Will Small Modular Nuclear Reactors Generate More Waste Than Conventional Ones?...
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Will Small Modular Nuclear Reactors Generate More Waste Than Conventional Ones?
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"A new study from Stanford and the University of British Columbia has bad news for the next generation of nuclear reactors," writes Slashdot reader SoftwareArtist
An announcement from Stanford University warns that "Small modular reactors, long touted as the future of nuclear energy, will actually generate more radioactive waste than conventional nuclear power plants," citing joint research with the University of British Columbia published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"Our results show that most small modular reactor designs will actually increase the volume of nuclear waste in need of management and disposal, by factors of 2 to 30 for the reactors in our case study," said study lead author Lindsay Krall, a former MacArthur Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). "These findings stand in sharp contrast to the cost and waste reduction benefits that advocates have claimed for advanced nuclear technologies...."
Energy is produced in a nuclear reactor when a neutron splits a uranium atom in the reactor core, generating additional neutrons that go on to split other uranium atoms, creating a chain reaction. But some neutrons escape from the core — a problem called neutron leakage — and strike surrounding structural materials, such as steel and concrete. These materials become radioactive when "activated" by neutrons lost from the core. The new study found that, because of their smaller size, small modular reactors will experience more neutron leakage than conventional reactors. This increased leakage affects the amount and composition of their waste streams.
"The more neutrons that are leaked, the greater the amount of radioactivity created by the activation process of neutrons," Ewing said. "We found that small modular reactors will generate at least nine times more neutron-activated steel than conventional power plants. These radioactive materials have to be carefully managed prior to disposal, which will be expensive."
That's a problem because already, just in America, spent nuclear fuel is accumulating at a rate of about 2,000 metric tonnes per year, the announcement notes, and is "currently stored in pools or in dry casks at reactor sites."
But that's not the only issue:
The study also found that the spent nuclear fuel from small modular reactors will be discharged in greater volumes per unit energy extracted and can be far more complex than the spent fuel discharged from existing power plants. "Some small modular reactor designs call for chemically exotic fuels and coolants that can produce difficult-to-manage wastes for disposal," said co-author Allison Macfarlane, professor and director of the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia. "Those exotic fuels and coolants may require costly chemical treatment prior to disposal."
"The takeaway message for the industry and investors is that the back end of the fuel cycle may include hidden costs that must be addressed," Macfarlane said. "It's in the best interest of the reactor designer and the regulator to understand the waste implications of these reactors."
The study concludes that, overall, small modular designs are inferior to conventional reactors with respect to radioactive waste generation, management requirements, and disposal options. One problem is long-term radiation from spent nuclear fuel. The research team estimated that after 10,000 years, the radiotoxicity of plutonium in spent fuels discharged from the three study modules would be at least 50 percent higher than the plutonium in conventional spent fuel per unit energy extracted.
Because of this high level of radiotoxicity, geologic repositories for small modular reactor wastes should be carefully chosen through a thorough siting process, the authors said.
"We shouldn't be the ones doing this kind of study," said Ewing. "The vendors, those who are proposing and receiving federal support to develop advanced reactors, should be concerned about the waste and conducting research that can be reviewed in the open literature."
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Excellent findings!
However, I'm worried that the economies that drive innovation in nuclear power will favor convenience and short term cost over long term sustainability.
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Especially in the first place they're going to be sold, Africa. Richer countries have people that can complain more effectively, witness decades long plans coming to nothing for storing nuclear waste in the US. But they'll get away with it other places.
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You fail to understand what they mean by "waste" . This isnt some form of radioactive poop coming out of the reactor. Every time you enter the reactor compartment to perform maintenance you don a full tyvex suit, cloth gloves that reach your elbows, a cloth hood, and often a face shield and respirator. Upon leaving the RC, you have to process through a CSCA (controlled surface contamination area). Your cloth gloves, suit, respirator filters, and tyvex suit are immediately put into a wastebin that is tagged as RAM(radioactive material). Its not that its full of actual radioactive particulate. Its that there is a small chance. After this, one uses an AN/PDR-56 to scan the rest of themselves in order to leave the CSCA. So the authors intent to make you believe its shedding more contamination is horse shit. Whats happening is that more maintenance is being done as a result of more smaller RCs, and more not-actually-contaminated materials are getting bagged as RAM. typical scaremongering by functionally illiterate journalists.
