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NPR:
Nuclear power plants are so big, complicated and expensive to build that more are shutting down than opening up. An Oregon company, NuScale Power, wants to change that trend by building nuclear plants that are the opposite of existing ones: smaller, simpler and cheaper.
The company says its plant design using small modular reactors also could work well with renewable energy, such as wind and solar, by providing backup electricity when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining.
...
NuScale's design doesn't depend on pumps or generators that could fail in an emergency because it uses passive cooling. The reactors would be in a containment vessel, underground and in a huge pool of water that can absorb heat.
Presumably the biggest risk of a NuScale reactor failing is radioactive gophers?
(Score: 2) by mrkaos on Thursday May 09 2019, @11:23AM (3 children)
Specifically, the reactors you are talking leak at around 70psi. This is a known basis design issue along with power to the gate pair seals of the spent fuel pools. It's negligence in the same fashion Chernobyl was. In TEPCO's case it was nonfeasance and therefore criminal negligence.
What I am getting at is the operating conditions of the reactors are dictated to the operator by the regulator. This is a function of reactor design, not the fuel source. Thorium fuel reactors will simply have a different type of operating experiences that will expose different types of design issues and create different regulations for operating them.
No, it isn't. Thallium 233 and its daughter products are very nasty indeed, constantly varying as well. The key design feature of thorium reactors is that are easier to control, that doesn't make them benign. Reactor technology that burn DU, plutonium and, spent fuel from the existing reactor technology could solve many problems if we have the materials technology to build them. The killer is that thorium is a better fuel than uranium and we should have chose it first however we wanted to blow things up and by selecting thorium now we end up with two uncontrolled waste streams instead of one.
In other words we end up with two problems instead of one.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Thursday May 09 2019, @06:52PM
Thank you for the additional information.
personally I consider ~5 atmospheres of pressure to be a lot. With the biggest issue being that the coolant would flash instantly into steam with a volume 1000 times greater than it's liquid phase, hence the large containment buildings that have to built around LWTR and other water cooled reactors. MSR reactors can operate at ambient pressure and any leaks would be plugged by the solidified fuel salts, allowing them to be made much smaller.
By "cleaner" I was referring to the amount and half-life of the resulting waste products. My understanding is that the waste may be more radioactive in the short term there is less of it and it would not require storage for as long due to the shorter half-life of the resulting elements.
I wasn't able to find any information about the Thallium 233 isotope you mentioned. Did you mean Thallium 206? With a half-life of 3 minutes and a beta decay it doesn't seem like it would be that much of an issue, but you might now something about it I don't.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Thursday May 09 2019, @07:06PM
Say what??? The primary coolant loop of pressurized water reactors runs around 155 bar/2250 PSI [wikipedia.org]. That's around the same pressure inside a SCUBA tank - your 70 PSI is more like a car tire.
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Thursday May 09 2019, @07:18PM
Thallium-233 doesn't exist. Did you mean Thorium 233 or perhaps Protactinium-232 or Protactinium-233 [thebulletin.org]?