This is a Generation II plant. The new generation III plants are much safer and involve passive cooling designs that do not need power. The Westinghouse design has a giant reservoir of water that can gravity feed into the core in case of an emergency. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000
There seems to be many who have a better understanding of current reactor technology than I have. Anyone know why there aren't thorium reactors on line? Is there some technical problem which must be overcome I'm not aware of?
The radioactivity is still largely there though, you wouldn't want to live on all that thriving stuff if your health and longevity is one of your concerns.
There seems to be many who have a better understanding of current reactor technology than I have. Anyone know why there aren't thorium reactors on line? Is there some technical problem which must be overcome I'm not aware of?
There seems to be many who have a better understanding of current reactor technology than I have. Anyone know why there aren't thorium reactors on line? Is there some technical problem which must be overcome I'm not aware of?
AFAIK back in the day uranium was chosen over thorium so as to facilitate weapons research. The plants just evolved on uranium.
No new nukes have been commissioned in however many decades, so even if thorium designs were ready, they wouldn't be built.
So there aren't unsolved scientific or engineering hurdles, but the inertia of bureaucracy. Must resist commenting on giving them control of health care...
Apparently China is doing some stuff with this. They're basically testing a whole ton of different nuke designs. Neat.
Given mankind various appetite for energy of all kinds, the available options are all bad. The only green options are water, wind, and solar. And honorable mention goes to chemical processes like Corn based ethanol and sugar cane which involve human food trade off for fuel. At least they are carbon neutral, and so would various bio engineered options not yet out of the lab to use agriculture wastes products, switch grass, or bio engineered micro organisms or algae to directly convert raw materials into diesel fuel.
Distributing iodine pills.... do iodine pills have to be distributed when a coal power plant "melts down"?
What's the worst case scenario here?
What's the worst case scenario for a natural gas, oil, coal, or solar power plant?
!#%^!#^!#^!#$^!#^#$%^#&
NO! Corn Ethanol takes a total of 8 calories to produce 1 calorie of fuel. It is environmentally devastating because it requires fertilizer / massive irrigation and has a very inefficient conversion process. Corn Ethanol is a big business subsidy for the massive farming companies, that's all there is to it.
Now sugar cane is definitely better, but it still isn't some magical carbon neutral process.
I don't know much about thorium reactors but I think its just because it was easier to evolve the old designs rather than starting from scratch trying to commercialize thorium. The problem with the NRC is that even if you have something "better" they are going to scrutinize it a lot more than older already approved technology.
Given mankind various appetite for energy of all kinds, the available options are all bad. The only green options are water, wind, and solar. And honorable mention goes to chemical processes like Corn based ethanol and sugar cane which involve human food trade off for fuel. At least they are carbon neutral, and so would various bio engineered options not yet out of the lab to use agriculture wastes products, switch grass, or bio engineered micro organisms or algae to directly convert raw materials into diesel fuel.
We might some day hope for fusion based power, but that goal is still not practical.
And in the case of electrical power, we can talk about it being a fairly efficient process,
until we lose 50% of that efficiency in something called line loss as we transport that electricity from a distant power plant to the end user.
But just like air travel, which is far safer per passenger mile, we have a horror of dieing in a airplanes crash while we blithely accept auto accidents that kill far more.
But I think Haybusa Rider is on to something. Thorium based reactors are far safer and don't generate the plutonium associated with Uranium based reactors. And while we piss and moan about the few actual Uranium that have melted down, in my mind the bigger problem is what to do all the nuclear waste produced in existing reactors that ne4ver melted down. By now we have mega mega mega tons of that waste that will be highly radioactive for at least 50, 000 years. If we can store that waste in a geologically stable area, it needs no water cooling, but heat pump technology could convert that waste heat into power. In event of natural disaster, loss of that heat pump effect endangers nothing.
If we're talking about this, we can harvest algae. In fact it has been suggested as a way of removing excess phosphate from waters. Then there is direct conversion by E. coli to fuel (butanol IIRC).
Either approach is vastly superior to growing multicellular organism which must be broken down to be useful.
There seems to be many who have a better understanding of current reactor technology than I have. Anyone know why there aren't thorium reactors on line? Is there some technical problem which must be overcome I'm not aware of?
It's my understanding that water reservoirs aren't exactly a new idea and that the real issue here is economics. Westinghouse and others have provided relatively cheap commercial nuclear reactors for years to those countries willing to take the risk. With Chernobyl and now this hopefully people will finally realize that cutting corners is just not a good idea.
There are two Gen III+ reactor designs in the certification process with the NRC right now - Westinghouse-Toshiba's AP1000 and GEH's ESBWR. In parallel, several utilities are licensing plants that will utilize these designs. Southern Company has broken ground on pre-construction activities to construct two AP1000 units at their Vogtle site in Georgia.Exactly!! Was listening to a Stanford professor of physics comment on the new way they have of cooling the new reactors and as Mark R stated its based on the laws of physics ensure that it stays safe, and intervention from pumps/computer systems, etc. is not required.
In fact I heard it said that the water or liquid used to cool the reactor utilizes the laws of physics to continually circulate without the aid of pumps or anything mechanical!
In this design Westinghouse's Passive Core Cooling System (PCCS) uses less than twenty explosively operated and DC operated valves which must operate within the first 30 minutes. This is designed to happen even if the reactor operators take no action.[7] The electrical system required for initiating the passive systems doesn't rely on external or diesel power and the valves don't rely on hydraulic or compressed air systems.[4][8] If the active process to turn on the passive system works the design is intended to passively remove heat for 72 hours, after which the PCS gravity drain water tank must be topped up for as long as cooling is required.
Exactly!! Was listening to a Stanford professor of physics comment on the new way they have of cooling the new reactors and as Mark R stated its based on the laws of physics ensure that it stays safe, and intervention from pumps/computer systems, etc. is not required.
In fact I heard it said that the water or liquid used to cool the reactor utilizes the laws of physics to continually circulate without the aid of pumps or anything mechanical!
I personally prefer designing things that don't utilize the laws of physics. Not as creatively stifling.
Well the thorium fuel cycle is a breeder reactor(note they are a thermal breeder not a fast breeder... quite different technologies). Thorium by itself can't run a power plant so you seed it with some fissile material, either uranium or plutonium. As the reaction progresses it creates 233U which is quite radioactive and then can be used in more conventional plants.
I'm not quite sure where people get the idea that these plants would be clean as a whistle. They actually breed radioactive fuel, however they do produce less of the longer lasting stuff .
A thermal breeder reactor would be considered Gen IV and it's main design challenges are handling the high temperatures, pre-processing of fuel, and post-processing of fuel. We probably won't see Gen IV plants for the next 20 years or so.
Japan ASSUMING a meltdown occurred'
Japanese authorities are operating on the presumption that possible meltdowns are under way at two nuclear reactors, a government official said Sunday, adding that there have been no indications yet of hazardous emissions of radioactive material into the atmosphere.