The Complete Case FOR Nuclear

[Rob Plant + 2,756]

On 3/6/2021 at 3:04 AM, Dan Clemmensen said:

Then Fukushima happened. That was a once in 10,000 year event. That made me realize that if we have 1000 nuclear plants, we will see a once in 10,000 year event about once per decade.

That is presuming that all 1000 plants are built in areas prone to tsunamis which is crazy.

Nuclear power is still the way to go especially thorium reactors and SMR's.

On new nuclear builds we need to somehow reduce construction costs whilst maintaining safety standards. Hinkley point C in the UK will likely end up costing £22-25 billion pounds and be one of the most expensive structures ever built on the planet.

Maybe the next major breakthrough will be fusion?? Iter will have first plasma in 2025 but again the cost of the project is mind blowing.

https://www.iter.org/

[Rob Plant + 2,756]

On 3/7/2021 at 2:15 PM, Sebastian Meana said:

Between "Cant" and "isn't because political incompetence" there's a difference, "can't" implies that there's something inherent to nuclear tech that makes it expensive, which is kinda bullshit, buying the materials for a 1.2GW nuclear powerplant is at worst 450 Million U$D, ad 800 million U$D in labour construction, and the profit and taxes the builder has to pay if is a turnkey project, boom you can make a reactor that last for 100 years for 1500U$D/KWe, other costs than that are management, political intrusion, and financing (interests compound over time)

You know why nuclear is expensive? Having to pay the NRC (which by the way is directed by antinuclear people since 2008 in the USA) to label something with "nuclear grade" after years of irradiation testing, like for example Flextape, a big roll of Nuclear grade flextape is 70U$D, while a roll of normal flextape is 5U$D, Nuclear grade flextape isn't in any practical or technical sense superior to normal flextape, just that has been tested years in irradiation chambers and has the nuclear label on it, the same it goes with every single of the miles of cable and pipework in a nuclear powerplant, including the concrete

As it turns out Japan, Russia, China, and South korea made the incredible discovery that if you make stainless steel pumps with the same alloys but without the "nuclear label on it", it works just as good as a normal "nuclear grade pump"
People is scared of nuclear stuff and radiation because most of them don't comprehend it, The jump from Wood to coal to oil to gas is from 16MJ to 30MJ to 45MJ to 55MJ, the jump from Natural Gas to Nuclear is from 55MJ to 80,000,000MJ, 1.5 MIllion times the energy density,

Also the nuclear waste is possibly the best part of it, because there's so little of it, a nuclear reactor with a output of 1350MWe will barely use 1250Kg of fissile material, and you know what? theres some valuable stuff on it, like Palladium, Rhodium, Ruthenium, Technetium, which isn't being done, in part because it is prohibited to do reprocessing in the US, or pyroprocessing, spent nucle|aer fuel should be reclasified as just "slightly used nuclear fuel" , because is what it is.

So when i hear people talking about Plutonium as nuclear waste, is just like when people used to talk about oil in coal mines as waste, or gasoline from kerosene refining as waste, or natural gas from oil wells as waste, just because isn't being used doesn't mean isn't useful, DuPont or Dow would have cracked pyroprocessing years ago if it was allowed or incentivized, and the KG of Reprocessed U-233 or Pu-239 would cost 5000U$D/KG, altho more of the revenue of pyroprocessing would have come from separating Fission products, as palladium is more expensive than gold, Technetium greatly increases corrosion resistance in any steel, and is a tremendous catalyst, and Rhodium prices are high since is so useful and there's so little of it

Great post!

Spot on in everything you say

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

11 hours ago, Rob Plant said:

That is presuming that all 1000 plants are built in areas prone to tsunamis which is crazy.

Nuclear power is still the way to go especially thorium reactors and SMR's.

On new nuclear builds we need to somehow reduce construction costs whilst maintaining safety standards. Hinkley point C in the UK will likely end up costing £22-25 billion pounds and be one of the most expensive structures ever built on the planet.

Maybe the next major breakthrough will be fusion?? Iter will have first plasma in 2025 but again the cost of the project is mind blowing.

https://www.iter.org/

No it only presumes that each plant is subject to some sort fo once-in-10000-year event, not that the event is a tsunami. It might be an sequence of hight-improbable operator errors (chernobyl), or a terrorist attack, or an airplane crash.

[turbguy + 1,544]

7 hours ago, Dan Clemmensen said:

No it only presumes that each plant is subject to some sort fo once-in-10000-year event, not that the event is a tsunami. It might be an sequence of hight-improbable operator errors (chernobyl), or a terrorist attack, or an airplane crash.

Unfortunately, any new tech will expose unexpected outcomes.

We think we now know enough about LWR's.  To get there, first the Navy, then US Utilities,had to pay out GOBS of bucks and then  experience several accidents ($$$$$). 

In the US and Japan, no one was killed (except for a research reactor accident in Idaho).

To get to know "enough" about other reactor arrangements, we gotta build several, operate them under military-style attention to detail, and then get that equivalent experience. Without that experience, all probabilities are nothing more than educated guesses.

As for a terrorist attack, the obvious thing to take out is the Main Generator Step Up transformer, not the reactor.  

BTW, Chernobyl was about as intentional as you can get.  The operators backed themselves up into a coffin corner, and it went off like a flashbulb.

Edited April 10, 2021 by turbguy

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

11 hours ago, turbguy said:

Unfortunately, any new tech will expose unexpected outcomes.

We think we now know enough about LWR's.  To get there, first the Navy, then US Utilities,had to pay out GOBS of bucks and then  experience several accidents ($$$$$). 

In the US and Japan, no one was killed (except for a research reactor accident in Idaho).

To get to know "enough" about other reactor arrangements, we gotta build several, operate them under military-style attention to detail, and then get that equivalent experience. Without that experience, all probabilities are nothing more than educated guesses.

As for a terrorist attack, the obvious thing to take out is the Main Generator Step Up transformer, not the reactor.  

BTW, Chernobyl was about as intentional as you can get.  The operators backed themselves up into a coffin corner, and it went off like a flashbulb.

I agree completely: fission power is basically cleaner and safer than any other type of power (with the possible exception of geothermal), including hydro, wind, and solar. However, I have given up on convincing enough people of this, and one accident every ten years, is enough to kill nuclear even though basically nobody dies.