Wind droughts

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

2 minutes ago, Jay McKinsey said:

More of your nonsense. Your naval reactors are not the equivalent of proposed SMRs. If they were so awesome they would be being used somewhere outside of a ship. According to Wiki, Russia has one small reactor in operation. It is a notorious RBMK that was built in the 1970's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_small_nuclear_reactors

This list only has the research reactors. There is this, which is obviously shipping

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademik_Lomonosov

Just 70 MW electric, 300 MW thermal. It is on a barge parked in a port and powers a town. It is basically an icebreaker reactor without the propulsion bits. See

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KLT-40_reactor

The next gen is already being built to be placed on land also

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RITM-200

The only difference in favor of a floating platform is the ease of cooling with the ambient water. Plus, such a reactor also can do water desalination on the side.

[Jay McKinsey + 1,490]

3 minutes ago, Andrei Moutchkine said:

This list only has the research reactors. There is this, which is obviously shipping

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademik_Lomonosov

Just 70 MW electric, 300 MW thermal. It is on a barge parked in a port and powers a town. It is basically an icebreaker reactor without the propulsion bits. See

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KLT-40_reactor

The next gen is already being built to be placed on land also

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RITM-200

The only difference in favor of a floating platform is the ease of cooling with the ambient water. Plus, such a reactor also can do water desalination on the side.

Russia is using an expensive barge nuclear plant to run a very remote high value mine. The town is just the mine workers.

No the next gen on land is not being built, it is in design. Perhaps you should try reading the links you post: In November 2020 Rosatom announced plans to place a land-based RITM-200N^[4] SMR in isolated Ust-Kuyga town in Yakutia.^[5] The reactor will replace current coal and oil based electricity and heat generation at half the price.^[6] Technical design for this type of RITM-200 core should be finished in 2022.

All the Russian plans for SMR are just for remote outposts, they are not grid competitive. 

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

37 minutes ago, Jay McKinsey said:

Russia is using an expensive barge nuclear plant to run a very remote high value mine. The town is just the mine workers.

No the next gen on land is not being built, it is in design. Perhaps you should try reading the links you post: In November 2020 Rosatom announced plans to place a land-based RITM-200N^[4] SMR in isolated Ust-Kuyga town in Yakutia.^[5] The reactor will replace current coal and oil based electricity and heat generation at half the price.^[6] Technical design for this type of RITM-200 core should be finished in 2022.

All the Russian plans for SMR are just for remote outposts, they are not grid competitive. 

Duh. Of course, are they not grid competitive. This is like saying that small nukes cannot compete with large nukes. Don't think this is different elsewhere? However, Russia has a lot of remote locations where connecting to the grid would be prohibitively expensive. They usually tend to have a body of cold water nearby, though. The barge is the cheapest housing around, at least post-Fukushima.

This form of "direct cooling" (without cooling towers) is actually the opposite of expensive. This is how you've got 30 out of 57 reactor blocks in France down now, due to combined heat wave and drought. Which is obviously quite a bit less likely to happen in the Russian Arctic?

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/08/24/this-viral-photo-of-the-dry-loire-riverbed-is-missing-some-context

So, this isn't even new, but simply is a crappy Eurofag design. As far as an entirely landlocked version of the RITM-200, they finally found a pilot customer in Yakutia who appears to be genuinely landlocked. This is a lower priority project, eyeing some export sales to Africa. So, they'll add a dry (closed loop) cooling tower in, big deal. It will be a bit more expensive that way, not less. As far as Russia-internal market for such SMRs is concerned, you can reasonably expect them "high value mining projects" to have some kind of access to the waterways. Because you want to get the product out? Come to think of that, the landlocked pilot customer in Yakutia must be mining something very compact, like diamonds or gold.

The "landlocked" version is the RITM-200N. Don't confuse it with regular RITM-200, which is shipping with the latest gen icebreaker. They even started building the next gen icebreaker, which will use the RITM-400. I reckon, Rosatom needs to have their asses covered for the contingency that somebody notices how much krill their devices are frying

Edited August 25, 2022 by Andrei Moutchkine

[Jay McKinsey + 1,490]

30 minutes ago, Andrei Moutchkine said:

Duh. Of course, are they not grid competitive. This is like saying that small nukes cannot compete with large nukes. Don't think this is different elsewhere? However, Russia has a lot of remote locations where connecting to the grid would be prohibitively expensive. They usually tend to have a body of cold water nearby, though. The barge is the cheapest housing around, at least post-Fukushima.