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I also didn't read the article yet, but from the summary alone.
"We found that small modular reactors will generate at least nine times more neutron-activated steel than conventional power plants. These radioactive materials have to be carefully managed prior to disposal, which will be expensive."
No, they are not just talking about an increase in non-contaminated waste, and even if they were, that's not so helpful because occasionally the gloves do get contaminated (why do you think you wear them?) and it's
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Youre guessing because you have no first hand experience. I actually had the fucking job. I know what Im talking about. Fe59 -> Co60 is not a damn concern because it never leaves the reactor compartment.
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Ah, so you are a fanatic and cult member. That makes it easy: Everything you say is a lie and you should not be listened to at all. You just have a nice sample as to why by trying a lie by misdirection. And now you are trying an "argument from authority" fallacy.
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It means you read articles written by someone with a BS in Journalism, with no actual understanding of what they write about, and then claim to have a clue. We didnt just operate an AN/PDR-56 or AN/PDR-27, we gad to disgram and build them to demonstrate we knew exactly how they function. There is a huge difference in understanding how to turn on a lamp, and how to build a lamp or change its bulb. Yet you seem to insist on believing the journalist that has to call maintenance to change the lightbulb on all m
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Youre guessing because you have no first hand experience. I actually had the fucking job. I know what Im talking about. Fe59 -> Co60 is not a damn concern because it never leaves the reactor compartment.
Ahhh, yes, floor cleaner to the nuclear reactor plant. No doubt gives you a great basis. Reactors last forever (in your five year experience) and are never decommissioned [edfenergy.com]. The radioactive steel from a reactor has never had to be dealt with by anyone and the decommissioning happens instantly the fuel is removed because there's no need to wait for any short lived / highly radioactive elements remaining in the reactor to decay before the work is safe to begin. Decommissioning is of course free and anyone who claims it is a major part of reactor cost is a liar.
TBH, given the insistence with which you are spreading falsehoods, it's most likely that I'm more qualified to discuss this than you. If you were an actual liar who knew how wrong the things he was saying were then you wouldn't do it so gratuitously.
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Youre the one without a clue. I have eight years working in the industry, thanks. Between the two of us youre the poser. Can you even tell the difference between an AN/PDR-56, AN/PDR-27, and an AN/PDR-77 without looking it up? Of course you cant. You have no teal experience, you only play an expert on slashdot. Be careful who you call a fanboy there poser. I may have to point out more shit you have no fucking clue about. I could fill a symbol with how little you know about that industry.
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Well, technically a woman can have a penis. Just look up Lorana Bobbitt.
/me grins...
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I think this just tells us that any new nuclear facilities need to be super-large, self-contained, and preferably 1000m below sea level, 1000km away from the sea. In the event of a nuclear event, blow up the mountainside and bury the entire complex.
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It's bullshit. You read it with a open mind and you will clearly see it is a hit piece for non-nuclear propaganda. I can see there are already people explaining why it is bullshit far better than I can. I'll just let them explain it then.
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One of the best ideas for disposal is reprocessing and reuse.
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Problem with reuse is that all the attempts to do so thus far have ended in expensive failures at well below commercial scale. Plus there are proliferation issues.
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They arent talking spent fuel. Thats once every 20 years. They are talking the cloth glove you used to lubricate a valve in the reactor compartment as part of its every 6mo maintenance schedule. More reactors means more people doing maintenance and thus more protective clothing being disposed of as POTENTIALLY radioactive. The amount of thick yellow polly bags tagged as RAM I have seen in my life, none of which is actually radioactive, could fill an airplane hangar.
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Problem is it costs a lot of money to properly categorize potentially radioactive waste, so it's not worth doing. Just throw it all in a nuclear landfill.
Also don't forget that the entire modular reactor becomes nuclear waste at the end of its design life. Nobody is going to take one apart to recycle it, it will just get stored along with everything else.
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They spent quiet a lot of money on the disposal system itâ(TM)s finally going to process all that nerve gas that theyâ(TM)ve been storing for 70 years. The thermal temperatures obliterate everything. We could use something like that to greatly reduce the volume of actual particulate thats radioactive. Once it is all dust we can use centrifuges to separate the various material based on its atomic mass. We already do it to refund uranium. This would be much less specific if I were doing is trying to
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Only at the level of "sloganeering" like you are doing.
