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posted by martyb on Friday July 05 2019, @01:46PM   Printer-friendly
from the no-reactors-for-you! dept.

Nuclear reactors are seen emotionally as risky due to a few major accidents, but new technologies are coming which will potentially reduce the risks associated with it dramatically.

Commercial reactors have used the same fuel for decades: small pellets of uranium dioxide stacked inside long cylindrical rods made of a zirconium alloy. Zirconium allows the neutrons generated from fission in the pellets to readily pass among the many rods submerged in water inside a reactor core, supporting a self-sustaining, heat-producing nuclear reaction.

Trouble is, if the zirconium overheats, it can react with water and produce hydrogen, which can explode.

To reduce this risk,

[m]anufacturers such as Westinghouse Electric Company and Framatome are hastening development of so-called accident-tolerant fuels that are less likely to overheat—and if they do, will produce very little or no hydrogen. In some of the variations, the zirconium cladding is coated to minimize reactions. In others, zirconium and even the uranium dioxide are replaced with different materials. The new configurations could be slipped into existing reactors with little modification, so they could be phased in during the 2020s.

Core testing of some of these options is already underway and would have to be successful and regulatory hurdles overcome. Additionally, some of the options actually improve efficiency (and consequently cost-effectiveness) of plants. Sadly, 'Too cheap to meter' remains well off the table.

Modern plants, such as are being deployed by Russia both at home and abroad, now include

“passive” safety systems that can squelch overheating even if electrical power at the plant is lost and coolant cannot be actively circulated. Westinghouse and other companies have incorporated passive safety features into their updated designs as well.

Alternative cooling approaches not subject to hydrogen generation, such as Molten Salt (e.g. liquid sodium) and Helium are being tested and deployed. And very small modular reactors are being developed at the Idaho National Laboratory (the Russian state-run company Rosatom is making small reactors as well.)

a group of Western states has entered a tentative deal with NuScale Power in Oregon for a dozen of its modular reactors.

Mortality rates for various power generation methods in the U.S. shows nuclear power with a 50x lower mortality rate per unit power generated than the next safest option (hydroelectric) and 100,000 times lower rate than Coal, which provides much of the U.S. base power generation in its stead.

Still, nuclear power remains stalled in the U.S. and is being phased out in other countries such as Germany, leaving primarily Russia and China, both of which are deploying nuclear power aggressively, as the primary markets and beneficiaries of these new technologies.


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 05 2019, @03:05PM (7 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday July 05 2019, @03:05PM (#863496)

    August 1990, I interviewed with the NRC in Atlanta for the position of plant inspector, when I asked about the future of nuclear power after TMI, he said: "there's a whole new generation of safer plant designs ready to go, they'll be starting construction any day now."

    Just remember: the NRC plant inspectors charged with keeping you safe from the next Chernobyl type event (against the forces of relentless capitalist cost cutting), are the kids fresh out of school who either believed that line, or didn't care that they were starting a career in a dying industry.

    Number of new (civilian) nuclear power generating plants opened since 1990: 0.

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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by RS3 on Friday July 05 2019, @03:57PM (5 children)

    by RS3 (6367) on Friday July 05 2019, @03:57PM (#863513)

    I'm hesitant to say too much, but I'm actually working in the nuclear world, specifically on the safety systems, that TMI did not have. I'd gladly tell you more if you're curious, but I don't know how to communicate offline. Maybe I'll ask the admins to send you my email address.

    In my other post here I linked to a great video on the TMI accident. There are many ways to analyze the accident and things that were done which contributed to the accident, but it all comes down to: if they had had a tiny bit more of instrumentation, the accident would never have happened.

    BTW, TMI and Chernobyl were very similar events in the mechanism of the problem, but TMI's design was much more conservative, and the meltdown was much slower and less exothermic. The Chernobyl video I linked says that the Chernobyl accident was a small-scale nuclear explosion reaction, and was only limited by the fact that the fissile materials vaporized, spread out, and quenched the reaction.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 05 2019, @04:16PM (4 children)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday July 05 2019, @04:16PM (#863520)

      For me it's not an issue of plant design / safety so much as politics / economics. The big lure of being an inspector for the NRC was an eventual "six figure" salary, highest paid short of high management at the time. The big downside was: max 2 year term at a given plant, then you're off to live in another state at another plant for a max of 2 years - didn't sound like a life I wanted, at any salary.

      Also: by that time I had taken to heart a piece of advice I got from a guy outside the Aiken, SC facility a couple of years earlier when I was taking a free trip on their dime to interview for a job there: background, his daddy did hot laundry, they took real good care of momma when he passed (guy was mid 20s) - advice, when you start a career you get locked into a field and it's even harder to jump fields than it is to get a start with no experience, himself he started in food, and he could jump from one food company to another easy enough, but nobody outside the food industry would even give him an interview. A not so subtle warning about starting a career in the nuclear field... In 1990, nobody else was giving interviews so I went to the NRC in Atlanta because I had nothing better to do, but they would have had to put on a much better story than they did to get me to sign up.

