Do you know what "India" refers to?

10/3/2011 3:32:20 PM

Hmm, are you referring to the Republic of India, the worlds 2nd most populous country and the worlds largest democracy by population?

That's what I got from your statement.

10/4/2011 1:18:42 PM

I wonder what people think of the small modular reactors being designed now. I'm really interested to see where that goes.

10/6/2011 7:31:46 PM

We just bought a big stake in a Small Modular Reactor company. Glad they finalllyy announced it. I hope it pays off for us.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204774604576627360588957324.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

10/13/2011 9:37:43 AM

^I am really in favor of these designs myself. Instead of having one massive reactor that generates so much heat it needs an active system to cool it, and with the larger costs and footprint brings out the NIMBY oppositions. In addition your efficiency drops greatly when you have to transport that power so far away from the generation source.

I would prefer to see lots of smaller and lower powered reactors spread across the country. This would give you a more stable and reliable grid, not to mention the passive cooling systems inherent in smaller and lower temperature reactors makes your power generation safer than PWR and BWR. Deploying this system would then allow power companies to finally decommission many of these older reactors. I can see no downside to this. Supplement this with wind/solar/geothermal/hydroelectric, and it is the fastest way to get our power generation system to a low/zero C02 emission system.

10/13/2011 10:01:18 AM

There is going to be just as much NIMBY for a small reactor as there is for a big reactor. As such, unless they cluster a bunch of reactors together to share the cost of the court battles, small reactors will be even less cost effective than their big cousins.

10/13/2011 10:15:16 AM

hard to say. There will probably be just as much NIMBY but the construction and maintenance costs are projected to be HUGELY smaller on these modular reactor clusters compared to current, larger units (where construction costs are a very large percentage of the total designed an installed cost). I really don't know how it will all go down cost-wise and how close they will get to matching their proposed substantially smaller costs. We won't know until they try and go through with actually doing a full commercial build of one of these for the first time.

10/13/2011 10:23:47 AM

so Flour jumped into NuScale...

NuScale is particularly exciting. I have a variety of mix feelings regarding them. The unit size is one of the key parameters. That, and the abundant use of large swimming pools (about the most obvious thing in the world for light water reactors). I'm a fan.

It's still confusing exactly what they're committing themselves by trying to take the natural circulation loop design space. In one sense, it's more risky since they have a lot more economy of scale to work against, but at the same time... it's cheaper to build demonstration units. Those demonstration units could kill off competitors.

Light water reactor plants should be like a big water park. No, srsly, it would prevent accidents like Fukushima.

10/13/2011 12:13:26 PM

Yea, I was in the presentation last week that NuScale gave the Fluor engineering team. It was definitely interesting to see. There is a long road ahead to an NRC-approved DCD (partially because so much of what they are doing is very different than the large reactors the DCD process is geared toward) but it will be something cool to be a part of if it really succeeds.

10/13/2011 12:21:15 PM

Quote :

"so much of what they are doing is very different than the large reactors the DCD process is geared toward"

yeah, well this is what industry keeps saying over and over again.

The NRC, at least, has shifted it's rhetoric in response to the popular support for small reactors. They now talk about the integral system reactors as being one of its next major priorities. This doesn't necessarily mean the industry's concerns are addressed, but those license applications are certainly being taken seriously. What industry really wants anyway isn't just the license evaluation, they want favorable regulating decisions. It's still possible for the NRC to make decisions that will rule out many possibilities. Staffing requirements, for one, are very major. It's not just that the process is targeted toward large reactors, but the rules are built for large reactors.

But even if the NRC is willing to do something, that doesn't mean that it'll get done. They also anticipate some budget squeezes, which is bizarre and confusing to me since they're a fee based regulator. Anyway, they've built a wall between the fee collection and the funding. Congress decides how much money the NRC gets, and they may be resource-constrained soon because... i mean, this is congress we're talking about. They've openly said that in the case that they don't have sufficient resources, the new designs get tabled b/c they're concerned more about the safety of operating plants.

If things get bad enough, I'm sure you'll see companies like NuScale do the same thing Terrapower did and start talking about going abroad b/c they just can't get it done here. That awkward situation is something that their partners are going to need to keep in mind.

