Tiny Nuclear Reactors Can Save American Energy

[packnrat]

sorry about no reply fast, i do not get on here every day.

but as to your fancy "calling" plan, is it Free? or do you pay a fee to get it? directly or indirectly?

only 650 homes for the mini nukes, can you say the ultra rich/connected will have there own. were i work they would need at least three just to keep the freezers working.  i live in a small town, and it has many more than that living here. so would need a number of the mini nukes. and yes i do believe in nuke energy production, in the long run it does produce the least amount of waste product for what is gotten out of it.

no energy production is "free" everything has a bad by product.

as to many "toys" just look at how the faa has destroyed a hobby for the money.  in the name of amazon.

yes i am a truck driver have been for 40 years, lots have changed,  most not for the better.

i own a 2004 yam FZ-1, with carbs, and it gets better millage than the second gen of the same bike, that is a good 60+ pounds lighter and has FI.

 

i was born a grumpy old man...

now i are one.

i am being dragged by the heels into this world that must be on-line 24-7-365.  i used to enjoy being out in the woods far from everything. now i can not even enjoy that due to unending ringing in my ears.

sad my life now requires a cell phone, (family/work) when i retire.. if i ever can, i will not have a cell phone. or if i do it will spend most of its time with no battery in it.

 

[packnrat]

On 4/6/2021 at 11:49 PM, Kevin H said:

I've wondered why we cannot put the waste on rockets and send them to the sun?  I know there is a risk during launch but after that, outta sight - outta mind.
I see eyes rolling and heads shaking but I would like to hear why this is not a viable option.

i read something in a thing about space travel. and it takes more (fuel, thrust, etc) to slow down a rocket to "fall" into the sun, than to change orbit to mars.

[Kirk W]

4 hours ago, packnrat said:

only 650 homes for the mini nukes, can you say the ultra rich/connected will have there own. were i work they would need at least three just to keep the freezers working.  i live in a small town, and it has many more than that living here. so would need a number of the mini nukes. and yes i do believe in nuke energy production, in the long run it does produce the least amount of waste product for what is gotten out of it.

You don't understand what a small nuclear generation plant is. The term MWe is million watts electric.

Quote

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) defines 'small' as under 300 MWe, and up to about 700 MWe as 'medium'

Small Nuclear Power Reactors   (Updated April 2021)

[NamMedevac 70]

At my age a tiny portable nuclear generator would be I deal for my frequent prolonged camping trips on all public lands.  Could recycle by selling to others when no longer needed.  Thanks for the post.

Retired Acct& SEC CFP, former legislative aide and pilot to Two Texas Governors with 4 honorable discharges from Active Army, Guard, Reserves.

William Perkins | Facebook

William C. Perkins, Former Army Medevac and UN Civilian Rescue pilot | Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1739912699644241&type=3

 

 

Edited April 20, 2021 by NamMedevac 70

[packnrat]

17 hours ago, Kirk W said:

You don't understand what a small nuclear generation plant is. The term MWe is million watts electric.

Small Nuclear Power Reactors   (Updated April 2021)

another poster here stated it would only work for 650 homes, and yes i do not know what the term "MWe" is as i do not deal in such numbers.

[Kirk W]

9 hours ago, packnrat said:

another poster here stated

That would depend on the size/output of the particular plant. Nuke plants are pretty heavy, at least under current designs and standards and they are expensive to build so not likely to be built in very small configurations. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced by nuclear fission of uranium and plutonium in nuclear power plants.

[RV_]

They can be made any size they choose. The development is for security. If an enemy had to target 1500 plants to black out California they would likely get caught and the grids isolated. Taking out large plants is easier because they are fewer. Distributed production can make sense if the numbers work. If it costs the same for enough smaller plants to do the same as one big one, then it makes sense to do that by attrition.

I am hoping for fusion because the safety is exponentially better. But that is still expected in 2025. Unless Doc comes back in the DeLorean sooner.

Edited April 23, 2021 by RV_

[agesilaus]

1 hour ago, RV_ said:

They can be made any size they choose. The development is for security. If an enemy had to target 1500 plants to black out California they would likely get caught and the grids isolated. Taking out large plants is easier because they are fewer. Distributed production can make sense if the numbers work. If it costs the same for enough smaller plants to do the same as one big one, then it makes sense to do that by attrition.

I am hoping for fusion because the safety is exponentially better. But that is still expected in 2025. Unless Doc comes back in the DeLorean sooner.