      I'm pro nuclear almost as much as I am anti coal. In Florida you can see the yellow sulfur streaks leaving the coal fired plant stacks against the otherwise clear blue skies. Some days now they use scrubbers that get rid of some of the coal pollution, but they're expensive to run, and they tend to shut them off when it rains and "forget" to turn them on for hours after it stops. Sulfur based acid rain is bad enough, but the mercury and other heavy metals are even worse. Florida actually receives significant amounts of mercury fallout from the coal fired plants in the Yucatan, and at one point it was bad enough that it was killing the top level predators (alligators) in the everglades... that one was primarily from waste incineration, but power generation was also a significant contributor. I believe that new nuclear plants with new designs would be MUCH safer than bandaiding the existing plants, and FAR preferable to the use of any fossil fuels, but our politics won't let us build new so they just keep limping along the old ones, and fracking to get fuel for the nuclear electric power shortfall.

      One of the few things I admire about France: how they make their electricity.

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      • (Score: 3, Informative) by RS3 on Friday July 05 2019, @05:23PM (3 children)

        by RS3 (6367) on Friday July 05 2019, @05:23PM (#863549)

        All good points- I hear you on the moving around thing. It might be interesting, but I have friends, family, interests/hobbies that don't move so easily, so it wouldn't work for me either. I also hear you on the "pigeon holing" in careers.

        Sorry about all of the coal mess. I think you also get some cadmium, thorium, lead, mercury, arsenic, chromium, etc. from coal soot.

        My point is, and good info is in my bigger post here, that TMI and other designs are perfectly okay and safe, as long as they have the monitoring systems that TMI did NOT have at the time. If TMI had had the system (that I work on), the accident would never have happened, and nobody would have ever heard of TMI.

        The safety monitoring systems are now, and have been in place ever since, but people don't consider that- they just fear nuclear.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 05 2019, @06:15PM (1 child)

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday July 05 2019, @06:15PM (#863568)

          TMI and other designs are perfectly okay and safe

          Nothing is PERFECTLY okay and safe, people screw up, software (written by people) screws up, mechanical things crack, break and seize, electrical things are worthless without electrical power. Some of the designs that the NRC guy was showing me back in 1990 go a long way toward improving the status quo, like: large cooling water reserve tanks ABOVE the reactor so you don't need powered pumps to get the coolant where it needs to go in a crisis.

          To me, the proof is in the operating history: and we're doing damage to human health and the global environment day-by-day with fossil fuels, especially coal. Meanwhile, Fukushima and Chernobyl are frightening like a jumbo-jet crash while the world ignores the higher daily death total from automobile crashes. The US nuclear power generation track record for safety is absolutely stellar, and I believe that we can do even better in the future.

          And, to the jackasses who prattle on about nuclear waste: take a look at the output of the Savannah River facility at Aiken, SC and similar, and tell me why you don't care about the much larger sources of nuclear waste from the military? It's a problem that needs a better solution, yes, but whether or not we produce ALL of our domestic electricity from nuclear power makes little difference - the military purposes nuclear waste is just as dangerous and far more plentiful.

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          • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday July 06 2019, @03:46AM

            by RS3 (6367) on Saturday July 06 2019, @03:46AM (#863734)

            Communication is a messy thing, especially when I'm trying to be concise. Also, I speak and write in context. Considering the insanity of an up to 4 GW fission reaction happening somewhere nestled among civilization, today's running nuclear reactors are safe enough that we don't need to worry. I'm sure there's still a chance that a horrible chain of failures could occur and result in a meltdown, but it's acceptably and extremely slim.

            I strongly advocate for emergency cooling water storage above the reactor, but I'm not sure if it's practical to store enough for today's 1-4 GW reactors. It would certainly help, and I wish I understood why it's not part of _every_ reactor installation. But that's partly why I advocate for many but smaller reactors- much less cooling water needed, and much less of a disaster if a disaster happens.

            Speaking of Savannah River, I've never been there but I hear (and see in pictures) that Savannah is an awesome place. I was part of a team that designed and installed the control system, and I wrote much of the documentation and manuals. I don't remember much. I remember thinking a thing like that needs to be out in a desert somewhere far from towns.

            The safety monitoring systems I'm working with were designed in the late 70's. Needless to say it's a very low-volume market. I've repaired / refurbished a few units, and we occasionally get orders for new ones, and yes a few parts are out of production, and no I can't substitute much at all (very minor stuff maybe), but yes I'm finding NOS parts and buying enough for at least 10 years. The units are designed and spec-ed to last 40 years, and generally do.

        • (Score: 2, Informative) by fustakrakich on Friday July 05 2019, @09:00PM

          by fustakrakich (6150) on Friday July 05 2019, @09:00PM (#863633) Journal

          they just fear nuclear.

          A lot of that is due to ongoing propaganda from its competitors, you know, those people rebranding themselves to be all environmental and stuff [youtube.com].

          There just doesn't seem to be a lot of profit in safe nuclear. And solar, I mean, California is totally weird, well, not "weird", just money driven [latimes.com]

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  • (Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday July 05 2019, @08:39PM

    by krishnoid (1156) on Friday July 05 2019, @08:39PM (#863628)

    Or maybe the plant inspectors were up against too many poorly-trained operators [youtu.be].