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Nuclear Power - As a nuclear physicist,
Henroid
Mexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
Mexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
Yes, as the title sarcastically points out I am not a nuclear physicist (Dr. Henroid does not exist). In fact I am fucking horrible when it comes to the formal education of science. I flunked biology, and never took the chemistry course that was required for graduation because of a loophole I found in the school's system (a loophole closed the year after I graduated - I may not be a formal student of science but maybe I can get myself a PhD in Bullshitting) (okay, I am Dr. Henroid afterall). But damn it, I respect science and like to take a brief glimpse leisurely - at my own staggered pace - because it's so neat.
One thing I've taken seriously for almost all my life is nuclear weapons, which recently has shifted to nuclear power (because I stopped being scared of the stuff as I learned more about the nature of the weapons). This morning I sat down for two hours watching a video, which is linked below. It jumps to a lot of different facets surrounding nuclear tech and is long, yes. It talks science and engineering, history, economics, policy of nations, and public perception, misconception & the media. It has a wide breadth of things to discuss because there's no one angle on nuclear power. I've also taken a lot of things at face value because, again, I don't know the boiling point of water (to put it one way).
I'll point out the video (after the first five minutes) spends a while being critical of the existing reactor and fuel models.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=P9M__yYbsZ4
I'll probably be cutting into this OP a lot as things move on or people discuss things (hopefully), but here's some general questions or points to leap from.
How much has initial investment into the current structure of nuclear power generation fucked over the further development or research? Which is to say, establishing the first reactors was expensive, and it wasn't efficient with results. But because the dollars were spent on getting that pitiful result already it's what people stick with.
What sort of measures are needed to fix the public perception of what radiation really is, rather than an unquestionable bad word? It's all about education, right? A little ironic of me to mention and all, but I see the value in hindsight. There's this thing that exists in public policy that no amount of radiation is acceptable, and the video's main host goes on to argue about how there's no actual execution of radiation levels on humans, that it's all hypothesized. It also points out that radiation exists in many ways around us that never really get called out and made understood that it's okay to certain extents.
Since the video is a couple years old and likely out of date in some respects, what's changed about what we know about thorium and its application as fuel? Has any work actually been done on it?
Is there any reality that China getting the jump on breeder reactors will shift influence / screw over the USA? Generally there's a lot of talk about how China is the USA's biggest competitor in the global economy and how they're going to oh noes kick our ass soon in every way. Well I am not an economist either (surprise), and see arguments that go against that often. But what was presented to me in that video shows that China has made actual efforts toward the new power development, and maybe they actually will have an edge on us.
Say we do change to a thorium breeder reactor system. What sort of economic impact happens here as other fuel and energy systems get cut on sharply? A fair point made in the video is that nuclear power is just energy and not necessarily a fuel, like you're not going to have it (easily) power cars. So carbon / fossil fuels will still have a place. But people are going to lose jobs quite likely.
Feh, I should've taken notes... Like I said it was a lot for me to take in and get excited to talk about. This will do for now at least.
And feel free to point out things that the video makes up shit about or gets wrong because that's interesting too!
One thing I've taken seriously for almost all my life is nuclear weapons, which recently has shifted to nuclear power (because I stopped being scared of the stuff as I learned more about the nature of the weapons). This morning I sat down for two hours watching a video, which is linked below. It jumps to a lot of different facets surrounding nuclear tech and is long, yes. It talks science and engineering, history, economics, policy of nations, and public perception, misconception & the media. It has a wide breadth of things to discuss because there's no one angle on nuclear power. I've also taken a lot of things at face value because, again, I don't know the boiling point of water (to put it one way).
I'll point out the video (after the first five minutes) spends a while being critical of the existing reactor and fuel models.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=P9M__yYbsZ4
I'll probably be cutting into this OP a lot as things move on or people discuss things (hopefully), but here's some general questions or points to leap from.
How much has initial investment into the current structure of nuclear power generation fucked over the further development or research? Which is to say, establishing the first reactors was expensive, and it wasn't efficient with results. But because the dollars were spent on getting that pitiful result already it's what people stick with.
What sort of measures are needed to fix the public perception of what radiation really is, rather than an unquestionable bad word? It's all about education, right? A little ironic of me to mention and all, but I see the value in hindsight. There's this thing that exists in public policy that no amount of radiation is acceptable, and the video's main host goes on to argue about how there's no actual execution of radiation levels on humans, that it's all hypothesized. It also points out that radiation exists in many ways around us that never really get called out and made understood that it's okay to certain extents.