This form of "direct cooling" (without cooling towers) is actually the opposite of expensive. This is how you've got 30 out of 57 reactor blocks in France down now, due to combined heat wave and drought. Which is obviously quite a bit less likely to happen in the Russian Arctic?

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/08/24/this-viral-photo-of-the-dry-loire-riverbed-is-missing-some-context

So, this isn't even new, but simply is a crappy Eurofag design. As far as an entirely landlocked version of the RITM-200, they finally found a pilot customer in Yakutia who appears to be genuinely landlocked. This is a lower priority project, eyeing some export sales to Africa. So, they'll add a dry (closed loop) cooling tower in, big deal. It will be a bit more expensive that way, not less. As far as Russia-internal market for such SMRs is concerned, you can reasonably expect them "high value mining projects" to have some kind of access to the waterways. Because you want to get the product out? Come to think of that, the landlocked pilot customer in Yakutia must be mining something very compact, like diamonds or gold.

The "landlocked" version is the RITM-200N. Don't confuse it with regular RITM-200, which is shipping with the latest gen icebreaker. They even started building the next gen icebreaker, which will use the RITM-400. I reckon, Rosatom needs to have their asses covered for the contingency that somebody notices how much krill their devices are frying

The entire point of SMR's that Rob brought up is that they are supposed to be grid competitive. That is why I said none of the Russian reactors are comparably to what is being proposed. The reactors you are going on about are expensive special use technology that are irrelevant to the discussion. Oh and that high value mining project I mentioned is a gold mine.

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

26 minutes ago, Jay McKinsey said:

The entire point of SMR's that Rob brought up is that they are supposed to be grid competitive. That is why I said none of the Russian reactors are comparably to what is being proposed. The reactors you are going on about are expensive special use technology that are irrelevant to the discussion. Oh and that high value mining project I mentioned is a gold mine.

Bigger nukes are more economical in the long run than smaller ones. Always. Potentially, both small and large ones can be "grid competitive", whatever that means. Note that in Russia, you very often want just heat without the electricity. That does not really happen elsewhere? (Except apparently in Austria, where I pay a lot more for district heating now than I do for electricity)

Anyhow, there are a type of massive thermal stations called GRES all over ex-USSR, which they often unplug from the power grid and let them make district heat only. How does that affect grid-parity, you reckon?

One Eagle Scout badge for Jay! There is nothing "special use" about being off the main grid, though. Americans should be the last people surprised by this, by the virtue of having an island grid the size of Texas.

 

[Michael Sanches + 187]

8 hours ago, Andrei Moutchkine said:

This list only has the research reactors. There is this, which is obviously shipping

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademik_Lomonosov

Just 70 MW electric, 300 MW thermal. It is on a barge parked in a port and powers a town. It is basically an icebreaker reactor without the propulsion bits. See

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KLT-40_reactor

The next gen is already being built to be placed on land also

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RITM-200

The only difference in favor of a floating platform is the ease of cooling with the ambient water. Plus, such a reactor also can do water desalination on the side.

The problem with many small reactors is security from terrorism. Even accessing the small University reactors require guards and background checks. 

It seems like floating nuclear reactors would be a terrorist's dream target.

[Michael Sanches + 187]

We see the problems caused by the Deepwater Horizon spill did to nearby areas. What would be the result of a terrorist caused, Fukishima-like incident to surrounding civilian and water areas from a small nuclear rector. One terrorist speedboat can ruin everyone's day.

On the other hand, would the ocean disperse the radiation causing little damage?

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

9 minutes ago, Michael Sanches said:

It seems like floating nuclear reactors would be a terrorist's dream target.

Why? If you sink the thing, nothing that bad happens. You can fish it out later. This is actually how they used to decommission them - blowing them through the ship's bottom to the ocean floor. 14% enrichment is supposed to not even be capable of melting down, just fizzling.

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

28 minutes ago, Michael Sanches said:

We see the problems caused by the Deepwater Horizon spill did to nearby areas. What would be the result of a terrorist caused, Fukishima-like incident to surrounding civilian and water areas from a small nuclear rector. One terrorist speedboat can ruin everyone's day.

On the other hand, would the ocean disperse the radiation causing little damage?

Fukushima-like, as in tsunami? They haven't been one in the Arctic for some millions of years due to all the ice, but they still have to follow the same rules. Which means massive fortifications if you build it on the shore. Floating ships are not affected by tsunamis much.

