tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.comments2024-02-16T17:52:44.944-06:00The Nuclear Green RevolutionCharles Bartonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01125297013064527425noreply@blogger.comBlogger4801125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-89305113678640638722016-02-19T06:16:34.041-06:002016-02-19T06:16:34.041-06:00The first link needs to be fixed.The first link needs to be fixed.Engineer-Poethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06420685176098522332noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-29636160506563035542016-02-19T05:48:52.443-06:002016-02-19T05:48:52.443-06:00FYI, the link to the Teller paper is dead.
The Wa...FYI, the link to the Teller paper is dead.<br /><br />The Wayback Machine has a copy:<br /><br />https://web.archive.org/web/20091028141957/http://geocities.com/rmoir2003/moir_teller.pdfEngineer-Poethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06420685176098522332noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-282295765046208442016-02-09T11:44:11.550-06:002016-02-09T11:44:11.550-06:00I think you are both pretty spot on with your stat...I think you are both pretty spot on with your statements. Engineer-Poet is describing how a certain sector of corporate power has used money and the democratic party in order to capture and control the traditional green movement. While Charles is likely spot on with his analysis of why Bernie has taken the stance that he has on nuclear. <br /><br />I seriously doubt that Bernie has ever given much consideration to the nuance of the energy issue. As a politician, he has to be vaguely knowledgeable on such a wide range of issues that he couldn't possibly be well informed on all of them. Given that his focus in the past has been on gender politics, race politics, and economic inequality, I don't think it is a far stretch to say that he relied on the opinion of someone he trusted to guide his statements on energy issues. He happened to pick the wrong person to trust, and he has been within that sphere of influence for so long that those opinions have been internalized as truth. <br /><br />We are all guilty of that in some field or another. None of us have the time anymore to be well informed in everything, and we must ultimately pick and choose which areas of discourse that we will defer judgement to someone else that we admire.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-84295144438080378192016-02-09T05:26:05.540-06:002016-02-09T05:26:05.540-06:00"Does Bernie serve the agenda when he vows to..."<i>Does Bernie serve the agenda when he vows to shut down nuclear power</i>"<br /><br />Yes. Every anti-nuclear sentiment serves the fossil-fuel interests.Engineer-Poethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06420685176098522332noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-89484809158693780572016-02-09T05:15:46.046-06:002016-02-09T05:15:46.046-06:00Does Bernie serve the agenda when he vows to shut ...Does Bernie serve the agenda when he vows to shut down nuclear power, offer free higher education and single payer health care, paid for no doubt by new taxes on the wealthy, and Wall Street. He does not have the votes in Congress and might as well promise free picknics on the Moon.Charles Bartonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01125297013064527425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-40998660175394410052016-02-08T21:22:34.449-06:002016-02-08T21:22:34.449-06:00I suspect it has to do with human psychology. The...I suspect it has to do with human psychology. There is an urge to grasp on to a group, a very real strength in numbers kind of thing. This means that fence sitting leaves you alone and vulnerable. This leads people to either embrace science (and all it's trappings) or religion (and all it's ignorance). There seems to be a real human tendency to shy away from the middle ground which is admitted ignorance and humility, ironically not bad things in either proper scientific theory or proper religion belief. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-61232187722045381732016-02-07T11:04:59.566-06:002016-02-07T11:04:59.566-06:00"So what is going on? Why do Republicans jump..."<i>So what is going on? Why do Republicans jump the tracks on Global warming and Democrats jump the tracks on mitigation?</i>"<br /><br />Because the false dichotomy serves the money interests which finance both so-called parties. You can see the total hatred directed at anyone not serving this uni-party: Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, the Tea Party, etc. The Dems pretty much vote in lockstep with the agenda.Engineer-Poethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06420685176098522332noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-80802754375241642052016-02-06T12:36:37.688-06:002016-02-06T12:36:37.688-06:00De Rerum Novarum was in fact a thinly veiled attac...De Rerum Novarum was in fact a thinly veiled attack on Georgism, which was was more popular and more feared by the wealthy elite than Socialism.<br /><br />Taxing earned income/capital is the best defensive smokescreen the wealthy elite could and still do wish for.