There is a strong resemblance between "plastics recycling" - an idea pushed by the petrochemical industry, and which turns out to be 97% BS (just 3% of plastic put into the recycling stream gets reused) - and "reprocessing and reuse" as a great idea for disposal.
Reprocessing does not reduce the fission product waste at all. This should be obvious, but people pushing this always talk as if it did. It also does not reduce the actual volume of the waste at
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99% of items bagged as RAM (RadioActive Material) is not radioactive at all. It was in a radioactive area and despite no counts from an AN/PDR-56, is required to be bagged as RAM anyway. Its a landfill problem more than an environment one.
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Yes, it’s all about liberal politics. Not many scientists who are smarter than you who have reached this conclusion.
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Let's look at a technology which is a lot more complex, a lot more dangerous, and involves a lot more complex infrastructure than nuclear power: aviation. over the years we have made that work, everywhere, and now safe enough that the most dangerous part of any flight, no matter where you are in the world, is driving to the airport.
Yet we are supposed to believe that the time-tested process of running a nuclear reactor is somehow too complex for mere humans to master. Keep on saying that until the last scr
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The problems are less nuclear complexity than the attempts to economize on necessary safety precautions, I have read that no nuclear power installation can obtain commercial business insurance and that is provided by the government. That says a great deal to me.
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Do not conflate the word waste with actual radioactive waste as measured by an AN/PDR-56. Most waste is completely free of contamination and is no more dangerous than your smelly socks. Regulations require it bagged as RAM regardless.
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Yes you should be relieved. If that was an actual measurement of actual radioactive material, then your source point radiation equation would have the shit pegging a Geiger-Muller detector the next county over. Let me put it this way, if they regulated viral contamination the way they do radioactive contamination, they wouldnt be allowed to just wipe down the point-of-sale screens at a store. There would be too many grooves and seams, that they couldnt get a good reading on, to determined it was free of con
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I would start with reading on how radiation interacts with matter. There is two primary types: EM radiation, gamma particles not all that different than visible light and your wifi router. What varies is frequency. Then there is sub atomic particles like protons, neutrons, and ions. They interact kinetically. The physics is that of scattering reactions. The cancer relationship is when it creates mutation in the DNA strands of cells by wiping out alleles. In some ways prolonged exposure is more dangerous tha
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When an story about gloom and fucking doom about radioactive waste, the average layman, read you, instantly assumes at 100% of this volume they are talking about is spewing out radiation. The kind of radiation that you get cancer from staying within 3 feet of it for a duration of no more than five seconds. Thats simply not true. It is entirely designed to make clueless morons panic that the whole world is going to die from radioactive poisoning. The answer is not avoiding nuclear power over a ridiculous fe
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And why do you think the fucking layman thinks that, when the summery explicitly explains about what it is talking about? They are talking about radioactive steel, activated by neutron bombardment.
Get it? Or not?
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The history of nuclear power in the USA has used the government to bear the costs of fuel development and waste disposal, and indemnified the industry extracting the profits in between. Of course no matter the nuclear technology it's a neutron source, potentially available to enrich bomb-grade or just dirty material, and leaving waste behind. As long as there are profits to grab in between fueling and disposal, people will lie about the degree of danger in the design/exposure, about what they're stealing a
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TFS is conflating the waste storage problem of high level spent fuel rods and low level neutron activated steel and concrete. They are very different critters. That doesn't mean they are wrong, but it also doesn't help their credibility.
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I also love the 'just in America' we have a massive accumulation rate of spent fuel. That's because we don't recycle it like the rest of the world.
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The way they ignore the mountains of toxic coal ash currently piling up is also noteworthy.
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Which world are you living in? Also, in which Universe?
In the Universe we occupy "recycling" spent fuel does not reduce the highly radioactive fission product waste at all - it must still be disposed of. It would require a Universe with very different physics for this not to be the case.
And in the world the rest of us live in only France is operating a reprocessing system for most its spent fuel (and must still dispose of the intermediate and high level waste that the reprocessing plants produce). Even excl
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Given the same technology, generating power on a large scale is always more efficient than generating power on a smaller scale because your losses occur at the 'edges' and with a greater volume you've got more 'meat' and less edge.
1 big dam is more efficient than 10 smaller 1/10th size dams. 1 big coal plant is more efficient than 10 smaller 1/10th size coal plants. 1 large nuke plant will be more efficient than 1000 1/1000th size nuke plants.
