Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology • Hacker News Board

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#231

Post by Spooky23 » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 8:21 PM UTC

cjslep wrote: post #115

Spooky23 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's precisely the point. Once the direct subsidy of nuclear via the military's nuclear weapons buildout went away, new plant construction... went way. The capital costs of any traditional power plant are massive, and fix high costs of goods sold for the life of the plant. This Canadian effort may find a way to build more smaller units, which will be great if they succeed. Solar and wind are disruptive because the…

> Once the direct subsidy of nuclear via the military's nuclear weapons buildout went away, new plant construction... went way. This is easily false. When you look at historical nuclear powerplant construction via the NRC, you see a flatline of new reactors starting 1979: Three Mile Island accident year. In fact, Ford and Carter (a nuclear engineer himself) banned reprocessing of spent nuclear fuels even before that!…

Where did the fuel come from?

A: US Government enrichment facilities built to support nuclear weapons programs. https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#232

Post by 0xffff2 » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 9:27 PM UTC

throw0101a wrote: post #148

With regards to Ontario, who are part of this announcement, the nuclear plant with the largest operating output is located in the province: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Nuclear_Generating_Stati... There are a couple that have larger installed capacity, but some of it is shutdown: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_stations Interestingly, Bruce Power has a 'special forces' / SWAT team that…

Off topic, but does anyone else notice that Lake Huron doesn't seem to exist on the Wikimedia map tiles used for the map in the first link?

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#233

Post by cjslep » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 9:45 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #231

cjslep wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once the direct subsidy of nuclear via the military's nuclear weapons buildout went away, new plant construction... went way. This is easily false. When you look at historical nuclear powerplant construction via the NRC, you see a flatline of new reactors starting 1979: Three Mile Island accident year. In fact, Ford and Carter (a nuclear engineer himself) banned reprocessing of spent nuclear fuels even before that!…

Where did the fuel come from? A: US Government enrichment facilities built to support nuclear weapons programs. https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...

Sure, today, military-grade plutonium is down-blended in MOX fuels. But your own source backs up the fact that from the 1950's to the 1980's (the time period we are talking about) the USA was the world's leading uranium ore producer.

One could argue that the mines were subsidized by the federal government (so they could enrich and breed nuclear-grade materials), but that is a far cry from GP's claim that "Once the direct subsidy of nuclear via the military's nuclear weapons buildout went away, new plant construction... went way", which is incomparable to the degree of subsidization as the USSR and their dual-use for RBMK reactors (why else design a reactor with a positive void coefficient).

EDIT: I'm not sure whether you're really concerned about the buildout of nuclear powerplants or the evolution of the USA's policy with regards to the nuclear fuel cycle, but I hope I addressed both.

EDIT2: Also: The "big 3" enrichment locations that the military used would also sell to civilian nuclear powerplants. But that's a far cry reason to "subsidize" the construction of nuclear powerplants. This "fuel subsidization" goes on today (MOX fuels) and the American monopoly of uranium enrichment has been broken since 1970 with the formation of Urenco, so the commercial civilian powerplants have always had other places to purchase from (if a regulatory hassle). There's really not a lot of strong evidence that the mining and enrichment of uranium for nuclear weapons somehow subsidized the construction of civilian nuclear powerplants.

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#234

Post by belorn » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 9:49 PM UTC

strainer wrote: post #196

belorn wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current energy discussion in Swedish politics is Green vs Nuclear. No one is discussing a stop for burning fossil fuels in power plants or banning the import of coal/NG energy from neighbors. Not even a suggestion from the green party at a total stop. Instead we get a bunch of political tricks. If we export more green energy than we import coal energy then we can pretend that that the coal did not actually get re…

>If we export more green energy than we import coal energy then we can pretend that that the coal did not actually get released into the air as pollution. That exchange is plainly not carbon neutral. Exporting green energy does usually contribute to reducing fossil fuel usage at destination - that cant reasonably be denied. It sounds like you believe the figures are being officially "double counted". But I'm quite do…

> the idea more likely comes from the kind of confused climate skeptic literature

https://www.svtplay.se/video/23437510/agenda/agenda-18-nov-2...

Political debate from 2 weeks ago. Green party spoke person vs moderate party leader. It beings at 35m. The moderate describe multiple times that Sweden buys dirty coal energy when the wind is now blowing, and the green party spoke person repeats the argument of being net exporter of green energy in response.

> It can even be carbon negative as rootmass is left to build soil

Areas where we plant tree and don't cut them down has a name: nature sanctuary. There has been plenty of initiatives to plant trees in order to create official carbon sinks on the books, so how many of those are nature sanctuary?

> It can even be carbon negative as rootmass is left to build soil, and benefit wildlife too

https://www.forskning.se/2019/09/20/tradplantering-ingen-uni... https://www.svd.se/plantera-trad-loser-inte-klimatproblemen

Counting tree planting initiatives as carbon sinks when there is no planning for what happens afterward is simply wishful thinking (quote from the study).

Criticism of the green movement is not automatically climate skepticism. How many climate skeptics want a complete ban of power generated from fossil fuels in the energy grid? If the green movement just would adapt that stance then I would not care. If people want to use other technologies in a non-fossil fueled world then good, just as priority one is a non-fossil fueled world. Sweden could adapt a ban on fossil fuel produced energy tomorrow and it would mostly only be a bit more expensive (some infrastructure to Norway might be needed in order handle still winter nights).

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#235

Post by pfdietz » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 10:12 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #131

StillBored wrote: post #3

A few years ago Toshiba was going to build a small reactor in Alaska. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galena_Nuclear_Power_Plant But it got canceled, and for the life of me I can't understand why anyone thinks its better to truck in heavy fuel oil for generators vs having a small reactor buried in the ground for 30 years. I've been saying for a few years now that green energy only advocates are basically on the side of…

People underestimate how much of the opposition to nuclear plants in the past was due to the "dual use" nature of the technology, and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. In the 80s it was hard to care about the effects of climate change in a mere hundred years when global policy was to keep civilization-destroying quantities of weapons on hand that could be delivered in 45 minutes. The war between nuclear weapons a…

People also underestimate how much the push for nuclear plants was due to governments trying to sugarcoat nuclear technology, to make it seem less frightening, and to try to make the trillions of dollars spent on nuclear arsenals seem less egregious.

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#236

Post by pfdietz » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 10:13 PM UTC

jabl wrote: post #219

michaelt wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AIUI, one concern with nuclear reactors is what to do with the waste. A 'breeder reactor' is a type of nuclear reactor that makes more efficient use of uranium than 'light water reactors' and with less left-over radioactive waste. Sounds great, so why do we build anything else? Well, once you've got a breeder reactor it's a very short step to making weapons-grade plutonium. Whereas with light water reactors, this isn…

No, not really. Historically, weapons grade Pu has been produced in dedicated (graphite moderated) thermal reactors, not with fast breeders. Fast breeders create Pu, yes, but the isotopic composition is poorly suited for weapons.

Actually, Pu from fast breeders is better than the Pu from thermal reactors, since (n,gamma) reactions are less likely on Pu with energetic neutrons.

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#237

Post by pfdietz » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 10:18 PM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #111

Spooky23 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's precisely the point. Once the direct subsidy of nuclear via the military's nuclear weapons buildout went away, new plant construction... went way. The capital costs of any traditional power plant are massive, and fix high costs of goods sold for the life of the plant. This Canadian effort may find a way to build more smaller units, which will be great if they succeed. Solar and wind are disruptive because the…

Solar and wind aren’t disruptive to base-load though, which is the problem. You can build all of the solar/wind you want, but you’re just falling back to fossil fuels at night and during less windy days.

Solar and wind most certainly do disrupt baseload, and they can do that even if they are not themselves providing a constant output of power. All they have to do is drive the price of power down often enough to ruin the economics of the expensive baseload plants, which depend on there being sufficiently high average prices.

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#238

Post by pfdietz » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 10:21 PM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #108

thawaway1837 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if the “green energy” people actually had that much power... In reality there are 2 forces that have stopped nuclear. NIMBYism. And terrible economics. But the green energy people are an easy punching bag for the nuclear advocates who are simply unwilling to face up to the reality of why nuclear keeps failing to take off.

The green energy people have massive amounts of power. They are the reason solar and wind is being built all over the world at an astonishing rate. Their lack of support for nuclear as a base-load is a major factor in its stagnation. In the US a Democrat at the federal level who doesn’t support green energy will be sentenced to the gas chambers. That’s more than half of the House of Representatives and nearly half of…

Solar and wind took off when their prices became competitive, then more than competitive, against the alternatives. You would have us believe this didn't matter, and their growth is instead caused by the greens suddenly acquiring political power, and that the simultaneous drop in prices was just an irrelevant coincidence.

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#239

Post by pfdietz » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 10:27 PM UTC

trasneoir wrote: post #166

Support for nuclear power has become my acid-test. If somebody is serious about making urgent and effective change, fission has to be on the table. Volume is the key to price - we need an internationally-vetted medium-sized design, with a supply chain that can crank out hundreds of complete "just add concrete" systems per year. As well as improving up-front costs, a ubiquitous design makes training and maintenance ea…

Support for CO2 taxes is my acid-test. If a nuclear advocate uses a climate argument, but doesn't support a CO2 tax, they're just hopping on a bandwagon hoping for a handout.

BTW, CO2 taxes would have to exceed $300/ton for new nuclear construction in the US to be competitive with natural gas. Do you support that high a CO2 tax?

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#240

Post by erentz » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 10:45 PM UTC

squiggleblaz wrote: post #184

erentz wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wondered about this myself. As another commenter pointed out naval plants use a more enriched uranium which IIRC allows them to run the reactors for 20+ years without needing to refuel. One other way of thinking about it though is that this is evidence we can have a program to make specialized small modular reactors fairly economically. So we shouldn’t be so skeptical about proposals we do it for civilian use.

> One other way of thinking about it though is that this is evidence we can have a program to make specialized small modular reactors fairly economically. So we shouldn’t be so skeptical about proposals we do it for civilian use. In Australia we occasionally have a discussion about our submarines. I think we have the largest and longest range conventionally powered subs. Should we get nukes? The argument against is w…

One option that was floated (can’t remember by who) is for Australia to lease new Virginia class submarines from the US. This would essentially mean the US would own the lifecycle aspects of the power plant. Don’t know if it’s a good idea or not.