<br /><br />Here you can read Henry George's letter to the Pope in response.<br /><br /> http://www.henrygeorgefoundation.org/the-science-of-economics/letter-to-pope-leo-xiii.html<br /><br />Modern economists carried on where the Pope left precisely by separating economics and ethics, which the Classical Economists before then saw as two sides of the same coin.<br /><br />This has been a disaster for the human race, perpetuating the false dichotomy between Left and Right, which George and other economists of his time proved could be reconciled.<br /><br />Trouble was, the privileged elite, like the Catholic Church, stood to lose from such a reconciliation, and would never allow that to happen. They still don't.benjhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11544297406005346095noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-77470164700951780772016-02-06T06:48:02.179-06:002016-02-06T06:48:02.179-06:00@Paul, thank you for your offer of assistance. I ...@Paul, thank you for your offer of assistance. I may employ my in house editor, my wife Becky. to do some editing.<br /><br />@Denpa, I am in agreement with your overall assessment, but may have slightly different views on the background of the Green anti-science ideology, which I will repost.Charles Bartonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01125297013064527425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-57692571388892212052016-02-05T19:11:25.439-06:002016-02-05T19:11:25.439-06:00(Just as a warning, as environmentally concerned p...(Just as a warning, as environmentally concerned person in my late twenties, my opinion below is very broad sweeping and simplistic view of the past ideologies. However, I think it does elucidate some of underlying motives of the actors that I am describing.) <br /><br />I think we need to remember that Bernie, along with many other prominent older greens, began their intellectual lives within the ideology of the 1960s hippie movement. Well they may have flown under a banner whose pretense was of saving the environment, the movement was fundamentally a reactionary movement against sudden technological change. The movement was always fundamentally anti-science and anti-modernity. Just as the religious right has been opposed to the core tenets of modernity because they see it as undermining the moral fabric of the country. Neither group rarely states it as such, but that is their core beliefs. <br /><br />So I think Bernie is being incredibly consistent to the ideology from which he springs. That old green vanguard doesn't care about saving the environment, they care about returning the world to a highly romanticized pre-industrial period of history when our relationship with nature was drastically different. They want to return back to an era where (electrified)horse-drawn carriages are the main form of transport, there is no need for power lines because everyone produces enough energy on their roofs, we all have an immediate connection to nature through the produce we grow in our yards, and everyone participates in labor that is harmonious with the workings of mother Gaia. The fact that this vision is completely unattainable through solar and wind is irrelevant to their ambitions, because they believe that if the ideology feels right and good, then that is all that matters. <br /><br />So as I see it, there is a group within the green movement that is just as religious in there beliefs about the way the world 'should' be as the religious right. Coming from that perspective, then, Bernie's rigid stance on nuclear is just as understandable as the religious right's rigid stance on evolution. <b> Being progressive doesn't make one immune to getting caught up in emotionally-based ideologies. </b> By which I mean, ideologies that build their foundations upon emotional pleas to how things 'should be' and not upon the evidence from how things actually turn out.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-871848998709729082016-02-05T16:57:07.022-06:002016-02-05T16:57:07.022-06:00Charles, Nicely written and needed. I'd be hap...Charles, Nicely written and needed. I'd be happy to fix your typing errors in this piece. --Paul WickUnknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06129545515439026434noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-26998992219120571672016-02-04T11:44:18.670-06:002016-02-04T11:44:18.670-06:00Excellent summary! As always, I immensely enjoy yo...Excellent summary! As always, I immensely enjoy your posts.