On the other hand, it's nearly impossible to get a large nuke plant built these days in most countries (though Britain is trying) and small nuke plants are much better than building any new coal plants.
And some of the small nuke plant makers are claiming they can do better on waste efficiency. It's possible - though these are not people you can trust with their claims, so we'll just have to see.
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They are claiming they can do better on waste fuel, not on all waste.
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But it will only be necessary to guard the wastes with armed guards for 184000 years, a bargain really compared to solar and wind, no?
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This fear of nuclear waste, given the dire consequences of climate change is irrational: https://www.genolve.com/design... [genolve.com]
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no, you are seeing it wrongly
the refusal of green energy because the only valid options are coal, gas and nuclear is the irrational partbuilding big centrals is the easy solution that companies like, because they control that investment and the price
building renewable energy sources require spread investment AND a big improvement in the electric grid distribution... big companies do not want to invest in the grid because that would put the power production out of their hands and end user of small companies
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"Millions of tons of concrete"? Nice! Do you know how much CO2 making concrete produces? So the lie about "no CO2" nuclear gets exposed again.
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Make sure that all costs are borne by the proponents of nuclear energy and no costs are externalized, not even insurance. Nuclear energy is prohibitively expensive and this will end it.
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Do the same for all energy sources, remove subsidies, priority of dispatchment, and let's see which one would be preferable.
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Renewables. Nuclear is several times more expensive by _all_ accounts that tried a realistic evaluation. This really is no discussion anymore, it is just fanatics on the nuclear side continuing to push tired old debunked lies because they cannot let go of their fetish.
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Nuclear energy should have an extra tax levied to pay for the regulation needed. It needs experts keeping an eye on it, inspections, security from law enforcement... We shouldn't have to pay for any of that.
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Revoke the Price-Anderson Act, that is all that is required to end the nuclear industry.
It was put in place as a temporary measure until Nuclear power was proven safe, and it has been re-enacted at every passing of an Energy policy Act so, clearly, nuclear power is not safe.
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Indeed. Also require insurance for all aspects, plants, waste processing and storage and final waste disposal sites. Yes, you _can_ insure a nuclear power plant. The cost would just be so ridiculously high that the Big Lie about "cheap nuclear" would be exposed for anybody to see. Because the back-insurers that would be tasked with a _realistic_ risk evaluation cannot be bribed and would find the real numbers. (Got a friend that was a senior risk modeller in a back-insurance for a decade or so. He told me t
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Not it isn't: https://ourworldindata.org/upl... [ourworldindata.org]
Nuclear power kills twice as many people as wind power, and compared to solar it's even worse.
In terms of cost it's difficult to even make a comparison, given that the total cost of dealing with Fukushima, Chernobyl and several others is still not known. Suffice it to say that a nuclear accident is far more serious than a wind farm accident, and far more expensive.
This has all been pointed out to you before, so why do you keep making this easily disprovable cla
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I doubt there are many people in here with more actual hands on experience than I have on this particular topic. The number of engine-room accidents on nuclear ships was a tiny sliver of the total number of engine-room accidents fleet-wide. It was much more substantial than could be explained by mere population of fuel burning ships. Itâ(TM)s possible that number is a result of the crew manning the stations on a nuclear ship went through a selection and training process that resulted in only the bright
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Naval reactors are very different to civilian ones though. They don't have to worry about proliferation or being profitable, so they are designed and built very differently. They also have access to very good cooling resources.
So even if they were safer, they are unaffordable and can't be used for civilian purposes without causing international problems with proliferation and a potential nuclear arms race. Even if the training in the US navy is excellent, that's no guarantee that it will be in the Chinese n
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No one seems to be concerned with the geographic location of renewables like wind and solar. Based on a couple years I was stationed in Seattle I dont see that as a very good solar location because it was always cloudy and rainy. Some areas get very inconsistent wind. And yet people suggest that we pipe that energy into the area from a different area that is very conducive to these renewables. They could do the same thing with nuclear power. Put a 550 MW reactor on an abandoned drilling platform and run the
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Explain how the Price-Anderson act is a safety protection.
What it does is force the liability for nuclear accidents onto homeowners, $600 TRILLION worth of liability. You don't talk about that when you shill. How do nuclear supporters feel about loosing their houses to a nuclear accident with no legal remedy? After paying all those rates, they'd still liable for repayments to a bank for a home they can't live in. That's another dirty secret the nuclear industry doesn't want you to know.
