| Topic: |
Science > Physics |
| User: |
"W. Watson" |
| Date: |
18 May 2004 10:30:20 PM |
| Object: |
HGTR Nuclear Plants and Freeman Dyson |
In Freeman Dyson's 1988 book Infinite in All Directions, he talks about HGTRs
(helium-cooled, gas-generated, turbine reactors), and notes how extraordinarily safe
they are. The downside in his view is that they must be capable of being built within
3 years, instead of the 10-12 years expected back then, to make them acceptable and
viable to the public. Has anything changed?
--
Wayne T. Watson (121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N, 2,701 feet, Nevada City, CA)
-- GMT-8 hr std. time, RJ Rcvr 39° 8' 0" N, 121° 1' 0" W
Your mother was right. Wear your hat and sunglasses in the summer sun.
This is especially true if you're older. -- NYT Science Section, May 2004
Web Page: <home.earthlink.net/~mtnviews>
sierra_mtnview -at- earthlink -dot- net
Imaginarium Museum: <home.earthlink.net/~mtnviews/imaginarium.html>
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: HGTR Nuclear Plants and Freeman Dyson |
19 May 2004 10:11:02 AM |
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"W. Watson" <wolf_tracks@invalid.inv> wrote in message news:<gxAqc.1887$be.845@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net>...
In Freeman Dyson's 1988 book Infinite in All Directions,
he talks about HGTRs
(helium-cooled, gas-generated, turbine reactors), and
notes how extraordinarily safe
they are. The downside in his view is that they must be
capable of being built within
3 years, instead of the 10-12 years expected back then,
to make them acceptable and
viable to the public. Has anything changed?
[ridiculous long sig snipped for posterity's sake]
Well, the Chinese put up a nuke station in three years.
They used a notion of building the station based on "wells."
Each sub-system of the station is designed to be constructed
by assembling parts into a vertical string, then dropping this
down in place on site. This allows more parallelism in the
construction process. Plus, the components can be exposed
to less of the construction process, so they don't have to
be protected from debris, damage, etc. One of the VPs here
says the process was quite impressive, but involved, shall
we say, "innovative" labour practices.
Socks
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| User: "W. Watson" |
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| Title: Re: HGTR Nuclear Plants and Freeman Dyson |
20 May 2004 07:18:41 AM |
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wrote:
"W. Watson" <wolf_tracks@invalid.inv> wrote in message news:<gxAqc.1887$be.845@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net>...
In Freeman Dyson's 1988 book Infinite in All Directions,
he talks about HGTRs
(helium-cooled, gas-generated, turbine reactors), and
notes how extraordinarily safe
they are. The downside in his view is that they must be
capable of being built within
3 years, instead of the 10-12 years expected back then,
to make them acceptable and
viable to the public. Has anything changed?
[ridiculous long sig snipped for posterity's sake]
Well, the Chinese put up a nuke station in three years.
They used a notion of building the station based on "wells."
Each sub-system of the station is designed to be constructed
by assembling parts into a vertical string, then dropping this
down in place on site. This allows more parallelism in the
construction process. Plus, the components can be exposed
to less of the construction process, so they don't have to
be protected from debris, damage, etc. One of the VPs here
says the process was quite impressive, but involved, shall
we say, "innovative" labour practices.
Socks
Interesting.
I wonder though if any progress has been made in how quickly HGTRs can be built.
--
Wayne T. Watson (121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N, 2,701 feet, Nevada City, CA)
-- GMT-8 hr std. time, RJ Rcvr 39° 8' 0" N, 121° 1' 0" W
Your mother was right. Wear your hat and sunglasses in the summer sun.
This is especially true if you're older. -- NYT Science Section, May 2004
Web Page: <home.earthlink.net/~mtnviews>
sierra_mtnview -at- earthlink -dot- net
Imaginarium Museum: <home.earthlink.net/~mtnviews/imaginarium.html>
.
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| User: "tj Frazir" |
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| Title: Re: HGTR Nuclear Plants and Freeman Dyson |
20 May 2004 04:58:41 PM |
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Hydrogen cooled =BF=A0WYF ..