No large reactors are not built for 'security' tho that is a minor plus. These are base loaded units intended to provide the 'base electrical demand' with little variation of power output. It is much more efficient to have all the distribution starting from one large power plant, distribution meaning power lines and transformer yards. From a 2000 MWE plant for example. If you split that up into ten 200 MWe plants thaen you have power lines starting from 10 different points and ten transformer yards. Highly inefficient and expensive and it multiplies high voltage lines running around the landscape.

This factor is a big complication for wind and solar power plants but especially wind, each tiny 2 MWe wind turbine needs it's own power lines and maybe transformer. Very expensive and inefficient.

And each nuke plants needs it's own operating staff and security 24X365, again very inefficient to have 200 operators scattered around the landscape when 40 at one central unit could do the same work.

Lastly Fusion power plants will not be safer and will produce many times the highly radioactive waste as does a fission plant. A fusion plant will all become very radioactive make maintenance a nightmare and make hundreds of tons of very hot waste. Look up neutron activation if you are interested.

There is a way to prevent that but it involves fusing Helium 3, which we don't have and takes much higher temps to fuse.

Finally if you think Fusion will be a commercial operation in four or five years then I can find some wonderful farmland to sell to you in west Texas. Think 20 years if ever.

 

Edited April 23, 2021 by agesilaus

[NamMedevac 70]

Well let us see now we sent men to the moon,  split the atom, invented the A Bomb, etc.,etc.  Lot of smart people out there, there.              Cheers to some

Capt Bill Perkins flying with the Royal Thai Military and Border Police

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1735404620095049&type=3

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1734375066864671&type=3

 

Edited April 23, 2021 by NamMedevac 70

[agesilaus]

29 minutes ago, NamMedevac 70 said:

Well let us see now we sent men to the moon,  split the atom, invented the A Bomb, etc.,etc.  Lot of smart people out there, there. 

If you mean Commercial Fusion well maybe. Splitting the atom was done before the war and in Germany, the first reactor was built under Chicago Field by Fermi, an Italian import, making the bomb took just about all the top physicists, Chemists and Engineers in the country along with top rank foreign imports. Plus there was no limits to the amount of money they could spend, Oak Ridge has Silver electrical wiring for example.

And the world saw an astounding flood of new physics in the years between the wars. Einstein, Fermi, Szilard, Bohr, Feynman the list is long and has not been reproduced since then.

Solvay photo

Going to the moon was a pure engineering problem, the theoretical work was mostly done. Again by the Germans. The government was throwing money at them. It just had to be scaled up, and by just I don't mean simple. And NASA was new and sort of nimble not the arthritic elephant it is today, they just handed off the return to the moon to Space X being incapable of doing it themselves.

Like the bomb, fusion is a mix of theory and very difficult engineering. I think they will solve the problems eventually but not soon barring some theoretical jump. And will it be cost effective when they do, no one knows. And they are not having mountains of cash pushing on them either.

Non Tech people having a charming belief that anything can be done and darned quick too.

Edited April 23, 2021 by agesilaus

[NamMedevac 70]

My reply to agesilaus. Well many expert tech people believe that sport. I am not one of those non tech people who believe that because now retired I only care about my fun stuff such as fishing, camping, outdoor scenic activities in western USA, etc.  Other people are paid big money to worry and solve any and all problems.  As one famous actor said in a movie "I don't care". 

By the way a close family friend who was an Army Warrant Officer with the AEC was assigned to the Chicago Stadium  atomic bomb research/design project known as the Manhattan Project. 

This info is on the Wikipedia website using simple first grade Google search. 

 

Edited April 23, 2021 by NamMedevac 70

[docj]

9 hours ago, agesilaus said:

Plus there was no limits to the amount of money they could spend, Oak Ridge has Silver electrical wiring for example.

Although that anecdote might sound amusing, the real reason that Oak Ridge has some silver wire is that during the peak of wartime production, copper was needed more for ammunition than it was for electrical purposes.  Furthermore, massive copper purchases by an otherwise obscure "Manhattan Engineering District" would have possibly exposed activities that needed to stay secret.    Here's an article about the use of silver in the Manhattan Project:  https://www.americanscientist.org/article/from-treasury-vault-to-the-manhattan-project

[Kirk W]

9 hours ago, agesilaus said:

Non Tech people having a charming belief that anything can be done and darned quick too.