So if the nucl
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Fans of pinwheels and mirrors in Europe are already paying a massive extra tax now that Russia has yanked its baseload fossil fuel rug from under their economies. The US can spare some gas, but LNG ships cannot match the energy bandwidth of Russian pipelines.
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No, because industries paying for their own regulation sets up an incentive structure that inevitably leads to regulatory capture.
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No problem. As long as the subsidies for "green" energy, are, likewise, 100% on you. And that includes hidden subsidies like taxes on competition, carbon credits selling and so on. And yes, also the externalized costs, like pollution caused by mining for rare elements needed for wind turbine magnets and PVs, mining for lithium, cobalt and stuff needed for batteries for when the sun deigns not shine, and so on, and oh, let's not forget, recycling windmill blades and PV panels.
So, deal?
Yeah, didn't think s-
Deal.
Offshore wind is now so cheap that it's in negative subsidy territory, that is companies are paying the state to build them.
https://cleanenergynews.ihsmar... [ihsmarkit.com]
In that case there was a bidding process, with the winner getting to give a proportion of the profits generated to the Dutch state for the first 20 years of the wind farms operation.
Any potential costs that the state might incur such as the ones you mention should be more than covered by that.
So yes, sign me up, I'd love to have a nice discount on
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One, what part of "If the average spot price in a quarter is below the bid price of $0.000015 per kWh (kr0.0001 per kWh), RWE receives the difference as a subsidy until it reaches a $988 million (kr6.5 billion) cap" from TFA you linked was too hard for you to understand? Two, paying to buy/rent the necessary land for construction isn't "negative subsidy", it's part of normal costs, greenie lies and word twisting notwithstanding. Three, I don't see them covering all the externalized costs. They still get rar
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... the functioning brain and the science of arithmetic?
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Indeed. Cost-wise nuclear is one of the worst scams ever perpetrated on the general population.
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Have you considered the possibility that you are the primitive one in all this story?
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So on one had they are completely neglecting reprocessing and complaining about Pu-239 levels after 10,000 years. On the other they are complaining about neutron activation products that will be completely gone after 10,000 years. Whining about extra neutron activation from the existing 3 GigaWatt thermal designs is just looking for something to whine about. The half-life of those products is around 2-5 years or even shorter. Did they even do any analysis of how many years it would take to go from structural steel and concrete into the biosphere? Probably decades at least and that's without 'special handling'.
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Perhaps you want to look at this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
But I guess you wont grasp it.
Hint: half life is not 2 - 5 years.
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Stanford’s Questionable Study on Spent Nuclear Fuel for SMRs [neutronbytes.com]
PNAS SMR waste study rebuttal [energyfromthorium.com]
Ted Nordhaus's rebuttal [twitter.com]The second rebuttal includes a link to a NAS Used Nuclear Fuel Meeting video, which features committee members Allison Macfarlane, Rodney Ewing, and Ed Lyman among others questioning presenters, proving that they have intentionally misrepresented and excluded SMRs in their paper. It is striking how ignorant and biased these "experts" are, and their treatment of the presenters is appalling. (
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Not going to watch a video, but if you have a peer-reviewed study that rebuts this peer-reviewed study, I'll peruse it.
Why people think videos are acceptable citations is beyond me. What a time waster.
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You could also read the things being linked, like the Twitter thread that includes very specific criticisms of supposed flaws in this study. For example, are the SMRs in this paper good examples of what is being planned? Or are they, as claimed, shelved and/or less efficient than what SMR designers support?
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The numbers might be off, but the premise isn't wrong.
SMRs never made sense. They were always going to be more expensive due to per-unit inspection and decommissioning costs. The only benefit is getting to sell the same shit a whole bunch of times. Reactors were built at the scale at which they were built because it was the least bad option. Making them smaller doesn't make them make more sense, it only makes them potentially more profitable because power companies get paid a percentage every time they buil
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That's a lot of words to say that you have already made up your mind, and mere facts don't matter.
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I made up my mind based on facts. You made up your mind based on nuclear industry propaganda.
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You literally started that comment with "The numbers might be off, but the premise isn't wrong." You don't care what the numbers really are because you will not let them inform you.
