5 ms·

Nuclear engineer here. If you want a deep dive into US reactor development history, I wrote this up on a vacation. https://whatisnuclear.com/reactor_history.ht

Nuclear engineer here. If you want a deep dive into US reactor development history, I wrote this up on a vacation. https://whatisnuclear.com/reactor_history.html https://whatisnuclear.com/reactor_history.html My take on the more modern economics is here https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html And waste here https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html

SemanticStrengh 4y ago
Do you have news on Westinghouse? Is had filled bankruptcy, did they survive? how? Are they in maintenance mode or do they pursue evoltution of their models? China has bought their patent and is in the process of upscaling the original Westinghouse design, is westinghouse still collaborating with china? Have they abandoned their own models? It seems according to their website they are joining the small reactor fad..
- acidburnNSA 4y ago
  Here's some recent news: China's announced that they're building 4 more Westinghouse AP1000 PWRs. They'll use the Chinese supply chain, but it's still a big win for W. https://info.westinghousenuclear.com/news/four-westinghouse-ap1000-reactors-in-china https://info.westinghousenuclear.com/news/four-westinghouse-... I really wish we could get a few more orders in the USA so that we could leverage the learning and supply chain being so painfully built in Georgia for the AP1000s there.
  - SemanticStrengh 4y ago
    for 4 AP1000 they are building ~20 CAP1000, westinghouse should never have sold they patents for a penny.. Also they are obscoleting westinghouse with their 4 planned CAP1400 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_reactors#China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_rea...
  - systemvoltage 4y ago
    We need to build hundreds of Nuclear Power Plants. Electricity should be so cheap, it’s not worth monitoring usage for homes. The fact that this hasn’t happened is a testament and an indictment of dysfunction in our society. I’ll turn into a single issue voter if any candidate for the President is pro-nuclear in a big way.
    - SemanticStrengh 4y ago
      The system needs voltage
      - systemvoltage 4y ago
        Your semantics are strong.
    - jazzyjackson 4y ago
      at current costs of fuel maybe power would be too cheap to meter, but is uranium really so abundant to meet demand? I thought I read there was only a couple hundred years supply, but maybe that was propaganda one way or another... I know it exists in seawater but is it easy to extract?
      - lazide 4y ago
        A couple hundred years of proven reserves, with massive deposits known but not proven. It’s never been worth doing more than scratching the surface. If uranium was used much more, there are economic amounts that are filterable from seawater even.
        natmaka 4y ago
        Seawater: "pumping the seawater to extract this uranium would need more energy than what could be produced with the recuperated uranium" Source: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/jones-j2/docs/epjn150059.pdf http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/jones-j2/docs/e...
Meandering 4y ago
What's your favorite or most closely watched Gen IV reactor? Figure you'd be one to ask.
- acidburnNSA 4y ago
  I think we should be building the best LWRs right now to decarbonize immediately: ABWR, APR-1400, AP1000. My favorite decarbonize rapidly at scale idea is to build a shipyard-based nuclear reactor gigafactory and mass-produce floating PWRs. (This was actually almost done in the 1970s in Jacksonville Florida. They had a manufacturing license from the NRC, the world's largest gantry crane installed and, everything [1]). Assuming we do build 1000+ gigawatts soon, then we will need to look into nuclear fuel recycling with breeder reactors. The most popular Gen-IV concepts in this area are sodium-cooled fast reactors (SFR) and thorium molten salt breeder reactors (T-MSRs). We have 450 reactor-years of experience with SFRs and like 5 with MSRs. Many of the SFR years were not great, and the MSR tech performance has never been seen at industrial scale (though China is about to turn on a T-MSR really soon!) So yeah I'm kind of a "decarbonize now with what we know 100% works" person. Focus on Gen-IV is fine for some people, but I think the industry and fans of the industry are way too overhyped on Gen-IV and not nearly hyped enough about Gen-III+. Japan can build gigawatt-class ABWRs in 36 months. We had a ABWR licensed and ready to build at South Texas Project but we just let it sit there. What a sad sad thing. That's a billion carbon-free watts we are not using. [1] https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2020-01-26-offshore-power-systems.html https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2020-01-26-offshore-power-sys...
  - cycomanic 4y ago
    So if nuclear is significantly more expensive that wind/solar like stated in the original article and faster to build (or are you disputing the numbers?), why would we not use the same money to instead build more renewables to get us there faster?
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      The classic answer is storage and on-demand production. Massive pumped storage is one partial solution the solar energy but I think the environmental impact is great enough that it would prevent it from ever being implemented in the United States.
jimt1234 4y ago
This is great. Thank you so much.
roenxi 4y ago
All those words. I want to highlight what I think it a theme there that is relevant to the framing of today's article: Nuclear was undergoing a series of massive technical improvement as humanity discovered an exciting new technology. Then people got scared and strangled all innovation out of the nuclear industry some time in the 70s. Heavy regulation makes it really, really expensive to experiment with new approaches. If we'd kept pushing on with nuclear, the existing nuclear technologies would probably have been obsoleted by now and we'd be using something different, cheaper and better with much more attractive cost structures. There is no point trying to improve a technology that governments are trying to regulate out of existence.
wnolens 4y ago
Awesome, what a great effort. Thank you. Bookmarked to read on my next vacation!
camel_gopher 4y ago
What do you think about NuScales SMR reactor?
cycomanic 4y ago
So the previous poster talked about how nuclear is so much more space efficient and the first picture I see on your waste page is a large field of temporary dry cask storage. So what is the size of the facility (including safety zones), is there a no fly zone around it and if yes how large is it?

