Nuclear power looking up in the US future?

[Doodler]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14681100/

Interesting concepts for the new cooling system.

[Demigrog]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14681100/

Interesting concepts for the new cooling system.

Articles like that make me want to punch someone. The reporter is uncritically repeating misinformation from people like Greg Kafoury, while everything that the engineers that actually understand the design of nuclear reactors say is followed immediately by a vague rebuttal or criticism. Grrr....

[Captain Kidd]

I can testify that the job market is there. GE and Westinghouse are hiring like mad in their new plant departments, the NRC is starting up a new reactor division specifically for new plants going in, and numerous other suppliers are starting to gear up.

[Swift]

I can testify that the job market is there. GE and Westinghouse are hiring like mad in their new plant departments, the NRC is starting up a new reactor division specifically for new plants going in, and numerous other suppliers are starting to gear up.
Speaking of which, how is your own job hunt going CK?

[Captain Kidd]

It's going good, got a few bites here and there. I'm mainly trying to decide if I want to stay in the nuclear business or stay local and help the father-in-law out with his startup business and then get back into engineering. I'm ready for a change of pace for a bit. :)

[antoniseb]

I'm glad that they are working on making these thing safer, though the article said nothing about some of the various issues that I expect are problems for long term operations of these plants.

They DID mention that there is no place to store spent fuel rods.
They didn't mention that nuclear reactors have problems with high levels of corrosion and embrittlement from high numbers of individual atoms getting converted from one element to another.
They didn't mention (though I assume it must be part of the new design) anything about making it easier to service the pumps, and change gaskets (for example).
They didn't talk about where the increased volume of fuel rods would come from, or where the waste from that process would go.

Whether or not fission power capacity will increase on the Earth again, it is certainly going to need to be developed for space colonization, and deep space probes.

[Swift]

<snip>
They didn't mention that nuclear reactors have problems with high levels of corrosion and embrittlement from high numbers of individual atoms getting converted from one element to another.

As I understand it, the corrosion issues are not completely, or even mostly, from the nuclear reactions. High pressure and temperature water is a pretty corrosive substance. In a previous job, I worked for a company that used similar conditions to grow quartz crystals (completely non-nuclear) and had to deal with such issues. In fact I attended a conference once on hydrothermal chemisty and a large percentage of the people were from the nuclear power industry.

[Captain Kidd]

You mean corrosion of the vessel head like at Davis-Bessie? That was due to an undetected leak which allowed boronated water (boron is used as a poison to help control the reaction rate) to come into contact with the reactor vessel, which has a thin interior stainless steel liner to prevent such contact. The leak remained undetected as long as it did due to human incompentance. (Of one form or the other.)

To make a reactor vessel 6 inches thick of pure stainless steel... yowza, that's going to be a pretty penny. (And yes, there is such a thing as "no expense is too much" being wrong.) Plus I think there's advantages to using carbon steel.

However, I don't know how the AP1000's vessel is made, it might just be all stainless steel thanks to the recent concerns.

The embrittlement rate of the vessel is well documented. Swift, neutron embrittlement is a concern. Sample coupons, installed when the vessel was fabricated, are routinely taken out and tested to compare the actual embrittlement rate to the calculated rate. Any aberrations are immediately investigated and corrected or accounted for.

If only they'd allow reprocessing, then a lot of the issues would go away. I think 97% or so of the spent fuel can be reprocessed back into usable fuel. (It's been awhile since I've studied that part of the cycle.) It's mainly the zirconel cladding that has to be discarded. But, thanks to the non-proliferation act, our hands are tied and it's got to be completely disposed as rad waste.

[Edited to typo a correct.]

[mugaliens]

Reality: http://www.ap1000.westinghousenuclear.com/

A mix of reality and overinflated media concerns in a pathetic attempt at "neutrality:" http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14681100/

[Donnie B.]

I've always thought the best solution to the waste issue is to require any new power station to include a long-term storage facility on site, with enough capacity to handle all the waste generated by the plant over its projected lifetime. If the plant operates longer than its projected lifespan, the operator would be required to expand the storage facility accordingly. The construction budget would have to take account of the need for the storage and the plant operators would have to provide some set-aside to pay for post-decommissioning costs of maintaining the storage facility along with the decommissioned plant itself.

This approach has several advantages. First, the plant itself already has security requirements, so there's no additional cost for that (at least until after the plant is decommissioned). Second, the additional space required isn't all that much; current nuclear plants are effectively doing this already (though on an ad-hoc and supposedly short term basis). Third, any one facility would have a limited amount of waste, so the impact of any leakage is minimized. Fourth, no potentially risky shipment is required. Fifth, if this is all made clear up front, there's no extra NIMBY issue -- if the plant is acceptable, so is the waste.

And of course, if reprocessing or long-term storage ever does become a reality, the requirement could be relaxed and the on-site storage could be phased out.