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Your comeback to the complaint about a video is that a Twitter thread is a reputable debunking of the peer review article? The OP named names, a pointless appeal to authority. The peer review process exists for a reason. It's not hard to get published in a peer reviewed journal, many kids at university are able to do it.
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No, my reference to the Twitter thread was a rebuttal to the blanket dismissal of someone else's argument because it contained, as part of one tweet in a long series that was just one of several citations, an indirect link to a video.
And peer review doesn't guarantee truth, or even good faith.
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I see this often from the anti-nuclear morons, they make some statement about how bad nuclear power is on some subject but then don't show how other options would do better. It amazes me that the anti-nuclear morons have been getting away with this fro so long. It appears people are finally picking up on these half truths.
How much more waste would renewable energy sources produce than nuclear fission? It's a complicated question that would take an entire book to answer. Fortunately for us several people tried to quantify this for us.
http://www.withouthotair.com/ [withouthotair.com]
http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co... [roadmaptonowhere.com]
https://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/... [blogspot.com]
https://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/... [blogspot.com]
https://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/... [blogspot.com]
https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
https://www.ted.com/talks/davi... [ted.com]I realize that many of those links are a few years old, but the technology has not changed significantly enough to change the conclusion. The numbers moved, that's not in doubt, but the gap between nuclear fission and renewable energy sources is still an order of magnitude.
Nuclear fission produced a lot of low level radioactive waste that we can safely dispose of in landfills much like we would many heavy metal wastes. The medium level radioactive waste might have to be sealed in steel drums before being landfilled, that's all the special care that would need. The high level waste would hopefully end up being reprocessed for the valuable industrial, medical, and scientific isotopes.
Just the total volume of waste that has to be dealt with from nuclear fission is tiny compared to that from wind, solar, and hydro.
So many articles about nuclear power on Slashdot lately is telling me something is going on. I saw a YouTube earlier this weekend about how electric vehicles are a scam, and before that how corn ethanol fuels are a scam, and another video about carbon credits are a scam. All the videos ended on how we need nuclear fission power plants. There were other suggestion in one or two of those videos but all agreed on the need for more nuclear power plants.
We need synthesized hydrocarbon fuels for a successful mission to Mars. A process that uses CO2 from the Martian air and water ice from the soil, powered by a NASA kilopower/KRUSTY nuclear fission reactor.
Professional motorsports are working on carbon neutral synthesized hydrocarbon fuels so they can keep competing without upsetting the tree huggers.
The US Navy is working on a hydrocarbon synthesis process that extracts dissolved CO2 out from seawater, produces hydrogen by electrolysis of seawater, all powered by electricity from a nuclear power plant aboard a ship. The goal was to avoid needing an "oiler", a ship bringing fuel oil to each battle group but they also got carbon neutral fuels as a bonus.
The USAF, USMC, and US Army have their own carbon neutral fuel programs. The joint project between the USAF and US Army is looking at biomass fuels blended with petroleum fuels to extend fuel supplies in case of war. Like the Navy program it is to produce "jet fuel" but it is fuel they use in more than just jets. In war they use one fuel type for all vehicles, as well as for heaters, stoves, generators, cutting torches, coffee pots, and whatever else. The USMC and US Army are looking into windmills, solar panels, and other technologies to avoid relying on fuel brought by helicopters, air-to-air refueling tankers, and trucks. (The air-
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Nor has what happens when you attempt to look up citations for these blogs. [slashdot.org]
Ironically, those posts ends where this one begins.
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1. Nuclear recycling is a proven technology, the question is whether you can recycle enough material to make it worthwhile, and whether the material obtained will be useful. (Plutonium is very useful for power generators in space, so obtaining this isn't a problem.)
2. Nuclear waste that generates heat is incredibly useful. Generating electricity from heat to generate heat involves two conversions and the process is wasteful. If you could simply use the heat from the waste to heat up water, which holds a lot
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You apparently believe that fast reactors destroy radioactive fission products. Fast reactor fanbois invariably seem to think this. They don't. All they do is burn-up the plutonium that would otherwise be in the spent fuel waste.
And the reprocessing to get the plutonium out produces more total waste volume that must be disposed of than the original spent fuel itself.
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Although not explicitly covered, I intended the multi-tier system to cover attacks and accidents, as you've a fallback that'll work for a while.
If you have a comprehensive grid system, with full routing by demand, then there are no single points of failure, you'd need to attack a lot of infrastructure before it couldn't cope.
