Ukraine nuke shutdown...

[Glen Walpert]

On Mon, 19 Sep 2022 18:26:14 -0700 (PDT), Anthony William Sloman wrote:

On Tuesday, September 20, 2022 at 9:52:01 AM UTC+10, Glen Walpert wrote:
On Mon, 12 Sep 2022 14:14:00 -0700 (PDT), Lasse Langwadt Christense
wrote:
mandag den 12. september 2022 kl. 23.02.27 UTC+2 skrev Glen Walpert:
On Mon, 12 Sep 2022 11:20:19 -0700 (PDT), Lasse Langwadt Christensen
wrote:
mandag den 12. september 2022 kl. 17.16.07 UTC+2 skrev Glen
Walpert:
On Mon, 12 Sep 2022 15:24:24 +0100, Martin Brown wrote:
On 12/09/2022 14:12, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:
On Mon, 12 Sep 2022 09:34:20 +0100, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

snip

I was thinking EM pumps with no moving parts, current is run through
the sodium and it is moved through pipes with magnetism.

Got it, inverse of a MHD. Has such a pump ever been used in any
practical application?

I thought that it was a standard solution, in use (in odd places ) for
decades.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306454918305413

Looks like R&D work, not installed in a plant for production of power or
anything else. While it looks promising I still haven\'t seen any
reliability or efficiency data which would justify use in a power plant,
other than as one of several pumps with the others being of conventional
design, with the intent of establishing reliability of the new design.

In the short term we have new PWR designs such as the Westinghouse
designed plants now being completed by Bechtel at Votgle 3&4 in Georgia
after the unfortunate bankruptcy of Westinghouse. We should be building
more of these plants now, not just hoping for adoption of an improved Fast
Breeder Reactor with energy storage in the distant future. (The energy
storage is necessary to obtain variable plant output power while the
reactor operates at full power continuously.)

Glen

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Tuesday, September 20, 2022 at 11:15:40 PM UTC+10, Glen Walpert wrote:

On Mon, 19 Sep 2022 18:26:14 -0700 (PDT), Anthony William Sloman wrote:

On Tuesday, September 20, 2022 at 9:52:01 AM UTC+10, Glen Walpert wrote:
On Mon, 12 Sep 2022 14:14:00 -0700 (PDT), Lasse Langwadt Christense
wrote:
mandag den 12. september 2022 kl. 23.02.27 UTC+2 skrev Glen Walpert:
On Mon, 12 Sep 2022 11:20:19 -0700 (PDT), Lasse Langwadt Christensen
wrote:
mandag den 12. september 2022 kl. 17.16.07 UTC+2 skrev Glen
Walpert:
On Mon, 12 Sep 2022 15:24:24 +0100, Martin Brown wrote:
On 12/09/2022 14:12, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:
On Mon, 12 Sep 2022 09:34:20 +0100, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

snip

I was thinking EM pumps with no moving parts, current is run through
the sodium and it is moved through pipes with magnetism.

Got it, inverse of a MHD. Has such a pump ever been used in any
practical application?

I thought that it was a standard solution, in use (in odd places ) for
decades.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306454918305413

Looks like R&D work, not installed in a plant for production of power or
anything else.

That paper looks like R&D work. The idea of using a linear synchronous motor to move a conducting fluid has been around for long time.

> While it looks promising I still haven\'t seen any reliability or efficiency data which would justify use in a power plant, other than as one of several pumps with the others being of conventional design, with the intent of establishing reliability of the new design.

The reliability ought to be excellent - there\'s nothing to wear out or break. The efficiency is unlikely to be impressive, but that\'s rarely all that important.

In the short term we have new PWR designs such as the Westinghouse
designed plants now being completed by Bechtel at Votgle 3&4 in Georgia
after the unfortunate bankruptcy of Westinghouse. We should be building
more of these plants now, not just hoping for adoption of an improved Fast
Breeder Reactor with energy storage in the distant future.

They produce remarkably expensive electricity, they take ages to build and we\'ve still not got any well-worked out way of dealing with the nuclear waste for the 100,000 years that it stays dangerous. It\'s an irresponsible idiocy.

> (The energy storage is necessary to obtain variable plant output power while the reactor operates at full power continuously.)

Even more idiotic.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Mike Monett VE3BTI]

Glen Walpert <nospam@null.void> wrote:

In the short term we have new PWR designs such as the Westinghouse
designed plants now being completed by Bechtel at Votgle 3&4 in Georgia
after the unfortunate bankruptcy of Westinghouse.

