Not sure what they are gonna research, but my understanding that the problem is not a tech one, but a NIMBY one.
It's not. It's a tech problem. More specifically, getting the tech cheap enough.
Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology
121–130 of 323 posts
Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nuclear submarines use highly enriched uranium as a fuel. That's not a practical thing to use in civilian reactors.
You can still make that size reactor with low-enriched fuel. It just doesn't last 30 years like it does in subs. Instead, it lasts 3-5 years.
That sounds like defeating the selling point of those small reactors? Can it still be cost effective with such short service cycles?
Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
After a bunch of mishaps (Fukushima being the more recent) it becomes more and more difficult to pretend that nuke plants aren't dangerous. It justifies fear. Moreover the waste management problem is not solved. During the last decades more and more citizen are less and less willing to pay for nuke plants. In democracies imposing is pretty difficult, and IMHO it's a good thing. In the same timeframe wind, and even mo…
> more difficult to pretend that nuke plants aren't dangerous. Nobody can pretend that nuclear plants aren't dangerous. The argument is that a Fukushima somewhere in the world once every 20 years would be substantially less dangerous than a coal fired plant in every country operating for 20 years. And it doesn't seem to be likely that we get a Fukushima every 20 years. So why is Fukushima used as a reason to use coal…
So, we should stop both nuclear AND coal plants and use solar, hydro and wind plants. What the problem with that? Batteries? Let's spend cost of 1 nuclear plant at electric batteries or pumped-hydro or compressed-air storage units and solve this problem.
Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology
#124Good that someone at last making it.
Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
> more difficult to pretend that nuke plants aren't dangerous. Nobody can pretend that nuclear plants aren't dangerous. The argument is that a Fukushima somewhere in the world once every 20 years would be substantially less dangerous than a coal fired plant in every country operating for 20 years. And it doesn't seem to be likely that we get a Fukushima every 20 years. So why is Fukushima used as a reason to use coal…
So, we should stop both nuclear AND coal plants and use solar, hydro and wind plants. What the problem with that? Batteries? Let's spend cost of 1 nuclear plant at electric batteries or pumped-hydro or compressed-air storage units and solve this problem.
Solar probably has a worse waste problem than nuclear (and probably a higher risk of actually harming me in the case of retail solar). Batteries and storage do too. The damage from a hydro failure is higher.
Wind might be a solid par technically. It does kill more people than nuclear though; that is a big negative. Better displaced than dead.
There isn't an option here that is obviously better. It would be pretty sensible to loosen the environmental restrictions on new nuclear plants, protect them from NIMBYs and then leave it to the market to go with whatever is cheapest. Could be anything, I have no particular horse to back as long as the race is fair; although I would like to see more nuclear because it just looks to me like the technically best option.
Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
A recator that can be passively cooled and operates at atmosphere pressure will not have the problems of these big reactors. A small design that can be produced in a factory will make the cost reasonable and preictable. The integral molten salt reactor has these advantages and should be comercialy available wothin 10 years.
These things usually take way longer than 10 years. There are MSR projects (not your proposed small variant) happening since the sixties. China startet multiple new projects about 10 years ago and currently estimating it will take at least another 10 years. The EU suspects it will take 30 years from now. https://www.thmsr.com/en/challenges/
I don't think it is unreasonable, they already passed some regulatory steps and want to build a fairly simple reactor.
Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A few years ago Toshiba was going to build a small reactor in Alaska. What an understatement. Let's quote one of the sources there: > But the project never began the mandatory, lengthy and extremely costly process of gaining approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. > This would include a site license, which takes tens of millions of dollars and several years, as well as a design permit. No design of this type…
> Fission has been in development for many decades. You're thinking of fusion. Reading the comments here from France where 80% production is nuclear with a nuclear waste reprocessing site it feels like the USA problem has more to do with local regulations than technology.
Oh yeah France our lovely neighbour with the rotting fleet of "should have been turned off" reactors underreporting accidents and an deficitary agency managing it all while the politicians chuckle it all off due to having slept on the renewable front. Yes, yes. It's great. If you don't blow half of the continent into a radioactive paradies one day, you'll end up being overthrown by some yellow vested nutjobs who will have to pay more taxes because the money for this ridiculously subsided energy project including the waste "management" (hello Russia) has to come from somewhere and decommissioning is not even priced in yet.
PS. Winter is coming. Time to buy some energy from Germany again...
Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Radiation hazards are very real, as we saw graphically with Chernobyl. With Fukushima, we see that they're still real, but we realize we're doing a lot better. Fukushima accident is now estimated to cause up to 1 long-term death from radiation. Chernobyl killed ~70 first responders acutely and up to 4000 long-term. For comparison with other energy sources, Banqiao dam failure killed 100,000 [1] and fossil fuels (84%…
The number of deaths is clearly in nuclear energy' favor. But Chernobyl's area is now inhabitable for thousands of years, isn't it? If that is true, having large areas of earth uninhabitable for 1000s (or much more) years sounds to me like the ultimate disaster. I just wish I am wrong.
Chernobyl has 30km exclusion zone. Even if we mismanaged the reactor issues as badly again, we wouldn't be able to cover "large areas of Earth".
Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nuclear energy languished largely because of fear, I think. Our failure to invest in nuclear the past several decades was a huge mistake that future generations will rightfully scorn us for.
After a bunch of mishaps (Fukushima being the more recent) it becomes more and more difficult to pretend that nuke plants aren't dangerous. It justifies fear. Moreover the waste management problem is not solved. During the last decades more and more citizen are less and less willing to pay for nuke plants. In democracies imposing is pretty difficult, and IMHO it's a good thing. In the same timeframe wind, and even mo…
Coal kills far more people than nuke does - both from direct accidents - and secondary effects.
Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
The costs to built the plants dominates the price. Once built the actual operation and fueling costs are best in class https://www.expressnews.com/business/eagle-ford-energy/artic... The majority of the cost to build the plants are due to the crazy uncertainty about the design/build timeline every-time one is built. Given that conceptually they aren't any more complex than your average coal plant those costs are mass…
Reading the article (and hoping i didnt just read over the part), they never mention the word waste once when it comes to the cost calculation. Thats rather convenient seeing as the number of functioning deep repository sites today is rather limited. What good are small operating costs when the build costs are this expensive and we dont have a viable solution for waste management (yet?). In practice these costs are e…
> It just doesnt make sense to me at this point from an economics perspective.
What are you comparing it to? Are you factoring in economic costs of continuing to release carbon into the atmosphere?
(I don’t want to excuse lazy/bad accounting... but traditional power plants don’t factor in the cost of the carbon they release, so basically everyone is ignoring long-term costs.)