Apologies for the glib tone in the previous post, it's sometimes useful in order to get the necessary eyeballs.
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As usual, because the nuclear option is not a perfect option, it is a problem. These small reactors solve a huge problem for the nuclear industry, NIMBY. If not for NIMBY, the U.S.A. and most of the E.U. (not including France) would be farther on the road away from fossil fuels.
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Whist your points aren't necessarily invalid, the UK has reduced CO2 more from 1990 levels than any other large Western nation without building a single new nuclear reactor
The reductions were realized by burning less coal and adding way more gas and bioenergy. The only meaningful new renewable component in that time was an added few percentage points contribution from wind.
https://assets.publishing.serv... [service.gov.uk]
The argument against Nuclear can't be you can reduce emissions by burning gas instead of coal.
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Nuclear fission is a stopgap solution until nuclear fusion is ready. The contaminated materials can be buried while without issue while the spent fuel can be highly reprocessed and reduced to very little material. Eventually, we can use the power from nuclear fusion to stabilize these materials, making them safe.
Surrendering to fear only empowers the companies that profit off destroying the future of this planet's ecosystem. Might I remind you that we have created a mass extinction event and if we don't
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This is something that seems to be always left mentioned. Fusion is clean, not radioactive etc, but current designs all cause the reactor and support structures to become activated and are radiactive waste.
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'Some neutrons escape from the core. This is a problem called neutron leakage, These materials become radioactive when “activated” by neutrons lost from the core.'
Won't fusion reactors (assuming they are ever built commercially) have this same problem? Deuterium-tritium (D-T) fusion results in an alpha particle (the nucleus of a helium atom) and a neutron. The neutron deposits its energy in a surrounding material, which generates heat. So in fusion and fission both you will have a lot of highly
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Yes, activation of the structure is a major issue with fusion. One area of materials research in fusion power is developing materials with lower long-term activation potential.
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âoeTo begin with the text of the Stanford press statement has a caveat the size of the Brooklyn Bridge.â
âoeThe analysis was difficult, because none of these reactors are in operation yet,â said study co-author Rodney Ewing, the Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security at Stanford and co-director of CISAC. âoeAlso, the designs of some of the reactors are proprietary, adding additional hurdles to the research.â
âoeThis is a significant shortcoming of the report. The absenc
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Sorry about the text encoding problems. Somehow the "smart" quotes feature went wrong. Here's the comment with fixed quotes:
"What’s Wrong with this Study?"
"To begin with the text of the Stanford press statement has a caveat the size of the Brooklyn Bridge."
“The analysis was difficult, because none of these reactors are in operation yet,” said study co-author Rodney Ewing, the Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security at Stanford and co-director of CISAC. “Also, the designs of some
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Finland has already figured out nuclear waste storage [science.org], including long term needs.
So why are you worried about a tiny bit of waste compared to something like a coal plant, that can be easily safely tucked away until we figure out get ways to re-use it?
In the meantime you get the only CO2 free energy that works at scale, which we desperately need.
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A moratorium on research in the whole world?. I never knew Carter was so powerful.
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The reason why breeder reactors were killed is because Carter was a snuffleupagus, and slapped a moratorium on that technology.
A moratorium on research in the whole world?. I never knew Carter was so powerful.
According to US Navy Admiral Hyman Rickover these reactors are “expensive to build, complex to operate, susceptible to prolonged shutdown as a result of even minor malfunctions, and difficult and time-consuming to repair.” None of that has stopped people from trying to change that reality. Nevertheless, the fact remains to this day, that If you want to build a nuclear reactor there are better and more modern designs than breeders that have fewer safety and reliability issues. It will be expensive als all heck but at least you can scratch your nuclear itch with a relatively mild chance of irradiating your country as long as you don't let any corporate asswipes armed with magic cost cutting swords anywhere near your reactor and your taxpayers are willing to foot the enormous bill.
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Who's going to foot the bill for climate change when it all goes pear-shaped?
Is it going to be those bankers and auto-makers who just got re-bailed out by the taxpayer?
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Who's going to foot the bill for climate change when it all goes pear-shaped?
Here's a nickel kid, get yourself a real argument.
Nuclear won't help with climate change. It's too slow so even if it made sense, it still wouldn't work.
