India has approved the construction of ten indigenously designed pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWR). India approved the construction of ten 700 MWe units in a “significant decision to fast-track India’s domestic nuclear power program”.
The Cabinet’s announcement did not give any timeline or locations for the new plants, but said the project would result in a “significant augmentation” of the country’s nuclear generation capacity.
India has 6780 MWe of installed nuclear capacity from 22 operational reactors with another 6700 MWe expected to come on stream over the next five years, the cabinet noted. It said the ten new units would be a “fully homegrown initiative”, with likely manufacturing orders to Indian industry of about INR 700 billion ($11 billion).
China is to supply Argentina with two nuclear power reactors – one a Candu pressurised heavy water reactor (PHWR), the other a Hualong One pressurised water reactor (PWR). The contract was among 19 agreements signed yesterday in Beijing during a meeting of Chinese president Xi Jinping and Argentinean president Mauricio Macri.
Source: NextBigFuture.com
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 20 2017, @08:27AM
N/T
(Score: 2, Interesting) by butthurt on Saturday May 20 2017, @08:49AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU#Nuclear_nonproliferation [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 20 2017, @09:30AM (18 children)
My first hope was India wouldn't build any more nukes.
Yeah, long shot.
My second hope was that if they were going to go nuke again that they would try a large-scale thorium plant that would CONSUME nuclear waste rather than produce more.
Oh, well. Welcome to the mid-20th Century, India.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 20 2017, @09:43AM
NK is geo closer to India than it is to US. Pakistan even more so.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday May 20 2017, @09:48AM (9 children)
FTFY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 20 2017, @01:11PM (6 children)
Nope. In the 21st Century, only nitwits come back with "coal" as an argument.
India gets even more sun than USA. [google.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 20 2017, @02:36PM
Have you seen the pollution in an Indian city?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 20 2017, @03:33PM
Nope. In the 21st Century, only nitwits come back with "coal" as an argument.
If by nitwits, you mean people who realize that a massive chunk of our energy does come from burned fossil fuels right now and passive energy collectors do not offer a viable replacement at present, then yes. The proper word for that is "realists".
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday May 20 2017, @09:11PM (3 children)
By this definition, your "more sun than USA" India is the supreme nitwit.
I assert the nitwit term is too mild.
From the linked (for your convenience [wikipedia.org]):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by butthurt on Saturday May 20 2017, @11:11PM (2 children)
It also says:
Most of the exported coal is planned to be shipped to India.
...which was what I originally assumed was what you wanted us to note.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday May 21 2017, @12:07AM (1 child)
That too.
My points:
1. India is increasing their use of coal - the project is backed by Indian govt subsidies and they plan to use the majority of it.
2. it is done with immediate environmental damage before even a mole of CO2 produced by burning that coal
3. no matter where it is exported/used, the steam turbine it's still a 19 century technology even when improved by the use of newer materials.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by dry on Sunday May 21 2017, @05:01AM
The steam turbine is great technology. The problem is how the steam is generated, nuclear, a huge mirror and the Sun, burning natural gas and methane, burning coal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 20 2017, @02:27PM (1 child)
Welcome to the 19th Century, India.
Old technology is not necessarily worthless or inferior. We still regularly use technologies discovered in ancient times.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday May 20 2017, @10:42PM
Read the link. In this case, old technology results in a man-made disaster.
True, it isn't the technology that is directly responsible, but the price one needs to pay to run that technology.
Even more so when the mantra is "privatize profits, socialize costs".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by butthurt on Saturday May 20 2017, @10:44AM (3 children)
[...] thorium plant that would CONSUME nuclear waste rather than produce more.
Thorium doesn't magically fission without fission products. India has a lot of thorium, and is working on a reactor that will use it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_heavy-water_reactor [wikipedia.org]
The plan includes
Three stream reprocessing of fuel containing Pu, Th and U.
-- https://www.iaea.org/NuclearPower/Downloadable/aris/2013/AHWR.pdf [iaea.org]
(Score: 2) by WalksOnDirt on Saturday May 20 2017, @05:58PM (2 children)
The fission products are not a big problem. The transactinides (which are not fission products) sort of are. Those are what thorium reactors are designed to greatly reduce.
Unfortunately, I'm not confident that India's approach to thorium is practical. LFTRs are not ready to build production plants either; they need more research.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Saturday May 20 2017, @11:06PM (1 child)
I don't think transactinides are a problem, because they are formed in small amounts and have short half-lives:
Transactinides are radioactive and have only been obtained synthetically in laboratories. None of these elements has ever been collected in a macroscopic sample.
[...]
Due to their short half-lives (for example, the most stable isotope of rutherfordium has a half-life of 11 minutes, and half-lives decrease gradually going to the right of the group) and the low yield of the nuclear reactions that produce them, new methods have had to be created to determine their gas-phase and solution chemistry based on very small samples of a few atoms each.
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactinide_element [wikipedia.org]
By "fission products" I meant elements such as iodine, caesium, strontium, technetium and xenon. If released to the environment, they can be a problem because they're radioactive and because some can bioaccumulate. If left in a reactor, some can be a problem because they absorb neutrons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_poison [wikipedia.org]
As a fertile material thorium is similar to 238
U, the major part of natural and depleted uranium.