Fukushima would've still be avoidable if they just put the emergency generators on top of the building, instead of the basement, where they got flooded. Gen3+ is supposed to mean it is no longer reliant on external emergency power at all. See

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_nuclear_safety

The old

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Nuclear_Power_Plant

once survived a magnitude 7 quake on dry land very near to the epicenter. This was 1988, right after Chernobyl. See

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Earthquake_resistance

It also does not have a primary confinement structure, something that is no longer possible post-Chernobyl. (USSR actually shut that one, and stopped the construction of a near complete one in Crimea, which is only slightly quake-prone. Armenia later reopened it, because it is broke)

One terrorist speedboat is not going to do jack. The latest contingency scenarios for NPPs also include 9/11. (an airliner loaded with kerosene) USSR was obviously was a believer in "oceanic dispersion", but Norway paid them for not doing it anymore

There are no accidental passersby in the Arctic, and hence no terrorists.

Edited August 26, 2022 by Andrei Moutchkine

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

28 minutes ago, Michael Sanches said:

We see the problems caused by the Deepwater Horizon spill did to nearby areas. What would be the result of a terrorist caused, Fukishima-like incident to surrounding civilian and water areas from a small nuclear rector. One terrorist speedboat can ruin everyone's day.

On the other hand, would the ocean disperse the radiation causing little damage?

Deepwater Horizon had it coming. Drilling rigs ought to not be dynamically positioned.

I'll show you the next one that is going to blow

https://www.eni.com/en-IT/operations/norway-goliat.html

Actually, it already did in 2015. (The site is abandonware, Eni quit, and the whole thing is unofficially operated by somebody Norwegian. Don't know how really bad it was, the thing got covered up) They are trying to dynamically position the thing in the ice! The Russian Prirazlomnaya, which gets all the flak from Greenpeace, is OK. It's got the concrete stalk.

https://www.aoosk.ru/en/products/offshore-ice-resistant-fixed-platform/

Those are the only two offshore drilling rigs in the Arctic ice, AFAIK.

 

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,190]

2 hours ago, Michael Sanches said:

The problem with many small reactors is security from terrorism. Even accessing the small University reactors require guards and background checks. 

It seems like floating nuclear reactors would be a terrorist's dream target.

Good luck against 2m thick concrete with your "terrorists"...  And no, numerous small reactors are not a problem in fact that is a benefit as it makes the parts small and cheap offset by a small reactors poor neutron fuel efficiency.  Likewise due to smaller reactor/turbine design you can also now FOLLOW demand curves, instead of ONLY being base load.  You put SEVERAL reactors in a single complex equal to the bigger reactors is the only difference.  But since it is a modular reactor in its own containment vessel(10cm+ thick stainless steel to be precise) one can move the fuel around easier even though it needs to be refueled more often.  Likewise unlike the big reactors, the small reactors are in effect idiot proof due to internal thermal loop with thermal plugs which... MELT out, dropping the rods or dropping boron etc should things get even hotter. 

If idiot governments are still going to ban breeding reactors use of non liquid nuclear fuels, then the smaller reactors make FAR more safety sense than what moronically we are using today.... the problem is their low 20's% efficiency when one does NOT use Plutonium. Plutonium's high neutron cross section makes small reactors vastly more efficient.  Of course you must ignore the power required to make the Plutonium....🙄

PS: Yes, I have worked on small modular nuclear reactor design, until funding ran out like all such designs as the government refuses to get the Hell out of the way.  There is nothing expensive about these designs and in fact are dirt cheap.  The government bureaucracy filled by illiterate greenpeace activists on the other hand is an impossible hurdle.  Maybe China or some other dictatorship can push a new design through.  It won't happen until a war of survival is required and someones fuel is completely cut off and they have to make a decision, become slaves from the dark ages, or build nuclear reactors and stay a modern nation....  But a modular small nuclear solid fuel reactor design might just get through somewhere if.....

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

33 minutes ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

Good luck against 2m thick concrete with your "terrorists"...  And no, numerous small reactors are not a problem in fact that is a benefit as it makes the parts small and cheap offset by a small reactors poor neutron fuel efficiency.  Likewise due to smaller reactor/turbine design you can also now FOLLOW demand curves, instead of ONLY being base load.  You put SEVERAL reactors in a single complex equal to the bigger reactors is the only difference.  But since it is a modular reactor in its own containment vessel(10cm+ thick stainless steel to be precise) one can move the fuel around easier even though it needs to be refueled more often.  Likewise unlike the big reactors, the small reactors are in effect idiot proof due to internal thermal loop with thermal plugs which... MELT out, dropping the rods or dropping boron etc should things get even hotter. 