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-78368548326057119482016-01-31T08:55:59.505-06:002016-01-31T08:55:59.505-06:00"If we build plutonium producing reactors in ..."If we build plutonium producing reactors in the United States, it is inevitable that they will spread to other countries, and equally inevitable that plutonium will fall into the hands of rogue states and terrorists. Inevitably then bad people will acquire nuclear weapons. Conclusion, the way to prevent nuclear proliferation is to not build reactors in the United States. "<br /><br />But that's exactly what you say happened in 1960s! US built nuclear power installations, and other countries got hold of it. BTW I agree with your argument - this is a political issue, not a technical one.Castlemainhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10179095575182056683noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-90818464800696462642016-01-28T03:00:45.631-06:002016-01-28T03:00:45.631-06:00I seem to have slipped off Gordon McDowell's e...I seem to have slipped off Gordon McDowell's email list, so thanks Charles for bringing this video from the master communicator to my attention.John in the Lothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03859716926230240245noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-5769502984689974922016-01-13T10:30:15.412-06:002016-01-13T10:30:15.412-06:00Charles - thanks for posting and including links t...Charles - thanks for posting and including links to these criticisms of Jacobson. Please keep posting!Andrew Jaremkohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07781060305332803073noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-78809634083591877882016-01-05T20:31:27.010-06:002016-01-05T20:31:27.010-06:00The situation for FBR fuel isn't as bad as you...The situation for FBR fuel isn't as bad as you paint it. Both Pu-240 and Pu-242 have fast-neutron fission cross-sections larger than U-235 at energies above 1 MeV (see <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/18811248.1990.9731269" rel="nofollow">tables 5 and 6 on page 13</a>). For Pu-240, this ratio goes as high as 1.4. In short, it takes less reactor-grade plutonium to fuel a fast-spectrum machine than U-235.<br /><br />Starting an FBR with a charge of MEU seems quite feasible. Fermi 1 used a core enriched to 26.5%, and it was on the small side at 200 MW(t); the S-PRISM would be around 650 MW(t) and probably get by with substantially lower enrichment. It would require on the order of 5-6x as much natural uranium to make a ton of FBR fuel vs. LWR fuel, but the beauty is that this would only be required <i>once</i>; after the reactor is started it generates more fissiles than it consumes. Since a LWR changes out about 40% of its fuel every 18 months (45-month turnover), my guesstimate is that the lifetime requirement of enriched uranium for an FBR would require natural uranium equivalent to about 20-25 years of demand for a LWR of similar power. This suggests that a 25-year buildout would have demand similar to an operating LWR fleet of the final size, after which uranium demand would be zero for many years due to the large inventory of depleted uranium created during the buildout and the previous operation of LWRs.<br /><br />A growing count of FBRs would also provide a destination for reprocessed Pu from the existing LWR fleet, and get rid of all of the dry casks now dotting current and past plant sites.Engineer-Poethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06420685176098522332noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-85802973532060875222016-01-03T07:24:16.338-06:002016-01-03T07:24:16.338-06:00Martin, first beryllium is not the only toxic mate...Martin, first beryllium is not the only toxic material in the ThorCon core salts. Safety is to be assured by avoiding direct human contact with core salts. MSR management requires robotic core salt management technology, so that workers never even get close to core salts duriing or after reactor operation. <br /><br />MSR safety requires that environmental safety hazards be avoided. This would include the avoidance of flooding as well as problems associated with the underground water table. It would be most unwise to howse a reactor beneath the shore in Tsunami prone Indonesia. It would be equally unwise to locate a reactor in the Missippi river floodplane, or underground, next to an East Tennessee lakeshore in limestone . Finally the core salt problems of the ORNL MSRE illustrate the hazards of politicians making technical decisions. The MSRE shutdown decision, together with the decision to not perform a decomissioning was mad by the Nixon era AEC. Had the salt been cleaned at shutdown, subsequent problems would have been avoided at a relatively low cost. Instead, the salt was simply put into storage, and problems began to fester. Thus like other reactors, attention always must be given to management of the shutdown, and this attention must begin during the design phase.Charles Bartonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01125297013064527425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-32490714975159601662016-01-02T20:37:29.790-06:002016-01-02T20:37:29.790-06:00Sorry to come in at a tangent here but I've lo...Sorry to come in at a tangent here but I've looked at the ThorCon design for a prototype plant and I have a few questions around safety. The plant is below ground level and ground level is at sea level. As such I worry about the risk of flooding. How does the design deal with the plant being flooded? Cleaning up after a flood would be expensive. Also the approach made by the ship for swapping cans appears to be face on to the plant. Why risk a collision? To me the entire plant is somewhat like a dry dock with a ship approaching the closed gate and a collision invites a flooding event. Why not have the ship approach along side rather than head on? I know these are rather basic questions but they have been bugging me for a week now. TerjePhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01761760117648814096noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-28496857812567810912016-01-02T14:59:10.093-06:002016-01-02T14:59:10.093-06:00Each new technology has its own safety profile. Th...Each new technology has its own safety profile. This article tells the good side of the MSR safety profile. We will need a few hundred reactor years to really find the bad side. But let me propose a few possible safety problems.