Same old PWR design:

The AP1000® PWR: Simply Electric

The Westinghouse AP1000 pressurized water reactor (PWR) is the most
advanced commercially available nuclear power plant.

https://www.westinghousenuclear.com/energy-systems/ap1000-pwr

Expensive, 0.5% to 0.7% burnup, highly radioactive waste, has to be shut
down to shuffle fuel rods.

We should be using TMSR - Thorium Molten Salt Reactors. These are
inexpensive since they don\'t need a pressure dome, offer virtually 100%
burnup, run at atmospheric pressure, walkaway safe, very little radioactive
waste that decays in hundreds instead of tens of thousands of years, can
burn radioactive waste from PWR reactors, doesn\'t have to be located near
water for cooling. Thorium fuel is cheap, found everywhere and will last
for thousands of years.

The only problem is the NRC limits the maximum power to 1 Megawatt. This
limits R&D investment.

Meanwhile, China is proceeding with development of a MSR in the desert.
Obviously they will get all the patents and the rest of the world will
depend on them for licensing. Here\'s an example:

Chinese molten-salt reactor cleared for start up

09 August 2022

The Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics (SINAP) - part of the Chinese
Academy of Sciences (CAS) - has been given approval by the Ministry of
Ecology and Environment to commission an experimental thorium-powered
molten-salt reactor, construction of which started in Wuwei city, Gansu
province, in September 2018.

https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Chinese-molten-salt-reactor-
cleared-for-start-up




--
MRM

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Wednesday, September 21, 2022 at 12:30:22 AM UTC+10, Mike Monett VE3BTI wrote:

Glen Walpert <nos...@null.void> wrote:

In the short term we have new PWR designs such as the Westinghouse
designed plants now being completed by Bechtel at Votgle 3&4 in Georgia
after the unfortunate bankruptcy of Westinghouse.
Same old PWR design:

The AP1000® PWR: Simply Electric

The Westinghouse AP1000 pressurized water reactor (PWR) is the most
advanced commercially available nuclear power plant.

https://www.westinghousenuclear.com/energy-systems/ap1000-pwr

Expensive, 0.5% to 0.7% burnup, highly radioactive waste, has to be shut
down to shuffle fuel rods.

We should be using TMSR - Thorium Molten Salt Reactors. These are
inexpensive since they don\'t need a pressure dome, offer virtually 100%
burnup, run at atmospheric pressure, walkaway safe, very little radioactive
waste that decays in hundreds instead of tens of thousands of years,

Frequently claimed by thorium enthusiasts. Not accepted by people who have looked into it. What is skipped is that these are the virtues of reactor designed to convert Thorium-232 - which doesn\'t fission - into U-233 which does. If you want to get power by fissioning much of that U-233 the reactor looks a lot more like one burning U-235 and has most of the same vices.

100% burn-up doesn\'t deal the fact that the products of U-233 fission are just as radioactive as the products of U-235 fission. The advantage with thorium is that there\'s no U-238 around to get turned into plutonium 239.

> can burn radioactive waste from PWR reactors, doesn\'t have to be located near water for cooling.

Why not? It is still a heat-generating process - that\'s how you get the power out - and you have to dump the waste heat somewhere. And the way you turn that heat into power is by volatilisng something and getting it hot and pressurised and venting that pressurised gas through a turbine. That needs a pressure dome.

>Thorium fuel is cheap, found everywhere and will last for thousands of years.

But it won\'t be if we get many thorium-burning reactors

> The only problem is the NRC limits the maximum power to 1 Megawatt. This limits R&D investment.

That and the fact that we still haven\'t worked out how keep radoactive waste safely stored for a couple of hundred thousand years

Meanwhile, China is proceeding with development of a MSR in the desert.
Obviously they will get all the patents and the rest of the world will
depend on them for licensing. Here\'s an example:

Chinese molten-salt reactor cleared for start up

09 August 2022

The Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics (SINAP) - part of the Chinese
Academy of Sciences (CAS) - has been given approval by the Ministry of
Ecology and Environment to commission an experimental thorium-powered
molten-salt reactor, construction of which started in Wuwei city, Gansu
province, in September 2018.

https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Chinese-molten-salt-reactor-cleared-for-start-up

It doesn\'t need much cooling because it\'s designed to produced U-233 from thorium-232, rather than power by fissoning that U=233 (which is to say heat).

This makes sense in an experimental reactor, but it makes it hopeless as a prototype for a power-generating reactor. Fairly clearly it isn\'t going to burn up a lot of U-233 if its job is to make lots of it for power-generating reactors.

This is typical thorium reactor enthusiast output - too dim to be taken seriously.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney