeder Reactor programme as well. Nuclear analysts say that it may be possible for India to obtain plutonium from friendly countries wanting to dismantle their weapons or dispose of their stockpiled plutonium.
There was enough blame to go around, that's for sure. It took incompetence at every level to make it happen.
obfuscation alert.
anyway, what difference does it make. better hope they're better with scalpels and lasers than they are with cyanide valves.
"Not unlike Homer Simpson, a couple of engineers were "sleeping at the wheel" when the cyanide leak occurred and a chain reaction of miscommunication and the lack of emergency stopgaps created that disaster."
It only means one thing and that is that safety devices and measures were not in place to account for human errors and misjudgements. Every report on Bhopal clearly states that Union Carbide completely neglected the safety standards.
Its not as easy as some funny guy pulled a lever and the whole town was gassed by the toxic fumes. It happened only because the safety measures were not adequate.
Only in the "it happened on my watch" culpability. The guy who screwed the pooch was an Indian.
You don't expect the media to report anything else besides the idea that it was all the fault of the "evil US capitalsits", do you??
Actually, as I remember the "thorium cycle", it does NOT specifically require plutonium. You could also do it with enriched Uranium.
Who said anything about "evil US capitalists"?
There can be no excuses for neglecting the safety regulations that resulted in so many deaths, be it the "evil US capitalists" or whosoever responsible for neglecting the safety standards.
Actually, fission energy comes from proton to proton repulsion, thus it is example of the awesome power of the electromagnetic force.
Anybody want to bet on when the safest becomes another Three Mile Island?
Uh, you have provided no proof whatsoever that Carbide "neglected the safety regulations". It's been some years since I studied the Bhopal issue, but all the major US chemical companies are absolute fanatics for safety (I worked at one for 25 years), so I seriously doubt that if any safety regs were violated, it was as a result of company policy.
Don't bother. Indians here seem to have a difficult time with self-criticism. It might have something to do with some of them being paid PR agents.
You're thinking of fusion.
Nope. Both fission AND fusion work because mass is converted to energy. In the case of fusion, the final fused atom weighs less than the two smaller atoms that were "fused"---that weight difference is the amount of mass converted to energy
In fission, the sum of the masses of the two atoms formed by the fission process is less than that of the original single fissionable atom. The weight difference again is the amount of mass converted to enery.
I'll bet that you can look at all the years after TMI and find many more deaths in coal mines, drilling for oil/gas than you will find in US designed and operated Nuke Plants.
There has been a design for an intrinsically safe nuke plant for years. By simply reducing the concentration of fuel in the fuel rods a reactor can be built to run with no coolant and every safety screwed up.
They have tested this design by removing the coolant and the temperature rises but only to a safe level and just stays at that level. The fuel in the rods has space to expand without damaging the rod itself.
The same can be said about flashlight batteries. There will be a small change in mass between a new one and a depleted one due to energy conversion. It still doesn't change the fact that the main source of joy in a fission explosion is electromagnetic repulsion.
"I seriously doubt that if any safety regs were violated, it was as a result of company policy."
Companies in the US dont often maintain the same level of quality or safety standards in third world countries. Very often foreign copmanies are known to take advantage of the lax in enforcement of regulations when it comes to cutting corners and it is especially true of US companies operating overseas in third world countries where corruption is rampant.
The Union Carbide which operated in Bhopal was not exactly well known for their "fantastic" safety standards.
Whatever.
Sorry, but not true. The only place where "electromagnetic repulsion" comes into play is in converting the velocity of the two fission fragment particles into heat as they collide with other atoms in the fuel rods. The SOURCE of that velocity is the mass difference between the original atom and the two new fission product atoms.
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