<br /><br />Danger to workers. This is not mentioned above. What if plant accidents harm workers? I'm sure the plant would be shut down and probably all the rest of the plants too. The harm might come from the non-breathable cover gas or a rare beryllium allergy or severe burns from high temperature equipment.<br /><br />Plant breaks and can not be repaired safely. The processing plant is really hot and really radioactive and is a no go zone. This process uses hydrogen (explosions), fluorine gas (poison), pumps to break, and pipes to clog. How could anything go wrong?<br /><br />The original MSRE is not yet decommissioned. Conclusion: its really safe to run but too unsafe to cleanup. Strange.martin burklenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-30151634237287321842015-12-21T13:36:52.687-06:002015-12-21T13:36:52.687-06:00I have frequrntly called attention to the load fol...I have frequrntly called attention to the load following potential of MSRs. I regrd Load following, backup, and peak power generation as potentually the most important potential for Terrestrial's IMSRs.Charles Bartonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01125297013064527425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-6450449291347291742015-12-21T12:49:33.214-06:002015-12-21T12:49:33.214-06:00Thanks for posting this Charles. I watched it agai...Thanks for posting this Charles. I watched it again and saw it in a whole different way because of all the things that have been going on in the world, especially with South Australia's current Royal Commission and Ben Heard's efforts at DecarbonizeSA. IMO Simon's analysis is right on target.<br /><br />I think, though, that system designers need to ask their engineers to create load following generators that can be driven by flexible heat sources. Natural gas turbines can ramp moderately quickly. Andrew Dodson did a presentation of his modeling of load following MSRs at TEAC 5 in 2013. In his model, the reactor stabilized itself in about 15 seconds following a load transient, and with a close to critically damped temperature profile. I think that's what both engineers and regulators like to see.<br /><br />If I understand correctly, nuclear power is currently bsaseload (as Simon says in the presentation) because it was deliberately designed that way, and because solid fueled reactors have to deal with the delayed production of xenon-135 from the fission products tellurium-135 and iodine-135. It's the delayed production of Xe-135 from I-135 that makes NPP operators say that their main job is 'fighting xenon' (a comment I saw on Brave New Climate.) According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_iodine#Iodine-135), 'The process of buildup of xenon-135 from an accumulated iodine-135 can temporarily preclude a shut-down reactor from restarting. This is known as xenon-poisoning or "falling into an iodine pit".'<br /><br />The MSR is a much more flexible and stable heat source. Let's give the engineers better design objectives!Andrew Jaremkohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07781060305332803073noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-64564943377233660562015-12-18T12:02:12.330-06:002015-12-18T12:02:12.330-06:00Thanks Charles for this post. Your external links ...Thanks Charles for this post. Your external links are leading me to very interesting, thoughtful and thought provoking posts. I'll be looking at more of A Chemist in Langley's (https://achemistinlangley.wordpress.com/) posts, in particular.Andrew Jaremkohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07781060305332803073noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-77402637318913130472015-12-18T08:25:16.549-06:002015-12-18T08:25:16.549-06:00Thanks for bringing up the background to these two...Thanks for bringing up the background to these two anti-nuclear sources. I read the article that you quote from, written by Naomi Oreskes, in the UK Guardian on-line newspaper and checked some of her sources including Jacobson's renewables "100% state by state roadmap". That didn't seem to have any serious numbers behind it, but maybe I never found them. Unusually all of the comments on her article that I read were against her position. Perhaps the shoot from the hip brigade didn't read it.