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle#Nuclear_fuel [wikipedia.org]
I'm guessing what you meant instead of transactinides was transuranic elements. According to the page I linked just above, the transuranic elements associated with a thorium fuel cycle have shorter half-lives than those from a uranium fuel cycle. However, that glosses over the fact that the uranium-233 produced has a half-life of ~159,000 years; and the uranium-232, ~69 years (pedantically, uranium is not transuranic).
(Score: 2) by WalksOnDirt on Sunday May 21 2017, @05:26AM
You're right.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 20 2017, @05:00PM
My first hope was India wouldn't build any more nukes.
Why? India's power mix is not even close to the top of their list of problems. Helping improve the lives of a billion is. While there should be some concern over whether India will regulate these plants well, it remains that something like these plants is necessary for India to have.
Oh, well. Welcome to the mid-20th Century, India.
Nobody has figured out a better way to do fission (or fusion) yet. So it is 21st Century tech as well.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday May 21 2017, @01:01PM (1 child)
India has a decades-long track record of going nowhere fast with its reactors. Note how the OP carefully pointed out that:
So if you're worried about proliferation or whatnot, don't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 21 2017, @09:22PM
Yeah. At about this point in a thread about nukes, I like to note that it takes around a decade from breaking ground until a nuke produces its first energy.
Meanwhile, a neighborhood can be solarized in a week.
proliferation
The problems that I envision are a lot more fundamental.
First, you have a for-profit operation making management decisions about operation/maintenance (e.g. San Onofre, Savannah River).
Next, you have Homer Simpson at the controls (e.g. Three Mile Island).
Underlying this, you have a design/construction done by more for-profit operations with all the corner-cutting that that brings.
...and decisions about where a plant will be located so often seem to completely ignore Mother Nature.
Diablo Canyon was built on the convergence of multiple fault lines. D'oh.
Not only did they build Fukushima on the Ring of Fire, they put it on the Pacific-facing coast of the island where a tsunami could^W did clobber it. D'oh.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 20 2017, @09:33AM (1 child)
My first hope was that India wouldn't build any more nukes.
Yeah, long shot.
My second hope was that if they were going to go nuke again that they would try a large-scale THORIUM plant that would CONSUME nuclear waste rather than produce more.
Oh, well. Welcome to the mid-20th Century, India.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday May 20 2017, @09:41AM
With the prev two, these make 4 ways already! :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Funny) by cafebabe on Saturday May 20 2017, @09:46AM (2 children)
Good morning. Infosys Nuclear Power Technical Support. How may I help you?
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
1702845791×2
(Score: 3, Funny) by turgid on Sunday May 21 2017, @07:40PM (1 child)
Wait for your Xenon transient before you turn it back on again. Please, for the love of God...
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Sunday May 21 2017, @09:01PM
Dear diety I love this place. Have a +1 Funny *holding ny sides from laugjing too hard*
(For those of you not into nuclear look up iodine pit [wikipedia.org])
(Score: 5, Informative) by Aiwendil on Saturday May 20 2017, @10:28AM
* Hualong One. It is a merge of the ACP1000 and ACPR1000 designs, it got a post-fukushima update. The ACP and ACPR are further developments of the french 900MW reactor (the kind the french has 34 of, also running in S.Korea, S.Africa and China)
* India PHWR - a locally designed derivate of the CANDU. PHWR is the main reactor type in India, 700MWe is their neweset model. Not to be confused with the AHWR. Shares lots of features (incl fuel req) and safety with CANDU, 765 days as longest stretch online.
* CANDU - THE canadian reactor, latest revisions of 6e (Qinshan as reference) works with thorium as well, 894 days as longest stretch online (only AGR has higher), major producer of medical and industrial isotopes, currently running in Canada, India, China, S.Korea, Argentina, Romania and Pakistan.
* CANDU & India PHWR. - Heavy water moderated, surrounded by double low pressure water tanks (results in that firetrucks can keep them cooled), fuel is natural uranium, can run on waste from light water reactors (DUPIC), with minor modifications can run on thorium, on-line refuelling, high breed ratio (0.6), can be used to produce pretty much any isotope you want, designed for black starts and grid isolation, overheating results in reactor shutting itself down (too tight margin for neutrons, misalignment of pressure tubes makes it sub-critical)
And military plutonium production is dealt with by IAEA safeguards - which are a requirement to buy fuel internationally.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday May 20 2017, @12:51PM (2 children)
Hopefully they will drop this "high pressure water" thing and use liquid metal or salts instead. Which should avoid heavy ecosystem contamination issues and explosive bursts of radioactive substances like in Chernobyl.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Sunday May 21 2017, @07:45PM (1 child)
...and replace it with a heat exchanger that uses water under pressure to extract the heat from the molten metal (Na/K eutectic) primary cooling loop :-) What could possibly go wrong [wikipedia.org]? Apparently the Na itself likes to absorb neutrons and becomes highly radioactive as a result.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday May 21 2017, @11:12PM
Use molten lead? the point is that water under high pressure combined with radioactivity is a bad idea. Fukushima Daiichi is an example of this. Anyway the Monju reactor site seems plagued with a negligent, lying and clumsy management.
This says it all: