Batteries Produce More CO2 Than Coal and Gasoline.

[Mike90250]

....The reason Fukushima melted down is that modern operating reactors require power, constantly, or they will melt down. ....

wrong, MODERN reactors do not melt when they loose power. They are designed to reduce output if they start to overheat, Fukushima was not a modern design.. Newer, but not current modern

New reactors like the AP1000 largely solve this problem by designing in enough convection cooling that even without active cooling their fuel remains intact.

or Thorium, or gas pebble or another half dozen designs that are held up by red tape (non-engineering tape)

[J.P.M.]

Another and IMO a bigger problem is getting past the fear of using Nuclear power. That seems to be the biggest road block for the industry.

Fear of nuclear power, similar to the ignorance that R.E. can do nothing (or everything) may well have the same source: ignorance of the unknown. Given the way things are headed, seems to me that the ignorance isn't diminishing.

[bcroe]

I think, if there hadn't been serious accidents, there wouldn't be fear. Sooner or later, humans make
mistakes, and nature happens. Its my opinion that the nuke idea needs to be redone from the ground up,
so that no abuse or mistake can result in released radiation, ESPECIALLY from loss of cooling. Bruce Roe

[SunEagle]

Never enlisted or been commissioned, but I've worked for them twice - once as a jumpmaster out of Tac-Air in San Diego, once as an avionics engineer working on the EF-111A at McClellan AFB.

Yep, and they are operated by the military, where training standards, acceptable losses and design tolerances are all completely different than in commercial power.

The closest MSR's to being commercially available are Nuscale and the Toshiba 4S reactors - but there are no orders for the Toshiba reactor, and the one potential order for them (a town in Alaska) fell through. Nuscale is submitting plans for a reactor in Idaho - but estimates that it will be 2026, best case, before they complete the plant. And as I mentioned they are estimating $5 a watt - and that's a marketing number, not a demonstrated one. To even get Idaho to consider the idea, Nuscale had to finance it themselves. Fortunately for them, the half billion in government funding they got will probably allow them to do that.

So again, we are many years away from having commercially viable small reactors.

You are probably correct. It seems most of the SMR projects I have read about are all off shore from the US except for a system that TVA is looking to build. Based on some designs the SMR do not need forced water cooling so if there is a loss of pumping or power they will not go critical like the larger systems.

The problem is still the cost to build these units but the idea of being able to add to them and increase the total output is a nice feature. You don't have to fund a 1GW system all at once but can build it out of small 10MW to 100MW systems which can be grouped to form one system.

Another and IMO a bigger problem is getting past the fear of using Nuclear power. That seems to be the biggest road block for the industry.

[jflorey2]

OK so you have never been in the military.

Never enlisted or been commissioned, but I've worked for them twice - once as a jumpmaster out of Tac-Air in San Diego, once as an avionics engineer working on the EF-111A at McClellan AFB.

especially the USN where small reactors are the norm. There are some 200 nuclear powered ships in operation today and over 700 decommissioned in the USa inventory. Not sure how many world wide. Point is there are far many more small room size reactors than any other type.

Yep, and they are operated by the military, where training standards, acceptable losses and design tolerances are all completely different than in commercial power.

The closest MSR's to being commercially available are Nuscale and the Toshiba 4S reactors - but there are no orders for the Toshiba reactor, and the one potential order for them (a town in Alaska) fell through. Nuscale is submitting plans for a reactor in Idaho - but estimates that it will be 2026, best case, before they complete the plant. And as I mentioned they are estimating $5 a watt - and that's a marketing number, not a demonstrated one. To even get Idaho to consider the idea, Nuscale had to finance it themselves. Fortunately for them, the half billion in government funding they got will probably allow them to do that.

So again, we are many years away from having commercially viable small reactors.

[Sunking]

Small reactors are a great idea, especially when they provide process or steam heat as part of their output. Unfortunately they are even farther away than the AP-1000 is.

OK so you have never been in the military. especially the USN where small reactors are the norm. There are some 200 nuclear powered ships in operation today and over 700 decommissioned in the USa inventory. Not sure how many world wide. Point is there are far many more small room size reactors than any other type.

[jflorey2]

Neither of those two were accidents. It was plain stupidity.

• The Russians decided to turn off the cooling systems to see what would happen. It blew up as expected.
• The Japanese decide to build a reactor next to the ocean to see what would happen when a 50 foot Tsunami wave hit the plant and turned off the cooling system, It melted down as expected.

Chernobyl (and Three Mile Island) were indeed due to foolish operators doing stupid things. Unfortunately, human error is, and forever will be, part of life. Reactors have to be able to withstand such errors.

Fukushima was an accident - an act of God if you will. Sure, they could have sited it high on a mountain - and a storm could have done the same to it. Or it could be sited on a plain somewhere - and an earthquake could have done the same to it. Or it could have been on a river - and a storm surge could have done the same to it. You will never be able to prevent all of those things.

The reason Fukushima melted down is that modern operating reactors require power, constantly, or they will melt down. This makes them inherently less safe than (say) a natural gas plant. If there's a big problem at a natural gas plant, you close the valves, combustion stops and the plant goes inert; you can all go home. With a nuclear power plant you have a tiger by the tail and you have to hang on to that tiger every hour of every day. Even if you shut the plant down you have to keep hanging on to that tiger for months, until the core goes into cold shutdown. That fact makes nuclear power a lot more dangerous . And that's why you have all those required HPI and emergency feedwater pumps, battery systems, diesel generators and reliable grid connections. And you have to make sure they work, which means good design, frequent maintenance and testing, and lots of operator training. And if the owner cuts corners, maybe fakes some of those expensive NDT inspections, a lot of people could end up homeless or worse. So you have to make sure they don't - which means inspections, reporting requirements, and regular reviews. Red tape, in other words.

New reactors like the AP1000 largely solve this problem by designing in enough convection cooling that even without active cooling their fuel remains intact. That will be a huge step forward; you really will be able to shut down the plant, flip all the right switches, pull the plug and go home. But you still have to flip the right switches - which means it's not 100% safe either. So while the red tape can be (and should be) a lot less you can't get rid of it all.

Try taking a 6-shot revolver, put in one bullet in the chamber, spin it, put it to your head, and pull the trigger 5 times and see what happens. I bet you never get to pull #5. If you do get 5 pulls without BANG, pass the gun to person setting next to you, spin the revolver and let them take their turn. Only thing unfortunate that would happen is; one of you would live.

I have a better example. Give someone a ten year old computer running Microsoft Windows XP, connected to a gun pointed at his face. His job - get that computer to run a web server every day for 20 years while inept users try to use the web page, and minimum wage low bidders do the PC maintenance. If it ever crashes, the gun goes off.

If some day that operator gets shot, is it his fault?

[jflorey2]

Why is that Jeff?
I know why. It is called man made political OBSTRUCTION by idiots like DAN.

Well, also because of two pretty big deal meltdowns. If not for Three Mile Island and Fukushima, the amount of red tape would be a lot less. (And that's hard to blame on Dan - that's on the nuclear industry.)

It takes 10 years of political RED TAPE to to even stand a chance of getting a permit to fight off Dan and his Obstructionist Lawyers. Westinghouse, GE, Hitachi have no incentive to push development, thu sno profit and development is extremely expensive.

Again, given the amount of money the government pumps in via the Price-Anderson act, I don't think you can claim that Dan and his ilk are solely to blame for turning a cheap form of power into an expensive one. Insurance companies are some of the most non-political, bottom-line organizations on the planet; all they care about is making a profit, and they do that by being (relatively) accurate judges of risk. And power plant owners could not afford insurance for their plants without the government's help.

That is the whole idea of the SMART GRID. To put small reactors at points of use with redundancy.

Small reactors are a great idea, especially when they provide process or steam heat as part of their output. Unfortunately they are even farther away than the AP-1000 is. And they're also not cheap. The company closest to production out there, NuScale, is estimating $5/watt - and that's one of those wildly optimistic PR numbers that has not been demonstrated in practice.

And again, here the nuclear industry has created its own problems. After the dismal failure that was the PM-3A reactor, people were understandably hesitant to put any money into small reactors. No one wanted to be saddled with that kind of a cleanup bill.

FWIW Russia and UK are already using FBR, RBMK, and EGP reactors.

I don't think we should be pointing to the RBMK's as an example of safe reactors. No reactor, ever, should operate with a positive void coefficient. A high schooler could tell you that.

I hope they get the problems sorted out with both the AP1000 and the few SMR's that are close to production; we sorely need the baseload generation they could provide. But unfortunately it's going to be a long road to get there.

[NorthRick]

Neither of those two were accidents. It was plain stupidity.

• The Russians decided to turn off the cooling systems to see what would happen. It blew up as expected.
• The Japanese decide to build a reactor next to the ocean to see what would happen when a 50 foot Tsunami wave hit the plant and turned off the cooling system, It melted down as expected.

Neither was an accident. Only fools, obstructionist, and USA citizens would call those accidents.
.

Accidents or stupidity, it doesn't matter. What does matter is that it scares people, and people oppose things they are afraid of.

[J.P.M.]

Why is that Jeff?

I know why. It is called man made political OBSTRUCTION by idiots like DAN. It takes 10 years of political RED TAPE to to even stand a chance of getting a permit to fight off Dan and his Obstructionist Lawyers. Westinghouse, GE, Hitachi have no incentive to push development, thu sno profit and development is extremely expensive. Get the Obstruction like Dan out of the way, and you cut construction cust 75%, and construction time cut by a decade. You can go from parking lot to a new parking lot in 6 years with the plant underneath the parking lot.

That is the whole idea of the SMART GRID. To put small reactors at points of use with redundancy. FWIW Russia and UK are already using FBR, RBMK, and EGP reactors.