Since the video is a couple years old and likely out of date in some respects, what's changed about what we know about thorium and its application as fuel? Has any work actually been done on it?
Is there any reality that China getting the jump on breeder reactors will shift influence / screw over the USA? Generally there's a lot of talk about how China is the USA's biggest competitor in the global economy and how they're going to oh noes kick our ass soon in every way. Well I am not an economist either (surprise), and see arguments that go against that often. But what was presented to me in that video shows that China has made actual efforts toward the new power development, and maybe they actually will have an edge on us.
Say we do change to a thorium breeder reactor system. What sort of economic impact happens here as other fuel and energy systems get cut on sharply? A fair point made in the video is that nuclear power is just energy and not necessarily a fuel, like you're not going to have it (easily) power cars. So carbon / fossil fuels will still have a place. But people are going to lose jobs quite likely.
Feh, I should've taken notes... Like I said it was a lot for me to take in and get excited to talk about. This will do for now at least.
And feel free to point out things that the video makes up shit about or gets wrong because that's interesting too!
Henroid on
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Literally every nuclear power plant we have in the US (104 of them) was either built before 1974 or had already begun construction in 1974. Following Three Mile Island, 'nuclear power' became such a boogey-man that no one is willing to let it into their back yard. There are modernizations and new technology introduced to these 38+ year old plants (and not like a lot of them; FOUR new reactors were built beginning around 2010 at existing plants), but we haven't actually built a new nuclear power facility since the 70's. There are vastly safer ways of producing nuclear power without even going to Thorium that we don't use in the US because nobody will build a new plant that takes advantage of them. Forget China; the EU is already decades ahead of us because they actually build new plants.
Thorium is cool and it could be a great power source, but it's not a straight-forward matter of slapping up a power plant to use it. Industrial-scale Thorium-based nuclear power has never been done. There's a lot of engineering and physics to do there before we can even build a plant, and all of that is pretty expensive.
I haven't watched the video but if it's not already addressed there, the reason we don't have Thorium plants already is that back in the 40's and 50's, nuclear physicists saw the potential applications of Thorium to power but couldn't find a way to weaponize it. So the focus was put on Uranium and Plutonium, 'cause those could be used for making bombs. The research programs were extremely expensive, but we had enemies to fight so budgets were found. Nowadays it would be private industry funding this stuff and it's a tough sell to get someone to back maybe a decade of research and testing before the first plant can be built. Especially when, at least in the US, there is no indication that such a plant can be built.
I'm not sure what you mean about radiation effects on humans being theoretical. The mechanisms by which radiation impacts the human body are pretty well understood. We use radiation all the time in medicine and there are a lot of radiation safety standards based on hard evidence. Radiation is nothing like the bogey man that the uninformed populace makes it out to be, but that's true of a lot of things. I don't really know how that could change except through education, but no part of how radiation works or what it does to the human body is really straight forward. I could explain it to a five year old, but it would take a really long time and a lot of pictures. Actually getting it taught in schools (at least in the US) would be basically impossible. There's no driving force to focus on educating people about nuclear power and radioactivity and we have a hard enough time maintaining the very basic standards of science education we already have below the collegiate level. If you can't get people to agree to learn about evolution, how likely are they to want to learn about nuclear power?
Is the Gamma cookie laced with cyanide?
Well, let me say that differently. The places where it's hard to talk about evolution will have no issues talking about nuclear power. There exist plenty of places where discussing it would be an outrage, but there's really no overlap with creationist enclaves.
Gamma radiation is actually less dangerous then equivalent energy outputs of alpha or beta radiation. It's just it's penetrating, so at high exposure it fucks you up internally whereas alpha and beta are stopped by dead-skin cells.
Ingesting or inhaling alpha and beta emitters is much more toxic then gamma emitters.
Most people don't understand that you will get a bigger dose flying in an airplane or eating a lot of bananas than you will standing inside most areas of a nuclear power plant.
Theoretically you could teach people that. You could also teach people that technologies exist which make Three Mile Island and Chernobyl disasters impossible. A massive earthquake and flood are going to fuck up pretty much anything, up to and including Thorium reactors (thought the results would be less devastating than Fukushima).
Problematically, though, 'radiation' is a pretty broad term that encompasses several types of energy transfer that impact humans in different ways. Kids learn about electromagnetic radiation and the light spectrum pretty early, so teaching them about gamma radiation should be (and, I'm pretty sure, is) an extension of that. Explaining alpha and beta particles is a little less straight-forward. Understanding why those things are bad for you and how they fuck you up requires an understanding of DNA, cell structure, and cellular replication (or at least a subset of those, depending).