SemanticStrengh 4y ago

Do you have news on Westinghouse? Is had filled bankruptcy, did they survive? how? Are they in maintenance mode or do they pursue evoltution of their models? China has bought their patent and is in the process of upscaling the original Westinghouse design, is westinghouse still collaborating with china? Have they abandoned their own models? It seems according to their website they are joining the small reactor fad..

acidburnNSA 4y ago
Here's some recent news: China's announced that they're building 4 more Westinghouse AP1000 PWRs. They'll use the Chinese supply chain, but it's still a big win for W. https://info.westinghousenuclear.com/news/four-westinghouse-ap1000-reactors-in-china https://info.westinghousenuclear.com/news/four-westinghouse-... I really wish we could get a few more orders in the USA so that we could leverage the learning and supply chain being so painfully built in Georgia for the AP1000s there.
- SemanticStrengh 4y ago
  for 4 AP1000 they are building ~20 CAP1000, westinghouse should never have sold they patents for a penny.. Also they are obscoleting westinghouse with their 4 planned CAP1400 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_reactors#China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_rea...
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  We need to build hundreds of Nuclear Power Plants. Electricity should be so cheap, it’s not worth monitoring usage for homes. The fact that this hasn’t happened is a testament and an indictment of dysfunction in our society. I’ll turn into a single issue voter if any candidate for the President is pro-nuclear in a big way.
  - SemanticStrengh 4y ago
    The system needs voltage
    - systemvoltage 4y ago
      Your semantics are strong.
  - jazzyjackson 4y ago
    at current costs of fuel maybe power would be too cheap to meter, but is uranium really so abundant to meet demand? I thought I read there was only a couple hundred years supply, but maybe that was propaganda one way or another... I know it exists in seawater but is it easy to extract?
    - lazide 4y ago
      A couple hundred years of proven reserves, with massive deposits known but not proven. It’s never been worth doing more than scratching the surface. If uranium was used much more, there are economic amounts that are filterable from seawater even.
      - natmaka 4y ago
        Seawater: "pumping the seawater to extract this uranium would need more energy than what could be produced with the recuperated uranium" Source: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/jones-j2/docs/epjn150059.pdf http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/jones-j2/docs/e...

Meandering 4y ago

What's your favorite or most closely watched Gen IV reactor? Figure you'd be one to ask.

acidburnNSA 4y ago
I think we should be building the best LWRs right now to decarbonize immediately: ABWR, APR-1400, AP1000. My favorite decarbonize rapidly at scale idea is to build a shipyard-based nuclear reactor gigafactory and mass-produce floating PWRs. (This was actually almost done in the 1970s in Jacksonville Florida. They had a manufacturing license from the NRC, the world's largest gantry crane installed and, everything [1]). Assuming we do build 1000+ gigawatts soon, then we will need to look into nuclear fuel recycling with breeder reactors. The most popular Gen-IV concepts in this area are sodium-cooled fast reactors (SFR) and thorium molten salt breeder reactors (T-MSRs). We have 450 reactor-years of experience with SFRs and like 5 with MSRs. Many of the SFR years were not great, and the MSR tech performance has never been seen at industrial scale (though China is about to turn on a T-MSR really soon!) So yeah I'm kind of a "decarbonize now with what we know 100% works" person. Focus on Gen-IV is fine for some people, but I think the industry and fans of the industry are way too overhyped on Gen-IV and not nearly hyped enough about Gen-III+. Japan can build gigawatt-class ABWRs in 36 months. We had a ABWR licensed and ready to build at South Texas Project but we just let it sit there. What a sad sad thing. That's a billion carbon-free watts we are not using. [1] https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2020-01-26-offshore-power-systems.html https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2020-01-26-offshore-power-sys...
- cycomanic 4y ago
  So if nuclear is significantly more expensive that wind/solar like stated in the original article and faster to build (or are you disputing the numbers?), why would we not use the same money to instead build more renewables to get us there faster?
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    The classic answer is storage and on-demand production. Massive pumped storage is one partial solution the solar energy but I think the environmental impact is great enough that it would prevent it from ever being implemented in the United States.

jimt1234 4y ago

This is great. Thank you so much.

roenxi 4y ago

All those words. I want to highlight what I think it a theme there that is relevant to the framing of today's article: Nuclear was undergoing a series of massive technical improvement as humanity discovered an exciting new technology. Then people got scared and strangled all innovation out of the nuclear industry some time in the 70s. Heavy regulation makes it really, really expensive to experiment with new approaches. If we'd kept pushing on with nuclear, the existing nuclear technologies would probably have been obsoleted by now and we'd be using something different, cheaper and better with much more attractive cost structures. There is no point trying to improve a technology that governments are trying to regulate out of existence.

wnolens 4y ago

Awesome, what a great effort. Thank you. Bookmarked to read on my next vacation!

camel_gopher 4y ago

What do you think about NuScales SMR reactor?

cycomanic 4y ago

So the previous poster talked about how nuclear is so much more space efficient and the first picture I see on your waste page is a large field of temporary dry cask storage. So what is the size of the facility (including safety zones), is there a no fly zone around it and if yes how large is it?