I think you may be ascribing more power to the Dan K's of the world than they may actually have. It just might be that some or a lot of what you call red tape and obstructionism is actually part of the safety net that you, I and others claim is part of the backbone of the safety of nuclear power as in: " See how safe this stuff is ?? - there's 10X the Q.C., design checks and double/triple redundancy all over and above anything else making power in the U.S, or the world, and ridiculous levels of inspection backup - we made sure it's safe - and here's the gospel truth certified, notarized documentation to back it all up ".

Anyway, if there is some obstructionist conspiracy going on by the likes of Dan K. and the evil ambulance chasers, what does that say about the strengths/savvy/political clout of the nuclear power industry that it can be held up for so long and in so expensive a way by a disorganized rabble of technical morons. If they (the nuclear industry) are that weak, I'm not sure they're the type I want running policy at a nuke. Besides, and taking a somewhat cynical, but to my experience at least possible if not likely situation, Q.C. costs money and more Q.C. costs more money and can be treated like a profit center with the added costs getting a surcharge for profit added to them, so maybe all their bitching is a red herring to protect if not enhance what might be a very profitable part of the business, making treehuggers and their unknowing shills like the Dan not much more than unknowing dupes, abettors and aids in what they claim as bad for humanity.

Finally, if there were to be some actual a conspiracy going on from any or all sides, the fix was probably in long ago and the powers involved don't give as much as the north end of a southbound rat about what any side in the issue thinks or does. If so, the best I can hope for is to blunt or shine some light on some of the treehugger misinformation and drivel as it relates to residential R.E.with maybe some reduction in the amount of the misinformation being seen by the solar ignorant and maybe a little less waste of time and resources and a little more reality based R.E. acceptance as a result.

[Sunking]

. The difference between a nuclear accident and accidents involving other forms of energy is the number of other people affected. Chernobyl's exclusion zone is 1,000 square miles. Fukushima's is 500 square miles. That's a big part of why so many people are opposed to nuclear power.

Neither of those two were accidents. It was plain stupidity.

• The Russians decided to turn off the cooling systems to see what would happen. It blew up as expected.
• The Japanese decide to build a reactor next to the ocean to see what would happen when a 50 foot Tsunami wave hit the plant and turned off the cooling system, It melted down as expected.

Neither was an accident. Only fools, obstructionist, and USA citizens would call those accidents.

Try taking a 6-shot revolver, put in one bullet in the chamber, spin it, put it to your head, and pull the trigger 5 times and see what happens. I bet you never get to pull #5. If you do get 5 pulls without BANG, pass the gun to person setting next to you, spin the revolver and let them take their turn. Only thing unfortunate that would happen is; one of you would live.

[Sunking]

That's great! But we don't have any yet. Every operating nuclear reactor in the US is either a PWR or a BWR; those WWII designs you are talking about. The only "passively safe" GenIII reactors (all AP1000's) we have are under construction but are at least three years behind in construction, and have at least a year to go before they produce any power. And since the Westinghouse division that designed and sold the AP1000's is now bankrupt there is some question as to whether they will ever operate.

Why is that Jeff?

I know why. It is called man made political OBSTRUCTION by idiots like DAN. It takes 10 years of political RED TAPE to to even stand a chance of getting a permit to fight off Dan and his Obstructionist Lawyers. Westinghouse, GE, Hitachi have no incentive to push development, thu sno profit and development is extremely expensive. Get the Obstruction like Dan out of the way, and you cut construction cust 75%, and construction time cut by a decade. You can go from parking lot to a new parking lot in 6 years with the plant underneath the parking lot.

That is the whole idea of the SMART GRID. To put small reactors at points of use with redundancy. FWIW Russia and UK are already using FBR, RBMK, and EGP reactors.

[J.P.M.]

I believe it is the fear of radiation that has turned people away from nuclear power even tho the chances of getting hurt, sick or die is extremely remote.

Apparently fear is relative otherwise why are there about 1300 people dying each day from cigarettes. That is a much higher % chance for death but I still see people lighting up

Less familiarity == more fear. Most folks know someone who has died from smoking, maybe they know of many. It's unfortunate, but an everyday occurrence. Not as many know someone who died of radiation poisoning, and no one I know of wants to think about being forced to abandon their home due to radiation, regardless of likelihood. Logic and dispassionate reasoning do not apply in such situations. stampeders on all sides have fertile ground to plant in such emotion charged fields.

[NorthRick]

What people are afraid of, and what they should be afraid of, can be considerably out of line with each other. Truly amazing at times.

[SunEagle]

You missed my point. Any workers killed in an accident is tragic. The difference between a nuclear accident and accidents involving other forms of energy is the number of other people affected. Chernobyl's exclusion zone is 1,000 square miles. Fukushima's is 500 square miles. That's a big part of why so many people are opposed to nuclear power.

I believe it is the fear of radiation that has turned people away from nuclear power even tho the chances of getting hurt, sick or die is extremely remote.

Apparently fear is relative otherwise why are there about 1300 people dying each day from cigarettes. That is a much higher % chance for death but I still see people lighting up