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The way you imagine it working, sure. But as an augmentation supply, to fill the gaps when we dont have peak wind or bight sun; thats where smaller reactors can make a big difference. The problem is people envision these 220GW behemoth plants doing the heavy lifting. I say let the renewables do the heavy lifting and let nuclear fill the gaps instead of using coal, oil, and gas.
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No, they cannot. It will be cheaper to get that production from a renewable source which can load follow efficiently. Therefore you can make a bigger difference with renewables.
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Well, that's how Juneau currently gets its power, though looking, they draw water from the bottom of 2 lakes rather then having a dam and reservoir. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]. There's 4 other hydro plants supplying the other 22% of Juneau's power needs, didn't bother checking whether they have traditional reservoirs.
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Rickover said that of the molten sodium cooled reactor used in a US Navy submarine. They had leaks to deal with and that was difficult to do safely in s submarine. First problem was the confined space in a submarine, there just wasn't a lot of room to move. Second problem was the melted sodium was a severe fire hazard on a submarine as hot sodium metal reacted violently with water. Japan had an experimental molten sodium cooled reactor, and this was another nightmare of leaks and fires. Bill Gates is t
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"Stupid people, better off dead really".
Rickover created safety in the Navy's Nuclear reactor fleet by solving the issues you ignore. That's what happens when you take ownership of the issues.
If you want nuclear power, start offering solutions to the issues instead of being stupid.
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Let's not forget the proliferation issues too. Military reactors use highly enriched fuel, which is not allowed for civilian reactors because it is weapons grade.
The solution needs to be viable all over the world, and not start a new nuclear arms race.
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Has anybody mentioned the mountains of coal ash being piled up today?
It's currently the biggest waste product in the USA and it's full of mercury, cadmium, arsenic, etc.
Have we even mentioned things like the Kingston coal ash spill? How many people have even heard of that event?
https://www.nationalgeographic... [nationalgeographic.com]
But hey, Trump used to go on TV and say "Clean coal" was the future so I guess we should go for that.
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Look dude, you posted about "mountains of coal ash" three times and nobody was stupid enough to take the bait, because your false dichotomy is false. No one is interested in your logical fallacies. Run along and let the people interested in a good faith discussion have one.
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It's going to be an issue as soon as there's someone that loves breaking toys just for fun.
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Running Slashdot requires no effort so turning it into Dicedot was natural. The low quality of most articles feels like a mix of sloth and sabotage.
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Editor gripes:
That's a problem because already, just in America, spent nuclear fuel is accumulating at a rate of about 2,000 metric tonnes per year, the announcement notes, and is "currently stored in pools or in dry casks at reactor sites."It _is_ a problem, but it is a SOLUTION as well. All of the spent nuclear fuel can be reprocessed and turned into fuel for newer classes of reactors.
We need to get past the last 50 years of biased propaganda from "environmental groups" (often paid for by gas companies to kill nuclear power, their competitor [environmen...ogress.org]), and look at nuclear power as a bridge to future forms of power generation. Natural gas companies want to lie us into another 30 years of natural gas plants with claims of "clean" gas, but only nuclear will give us the power densities that power consumers want with release of CO2 limited to the concrete it is built from.
This can only happen if nuisance lawsuits are kept off the table, and that can only happen if our politicians get their act together and make this a matter of national security. I would trust the Navy and the DOE to develop and deploy next-gen nuclear systems way more than any for profit company.
As a committed Liberal, I think it is time for the Democratic party to regain some semblance of sanity on nuclear power and for the Republicans to pull away from the oil company teat.
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The waste increases decommissioning costs. The proponents of SMRs claim they will decrease costs. They are lying.
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Oh stop with the usual BS. Even if the paper is correct, and it's very far from obvious it is (they make a ton of assumptions, and many were challenged at face value within days of it coming out), the real costs in nuclear are in time, risk, and size of capital expenditure.
Time is the major factor. The longer and more capital intensive up-front a project is, the less time value you're getting out of your money. It's not just interest payments on any debt, it's lack of income from reinvesting the capital.
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And as in almost all countries with a significant nuclear power percentage of the grid, the nuclear plants are built and operated by the government. The U.S. and Japan are unique in having private companies responsible for building and operating nuclear power plants. If you want more nuclear plants in the U.S. adopting the model that has worked elsewhere would seem to be the way to go yet nuclear proponents in the U.S. never suggest that.
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