Nuclear's Next Generation

[LARED]

http://www.memagazine.org/mepower03/nextgen/nextgen.html

Only a few years ago, most experts would have written off nuclear power. It seemed too expensive, too unpopular, too risky.

But if anything, nuclear power today is enjoying a kind of renaissance, both in the United States and around the globe. The renewed interest stems from practical concerns about the need for more baseload power, a desire for greater national energy security, and concerns about the long-term impact of fossil fuel emissions. Nuclear power also fits in well with recently articulated national goals for developing a hydrogen economy. And nuclear power plants have demonstrated considerably improved performance of late.

At the end of the process, six concepts were recommended for further development: the gas-cooled fast-spectrum reactor, the lead alloy-cooled reactor, the molten salt reactor, the sodium-cooled fast-spectrum reactor, the supercritical water-cooled reactor (thermal or fast spectrum), and the very-high-temperature gas-cooled reactor. Those concepts include a variety of coolants—water, gas, liquid metal, and molten salt—as well as both thermal (that is, moderated) and fast spectrum (unmoderated) designs.

With a robust R&D effort, most of those concepts could be developed and deployed by the year 2020. And each is aimed at meeting projected power needs in the mid-21st century. For example, several concepts— most prominently, the very-high-temperature gas-cooled reactor—have a higher output temperature and are therefore attractive for process heat applications. These concepts also would be well-suited to produce hydrogen in quantity and at an attractive price. Nuclear power currently is one of the most attractive means of large-scale production of hydrogen, and therefore is a critical element of the Bush administration's hydrogen initiative. There is currently legislation pending that would authorize construction of a demonstration VHTR for the production of hydrogen within a decade.

[pinkpops]

1. The closest I want to live to a nuclear reactor

is 93 million miles

[LARED]

4. Just wondering

do you avoid things like television, dental x-rays, smoking, or airline flight. All this activities will increase you exposure to radiation.

I can never understand the angst some people have regarding nuclear energy. It's clean, it's pretty cheap, has an excellent safety record when compared to existing viable energy technologies. (Before I get flamed; "green energy" is not really viable as an energy source that could meet significant demands in this country. I am for applying these technologies where it makes sense but realistically the capacity is small.)

As for the problems with waste? Give it time. The technologies will emerge to deal with it. But there is no reason to wait for these technologies prior to building new nuke capacity. The waste streams of fossil fuels are far dangerous and presently have a far greater impact on peoples heath right now that radioactive waste ever has.

[The Bish]

7. I live about a half a mile from one

I have no problem with it. Of course its just a little 250 kW research reactor but I wouldn't have a problem if it was a full size power reactor either.

[ronatchig]

2. No mention

in the article of the most pressing design problem in fission reactors which is the waste product(spent fuel). Nor the fact that taxpayers are required to substidize the industry for the storage of the waste. I say NO to nuclear power.

[alwynsw]

9. Waste problem to be solved

If anyone has the link... I read an article recently that, I forget, either Lawrence Livermore or JPL, scientists have begun reducing the half life of waste nuclear material to minutes using lasers. As I recall, it is expected that it will take up to ten years to discover the proper frequencies to deal with all of the various radioactive and irrated waste.

If the process works as reported, all nuclear waste can be made essentially harmless in under a day per batch.

I have no real problem with nuclear power as it stands. Having worked in the disposal end for a number of years in a previous life, I am aware of many of the risks and benefits of the program. The reduction technique described removes virtually all objections from my corner. And yes, I was involved in the clean up at St. Charles, Fernald, Rocky Flats, and others as well as the disposal of spent fuel for active reactors such as Davis-Bessie.

I have not mentioned the obvious concerning monitoring, secondary containment, and a multitude of other issues. Chernobyl taught us much about those issues that I'll not re-hash here.