There is no point it attempting to convince self-proclaimed experts of anything. 😏

[justRich]

Fission will probably be obsolete before it becomes a backyard power plant.
Billionaires Jeff Bezos and Tobia Lutke recently committed large sums to General Fusion with plans to bring fusion online within four years:  General Fusion

And American MIT spin-off  Commonwealth Fusion Systems plans a ". . . full-scale magnet demonstration is set to take place in June 2021."  : Commonwealth Fusion Systems (also with billionaire backing Bill Gates)

TAE Technologies see commercial power production by end of this decade: TAE Technologies

Dozens of companies are in pursuit of fusion: https://www.fusionindustryassociation.org/members

[agesilaus]

Various people have been predicting commercial fusion in a short time frame for decades. If they could make a prototype that actually produced a substantial amount of power over what it takes to run the plant then I would be more optimistic. And I'm not talking about producing power for 24 milliseconds of some such. When a fusion plant runs for say 8 hours with a net positive and usable power production, let me know.

 

The first protype power reactor (fission) powered the town of Arco ID. And you can visit that plant if you are in that part of Idaho, worth the stop too.

 

[justRich]

20 hours ago, agesilaus said:

Various people have been predicting commercial fusion in a short time frame for decades.

While understandable, this is a typical standard response.
The data shows otherwise.

 

[RV_]

On 4/5/2021 at 10:09 PM, bruce t said:

We can all find examples that suite our opinions. Heck how many workers have died in coal mines over the years? But there's a double standard here. If you are afraid of any radioactive material then you will avoid the medical help that folks use every day to save lives. Yes it's low risk. Isn't it? That's why hospital staff leave the room while they x-ray YOU. Not them. And where is that medical radio active waste stored? You're happy to stand in front of your microwave while you are heating something!

Life is full of risks. Calculated risks. Heck even driving to the hospital to get an x-ray is a risk. The danger on the road is greater than the risk from the x-ray. We accept that risk. Some folks still smoke while protesting all sorts of things.

There are problems with coal, wind, solar, nuclear you name it. But a problem is something that is just waiting for a solution. The sad thing is that some folks don't want a solution because they don't want the problem solved.

Bold and italics added by me. Bruce T you said it all there. It's amazing how many folks try to politicize science. And those folks specialize in egos not advancing science. LOL

You guys here are trying to make out folks reading the science are pretending to expertise they don't have.

I submit when you guys say those of us excited about progress are naive, and feel the need for political dog whistling calling me a green, you are only rallying your little clique. See none of you currently works in a lab with current tech. Joel I believe you defended the ULA several years back when I outlined their $500 hammer mentality because you said you knew Lockheed. Boeing not only lost the race to Mars, they are an example of insane government subsidies to keep competition of two companies.

Why wasn't that an issue when the ULA, using Russian rockets because they could not build their own, and the ULA had a government approved monopoly.

An important point is that I don't doubt your collective stories of the past. But your group naivete comes from believing we will swallow your predictions of the future. Not only are none of you working in the labs with today's rapidly evolving knowledge of not just physics, but quantum physics as well, but not one of you has a working crystal ball. 

Remember when y'all were making fun of Musk's Space X "Mars dreams." Mars! Electric cars! Thus guy's nuts! Then he does it, and lands them for reuse, and now The old codgers at Boeing and Boeing/Lockheed (ULA) hate it that Boeing has all but dropped out of manned missions in the last few years, depending on getting more money per launch because the administrations want at least two competitors, so taxpayers pay the ULA more to do less.

What is ITER?  International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor

ITER ("The Way" in Latin) is one of the most ambitious energy projects in the world today.

 

What kind of radioactive waste does a fusion reactor produce?

 

Fusion on the other hand does not create any long-lived radioactive nuclear waste. A fusion reactor produces helium, which is an inert gas. It also produces and consumes tritium within the plant in a closed circuit. Tritium is radioactive (a beta emitter) but its half life is short

 

.

Fusion - Frequently asked questions | IAEA

www.iaea.org/topics/energy/fusion/faqs

 

Below is the current timeline to first plasma in 2025, and then to first Deuterium- Tritium operation begins. the ITER link is below it. 

When will experiments begin?

ITER's First Plasma is scheduled for December 2025.

 

That will be the first time the machine is powered on, and the first act of ITER's multi-decade operational program.

 

On a cleared, 42-hectare site in the south of France, building has been underway since 2010. The central Tokamak Building was handed over to the ITER Organization in March 2020 for the start of machine assembly. The first major event of this new phase was the installation of the 1,250-tonne cryostat base in May 2020. In the ITER offices around the world, the exact sequence of assembly events has been carefully orchestrated and coordinated.