If idiot governments are still going to ban breeding reactors use of non liquid nuclear fuels, then the smaller reactors make FAR more safety sense than what moronically we are using today.... the problem is their low 20's% efficiency when one does NOT use Plutonium. Plutonium's high neutron cross section makes small reactors vastly more efficient.  Of course you must ignore the power required to make the Plutonium....🙄

PS: Yes, I have worked on small modular nuclear reactor design, until funding ran out like all such designs as the government refuses to get the Hell out of the way.  There is nothing expensive about these designs and in fact are dirt cheap.  The government bureaucracy filled by illiterate greenpeace activists on the other hand is an impossible hurdle.  Maybe China or some other dictatorship can push a new design through.  It won't happen until a war of survival is required and someones fuel is completely cut off and they have to make a decision, become slaves from the dark ages, or build nuclear reactors and stay a modern nation....  But a modular small nuclear solid fuel reactor design might just get through somewhere if.....

You may not use plutonium, but you may use MOX to breed. Or at least Russia and USA may, as a part of some disarmament deal to reduce the stockpiles of weapons-grade Pu. In practical terms, only Russia has a working MOX-burner setup. The US decided to call it nuclear waste to bury instead. You forgot to mention that this stuff makes for an essentially closed nuclear cycle where the "depleted" U238 gets "undepleted" into fissionable U235. No nuclear waste, or at least way less.

China is not a dictatorship. It is fascist all right, but so are the Japanese and Koreans too. I think fascism is natural to all Far Easterners.

 

 

[NickW + 2,714]

7 hours ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

Good luck against 2m thick concrete with your "terrorists"...  And no, numerous small reactors are not a problem in fact that is a benefit as it makes the parts small and cheap offset by a small reactors poor neutron fuel efficiency.  Likewise due to smaller reactor/turbine design you can also now FOLLOW demand curves, instead of ONLY being base load.  You put SEVERAL reactors in a single complex equal to the bigger reactors is the only difference.  But since it is a modular reactor in its own containment vessel(10cm+ thick stainless steel to be precise) one can move the fuel around easier even though it needs to be refueled more often.  Likewise unlike the big reactors, the small reactors are in effect idiot proof due to internal thermal loop with thermal plugs which... MELT out, dropping the rods or dropping boron etc should things get even hotter. 

If idiot governments are still going to ban breeding reactors use of non liquid nuclear fuels, then the smaller reactors make FAR more safety sense than what moronically we are using today.... the problem is their low 20's% efficiency when one does NOT use Plutonium. Plutonium's high neutron cross section makes small reactors vastly more efficient.  Of course you must ignore the power required to make the Plutonium....🙄

PS: Yes, I have worked on small modular nuclear reactor design, until funding ran out like all such designs as the government refuses to get the Hell out of the way.  There is nothing expensive about these designs and in fact are dirt cheap.  The government bureaucracy filled by illiterate greenpeace activists on the other hand is an impossible hurdle.  Maybe China or some other dictatorship can push a new design through.  It won't happen until a war of survival is required and someones fuel is completely cut off and they have to make a decision, become slaves from the dark ages, or build nuclear reactors and stay a modern nation....  But a modular small nuclear solid fuel reactor design might just get through somewhere if.....

Small reactors also lend themselves well to utilising the waste heat for industrial purposes. This is one area the Easternbloc did better in terms of utilising waste heat from power plants for district heating & industrial uses. 

[Michael Sanches + 187]

12 hours ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

Good luck against 2m thick concrete with your "terrorists"...

Tell that to the people of Oklahoma City.

One man, one truck. Not too different than one man, one speedboat.

[Michael Sanches + 187]

No fly zones around the 86 nuclear reactors in the US are you must stay away 10 nautical miles or over 18,000 feet.

 

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,190]

1 hour ago, Michael Sanches said:

Tell that to the people of Oklahoma City.

One man, one truck. Not too different than one man, one speedboat.

Does absolutely nothing to 1m thick concrete.  In fact you can run an aircraft at 1m thick concrete at mach 1 and it will do absolutely nothing.  And all the small reactors are in individual containment vessels submerged under many meters of water below grade.  Standard Bombs, let alone fertilizer home made jokes at Oklahoma city with nice glass panels everywhere, or speedboats literally cannot do anything against that as the water itself will turn said aircraft into confetti...  You literally have to have a hardened missile or artillery to even slightly damage reinforced concrete. 

All that before one even talks about penetrating 10m of water... Do you have ANY idea what it requires to penetrate 10m of water?  You could be going mach 3 and your penetration for bullets is measured in centimeters... Go look it up on youtube for 50 caliber bullets. The larger the shell the further you can penetrate, but your velocity is a joke. 

No fly zones ... what a joke.  Go look up nuclear containment vessel aircraft testing on youtube.  Absolutely no reason for no fly zones.  None.  You could literally fly 10,000 aircraft at near mach one at said facility and you still would not create a disaster. 