[NNadir]

3. Excellent well stated report.

I very much doubt however that making hydrogen is the best use for nuclear reactors. The thermal heat of the high temperature options (HTGCR) and Molten Salt reactors can be used to convert carbon sources such as waste materials and biomass into low molecular weight high energy density fuels.

Hydrogen is really not a suitable fuel because of its physical properties which include an extremely low temperature critical point (leading to a high cost of liquification), very low viscosity and low energy density. The Hydrogen initiative on the part of the Bushies is just another Bush lie designed to distract the world from the fact that they can only think oil, Halliburton, oil, Halliburton, oil, Halliburton...

You have forgotten to mention accelerator driven transmutation reactors. These reactors have impecable safety features (since they are subcritical) and offer the advantage of recovering the energy of the minor actinides (the transplutonium elements) and long lived fission products such as Tc-99 and Cs-135.

It is also worth pointing out that the PWR in use in the west over the last several decades have been by and large spectacularly successful. There is really no reason not to build more of these, particularly with the recent advances in materials science and computer control systems not available in the decades that the first PWRs were built. There are a number of passive design features that can still be incorporated into these.

It is important to move towards a Thorium fuel cycle (as opposed to a Uranium-Plutonium cycle) to reduce proliferation concerns (the most serious impediment to nuclear development in my view).

Thermal molten salt reactors have some excellent features for use in a Thorium cycle as was demonstrated by Weinberg several decades ago. It is also possible in my opinion to build fast molten salt reactors that are net "waste" burners. These reactors may be excellent plutonium burners.

In the short term, it will also be necessary to have some plutonium burners, not necessarily, fast liquid metal reactors (which are operationally problematic) but suitably modified PWRs, prehaps using the Radowsky configuration to generate U-233 from Thorium as a side product of reducing plutonium stockpiles. For reasons of peace, it is very important to get as much military plutonium into reactors as is possible, both to reduce its volume and its suitability and ease of use in nuclear weapons. Probably such plutonium should be burned with waste Neptunium to further denature it. This is a critical issue for the future, and not one that unfortunately gets much dicussion. (The Clinton-Gore administration had an enlightened approach to this issue, even if they tended to downplay it for political reasons. The Bushies, as expected, have completely destroyed this useful approach.)

Anyway thanks for this article. I very much appreciate seeing someone other than myself arguing for nuclear power from an environmentalist perspective.

[The Bish]

6. We should start a club

Liberal Environmentalists for Nuclear Power.

[Vogon_Glory]

5. Interesting Idea But

The idea of second-generation nuclear reactors is interesting, but I'd like to see the processes LEAST amenable to producing fissile material for use in warheads pushed forward.

I don't know about the rest of the DUers out there, but I'd prefer something like the so-called "pebble" technique to be used by the Iranians rather than the Soviet style graphite rod nuclear design used at Chernobyl.

[NNadir]

8. A Chernobyl type positive void coefficient reactor will never be built...

...again, and for good reason. This reactor was designed specifically to be a dual use weapons/power reactor.

No such design was built for commercial purposes in the west although the British Windscale reactor (which burned in the 1950's) and the American weapons reactor at Hanford were of this type.

Pressurized Water Reactors (PWR)and Boiling Water Reactors built in the US for commercial purposes do not produce plutonium that is particularly useful for weapons purposes.

The Canadian CANDU reactor which is moderated with deuterium oxide (heavy water) rather than ordinary water is a pretty efficient plutonium burner, but its constant fuel options to present some weapons risk if not properly monitored.

But your point is well taken. The most important thing is to use the Thorium cycle as much as possible, and to make the design fuel composition of reactors where plutonium is present to consume, denature and minimize access to the plutonium. It will never be possible again to eliminate at least theoretically, nuclear weapons, but through the intelligent use of nuclear power, we can minimize the likelihood that they will be safe, or even possible to assemble.

Without nuclear power on the other hand, the world faces hundreds of metric tons of weapons grade fission material with which nothing can be done.