New Reactors

10:41PM EST November 26. 2012 - A new generation of nuclear reactor is scheduled to launch in the United States within a decade, potentially transforming the U.S. nuclear industry

These small modular reactors (SMRs), about a third the physical size of traditional ones, would be portable and built mostly in factories. They got a boost last week from the Department of Energy, which announced it would pay up to half the cost to design and license the first ones for the U.S. commercial market.

Citing nuclear energy as "low carbon," Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the award is part of President Obama's push for a broad, "all-of-the-above" energy strategy that reduces greenhouse gas emissions. Chu said DOE will accept funding requests from other companies developing small modular reactors.

"You can put them together like Legos on a job site," Mowry says. "The industry likes building blocks of this size," he says, likening the heft of each to a tanker truck. He expects a two-reactor plant generating a total of

360 megawatts of power to cost $1.5 billion to build - about a tenth of the projected cost of a two-reactor, 2,000-megawatt plant the NRC approved earlier this year for Georgia.

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Best Regards Tom.

Reply to
azotic
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I have always been hoping for nuclear power that comes in an acceptable package.

i
Reply to
Ignoramus22527

You'll still have to find a place to put the spent fuel that doesn't have folks crying "NIMBY".

Reply to
Tim Wescott

The "spent" fuel is not spent at all but contains at least

99.5% of the original nuclear energy. Currently cost to reprocess is higher than new fuel rods.

Uranium fission is old technology, much on the same order as steam v diesel. LFTR [liquid fluoride thorium reactor] is the wave of the future. Not only is thorium about as common as lead (and is an unwanted byproduct of rare earth extraction, while uranium is about as common as platinum, LFTRs can use directly use the "spent" fuel rods/elements as auxiliary fuel, using most of the high level nuclear "waste" to generate energy, while reducing the physical amount by about 95% and reducing secure storage requirements from 10 of thousands of years to at most a few centuries and quite possibly a few decades with vitrification.

See

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Reply to
F. George McDuffee

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Yeah gods!! I'm amazed. What moron thought that one up. I can see privately owned nuclear weapons only months away. And no doubt with the free market philosophy, plenty of the spent fuel will be sold to the highest bidders. The Taliban and AQ wont even have to try and import the stuff any longer - just a little bit of explosive for a nice dirty bomb.

Reply to
The Cassocked Crusader

On 11/27/2012 1:44 AM, F. George McDuffee wrote: ...

...

Even more of a hindrance in the US is there is still an executive order in place (thanks to Mr Peanut who couldn't distinguish between commercial nuclear reprocessing and weapons proliferation) and killed both the breeder reactor demonstration project at Oak Ridge and prohibited GE from being licensed to build a reprocessing facility at Savannah River.

As a result, we got neither commercial reprocessing nor a plan for spent fuel other than a political issue for H Reid to ride for 30 years nor prevention of proliferation in N Korea et al., ...

Reply to
dpb

That has already been tried as early as in 60s.. ORNL tried "Molten Salt Reactor Experiment" with 7.4MW test reactor 1965-1969, and "Molten salt breeder reactor"

1970-1976.. Materials problems were main negative thing with tellurium intergranular cracking etc.. Of course, you still need the uranium to run the reactor too, but uranium is actually surprisingly common element - about 40 times more common than silver and 500 times more common than gold..

There have been other more successfull reactor development like the IFR, Integral Fast Reactor, terminated in 90s.. They have been terminated because of politics.

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It is highly unlikely, unfortunately, that a new reactor type will come to the market for at least

20-30 years. Simply it takes so long to develop it, test it, market it and build it. Even then, politics propably prevents it. It doesn't matter if it is safe, well understood physics/engineering, cheap energy. In Finland, at the moment, it takes about 15 years to build a new NPP (Olkiluoto 3 project started in 2000, now they estimate it will be ready 2015) that is just a big (1600MW) pressurized water reactor (EPR).

Actually, they are shutting down nuclear power plants (NPPs) in Germany and building mostly coal power plants to replace them, 12000MW. That, in effect, means the end of "green politics" with massive additional pollution like CO2 and particles from new coal powerplants replacing environmentally clean NPPs.

Our brave new world where facts are irrelevant and decisions are not based on technology or science. This is what the majority wants as voters!

Reply to
Kristian Ukkonen

My back yard is available for a suitable lease fee...

Reply to
Pete C.

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I'd love to have an (intact) one or two of the Russian Radiothermic generators they used for remote com stations. No moving parts, no maintenance, no fuss, just a constant supply of power.

Reply to
Pete C.

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You might be interested in the US series of SNAP reactors -

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Reply to
Jim Stewart

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When I can buy one at my Local Fry's...

Reply to
Pete C.

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Not at Fry's. But rumor has it that a SNAP 19C was lost in an avalanche at the base of Nanda Devi mountain in India.

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Reply to
Jim Stewart

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You would need a leaded suit

Reply to
Ignoramus3447

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Nope, the units are entirely safe when *intact*. The only issues associated with them were when some uneducated folks came across a unit and decided it was a good idea to take it apart to sell for scrap.

Reply to
Pete C.

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