[Edited on October 13, 2011 at 12:57 PM. Reason : ]

10/13/2011 12:55:41 PM

Quote :

"In addition your efficiency drops greatly when you have to transport that power so far away from the generation source. "

Quote :

"I would prefer to see lots of smaller and lower powered reactors spread across the country. This would give you a more stable and reliable grid"

your efficiency and reliability is actually going to be worse with localized distributed nuke plants. Utilities gain reliability from their major generation plants by spending tens of millions of dollars installing redundancy inside their substations and switchyards at the plant, connecting these systems to their EHV transmission grids (345-765kV in this country), and limiting the allowable connection points to these major EHV transmission corridors so that there is less chance of equipment failure. They're not going to allow a little 45MW unit to connect to their EHV network, and it will be hard to justify the cost of multiple redundant HV transmission feeds to a generation unit so small. Likewise, the losses are going to be the same or higher on a generation plant connected to lower voltage transmission lines, since the losses are roughly proportional to the current^2 on the line.

It's not like we build nuke plants hundreds of miles from load centers like some coal plants are; Robinson, Catawba, Oconee, Shearin Harris, Brunswick, McGuire, Surry, North Anna, and Calvert Cliffs are the closest plants to us, and all of those plants with the exception of Calvert Cliffs are located within 20 miles of their major load center. Calvert Cliffs is a bit of an anomaly due to the layout of DC, Annapolis, and the Eastern Shore, but it's still within 40 miles of it's load center is is being tied into additional 500kV grids with the MAPP and TRAIL projects (eventually).

The only advantage I see of small-scale nuke plants is that you could install them in an urban area and use them as cogeneration units for process steam and district heating. Unfortunately, the NIMBYism over the proposal of using nuclear derived steam to heat residential space and office buildings would be insane. It's a shame too, because we could get the efficiency of a nuke plant from 40% to 50% by using supercritical steam cycle design and then drive it from 50% to 90% efficiency by using the waste heat for district heating and process steam.

these units make sense for countries like India and China, where EHV grid reliability is a joke and the local community will be glad to have hot water and heat in their homes provided by a cogeneration nuclear setup.

[Edited on October 13, 2011 at 1:37 PM. Reason : I don't know the ramifications of refueling 20 times as many reactors, but it can't be any simpler]

10/13/2011 1:35:53 PM

From their studies, they believe refueling these smaller reactors is actually a lot easier because of the way they are built. It also allows them to avoid down-time (outside of certain NRC required downtime) relating to refueling because they are on a rotational re-fueling schedule which keeps the plant always at full capacity.

And actually the idea behind these modular reactors might be a little misleading. While some might ideally be utilized in more localized areas, individual 45MW reactors is not the main use or the immediate impact NuScale expects to have. Their main use and intent they see in the US, and how they are proceeding in presenting it to the NRC, would actually be in clusters. A site would still be built to have, say, 540MW of capacity utilizing 13 (utilizing N+1 philosophy) of these reactors all in the same reactor building. A big part of their main approach is meant not to create a 45MW nuclear plant, but to create large plants utilizing an entirely new approach that is easier to build and has looked at the safety, refueling, and maintenance in an entirely new way.

[Edited on October 13, 2011 at 2:07 PM. Reason : ]

10/13/2011 2:01:18 PM

that actually makes a lot more sense. you could keep the majority of the units up and running for base load while units are taken off individually for maintenance and refueling.

10/13/2011 3:10:09 PM

yea the scenario they presented us was 12 reactors with 1 spare. Depending on how the plant intended to use the spare and once they had been in operation for a year or two, they would be on refueling cycles that either left 11 in operation at all time (with 1 being in refueling mode every other month and 1 spare) or cycled such that there were always 12 running with 1 being refueled. I liked the idea behind that as well as the way they handled the cooling and extremely minimized the chance of a loss of cooling accident.

10/13/2011 3:15:42 PM

bump by request

1/19/2012 1:53:23 AM

Nuclear Aftershocks

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/nuclear-aftershocks/

1/19/2012 1:58:04 AM

surprise, surprise, there's a million problems with that report. environmental nutjobs at their best
http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2012/01/new-report-falsely-claims-nuclear.html

1/26/2012 8:52:21 AM

surprised that our resident troll-douche hasn't hyped up the recent tritium release at an illinois plant

2/1/2012 7:01:16 PM

I am aware.

2/1/2012 7:02:31 PM

Progress Energy botches repair of aging nuclear plant so badly it will likely be abandoned.

http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/03/01/1894613/nuclear-fiasco-vexes-progress.html

Today's energy utilities are incapable of managing these antiques. Regulators are nothing more than an industry trade group. Shut them all down before it's too late.

3/1/2012 12:30:35 PM

fuck, what now from the guy who doesn't understand risk analysis? I hope you didn't get in a car today



the irony here is that stupid fucks like you weren't so anti-nuclear, we could be decommissioning this dinosaur instead of trying to to make it last another 30 years. forest? what forest? there's so many damned trees I can't see it!

[Edited on March 1, 2012 at 12:41 PM. Reason : ]

3/1/2012 12:38:14 PM

Quote :

"fuck, what now from the guy who doesn't understand risk analysis? I hope you didn't get in a car today the irony here is that stupid fucks like you weren't so anti-nuclear, we could be decommissioning this dinosaur instead of trying to to make it last another 30 years. forest? what forest? there's so many damned trees I can't see it! "

I am in 100% and complete agreement with this post. Note the date and time.

3/1/2012 1:03:30 PM

I'd much rather store the radioactive by-products of energy production under a mountain or desert than in my lungs. Even shabby nuclear beats any fossil fuel hands down. Still, uranium mining pratcies have a pretty sordid history, I'm more concerned about that end than the waste-storage.

3/1/2012 1:16:43 PM

^coal produces a radioactive by-product?

liberals teach us something new about energy every day. ^


ra·di·a·tion/?rade'aSH?n/
Noun:
The emission of energy as electromagnetic waves or as moving subatomic particles.

3/1/2012 2:00:49 PM

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste

http://www.epa.gov/radiation/tenorm/coalandcoalash.html

http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1997/fs163-97/FS-163-97.html

http://www.gdr.org/radiationincoal.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation#Human-caused_background_radiation

Hint: I know it's really exciting to think you're making a point and jump on the keyboard, but 10 seconds of googling can prevent embarrassing yourself like this again in the future..

[Edited on March 1, 2012 at 2:03 PM. Reason : .]

3/1/2012 2:01:27 PM

Oh snap.

3/1/2012 2:04:36 PM

your underlying goal of diminishing nuclear energy even by defending it and attacking coal isn't going to work

also if you burn specific coal with uranium in it no shit it's going to be radioactive. my god. you take 1 article and apply it to an entire industry.

lol

3/1/2012 2:06:00 PM

You clearly didn't read the article so I'll give you a second shot, feel free to also check out the other 4 I edited in.

[Edited on March 1, 2012 at 2:07 PM. Reason : .]

3/1/2012 2:06:34 PM

per your fucking article...

Quote :

". They occur in such trace amounts in natural, or "whole," coal that they aren't a problem. But when coal is burned into fly ash, uranium and thorium are concentrated at up to 10 times their original levels."

oops problem solved.

LOL OMG CHERNOBYL'S EVERYWHERE

[Edited on March 1, 2012 at 2:09 PM. Reason : .]

3/1/2012 2:07:15 PM

stop radiating all over me, prick_bryan.

by the way, you still haven't answered my questions:
1) when did you start at state and what class are you talking about
2) what make/model/year car do you drive?

3/1/2012 2:07:23 PM

1) i started in 200x and finished in 200x
2) my current mpg's is around 40mpgs when in gas mode, and fucking infinity in electric mode


suck on that bitch

3/1/2012 2:10:11 PM

I'm sorry you find it so hard to believe that radioactive elements emit radiation

3/1/2012 2:10:36 PM

200x, eh? care to fill in the x? care to say what class you are talking about?

3/1/2012 2:11:20 PM

hey i shoved some uranium up my ass too and then farted

does that make me a douchebag liberal cunt like you now?



[Edited on March 1, 2012 at 2:15 PM. Reason : lol you're saying coal with uranium in it will emit radiation. wow huge revelation there.]

3/1/2012 2:11:36 PM

the sad thing is that you don't realize how wrong you are at this point. It is established fact that coal plants emit radiation out the stack. Take a geiger counter to any coal plant's stack and you'll get readings well above background. even if you were magically able to remove all of the traditionally thought of radioactive elements from the coal stream, it'd still be radioactive, because it's got so much carbon. Ever heard of radio-carbon dating? what the fuck do you think the "radio" stands for?

