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Transatomic Power

transatomicpower.com

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Re: Transatomic Power

#51

Post by InclinedPlane »

Maxels wrote: post #2

So this is a company with a pretty ui that is advocating the same thing Kirk Sorensen has been advocating for a few years now. I know every time this molten salt vs light water reactor debate comes up, people much smarter than I talk about how the salt is corrosive and there are currently no viable solutions to deal with this. Is there anyone out there smarter than I that can explain whether this company is doing any…

Note that this is note exactly the same thing, Sorensen has been advocating a Thorium fuel cycle, these folks seem to be advocating a Uranium fuel cycle.

Re: Transatomic Power

#52

Post by jccooper »

BendertheRobot wrote: post #23
Gibbon1 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a tendency to think of fuel rods as a problem rather than the solution to a problem, which is raw spent fuel is nasty. The cheapest and easiest way to deal with spent fuel is to store it for decades while the worst of the radio-isotopes decay. Fuel rod technology allows you to do that, a molten salt design doesn't. I'm okay with this argument but is seems to bother people that you can't recover spent…

The cheapest and easiest way to deal with spent fuel is to store it for decades That is insane. The best way to deal with waste is to recycle it.

Waiting for the hottest stuff to go away is part of the recycling process. It's just a very slow part.

Re: Transatomic Power

#53

Post by JoshTriplett »

alexhill wrote: post #30
adamcanady wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To get this straight, when they indicate 96% utilization of the uranium, they don't mean converting 96% of the total energy to electricity, as it is assumed that some will be lost along the way, right? If the above statement is true, what happens to the remaining 4% of the energy in the uranium? Is it just not effective to have it in the molten salt, so the entire batch is replaced? Or does this happen 'on the fly' s…

96% of fissile material converted to non-fissile material, and that energy is then converted to electricity at normal steam turbine efficiency, 30% or something. This as opposed to less than 1% for Gen III reactors. Edit: I posted that fuel handling is a batch process, not continuous – that might not be true for molten salt, not sure.

> that energy is then converted to electricity at normal steam turbine efficiency, 30% or something

It amazes me that we don't have a better way to use the power generated by nuclear fission or fusion than heating water.

Re: Transatomic Power

#54

Post by auberonx »

In the absense of renewables, the promise of more efficient nuclear electricity production sounds great. It's just that this promise has been around since the 50s and instead we now have huge amounts of highly toxic nuclear waste. The potential of wind, especially in the States, is so significant and threatening to anyone stupid enough to invest their time in developing nuclear power plants at a time when the price for renewables has undercut nuclear and coal.

Re: Transatomic Power

#55

Post by Zardoz84 »

auberonx wrote: post #54

In the absense of renewables, the promise of more efficient nuclear electricity production sounds great. It's just that this promise has been around since the 50s and instead we now have huge amounts of highly toxic nuclear waste. The potential of wind, especially in the States, is so significant and threatening to anyone stupid enough to invest their time in developing nuclear power plants at a time when the price f…

So we shouldn't invest on ways to recycle nuclear waste, because they way is by nuclear reactors ?

Re: Transatomic Power

#56

Post by Turing_Machine »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #53
alexhill wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

96% of fissile material converted to non-fissile material, and that energy is then converted to electricity at normal steam turbine efficiency, 30% or something. This as opposed to less than 1% for Gen III reactors. Edit: I posted that fuel handling is a batch process, not continuous – that might not be true for molten salt, not sure.

> that energy is then converted to electricity at normal steam turbine efficiency, 30% or something It amazes me that we don't have a better way to use the power generated by nuclear fission or fusion than heating water .

Steam is actually a pretty good working fluid, although the fact that we have 200 years of experience with it undoubtedly plays a significant role.

Re: Transatomic Power

#57

Post by auberonx »

Zardoz84 wrote: post #55
auberonx wrote: post #54

In the absense of renewables, the promise of more efficient nuclear electricity production sounds great. It's just that this promise has been around since the 50s and instead we now have huge amounts of highly toxic nuclear waste. The potential of wind, especially in the States, is so significant and threatening to anyone stupid enough to invest their time in developing nuclear power plants at a time when the price f…

So we shouldn't invest on ways to recycle nuclear waste, because they way is by nuclear reactors ?

This video makes it all look a little too easy. The nuclear industry is with its back to the wall and for very good reasons. The core message here is: let's build more nuclear power plants and we can sort things out. We have been hearing those types of arguments for over 60 years. The technology has left us with huge amounts of incredibly toxic waste and recycling experts in France/UK/US still haven't been able to sort this out. So here are wonderboy and wondergirl telling us they sorted it out. Hm. Who doesn't like a good miracle.

Re: Transatomic Power

#58

Post by xorcist »

yc1010 wrote: post #4

I wish Transatomic all the best but they have an uphill battle :( to convince a populace for whom unfortunately "nuclear power" brings up an image Homer Simpson. aside: I think Greenpeace also has a lot to answer for with their campaign against nuclear power. Thanks to them my children can look forward to a world where a coal plant is build every week and fossil fuel fueled climate change is a certainty.

That's not fair criticism. Greenpeace has been one of the strongest campaigners against coal plants since the 80s.

They do campaigning against nuclear power as well, for example open pit uranium mining and waste disposal processes, which might be the source of the confusion.

Re: Transatomic Power

#60

Post by justatdotin »

opo wrote: post #41
pavlov wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homer Simpson and the three-eyed fish graced TV screens in 1989. In the preceding ten years, the world had seen a sequence of serious nuclear accidents: Three Mile Island, Sellafield, Chernobyl... The smear campaign was accomplished by the companies and nations that built and maintained those shoddy, dangerous plants. Blaming Greenpeace makes as much sense as blaming them for climate change.

>...In the preceding ten years, the world had seen a sequence of serious nuclear accidents: Three Mile Island, Sellafield, Chernobyl... Considering that it would be illegal to build a Chernobyl style plant in any other country rather than the Soviet Union, it probably shouldn't be on your list. >...The smear campaign was accomplished by the companies and nations that built and maintained those shoddy, dangerous plant…

if only there was like, some alternative to coal and uranium ...
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