It's certainly not impossible to teach at any age, but a few anecdotes about bananas and cement aren't going to do the job. It's going to take teaching better science to kids at the highschool and younger grade levels for a generation, 'cause convincing the current generation of post-school adults that nuclear power isn't necessarily dangerous is basically a lost cause.
Yeah, I actually have less exposure from Naval Nuclear sources over the last decade than I get in one summer from naturally-occurring sources.
*shakes fist at SimCity 2000*
It was indeed covered (I washed over it saying there's history explained in the video). The guy was kicked out of the nuclear energy commissions and the place he was given to run was shut down.
Burning coal emits radioactive particles directly into the atmosphere - exposing nearby communities to 50% to 200% more radiation than a nuclear power plant generating equivalent amount of power. (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste)
But ever since Fukushima, countries have been using less nuclear power and more coal. Derp. http://www.planetizen.com/node/56346
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I'm worried about its effect on scorpions, ants, and lizards. Everyone knows that radiation = giant bugs/godzilla.
We have a ton of just unused space in the US, it's really strange that we can't get a nuclear plant put up in the outskirts near the desert or mountains without NIMBY going on.
Nuclear power plants need a massive water source and people live on/near/downstream most of them.
This is double true after Fukushima because one of the biggest costs with nuke plants is the regulatory bullshit and all the delays that it entails. To quote the NRC chairman(and lone No vote on Vogtle) "I cannot support issuing this license as if Fukushima never happened"...This for a plant located in the Earthquake and Tidal wave epicenter that is mid Georgia(it's 140 miles west of Charlestons SC) .
IF that can get streamlined with the AP1000 units, then maybe you'll see more of them.
The other thing is that natural gas is so cheap right now, and you can build a NG plant for like a third of what a similar rated nuke plant will run you. It takes a long time for the better capacity factor and fuel costs advatages of Nuclear to eat away at an extra $5b + in costs that need to be financed. Especially when you compare the couple years required to build an NG plant to the decade+ for a nuke plant. A NG plant can be up and paying off its loans, before the excavation for the nuke plant is even started.
Well, I think the tsunami that hit Fukushima was way fucking bigger than anyone would've expected them to get. It was a record setting earthquake after all. Hilariously, apparently there were still emergency generators running after the tsunami hit, but their switching station wasn't floodproof, so they couldn't get power to the reactors. Good thinking.
It is definitely true that NG is easier to implement and get approved. You still have the problem of being a huge CO2 source, though. In terms of CO2 nuclear has a big advantage.
And you still have the health effects from burning fossil fuels (which includes radiation exposure from naturally-occurring nucleotides in the fuel).
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Radiation is a huge boogey man. I have a minor in physics and on of my physics professors said that another physics professor wouldn't stand in the same room as a microwave oven that was on because of fear of radiation. Also, I had a quantum physics lab and my partner freaked out when we did some experiments with radioactive material, despite the levels being so low that the agency that oversaw radiation exposure said we didn't have to wear those badges that determine radiation level because no student in the past five years even had a reading on it. With these few examples, I imagine any change in perception would be require a lot of media blitzing and education.
Fun side note. I got to go on a tour of a small nuclear research reactor (1 MW output), and we got to be in the reactor room when the operator let it go super critical. It pretty much did a brief flash. But that's because the fuel they use is a uranium salt that rarifies when heated so that it cannot maintain in a super critical state for long.
As to the no actual execution of radiation levels on humans. I'm sure that's due to ethics. In order to learn how much radiation a person can take, we'd have to expose a lot of people to a lot of types of radiation of a long time. We would undoubtedly kill a lot of people and injure many more just to see how precise our safety measures are. I'm fine with someone saying, "this level looks to be lethal, let's not let people get near that level."
An anti-nuclear power signs I saw said, "Imagine a world without radiation." The response in my head was, "We wouldn't be able to see so I guess we'd be down to 4 senses."
There's also this: http://xkcd.com/radiation/
"At least then I wouldn't be able to read your dumb sign."
They wont even fucking touch the stuff here in Australia. It drives me absolutely fucking barmy with how mind bogglingly self destructively backwards it all is. Oh noes radiation lets just smash the biosphere instead! Yay!
Will link this instead.
Also, fuck coal.
I myself, merely have a bachelor of science in the topic.
A BS if you will.
Well you need to note the difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation.
