8 ms·

It is strange how much the unique capabilities of CANDU reactors are ignored. It can run on unenriched uranium.

by HyperSane 4y ago

selectodude 4y ago
Heavy water is really, really expensive.
- MichaelZuo 4y ago
  Do you have some numbers? Is it 100x the cost per litre, 1000x, 10000x ?
  - 9wzYQbTYsAIc 4y ago
    According to Wikipedia, one liter goes for 2.23 USD [1]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prices_of_chemical_elements https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prices_of_chemical_elements
    - kennend3 4y ago
      This might make sense. I responded to this question as well and it seems the plant near me took $1.5 billion for the heavy water. After a bit of digging, it turns out it has approx. 500 tons of Heavy water.
      - 9wzYQbTYsAIc 4y ago
        Apparently one source (hidden behind a $3000 paywall) claims the market is only expected to grow.
    - philipkglass 4y ago
      That's for a liter of gaseous deuterium. According to the note in the last column, "Also sold by same supplier in the form of heavy water at price of 3940 USD per kg deuterium." Since a kilogram of heavy water is ~20% deuterium by mass, that means $788 per kilogram of heavy water. That would only come to $394 million for 500 metric tons of heavy water, significantly lower than the $1.5 billion found by kennend3. The higher price kennend3 found could reflect the fact that Canada manufactured its own heavy water for building CANDU reactors in the 20th century whereas today there is more heavy water manufacturing capacity, including a large and relatively new plant in India: https://www.hwb.gov.in/heavy-water-plant-manuguru https://www.hwb.gov.in/heavy-water-plant-manuguru
      - nimish 4y ago
        If demand spikes then more efficient ways of harvesting heavy water will be invented. It's just not a big commodity.
        sandworm101 4y ago
        Oh they have tried. Collecting various forms of hydrogen by separating heavy water has had government/military funding for decades. The basic physics has been worked out. There is no low-energy option anymore than there is a low-energy way to separate uranium isotopes.
        philipkglass 4y ago
        The original heavy water plant in Vemork, Norway recovered it as a byproduct of producing hydrogen from water by electrolysis [1] for the manufacture of fertilizer. Ordinary "light" hydrogen is preferentially evolved from water when it's split by electrolysis, with deuterium accumulating in the liquid left in the cell. If the plant operator periodically extracts the residual water from a cell and uses it as input to another cell in a cascade arrangement, as done at Vemork, then high-purity heavy water can be generated as a byproduct of electrolysis with little additional cost. The Vemork plant had 108 megawatts of capacity and could produce 12 tons of heavy water per year ([1], [2]). I expect several gigawatts of electrolytic hydrogen capacity to be built this decade for supporting "green" production of steel and ammonia with renewable electricity. Plant operators could also invest a modest effort to extract and concentrate older electrolyte batches, providing a new low cost source of heavy water. Note that this is a very energy intensive way to get deuterium, but it could be low cost because the capital and operating expenses are mostly accounted for by the plant's primary purpose (hydrogen production). The marginal cost to add a side business of heavy water recovery would be much smaller. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_heavy_water_sabotage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_heavy_water_sabotage [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vemork#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vemork#History
        mauvehaus 4y ago
  - kennend3 4y ago
    This is from the CANDU plant near my house "Total capital costs including interest were $14.319 billion CAD (about US$11.9 billion) with the heavy water accounting for $1.528 billion, or 11%, of this. " $1.5 billion (CAD) for heavy water seems like a LOT of money??
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      That's a lot of money but 11% of a reactor budget isn't a big deal at all.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- arcticbull 4y ago
  Doesn't really matter. Child comment mentions $1.5B in heavy water costs. That's $1.1B USD. Assuming an old, 600MWe nameplate capacity and the planned 30 year service life at 80% capacity (although they last far longer) we're talking total generated 130TWh. That means heavy water contributes a total of 0.8c/kWh. The cost of raw Uranium is between $0.0015/kWh and $0.000015/kWh. [1] Disposal is like $500/kg, and 1kg gets you 315000kWh (0.16c/kWh). Once the very expensive reactor is up and running the costs are very, very low. [edit] Study pins it at 20% of the plant up-front cost. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_pla... [2] https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/34/087/34087588.pdf https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/...
  - amluto 4y ago
    > That means heavy water contributes a total of 0.8c/kWh. Which exceeds the LCoE of a brand new solar plant.
- HyperSane 4y ago
  It is a one time expense.
aidenn0 4y ago
FWIW, any fast-neutron reactor can use MOX fuel, and extracts more energy from the fuel. However unlike CANDU they need fairly highly enriched fuels which is a proliferation concern.
sandworm101 4y ago
It's the name. "Canada" in a name is marketing poison. The public just wouldn't like seeing US strategic weapons dismantled in a Canadian reactor. They need a rebranding as "Texacan Freedom Reactors". Take Sea Doo jet skis. You have to dig deep in their website to find a reference to their Canadian origins, even harder on Ski Doo's website. And one would expect that Canadian heritage would be a plus for a snowmobile.
- jacob019 4y ago
  Dude, what did Canada do to you?
- skipants 4y ago
  Canada Dry seems to do just fine
- kennend3 4y ago
  The number of articles with titles like "Why do Americans disguise themselves as Canadians when travelling abroad?" seems to disagree. As far as "national pride" goes there is a big difference between the US vs CA. Here (Canada) you would be hard pressed to find cCanadian flags. Really only two places fly them, government buildings (schools, offices, etc) and US big box stores (walmart?). I lived in the US for ~6 years and this "flag" thing really stood out at first. Like i'd drive around and there would be bridges basically covered in flags. This is something you will pretty much NEVER see here.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

It is strange how much the unique capabilities of CANDU reactors are ignored. It can run on unenriched uranium.

selectodude 4y ago

Heavy water is really, really expensive.