 

The successful integration and assembly of over one million components (ten million parts), built in the ITER Members' factories around the world and delivered to the ITER site constitutes a tremendous logistics and engineering challenge. The ITER Organization will be carrying out the work supported by a number of assembly contractors (nine contracts in all).

 

In November 2017, the project passed the halfway mark to First Plasma. (More here.) In July 2020, the project officially launched the machine assembly phase. (More here.) Today, project execution to First Plasma stands at 72.4 percent (January 2021 data).

 

ITER Timeline

 

2005

Decision to site the project in France

2006

Signature of the ITER Agreement

2007

Formal creation of the ITER Organization

2007-2009

Land clearing and levelling

2010-2014

Ground support structure and seismic foundations for the Tokamak

2012

Nuclear licensing milestone: ITER becomes a Basic Nuclear Installation under French law

 
 

2014-2021

Construction of the Tokamak Building (access for assembly activities in 2019)

2010-2021

Construction of the ITER plant and auxiliary buildings for First Plasma

2008-2021

Manufacturing of principal First Plasma components

2015-2023

Largest components are transported along the ITER Itinerary

 
 

2020-2025

Main assembly phase I

2022

Torus completion

2024

Cryostat closure

2024-2025

Integrated commissioning phase (commissioning by system starts several years earlier)

Dec 2025

First Plasma

2025-2035

Progressive ramp-up of the machine

2035

Deuterium-Tritium Operation begins

 

 

 

https://www.iter.org/proj/inafewlines#1

 

 

[RV_]

16 hours ago, Rich&Sylvia said:

While understandable, this is a typical standard response.
The data shows otherwise.

 

The data indeed does show otherwise. Good point. However, we see data from scientists, others see a wall of words.

Edited April 25, 2021 by RV_

[RV_]

On 4/23/2021 at 10:47 AM, agesilaus said:

Various people have been predicting commercial fusion in a short time frame for decades. If they could make a prototype that actually produced a substantial amount of power over what it takes to run the plant then I would be more optimistic. And I'm not talking about producing power for 24 milliseconds of some such. When a fusion plant runs for say 8 hours with a net positive and usable power production, let me know.

 

The first protype power reactor (fission) powered the town of Arco ID. And you can visit that plant if you are in that part of Idaho, worth the stop too.

 

The actual experts and their timeline

Who is participating?

The ITER Project is a globe-spanning collaboration of 35 nations.

The ITER Members China, the European Union, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States have combined resources to conquer one of the greatest frontiers in science—reproducing on Earth the boundless energy that fuels the Sun and the stars.

The actual timeline is in the ITER page herehttps://www.iter.org/proj/inafewlines#1

[RV_]

From "The Hill"

"Fusion — clean, carbon-free energy the world desperately needs

Today, with the new superconductor, experiments can be built with more than twice the magnetic field opening up the possibilities of a new class of fusion machines. A team at our MIT research center is collaborating with the startup company, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, to design and build SPARC — just such a device. When operating, it will be the first fusion experiment to create and confine a plasma that produces net fusion power — a goal of the world’s research program for more than 60 years. 

However, despite tremendous progress in the science and technology, a practical demonstration of fusion has remained out of reach. So what has changed? One answer is that a new technology has emerged out of the lab and into industrial maturity. High-temperature superconductors were discovered in the mid-1980s but only in recent years have they been manufactured in a form and in quantities suitable for fusion. The other factor is a surge of interest and investment in fusion from the private sector. Together, these alter the landscape and offer the possibility of a dramatic speed-up in the development of this new energy source.

To explain the impact of superconductor development, we need to understand a bit about how fusion power works. The most important thing to know is that to make the fusion process go, we need to get the fuel up to unimaginably high temperatures — somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000,000 degrees. Remarkably, achieving these temperatures in the laboratory (albeit quite large well-equipped laboratories) is now fairly routine. What has slowed progress is the scale of the devices that will be required for the next step. A consortium of nations including the U.S. is currently building such an experiment, called ITER. ITER is an enormous machine that will cost 10s of billions of dollars to complete and won’t begin fusion experiments until about 2035.

