On 10/04/14 03:30, Johny B Good wrote:


You seem to be fixated on antique reactor technology.

Nio, fixted on what works

Even safer and
cheaper to build would be a modern LFTR design.

You seem to be fixated on LFTR reactors

There are no modern LFTR designs.

LFTR reactors that were builtm were built decades ago to entirely
different safety standards.

There are more unkowns in building a new LFTR reactor than a new
conventional type reactor.

Ergo its going to e a lot MORE expensive to build at first.


The technology has
already been tested over 40 years ago because it looked like it might
allow nuclear powered bombers to stay aloft for weeks at a time.


No, that wasnt the reason for it.

As soon as the ICBM was developed, the military, who were the only
government department with a big enough budget for this sort of R&D
lost interest and 'pulled the plug'.

With LFTR, you lose the rather quaint need to shut down in order to
replace expensively manufactured/reprocessed fuel rods (continuous
fuelling)

AT least two more modern reactors - the CANDU and the pebble bed, also
have that feature...

and the need for a massively expensive containment building
also disappears since the nuclear fuel stays liquid at the 5 or 6
hundred deg C working temperature at normal atmospheric pressure (no
radioactively contaminated boiling water hydrogen generation risk to
worry about)

No, in fact its even trickier to handle an probably more dangerous.


A simple plug that melts in the event of the cooling fans
stopping due to loss of power generation makes an effective failsafe
to drain the fuel into a sink where it will reduce heat output to safe
levels automatically.


Provided that's where the fault occurs. It its in the heat exchanger to
the steam plant, you get 600C molten salt, full of radioactive
contaminants mixing with water. BANG and a lot of radioactive release.


And those contaminants are whilst short lived and great for long term
waste disposal, viciously hot and dangerous before they decay.

Yu have read the fanbois 'reasons why throrium LFTR is better' sheet.

Try looking for the 'reasons why thorium LFTR is more dangerous and
expensive' arguments as well.



A modern LFTR will be a damn sight safer than any of the current cold
war driven designs that are currently in productive service.

IN some ways yes, in oitherwsays a resounding NO.


It burns
Thorium which is estimated to be four times more abundent than Uranium
and it can usefully extract in excess of 90% of the nuclear energy
contained in the fuel unlike uranium burning reactors which only
manage about 1% without expensive fuel rod reprocessing.


Ther is no shortage of dirt cheap uranium and actually plutonium. In
fact we have a problem getting RID of the plutonium.

You've got the right idea about developing fission reactor technology
over fusion. The only odd thing seems to be your assumption that it'll
be based on cold war designs rather than the 'No Brainer' choice of
LFTR which will give us the required breathing space to finally
achieve the Holy Grail of safe nuclear fusion power some time over the
next century or three.


You have failed to understand the engineering and commercial realities
of teh whole nuclear development cycle.

What we need right now is not 'pie in the sky ' stuff that may work one
day at unknown cost. What we need now is stuff we know exactly how to
build that does work, FIRST.


And a program to unlock other possible technologies in the future, but
we can't afford and shouldn't attempt to put all our eggs in one basket
like the Germans are doing with renewable energy. Total disaster.

Right now what we need is any nuclear power that can be built on time,
on budget and at a price less than around £3bn/GW capacity.

Some years ago CANDU were stating (well of course they would, wouldn't
they) that they were in CANADA delivering plant at a capex of around
$2.5bn per GW, and a levelised unit cost below coal gas or hydro
provided the plants got to run better than 60% capacity factor.

AS baseload they were achieving better than 90%.

The WALKED AWAY from the UK, because they are not a large company and
they were not interested in wasting years trying to meet insane red tape
requirements when they could sell their reactors to countries that
definitely wanted them.

In other words what matters MOST right now is not this reactor design or
that reactor design, but getting the cost of building ANY reactor AT ALL
down from the insane levels they are now, to what they ought to be given
the actual complexity of construction.

And the SMR of whatever type may be able to do that. It's not an ideal
engineering approach, but it's an ideal POLITICAL approach.


If you can build a reactor on a production line and get it type
approved, and ship it as more or less a flat-pack of parts, the chances
of governments interfering in the build process with a regulation change
halfway through construction are minimal, because the actual on-site
work is much less.

what causes cost and time overruns is simply that any issue no matter
how small on a reactor build causes in the worst case, a total halt on
construction and what amounts to a complete redesign and re-approvals
process having to be undertaken. And during that interest must be paid
on the money borrowed to build the thing.


Getting the approval in the first place may take years.

What is clear is that getting costs down is NOT a mater of different
technologies at all. It is a matter of politics.

Ergo there is no point in throwing huge sums of money at a technology
that wouldn't modify the political landscape.

Which is why money is being spent on the SMR approach.

So get educated to the realities of nuclear power. It is not at the
fission level, a technical challenge. Nor a waste disposal challenge or
anything else that can be addressed by some radically different
technology. It is a political will challenge.

And bear in mind, if the EU decided 'there will never ever be another
reactor built in Europe' they could easily pass such a regulation or
directive, or make it so onerous to build one that no one ever would, as
they are trying to do with coal.






--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the least capable to
lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the
members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are
rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a
diminishing number of producers.