This is the Nuclear Energy Item

Apr 7 02:33 UTC 2003

hmm....

I was just thinking about the fallout over the controversy of
the Clinch River Breeder reactor. Even though Reagan supported
the project, it was ultimately killed in the senate in 1983.

According to: http://debye.colorado.edu/phys3070/Lectures24-30.htm

"A reactor lasts about 30 yrs. Metal parts weaken when exposed to 
radioactivity."

Many of the older reactors are coming upon their 30 birthday..
and even if they lasted indefinitly. There is still the problem
of storing the waste they produce...I've read that the Big Rock 
Point Reactor closed down "due to waste storage limiations"

(src: http://ishgooda.nativeweb.org/nuclear/fermi2.htm )

I've been reading about this new NIF (National Ignition Facility)
at Livermore National Lab, which is suppose to be creating the 
world largest laser for testing Fussion...the problem is that
cost over-runs and delays, it was suppose to open in 2003 but now
is sceduled to open in 2008 if there are no other problems.


Anyways Twenty years later, it seems we've made very little 
progress. What do you think the future of this industry is?
How about the new pebble bed reactors? too much F.U.D? 

response 2 of 20:

Apr 7 18:20 UTC 2003

The proposed commercial pebble-bed modular reactor near Cape Town SA is
causing controversy - over waste - before it is built. See
http://www.capetown.gov.za/press/Newpress.asp?itemcode=614

response 4 of 20:

Apr 14 17:26 UTC 2003

I don't think most people can appreciate the advantage of waste being
dangerous for "only" 300-400 years.

response 6 of 20:

Apr 15 23:10 UTC 2003

hmmm....I find that interesting...

if they spent fuel is so hot, why can't it still be used?

Isn't it just used to heat water into steam to spin a
turbine? seems like a waste of resource to me.

response 8 of 20:

Apr 16 14:51 UTC 2003

Some of it is thermally "hot", too.  Some of the reprocessing done at
the Hanford site produced concentrated liquid waste that self-boiled.

response 10 of 20:

Jun 9 12:46 UTC 2003

Re #4:  That's only because they've been brainwashed by propagandists
for so long.  When you contrast poisons like mercury and lead which
remain toxic forever, 400 years is a huge improvement.  So is the
million-fold reduction in volume over e.g. coal ash.  There are
wooden builings older than 400 years; the pyramids are 5000 years
old, and there are mines far older still.  400 years is nothing.

Re #5:  If you're interested in the actual cooling required, look up
"reactor afterheat" (in a CRC handbook, not Google).  The tables yield
the fraction of full-power output under different circumstances of
run time and time since shutdown.  (Active cooling isn't that big of
a deal, because it only takes a week or so for a reactor to cool down
to the point where its fuel can be changed; this means that the
coolant has to remain cooler than the boiling point of water.)

There are plenty of places in the US remote enough to not be "next
door" to anyone, and most of the Japanese problems seem to have come
from people failing to follow procedure.  This can be ameliorated
with equipment performing cross-checks and sounding alarms.

Re #6:  If you look at the afterheat tables, you'll see that the
minuscule fraction of operating power which comes from the fission
products losing energy simply isn't enough to be worth the effort
to capture (except for some very special purposes, like space probes
[Pu-238] or radiation sources [Cs-137]). 

Re #8:  Anything that produces heat can get to the boiling point, if
it's big enough and thus self-insulated.  Some of the Hanford wastes
"burp" gases unrelated to boiling.  AFAIK, these gases come from the
radiolytic decomposition of the organic solvents used to separate
uranium from plutonium (the SOLVEX process).  This is one nasty brew...

There are more modern reprocessing technologies which use molten salts
instead of the organics, and the horrendous mess which people associate
with reprocessing ala Hanford simply can't happen.