Both of which, by the way, are everywhere.
I finished watching most of the video linked in the OP - most of that is good stuff, the guy knows a lot about nuclear technology for sure. There are good explanations of how current technology works, current perceptions and how the media handles it, and the state of development of new nuclear technology.
While I think LFTR should be developed - it seems to have a lot of advantages both technologically and economically - I suspect he may be a little too optimistic/not concerned enough about the safety requirements or main challenges of the technology. At least it seems that way to me in the video. (I should note that I can forgive him for that attitude - in a way he is trying to sell the idea of the technology. He probably does realize the challenges he just isn't elaborating much on them in the video). Like he was saying you don't really need containment... there is no need for water/steam, etc etc etc.
I agree the design appears that you don't need water interacting with the reactor itself, in the sense of being needed to sustain the nuclear reaction, but you obviously need a Rankine cycle (or whatever other thermodynamic cycle eg Brayton) to spin a turbine to make electricity. That introduces the need to have the steam generators interface with the molten salt. I'm curious to see how designs or actual working models accomplish this interface.
I suspect you would still need a kind of containment system for the reactor. I haven't read any information about it, but I'm betting the reactor still outputs crazy fields when it is in operation. In addition you need a significant amount of radio-chemical processing systems for the reactor itself, that brings into question all kinds of associated hazards. Nothing that I think is insurmountable, but would probably take up a lot of the development process and be a significant and continuing operating concern. I can't fully fathom what all the dangers and challenges would be of such a system, but you can't tell me it wouldn't need a certain level of containment, both via equipment and procedure.
I'm also curious about the need to constantly cool the LFTR reactor. A big concern of current nuclear technology is the fact that once you turn off the reactor it still produces decay heat for a while. LFTR appears to have the same concern - this also spills over into the containment area of planning and operations.
The issue of not dealing with huge pressures in the nuclear systems does seem to be a significant advantage, although high operating temperatures will bring their own set of concerns (700C molten salt vs ~300C light or heavy water coolant). Its nice to not have to worry about nuclear systems flashing to steam on a line break. (The "conventional side" of the system, the turbine side, would still have that concern... but at least it wouldn't be radioactive. Unless of course a combined event happened.... molten salt rupturing into the secondary side, AND a main steam line break - but I'm making a bunch of assumptions about how the technology works here).
I think long term - like really really long term - Thorium power, perhaps in LFTR form is inevitable. In hundreds of years if civilization exists thorium power will undoubtedly be a reality. Today the main things holding it back are politics, economics and uncertainty. Those things are harder to overcome than the technological concerns. However, something tells me a fully operational LFTR reactor / power plant with multiple reactors would still be hugely complicated, probably as complicated as current nuclear technology. It would just be a whole different beast.
Electricity markets have some rather unusual properties, but the most important to keep in mind is that demand and supply for electricity must constantly match up both in time and place, otherwise you have problems. The transmission system moves the power around, but it costs a decent amount of money itself and there are limits to its capacity. There tends to be pretty heavy oscillation in demand for electricity that is effectively random (people turning things on and off at whatever times), but also longer term patterns over the course of a day where demand tends to peak and trough at roughly predictable times during a day (often more power usage at the height of activity in the daytime than in the middle of the night).
So you'll need some baseline level of power generation to cover no more than the lowest level of power demanded over a longer period of time, and other power generation that you can ramp up and down as needed to cover the peaks and spikes during a shorter period of time. Coal, nuclear, and hydro were often traditionally used for baseline power, but nuclear is more or less completely relegated to the role of baseline generation. That's because it is no simple matter to just turn on or off a nuclear power plant, and turning off a large one can cause the operator to lose out on millions of dollars. Fukushima was a catastrophe because the mechanisms to safely shut down the power plant in the event of an emergency were themselves disabled in the disaster. Even if you talk about more modern designs of plants that can safely shut themselves down on loss of power, it's still bad news from an economic perspective to be forced to shut down a nuclear power plant.
Although oil has been pretty expensive, coal has stayed decently cheap since the financial meltdown despite its dirtiness and awful negative externalities, which doesn't create much incentive to invest in new nuclear power plants. Also, and perhaps more importantly, natural gas has gotten much much cheaper in many places, to the point that natural gas is actually getting into the price competitive range with coal for cost per kilowatt hour, which was almost unthinkable not that long ago. Natural gas used to be relegated more towards peak generation since it was cheaper to throw up a few cheap turbines that you wouldn't run all the time on expensive fuel, but now the fuel's cheaper and they can build more efficient plants that have more upfront cost but make more sense to run all the time. It sort of puts a damper on throwing up a huge, inflexable nuclear plant to meet growing power demand when you could just build some natural gas turbines that can fit your specific needs more closely.
