Comments on Next Big Future: Constructing a lot of nuclear power plants is not ...

I thought some Recent Nuclear News may be interest...

2007-07-19T01:42:00.000-07:00

I thought some Recent Nuclear News may be interesting here:

The Japanese earthquake story continues to be updated.

TEPCO ups report of impact of earthquake on its reactor

The Japanese company TEPCO has revised upwards its estimates of the impact of the recent earthquake in Japan on one of its reactors. It is now saying that 400, not 100, drums of low level waste overturned and that the amount of very weakly radioactive water that leaked into the sea was 50% higher than recent estimates.

However, before worrying about the leak it should be noted that the water that leaked was only two and a half times more radioactive than regular Bordeaux wine!

click here for the full story

Russian-built reactor operates at full power in China

The Tianwan 2 nuclear reactor, built by Russia in China, operated at full power for five days in mid-July. The plant is due to enter full commercial service in a few months. The Russians have already built one reactor at the Tianwan site and they have contracts to build two more soon.

click here for more information

So in 2018-2023, the world could be making 200+ re...

2007-07-15T09:45:00.000-07:00

So in 2018-2023, the world could be making 200+ reactors per year which would be enough to replace all of the new coal reactors. However, currently it appears that 100 per year would be a good level to achieve. If those are the 50% up powered (MIT donut fuel and nanoparticle coolant) reactors then each would be 3 GW reactors.

It will take time and commitment to scale up. Trai...

2007-07-15T09:42:00.000-07:00

It will take time and commitment to scale up.
Training people and separately getting less people intensive designs through automation or from the design would take time.

However, it does take 4-5 years to build a reactor and maybe 2-X years for approvals and licensing.

There is a ramping up globally now. 30 are being constructed and completed over the next 4 years. We could make 150 in the next 5 year build cycle (2013-2018) by following the historical scale up. The US scaled in 5 years from almost 3 small reactors to 12 larger ones in 1974. (8 in 1972, 10 in 1973) The world can scale up to 30 per year within 5 years.

The people to be employed for those reactors can go through 4-5 year training now. The global available supply of engineers and technicians is enough to provide those people. Universities are re-establishing nuclear training programs and bachelors degrees and the PHD programs.

China, India, Russia, Japan, S Korea, USA and the major corporations are scaling up and assembling the resources to build hundreds of reactors. It currently seems that the scale may only have 70-90 reactors (20 per year) built in 2013-2018.

I hope that more effort is made

Nice article and nice response to comment.I'm wond...

2007-07-15T08:46:00.000-07:00

Nice article and nice response to comment.

I'm wondering about the manpower question, the skilled workforce to build these plants.

If robots could build nuclear plants, and we had enough robots from robots building robots, it wouldn't be a problem.

I am serious and don't call me Shirley. ;-)I am no...

2007-07-13T20:24:00.000-07:00

I am serious and don't call me Shirley. ;-)

I am not saying nuclear is the only thing we should use.

"Nuclear waste" is incompletely burned nuclear fuel.

There are high burn reactors which can use up 100% of the fuel instead of 0.7 to 2%.

I have looked at the costs of all energy sources

Money "spent" on nuclear energy was an investment that provided energy for consumers and profit for the companies. This is like saying that 30% of the money spent on Walmart coud have been spent on research for energy breakthroughs.
You invest money in energy and get it back at a price per kilowatt hour.

Oil and coal kill 3 million people each year because of air pollution. Oil is about 50% of that. Plus little wars over oil. Japan started WW2 with the USA over lack of access to oil. The Iraq wars.

Electric cars use electricity. So 50% electricity from coal means that half of the electric cars are batteries powered by coal. Electric cars are the way to go but you have to clean up the sources.

I have written a lot about coal

Status of breeder reactors and nuclear waste reprocessing

Nuclear waste analysis

Look at my past articles on nuclear power

Nuclear power and water

Getting the scope of the energy problem right

Nuclear proliferation has killed no one

And what about the TONS of radioactive waste your ...

2007-07-13T19:53:00.000-07:00

And what about the TONS of radioactive waste your little glowing plan will produce.

Surely you can't be serious.

If every modern country spent only 30% of what has and may be spent on nuclear energy I'm pretty confident that we would see significant breakthroughs.

Why it was only as few years ago GM pulled the plug on their electric car because nobody wanted it (Who Killed the Electric Car) and they couldn't figure out how to make it worthwhile. But Th!nk, Telsa and others managed to figure it out and with a hell of a lot less money than the billions US car makers have pissed away on that foolish hydrogen dream they have been peddling since the 70's oil crisis for Pete's sake!

The World Nuclear industry is no better and probably a lot worse (in the long run) than big oil.