Your abject ignorance is typical unfortunately. 

Inform yourself before speaking and looking a fool.

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

3 hours ago, Michael Sanches said:

Tell that to the people of Oklahoma City.

One man, one truck. Not too different than one man, one speedboat.

This was just any odd office building. The WTC actually shrugged off a similar attempt (small U-Haul truck with fertilizer) in its underground garage. The recently built nukes are supposed to shrug off 9/11 (airliner fully loaded with fuel)

[Rasmus Jorgensen + 1,169]

On 8/26/2022 at 3:01 AM, Andrei Moutchkine said:

Drilling rigs ought to not be dynamically positioned.

why not?

[Rasmus Jorgensen + 1,169]

On 8/26/2022 at 3:01 AM, Andrei Moutchkine said:

I'll show you the next one that is going to blow

https://www.eni.com/en-IT/operations/norway-goliat.html

Actually, it already did in 2015. (The site is abandonware, Eni quit, and the whole thing is unofficially operated by somebody Norwegian. Don't know how really bad it was, the thing got covered up) They are trying to dynamically position the thing in the ice!

Pls tell me your sources and tell me more about this. 

I have first hand knowledge here and would like to see how big a hole you can dig. 

 

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

7 minutes ago, Rasmus Jorgensen said:

Pls tell me your sources and tell me more about this. 

I have first hand knowledge here and would like to see how big a hole you can dig. 

 

So, do tell. What happened there in 2015? The Russian sources say that the thing is no longer operational and their Prirazlomnaya be the one and only platform operating in the Arctic ice now. So also thinks Wikipedia and Greenpeace. Alas, the platform seems to be operational, but in a very low-key way and with the original team gone.

Do you also think it is sane to be dynamically positioning in the ice?

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

16 minutes ago, Rasmus Jorgensen said:

why not?

Because they are not really ships and are not at a liberty to move more than a few meters away? Outright catastrophic in the ice. Because a moving ice field is going to win and move you away, no matter what?

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

22 hours ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

Does absolutely nothing to 1m thick concrete.  In fact you can run an aircraft at 1m thick concrete at mach 1 and it will do absolutely nothing.  And all the small reactors are in individual containment vessels submerged under many meters of water below grade.  Standard Bombs, let alone fertilizer home made jokes at Oklahoma city with nice glass panels everywhere, or speedboats literally cannot do anything against that as the water itself will turn said aircraft into confetti...  You literally have to have a hardened missile or artillery to even slightly damage reinforced concrete. 

All that before one even talks about penetrating 10m of water... Do you have ANY idea what it requires to penetrate 10m of water?  You could be going mach 3 and your penetration for bullets is measured in centimeters... Go look it up on youtube for 50 caliber bullets. The larger the shell the further you can penetrate, but your velocity is a joke. 

No fly zones ... what a joke.  Go look up nuclear containment vessel aircraft testing on youtube.  Absolutely no reason for no fly zones.  None.  You could literally fly 10,000 aircraft at near mach one at said facility and you still would not create a disaster. 

Your abject ignorance is typical unfortunately. 

Inform yourself before speaking and looking a fool.

The penetration in water depends on the shape a lot. Conventional bullets and shells indeed suck at that, but there are special spearguns used by frogmen which do not.

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,190]

1 hour ago, Andrei Moutchkine said:

The penetration in water depends on the shape a lot. Conventional bullets and shells indeed suck at that, but there are special spearguns used by frogmen which do not.

You can get off your arse and look that up as well.  We are talking ~ about 3m at LOW velocities.  Why they are called SPEAAARGUNS... 👍  The title gives it away...  Let me check what a low velocity spear does against 1m thick concrete  again....🤡

Ha~!  Took my own advice... Found this GEM: Guinness world record for catching spears from a spear gun at it looks... 2m... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya3od2FfHcM 

Clown world.....

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,190]

PS: There are bullets designed to be fired underwater/into water.  They use super cavitating principles via nose geometry creating cavities of steam to create surrounding gas bubble.   They are also probably made out of super dense super expensive materials for much superior ballistics.

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

31 minutes ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

You can get off your arse and look that up as well.  We are talking ~ about 3m at LOW velocities.  Why they are called SPEAAARGUNS... 👍  The title gives it away...  Let me check what a low velocity spear does against 1m thick concrete  again....🤡

Ha~!  Took my own advice... Found this GEM: Guinness world record for catching spears from a spear gun at it looks... 2m... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya3od2FfHcM 

Clown world.....

A simplification for you. Catch a spear from this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APS_underwater_rifle