3/1/2012 2:15:42 PM

its sad nobody can see his anti nuclear agenda

and the lefts hatred of fission in general

it's all part of that attack on nuclear

[Edited on March 1, 2012 at 2:16 PM. Reason : ,]

3/1/2012 2:16:13 PM

I'll note that before you edited, you made a snide comment about cell towers. to which, I will respond

dude, don't move the fucking goalposts, you ignorant slut. you are the one who said the following:

Quote :

"coal produces a radioactive by-product?"

you opened your mouth and showed your MASSIVE ignorance on this issue. coal certainly doesn't have the same potential for radioactive releases, but it has them, every fucking day. which was Str8Foolish's point. and one that you claimed isn't happening and can't happen

[Edited on March 1, 2012 at 2:19 PM. Reason : ]

3/1/2012 2:17:31 PM

but it doesnt' matter. this is a retarded fucking point. coal will run out in <100 years. uranium will run out in 1000 years.

both pollute.

one produces shit tons more than the other

we are building new nuclear plants. we've shut down 100 coal plants in the past few years.


pwnt. /thread.

3/1/2012 2:17:56 PM

your entire point is 100% dead. coal power plants and their radiation are done. it's over. the age of coal is done.

str8foolish and several other idiots are pretending they support nuclear. it's pure shit. their xen god masters won't allow this believe in their church of pure energy soon enough. and str8foolish will have already bought into that

nuclear will continue to grow with solar and wind and tidal.

there is nothing further to discuss.

[Edited on March 1, 2012 at 2:20 PM. Reason : ,]

3/1/2012 2:19:53 PM

no, my point that you are a fool isn't dead. you said coal wasn't radioactive. now you are trying to divert the issue and talk about shit. ADMIT YOU TALKED OUT YOUR FUCKING ASS.

also, what class did we have together? who was the teacher, and what year?

[Edited on March 1, 2012 at 2:29 PM. Reason : a]

3/1/2012 2:21:36 PM

every fucking black body in the universe emits radiation you fucking moron


and when you jam plutonium and uranium up its ass it's going to be even more radioactive you stupid dipshit.

you need to learn to troll harder.

3/1/2012 2:37:38 PM

going to fucking mcdonalds and getting a fucking big mac is radioactive

it just so happens that when you make it with a uranium patty instead of a beef patty it tends to be a little more radioactive you fucking troll

3/1/2012 2:38:46 PM

and yet, you initially declared that you were shocked, astounded, I tell you, that coal was radioactive. btw, I was not aware that we were now looking at coal as a "black body radiation." Is that because it's black, now? what was your degree in, again?


or, do you think it is exceptionally easy to ensure that zero traces of uranium get into the coal seam to begin with? is it your contention that the people take coal, then shove some uranium in it, just for shits and giggles, and then burn it?


also, there's this thing called an "edit post" button. use it

[Edited on March 1, 2012 at 2:42 PM. Reason : ]

3/1/2012 2:40:55 PM

0.2/10 trolling effort

it's almost predictable at this point what you are going to say

i'll be back in about 45 seconds with an exact AI algorithm of your pathetic brain cells.


[Edited on March 1, 2012 at 2:43 PM. Reason : ,]

3/1/2012 2:42:17 PM

Quote :

"and yet, you initially declared that you were shocked, astounded, I tell you, that coal was radioactive. btw, I was not aware that we were now looking at coal as a "black body radiation." Is that because it's black, now? what was your degree in, again? or, do you think it is exceptionally easy to ensure that zero traces of uranium get into the coal seam to begin with? is it your contention that the people take coal, then shove some uranium in it, just for shits and giggles, and then burn it?"

so predictable, yet you didn't know that coal was radioactive.

[Edited on March 1, 2012 at 2:43 PM. Reason : ]

3/1/2012 2:43:09 PM

Quote :

"But when coal is burned into fly ash, uranium and thorium are concentrated at up to 10 times their original levels."

10 times their original levels

3/1/2012 2:44:16 PM

eating 6 bananas is the same radiation as getting an xray too dumbass

OH MY GOD GUYS EARTH HAS RADIATION EVERYWHERE ON EVERYTHING

THEREFORE NUCLEAR RADIATION CAN BE DIRECTLY COMPARED TO COAL RADIATION.

lol

3/1/2012 2:47:16 PM

OMG GUYS WE GOTTA GET OFF THIS PLANET ITS EVERYWHWERE HOLY SHIT HOW DID WE EVEN EVOLVE HERE!!!!

3/1/2012 2:47:55 PM

move the goalposts more, prick_bryan. you said coal wasn't radioactive. now you are comparing doses.

is coal radioactive or not. did you originally claim it was not radioactive, or not? If coal is radioactive, and you originally claimed it was not, that means you are a fucking moron.


now, what class did we supposedly have together. what year, what semester, what teacher?

3/1/2012 2:49:58 PM

Bryan. My son. A good troll speaks little and upsets many. Have you forgotten your teachings?

3/1/2012 2:52:53 PM