4 ms·

The patents probably cover details that have become important in other industrial processes, and have gone on without enforcement for too long already. A favor

by ncmncm 4y ago

The patents probably cover details that have become important in other industrial processes, and have gone on without enforcement for too long already. A favorite trick is to require a contract promising payment in perpetuity, even after the patent expires.

PaulHoule 4y ago
I know some of the 1970s patents on LWR involved methods for controlling water chemistry so that the thing didn’t corrode. Those are certainly expired by now. There are a lot of great ideas in the AP1000 but since the time scale from conception to getting them into production is so long the length of patent protection seems short. The Chinese for instances have derived the CAP1200 from the AP1000 but they seem really excited to go forward with the Hualong One which is similar to the AP1000 in a lot of ways but believed to be more cost effective.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Guessing they have lots of submarine patents they have been keeping in abeyance until they spot somebody they can use them against. "Cost effective" and nukes don't seem to exist in the same universe.
  - PaulHoule 4y ago
    With nukes there are two problems. When people say "nuclear power is not economical", they are really saying "in North America and Europe, gas turbines powered by natural gas are cheaper". That, of course, is ignoring the cost of carbon. People aren't comparing coal to the LWR anymore the way they did in the 1970s because conventional coal burning plants are uneconomical for the same reason: the steam turbine is huge and expensive. In the case of the LWR the low temperature of operation requires absolutely huge steam generators, which are much larger than the pressure vessel and are in the primary coolant loop and safety critical. People used to think fast reactors would be necessarily more expensive than the LWR but people envisioning a future for nuclear believe a system that runs at high temperatures and has a powerset based on https://www.energy.gov/supercritical-co2-tech-team https://www.energy.gov/supercritical-co2-tech-team could be competitive in North America. (e.g. the LWR is more competitive in China because they don't have a huge natural gas pipeline network) The other one is the difficulty of building an LWR on time and on budget It would be one thing if they said it cost $7 billion and it really cost $8 billion, but if it ends up costing more like $15 billion that's a big problem. Some of it might be the stop-start nature of the thing (the US planned to build 4 AP1000s, had them terribly delayed because of challenges building the first one in China, and canceled 2.) If we'd decided to build these at a reasonable cadence we might have applied the learnings from the first ones to learn how to make them reliably, we might be able to build them on budget and on schedule.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      Nukes are expensive compared to, particularly, renewables. Gas turbines will be outcompeted, too, as renewables cost continues on down. With recent advances in power extraction via what amount to thermocouples, no-moving-parts nukes might have a future. They just need to sit glowing red-hot surrounded by thermocouples, with the backsides of the latter cooled.

by ncmncm 4y ago

PaulHoule 4y ago

I know some of the 1970s patents on LWR involved methods for controlling water chemistry so that the thing didn’t corrode. Those are certainly expired by now. There are a lot of great ideas in the AP1000 but since the time scale from conception to getting them into production is so long the length of patent protection seems short. The Chinese for instances have derived the CAP1200 from the AP1000 but they seem really excited to go forward with the Hualong One which is similar to the AP1000 in a lot of ways but believed to be more cost effective.

ncmncm 4y ago
Guessing they have lots of submarine patents they have been keeping in abeyance until they spot somebody they can use them against. "Cost effective" and nukes don't seem to exist in the same universe.
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  With nukes there are two problems. When people say "nuclear power is not economical", they are really saying "in North America and Europe, gas turbines powered by natural gas are cheaper". That, of course, is ignoring the cost of carbon. People aren't comparing coal to the LWR anymore the way they did in the 1970s because conventional coal burning plants are uneconomical for the same reason: the steam turbine is huge and expensive. In the case of the LWR the low temperature of operation requires absolutely huge steam generators, which are much larger than the pressure vessel and are in the primary coolant loop and safety critical. People used to think fast reactors would be necessarily more expensive than the LWR but people envisioning a future for nuclear believe a system that runs at high temperatures and has a powerset based on https://www.energy.gov/supercritical-co2-tech-team https://www.energy.gov/supercritical-co2-tech-team could be competitive in North America. (e.g. the LWR is more competitive in China because they don't have a huge natural gas pipeline network) The other one is the difficulty of building an LWR on time and on budget It would be one thing if they said it cost $7 billion and it really cost $8 billion, but if it ends up costing more like $15 billion that's a big problem. Some of it might be the stop-start nature of the thing (the US planned to build 4 AP1000s, had them terribly delayed because of challenges building the first one in China, and canceled 2.) If we'd decided to build these at a reasonable cadence we might have applied the learnings from the first ones to learn how to make them reliably, we might be able to build them on budget and on schedule.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Nukes are expensive compared to, particularly, renewables. Gas turbines will be outcompeted, too, as renewables cost continues on down. With recent advances in power extraction via what amount to thermocouples, no-moving-parts nukes might have a future. They just need to sit glowing red-hot surrounded by thermocouples, with the backsides of the latter cooled.