The other big economic factor is that nuclear plants are very capital intensive, meaning that the upfront costs to build and then plan forward for decommissioning the plant are huge, and dominate the cost equation relative to the variable costs including things like nuclear fuel. So you have to come up with some very long term financing with uncertain returns, and in case you haven't been paying attention to recent history, the financial sector which would handle that sort of thing hasn't been all that healthy in the Western world. The Three Mile Island incident is often cited as what killed the expansion of nuclear power in the US, but it really didn't cause much physical damage at all, just psychological damage. But what is often forgotten is the failure of Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS, pronounced whoops!), where a large scale expansion of nuclear power in the Pacific Northwest fell through for the much more mundane reasons including mismanagement, cost overruns, and financing troubles. That left a few partially built useless nuclear power plants that you could drive by (and I did when I was younger) and they provided a large visual reminder of how much money you can lose trying to build new nuclear power plants.
Anyways, if we actually want to expand nuclear power, then it's not simply a matter of technology or safety. It has to make sense economically, or no one in the private sector will bother.
I could've sworn I read something after the earthquake about soil samples showing that there had been massive tsunamis that inundated in the area previously. Either way, they call it the ring of fire for a reason, and extra steps should've been taken, but this isn't a thread about TEPCO being careless so I'll shut up now.
maybe i'm streaming terrible dj right now if i am its here
On the one hand, it kinda survived the quake and tsunami. Pretty good.
On the other hand, unforseen disasters can happen anywhere. Japan gets earthquakes all the time, and Georgia doesn't. But this tsunami couldn't have been expected, and so if you build a plant in Georgia or wherever, it has to be able to safe not just from likely threats, but incredibly unlikely ones too.
How did we convince congress that it was safe? ADM Rickover drank a glass of coolant during the hearing (chemically treated water that more then likely just gave him the runs for a couple of days).
(Was enrolled in Naval Nuclear Power before I went conventional electrician.)
Natural disasters aren't predictable in terms of when they strike, but they're fairly predictable in terms of what kind will strikes. In California, earthquake proofing structures is a big fucking deal. Texas? Not so much. But we worry about tornadoes here instead.
A danger foreseen is half-avoided. Tsunamis are an expected danger in Japan. Judging the average severity is one thing. But the point is, you can always prepare for the worst. There's no excuse.
Areas around the Fukishima plant won't be safe for humans for a long, long time. 'Less environmental damage' is pretty debatable, and it should come as little surprise that the mostly evacuated plant saw fewer casualties that an exploding refinery.
The old designs as safe so long as nothing goes wrong with the cooling mechanisms. Do I trust private entities to safeguard their safety mechanisms at great expense? Not really.
The newer designs are fine, but the old ones are rightly condemned. I've said it before - the hazards presented by uranium & plutonium aren't a joke. Comparing uranium or plutonium with coal is stupid; Slotin was killed by a sphere of plutonium about the size of a baseball (and it would've killed a room full of other scientists if he hadn't prevented it from going critical) in a controlled environment, because a screwdriver slipped in his hand. How many times has lump of coal that size directly killed someone / threatened to kill an entire room full of people?
If they're gonna put the work in to research Thorium from scratch, more than accidentally causing new disasters I'd imagine the new careful approach will make progress on it far slower and way more expensive nowadays. It's gonna be an extremely hard sell to people who're already terrified of nuclear power. So maybe the way to go is saturate the media ala Kony 2012 with a message of this potentially safer and more efficient process before actually starting the research?
It should, but unless there are absolutely no negative outcomes everyone will always blame it because it's scary
Its not that uranium and plutonium is safe enough to give to toddlers, its just that when compared to the "safe" power production alternatives it kills less people. If we stop dealing in absolute numbers but instead look at deaths per kWh it gets even sillier.
And we'll have that problem with newer reactors as well.
In fact we'll have that problem every time a company tries to build & run something as cheaply as possible and can lobby the government to get the regulations they want. Get your plant classified as critical national infrastructure and you can probably have any safety concerns lost in a government filing cabinet somewhere as well.
On the idea that China is taking steps toward furthering nuclear power tech, can we rely on them to act so eager and have the same safety standards as their coal mining to allow the USA to overtake them despite not being first? People aren't going to give a shit about nuclear tech if it's super dangerous.