Achieving and maintaining the needed temperatures requires isolating and insulating the fuel from ordinary matter. At these extreme temperatures, the electrons in the fuel atoms are all stripped from their nuclei and the gas becomes a plasma, the fourth state of matter. Plasma is an excellent conductor of electricity, which allows it to be shaped and confined by magnetic fields. So magnetic fields provide thermal insulation and, crucially, the quality of that insulation improves as the field’s strength is increased. Make the magnetic field higher and a fusion machine of a given performance can be made smaller. So though huge, ITER is as small as it could be given the magnet technology that was available in the 1990s, when it was designed. Today, with the new superconductor, experiments can be built with more than twice the magnetic field opening up the possibilities of a new class of fusion machines. A team at our MIT research center is collaborating with the startup company, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, to design and build SPARC — just such a device. When operating, it will be the first fusion experiment to create and confine a plasma that produces net fusion power — a goal of the world’s research program for more than 60 years. "

https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/519941-fusion-clean-carbon-free-energy-the-world-desperately-needs

[NamMedevac 70]

As usual RV you support your statements on technical and important issues with solid evidence.  You still the winner sport.  Cheers and Grins all around.  Capt. Lucky.

P.S. I am a fusion fan and maybe someday

Edited April 25, 2021 by NamMedevac 70

[docj]

10 hours ago, RV_ said:

What kind of radioactive waste does a fusion reactor produce?

 

 

Fusion on the other hand does not create any long-lived radioactive nuclear waste. A fusion reactor produces helium, which is an inert gas. It also produces and consumes tritium within the plant in a closed circuit. Tritium is radioactive (a beta emitter) but its half life is short

IMHO this is a bit of an oversimplification.  A deuterium-tritium fusion reaction produces a pair of 14.1 MeV neutrons which contain most of the energy of the process.  While these neutrons, themselves, aren't radioactive, they can create all sorts of radioactive isotopes when they are absorbed by matter.  To say it a bit differently, the neutron flux from a fusion reactor can "induce" radioactivity in a wide ranger of materials.

The most common approach for capturing this energy and using it in a reactor would be to surround the fusion "core" with a blanket of liquid lithium to absorb the neutrons.  That's well within current engineering skills but neither is it "easy."

Edited April 25, 2021 by docj

[agesilaus]

11 hours ago, RV_ said:

Fusion on the other hand does not create any long-lived radioactive nuclear waste. A fusion reactor produces helium, which is an inert gas. It also produces and consumes tritium within the plant in a closed circuit. Tritium is radioactive (a beta emitter) but its half life is short

Disraeli is supposed to have classified the variety of lies as:

"Lies, damned lies and statistics" and that statement above falls into the damned lies category:

Quote

Bombardment by fusion neutrons knocks atoms out of their structural positions while making them radioactive and weakening the structure, which must be replaced periodically. This results in huge masses of highly radioactive material that must eventually be transported offsite for burial. Many non-structural components inside the reaction vessel and in the blanket will also become highly radioactive by neutron activation. While the radioactivity level per kilogram of waste would be much smaller than for fission-reactor wastes, the volume and mass of wastes would be many times larger. What’s more, some of the radiation damage and production of radioactive waste is incurred to no end, because a proportion of the fusion power is generated solely to offset the irreducible on-site power drains.

BATS

So it is strictly true that the fusion reaction itself does not create radioactive waste the huge number of neutrons produces induce radioactivity is the structure of the fusion reactor. Converts iron to radioactive Iron-56 for example.

 

One other point, the radiation I get from ONE CT Scan is four times the total radiation dose I got in 6 years in the Navy. And we were the first people into the reactor vessel after a shutdown. Just try to get the Tech to tell you how much radiation you are getting from that X-Ray or CT scan. I've tried for decades and they always deny knowing, which is another damned lie. They must have it hammered into them, during their training to never tell the patients that information.

Edited April 25, 2021 by agesilaus

[agesilaus]

2 hours ago, NamMedevac 70 said:

As usual RV you support your statements on technical and important issues with solid evidence.  You still the winner sport.  Cheers and Grins all around.  Capt. Lucky.

Anyone can produce an article to baffle the uninitiated, as we were told in the Navy: "If you cannot dazzle them (Meaning the board of inspectors from Naval Reactors) with your brilliance, baffle them with your BS"

 

Show me a operating, meaning one that can run for hours, fusion reactor with serious net positive power production. At least enough power to light up an old style 100W light bulb. Then I'll be a fusion believer.

I am hoping that we will make such a device, I am not anti-fusion but I am a realist too. You can produce a stack of papers as high as the Washington Monument and without a physical operating example that stack just represents treecide.

[NamMedevac 70]

Agesilaus I see you do same thing as RV with your evidence link to support your statement.  I doubt if few including me really care.  And like I said "maybe someday". 

ZZZZZs

One cool cat waiting on a ride to the Vegas Strip.

Edited April 25, 2021 by NamMedevac 70