Comments on: The big bad nuclear mafia

By: aalberti

aalberti — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 08:43:00 +0000

Water moderated / thorium fueled molten salt reactor?
What kind of mess is it?
I think you investigated the wrong kind of reactor.

By: Klas2k

Klas2k — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 11:52:00 +0000

That is actually a very good argument. A lot of the time it is claimed that Nuclear costs risks stalling "renewables" investments. But at ten times the moeny, double the nuclear investments would still only marginally affect renewable investments - but probably give a much better turnout imo /K

By: Johan

Johan — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 09:12:00 +0000

Utilities might select breeders if the breeder reactor by itself is cheaper than a LWR. One can just run it in non breeding mode with a once through uranium fuel cycle. Fast reactors have better neutron economy so they should be able to achieve higher burnup with a given enrichment compared to LWR.

Considering how much uranium there is and how relatively cheap even uranium from sea water can be I wonder if reprocessing can ever become cheap enough to economically justify closing the fuel cycle.
One can of course also imagine a waste tax that taxes utilities based on amount of long lived waste produced per kWh of energy. That would be better than the current waste fee that is just a fixed amount regardless of how little or much waste is produced per kWh.

By: Johan Edlund

Johan Edlund — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 16:01:00 +0000

With current technology I don't think fuel costs will be lower with breeders. That can be counterintuitive but the fuel costs are made up of several parts; purchase of natural uranium, conversion, enrichment and finally fuel fabrication. With a breeder, the type of reactor required to make use of all the energy in fissile and fertile isotopes of uranium the fuel costs will be divided between purchase of natural uranium, reprocessing of used fuel and fuel fabrication and due to the higher radioactivity and greater proliferation risk with used reactor fuel, the costs of the latter two processes are higher. So even if you save money by buying less uranium or thorium the total costs will not be lower.

Since fuel costs are perhaps 10% of the total production costs and the breeder reactor is perhaps 30% more expensive to build, overall economy will be worse than using fresh LEU with conventional light water reactors. That utilities select to operate light water reactors isn't by accident.

If we want utilities to select breeders over LWR's in the near future I think some sort of subsidy will be required.

By: c furr

c furr — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 18:34:00 +0000

I did my research, would rather see the attention & funding go to PBRs. I think they are allot safer than anything that needs active cooling (or any coolant at all). A little support for something that even the "OH NO everything is as poorly operated-maintained-sited-designed bla bla bla as Fukashima!" bunch can recognize as much lower threat in most worst case scenarios might allow us to maintain a high energy/low cost civilization. I think most global warmistas would be more comfortable with it as well.

some basic refs on the web I used coming to my point of view:
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor#Safety_features
MIT
http://web.mit.edu/pebble-bed/background.pdf
Bunch of nuke enthusiasts nearly as radical as some anti-nuke enthusiasts
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202008/F-W_2008/HTR_4.pdf

By: Johan Simu

Johan Simu — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 21:02:00 +0000

Great info, thanks! Hadn't thought about that.

By: Donald

Donald — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 14:50:00 +0000

Great article.

To amplify the point, imagine the fuel cost if we had reactors that could use essentially all of the uranium (or thorium). That would drop the fuel cost per gigajoule by a factor of 200. For electricity, the fuel cost would be a rounding error in our monthly bill.

By: Johan Edlund

Johan Edlund — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 14:47:00 +0000

Well, all the three nuclear companies in the above comparison are state owned, which can explain why they aren't run like oil and gas companies. Most reactor vendors also don't sell their products to end users so it can be difficult to justify PR spending directed toward the general public. Most of us have probably bought gas from Shell or motoroil from Exxon Mobil, we can't say the same about Westinghouse or Areva. Electric power producers on the other hand usually keep quit about how they produce their electricity unless the production method is viewed favorably by politicians and the general public. I've heard and seen several commercials about wind power, but not a single one about electricity from nuclear, coal, gas or oil even though these dominate in actual production. Even hydro is hardly mentioned and hydro was after all regarded as the most enviromentally friendly power source in the Extern-E study (before wind, nuclear and solar in that order, but with very little difference between them).

By: ZAIMatte

ZAIMatte — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 11:32:00 +0000

Sorry, I have seen this video before the gentleman makes a very convincing argument but why?

Uranium is still too cheap, has the same proliferation risk as thorium and there is enough of the stuff around (already mined) to keep us going for millenia.

You can make excellent weapons from Uranium-233, it is even easier to extract as the uranium is in a thorium matrix.

MSR may be the technology of the future, but we are not there yet. Lots of research is still needed to build a full scale pilotplant, in the mean time we will need LWR or metal cooled fast breeders...

If you can't make your own argument, please do not post here but in our forum.

By: Johan

Johan — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 11:31:00 +0000

The proliferation arguments against uranium is mostly based on lies and exaggerations and those same lies and exaggerations can just as easily be thrown at thorium by the anti nuclear crowd.

It is better, imo, to highlight that the proliferation risk is pretty much zero from civilian nuclear power, regardless of what fuel the reactor uses.

You can't win over anti nuclear lies by new technology.