<br />Unfortunately her position is taken on faith, and quoted as dogma, by many greens that I know here in France. They are not open to debating the issue of the value of nuclear power in reducing CO2 emissions, or the relative safety risks in utilizing different energy sources. It is after all a subject that requires an unbiased treatment of statistics and projections along with an understanding of the technologies involved. That isn't possible for most people so they just look at headlines and summaries.<br />They never address the issues that confront renewables such as the lack of a viable grid scale energy storage technology, securing the base load with backup generation and the stability of electrical supplies. They also seem to all think that ever greater energy conservation in the West will provide for the growing energy needs of rapidly developing countries like China, India and Brazil.<br />Anybody bothering to read your blog is probably already a convinced pro-nuclear campaigner on these issues but if they are in a position to convince others I recommend Mark Lynas's book "Nuclear 2.0". It's short, well argued and he has actually done some arithmetic to support his case!John in the Lothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03859716926230240245noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-49948754769938767322015-12-15T12:45:40.735-06:002015-12-15T12:45:40.735-06:00MSR reactors can be designed optimized for safety ...MSR reactors can be designed optimized for safety - making them simple and safe designs with low excess reactivity, low fission product inventory, and small source term. These, in turn, make a criticality accident unlikely and reduce the severity of a loss of coolant to where they are no longer severe accidents. A melt down is not an accident for a reactor that uses molten salt coolant-fuel. The molten salts are stable, non-reactive and efficient heat transfer media that operate at high temperatures and at low pressures and are highly compatible with selected structural materials. The Moir-Teller underground mounting concept mentioned by Charles Barton in this blog is an excellent one and improves both the safety and security of new MSR reactors. Immersing MSRs in water, essentially undersea mounting as sometimes advocated by Kirk Sorensen, also has many safety advantages in surrounding the reactor with enough water to form an infinite heat sink, helping to mitigate decay heat problems in the event of major accidents. All these features reduce the chance of serious nuclear accidents.<br />I believe that Dr. Gat's proposals still stand up well after the passage of time and are an excellent guide for MSR development. I think it is worthwhile for all Thorium MSR designers to look at how their design might be transformed by optimizing all aspects of the design for safety.<br />Molten salt reactors - safety options galore<br />by Dr. Uri Gat and H.L. Dodds<br />http://www.osti.gov/scitech/biblio/469120<br />THE ULTIMATE SAFE (U.S.) REACTOR<br />By Uri Gat and Sylvia R. Daugherty<br />http://www.iaea.org/inis/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/17/045/17045126.pdf<br />The Ultimate Safe (U.S.) Molten Salt Reactor is a reactor that eliminates the traditional safety concerns of nuclear fission reactors. The U.S. MSR reactor has an insignificant source term and no reasonable criticality accident.<br />-------------<br />Some additional areas for further effort and research to make MSRs and LFTRs “ultimately safe”.<br /><br />Many molten salt advocates tend to use the very small 8 MWt ORNL MSRE when thinking about MSR safety systems. Commercial MSRs of larger size may not be able to use safety approaches that worked splendidly with the small MSRE experimental reactor. <br />One area of concern is the emergency drain tank.<br />A larger commercial MSR will require a larger and more elaborate and well engineered drain tank system to be safe. ORNL put effort into engineering a larger commercial scale drain tank in the following technical report.<br /><br />Drain Tank – Engineering Details<br />ORNL TM-3832 Molten Salt Demonstration Reactor<br />http://www.energyfromthorium.com/pdf/ORNL-TM-3832.pdf<br /><br />The Thorcon MSR does not real time reprocess molten salts to remove fission products and neutron poisons. This delays, but does not eliminate, problems that can come from the ultimate processing of used MSR molten salt later at a centralized facility. Whatever centralized facility designed to recover valuable assets found in used salt must employ chemistry that minimizes loss of radiation to the environment. The ultimate satisfaction of the public with MSR technology may rest on how effective the chemical processing is at the centralized used salt recovery facility and how small the waste streams are and how little the radiation released to the environment is from Thorcon MSR used salt processing.<br />Robert Steinhaushttp://www.yottawatts.netnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7597656451205429515.post-60464245088182451112015-12-14T18:16:55.271-06:002015-12-14T18:16:55.271-06:00Martin, Interesting questions. I will attempt to ...Martin, Interesting questions. I will attempt to respond to them quickly, if some one from ThorCon does not beat me to the punch.Charles Bartonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01125297013064527425noreply@blogger.com