MichaelZuo 4y ago
Do you have some numbers? Is it 100x the cost per litre, 1000x, 10000x ?
- 9wzYQbTYsAIc 4y ago
  According to Wikipedia, one liter goes for 2.23 USD [1]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prices_of_chemical_elements https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prices_of_chemical_elements
  - kennend3 4y ago
    This might make sense. I responded to this question as well and it seems the plant near me took $1.5 billion for the heavy water. After a bit of digging, it turns out it has approx. 500 tons of Heavy water.
    - 9wzYQbTYsAIc 4y ago
      Apparently one source (hidden behind a $3000 paywall) claims the market is only expected to grow.
  - philipkglass 4y ago
    That's for a liter of gaseous deuterium. According to the note in the last column, "Also sold by same supplier in the form of heavy water at price of 3940 USD per kg deuterium." Since a kilogram of heavy water is ~20% deuterium by mass, that means $788 per kilogram of heavy water. That would only come to $394 million for 500 metric tons of heavy water, significantly lower than the $1.5 billion found by kennend3. The higher price kennend3 found could reflect the fact that Canada manufactured its own heavy water for building CANDU reactors in the 20th century whereas today there is more heavy water manufacturing capacity, including a large and relatively new plant in India: https://www.hwb.gov.in/heavy-water-plant-manuguru https://www.hwb.gov.in/heavy-water-plant-manuguru
    - nimish 4y ago
      If demand spikes then more efficient ways of harvesting heavy water will be invented. It's just not a big commodity.
      - sandworm101 4y ago
        Oh they have tried. Collecting various forms of hydrogen by separating heavy water has had government/military funding for decades. The basic physics has been worked out. There is no low-energy option anymore than there is a low-energy way to separate uranium isotopes.
        philipkglass 4y ago
        The original heavy water plant in Vemork, Norway recovered it as a byproduct of producing hydrogen from water by electrolysis [1] for the manufacture of fertilizer. Ordinary "light" hydrogen is preferentially evolved from water when it's split by electrolysis, with deuterium accumulating in the liquid left in the cell. If the plant operator periodically extracts the residual water from a cell and uses it as input to another cell in a cascade arrangement, as done at Vemork, then high-purity heavy water can be generated as a byproduct of electrolysis with little additional cost. The Vemork plant had 108 megawatts of capacity and could produce 12 tons of heavy water per year ([1], [2]). I expect several gigawatts of electrolytic hydrogen capacity to be built this decade for supporting "green" production of steel and ammonia with renewable electricity. Plant operators could also invest a modest effort to extract and concentrate older electrolyte batches, providing a new low cost source of heavy water. Note that this is a very energy intensive way to get deuterium, but it could be low cost because the capital and operating expenses are mostly accounted for by the plant's primary purpose (hydrogen production). The marginal cost to add a side business of heavy water recovery would be much smaller. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_heavy_water_sabotage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_heavy_water_sabotage [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vemork#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vemork#History
        mauvehaus 4y ago
- kennend3 4y ago
  This is from the CANDU plant near my house "Total capital costs including interest were $14.319 billion CAD (about US$11.9 billion) with the heavy water accounting for $1.528 billion, or 11%, of this. " $1.5 billion (CAD) for heavy water seems like a LOT of money??
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    That's a lot of money but 11% of a reactor budget isn't a big deal at all.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
arcticbull 4y ago
Doesn't really matter. Child comment mentions $1.5B in heavy water costs. That's $1.1B USD. Assuming an old, 600MWe nameplate capacity and the planned 30 year service life at 80% capacity (although they last far longer) we're talking total generated 130TWh. That means heavy water contributes a total of 0.8c/kWh. The cost of raw Uranium is between $0.0015/kWh and $0.000015/kWh. [1] Disposal is like $500/kg, and 1kg gets you 315000kWh (0.16c/kWh). Once the very expensive reactor is up and running the costs are very, very low. [edit] Study pins it at 20% of the plant up-front cost. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_pla... [2] https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/34/087/34087588.pdf https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/...
- amluto 4y ago
  > That means heavy water contributes a total of 0.8c/kWh. Which exceeds the LCoE of a brand new solar plant.
HyperSane 4y ago
It is a one time expense.

aidenn0 4y ago

FWIW, any fast-neutron reactor can use MOX fuel, and extracts more energy from the fuel. However unlike CANDU they need fairly highly enriched fuels which is a proliferation concern.

sandworm101 4y ago

It's the name. "Canada" in a name is marketing poison. The public just wouldn't like seeing US strategic weapons dismantled in a Canadian reactor. They need a rebranding as "Texacan Freedom Reactors". Take Sea Doo jet skis. You have to dig deep in their website to find a reference to their Canadian origins, even harder on Ski Doo's website. And one would expect that Canadian heritage would be a plus for a snowmobile.

jacob019 4y ago
Dude, what did Canada do to you?
skipants 4y ago
Canada Dry seems to do just fine
kennend3 4y ago
The number of articles with titles like "Why do Americans disguise themselves as Canadians when travelling abroad?" seems to disagree. As far as "national pride" goes there is a big difference between the US vs CA. Here (Canada) you would be hard pressed to find cCanadian flags. Really only two places fly them, government buildings (schools, offices, etc) and US big box stores (walmart?). I lived in the US for ~6 years and this "flag" thing really stood out at first. Like i'd drive around and there would be bridges basically covered in flags. This is something you will pretty much NEVER see here.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]