I still think that our response to nuclear waste should be to reprocess
it, vitrify the fission products into glass blocks, and stack a pyramid
of the blocks on a concrete or ceramic pad in our driest desert.  Done
right, it would glow gently from Cerenkov radiation.  You could let
people view it from a safe distance and use it to attract tourists.  The
only problem is that it wouldn't be a very big pyramid for a long time.

Oh, yes.  If any Al Qaeda or other group wants to crash an aircraft
into it, we should offer to train their pilots, sell them the aircraft
(at a substantial profit), see them off from the airport, and televise
the crash live on Pay-Per-View.  It should profitably finance the cleanup,
as well as being a wonderful example of the futility of their cause.

response 12 of 20:

Nov 20 01:31 UTC 2003

EU Diplomats to Settle on Single Fusion Site
Wed November 19, 2003 02:25 PM ET

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union ministers will propose a single 
site to its international partners in a pioneering project to create 
the world's first large-scale nuclear fusion reactor, a diplomat said 
on Wednesday.
 
Nuclear fusion promises to use the same energy that powers the sun to 
generate electricity without the hazards of conventional nuclear 
fission reactors.

But the technology has never worked outside a laboratory, and the EU,
United States, Canada, Russia, Japan and China are sharing the $11.92 
billion costs of building the first reactor.

Canada and Japan have already proposed sites, and the EU had originally
put forward two locations, one in France and one in Spain.

But diplomats from the EU's member states agreed on Wednesday that their
ministers would settle on a single site on November 27, one diplomat 
close to the decision told Reuters.

"They are going to say one site (at the) next competitiveness meeting," 
the diplomat said.

The bloc has not decided whether its proposed site would be in France 
or Spain. It was not immediately clear when a final decision among the 
international partners would be taken.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=scienceNews&storyID=3854545

response 14 of 20:

Nov 20 04:05 UTC 2003

Hmm...so why build a larger scale one?  Is it because there are
inefficiencies that get smaller as you scale up, making it easier to
reach the break-even point with a larger reactor?  I suppose heat losses
would be easier to control on a larger scale, since you'd have less
surface area for the same volume.

response 16 of 20:

Nov 21 13:23 UTC 2003

If I understand correctly, larger fusion machines are
"easier" to push to breakeven because the pressure gradients
are lower, causing fewer problems with plasma instabilities
and making it easier to get the higher confinement times
required to achieve enough fusions to recover the invested
energy.  I say "easier" because larger machines mean larger
magnets, which are both harder and more expensive to build.

Inertial confinement fusion is the same.  We can easily
make "reactors" with per-batch yields of tens of megatons
down to hundreds of kilotons, but fusing microgram or
even milligram quantities is comparatively very difficult.

I recall reading that we could have build a linear plasma
pinch machine that would have gone to breakeven at least
20 years ago.  The problem is that the machine would have
had to be roughly a kilometer long, to give the plasma
enough time to react before it squirted out the ends.

response 18 of 20:

Jun 25 03:19 UTC 2005

Finally!

"A long and bitter dispute about where to site the world's largest
nuclear fusion reactor looks all but certain to end in favour of France.

Countries have been arguing since 2003 over whether to site the
International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) at Rokkashomura
in Japan or at Cadarache in France. The French bid has been backed by
the European Union, China and Russia, while Japan has been supported by
the US and South Korea.

Recent reports that Japan has accepted that the reactor will be built in
France are accurate, UK government sources have told New Scientist. But
officials are nervous about publicly confirming the agreement in case it
falls apart at the last minute.

The European Union stressed that no final decision would be taken until
ministers from all six parties meet in Moscow, Russia, on Tuesday 28
June. "We are optimistic that we will reach a decision on the site
then," said the EU's science spokeswoman, Antonia Mochan."

full story at: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7573

response 20 of 20:

Jun 26 20:01 UTC 2005

Japan, but I don't think earthquakes are much of an issue. There is
no radioactive hazard to guard against with the ITER. I would expect that 
construction standards for the relatively small facility would take
earthquakes into account. Other issues are more important in deciding between
Japan and France.