Is that like c0oling tnt with C4 ?
Just what kind of reactor is a gas reactor anyway ?
are U one of those cold fusion people ?
I bet ,,if you used hydrogen in a reactor you wount have to worry
about coolants.
I bet that reactor could burn that hydrogen in a billionth of one
second without oxygen .
HGTR ,,,hu ..TGOTB and MOE is where its at
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| User: "greywolf42" |
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| Title: Re: HGTR Nuclear Plants and Freeman Dyson |
20 May 2004 12:25:00 PM |
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W. Watson <wolf_tracks@invalid.inv> wrote in message
news:gxAqc.1887$be.845@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net...
In Freeman Dyson's 1988 book Infinite in All Directions, he talks about
HGTRs
(helium-cooled, gas-generated, turbine reactors), and notes how
extraordinarily safe
they are. The downside in his view is that they must be capable of being
built within
3 years, instead of the 10-12 years expected back then, to make them
acceptable and
viable to the public. Has anything changed?
High temperature gas reactors (HTGRs) are not significantly safer than any
other low-enriched fission power plant. [I don't know if Dyson transposed
the letters from the standard terminology, but the machines are the same.]
There is no machine or technology that cannot be made safer than it is ...
or safer than something else. It just takes money. But there is no
perfectly safe machine, anywhere. There are some really bad design ideas,
of course. Russian reactors (Chernobyl) were built without containments --
just like U.S. military reactors, chemical facilities, and LNG facilities.
No nuclear plant "requires" 10-12 years to construct. 3 to 6 years is
reasonable from an engineering standpoint, and is common around the world.
Just not in the U.S. In the U.S., there was a major effort for
'reengineering' all the nuclear plants under construction shortly after
Three Mile Island. Throughout the early 1980s, plants under construction
were redesigned and restructured. This effort resulted in doubling or even
tripling the construction times for plants then under construction. (I
recall the longest was 15 years.) Presumably, the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission would have no need to change design requirements in the middle of
construction of newer plants.
In my opinion, the lead time of building a plant is not the primary obstacle
to building new nuclear plants in the U.S. The primary obstacle is that
nuclear plants are inherently suited for baseload generation. They are
high-capital cost, low operating cost plants. In today's 'deregulated'
energy systems, one makes money with peaking-power plants that have low
capital cost and high operating cost.
The other major change is that there are no longer any domestic U.S.
companies building nuclear power systems anymore. GE, Westinghouse, B&W,
and General Atomic (the only US company to build an HTGR) are all out of the
business.
We could buy a Canadian plant (CANDU). Unlike any of the US designs, they
can be refueled online. But because they use natural uranium, they have the
drawback of not subsidizing the US military uranium-enrichment
establishment. I doubt one could garner political support here.
--
greywolf42
ubi dubium ibi libertas
{remove planet for return e-mail}
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: HGTR Nuclear Plants and Freeman Dyson |
20 May 2004 04:34:29 PM |
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"greywolf42" <mingstb@marssim-ss.com> wrote in message news:<10apq974etr2926@corp.supernews.com>...
[snip]
In my opinion, the lead time of building a plant is not the primary obstacle
to building new nuclear plants in the U.S. The primary obstacle is that
nuclear plants are inherently suited for baseload generation. They are
high-capital cost, low operating cost plants. In today's 'deregulated'
energy systems, one makes money with peaking-power plants that have low
capital cost and high operating cost.
The high capital cost is not *directly* the problem. The issue is,
the nuke regulatory process has this thing called an intervention.
Interested parties can come forward and make a case to get the plant
stopped. The current process has this *AFTER* the construction phase.
So it can happen, and has, that a utility will spend billions to
design, build, and get licensed to run, a nuke plant, then not be
allowed to operate it. At least one nuke in California was completed,
then never operated, not a kwhr. There are few utilities that can
stand such a hit. There are few that will take the risk.
There is some motion on changing this so that the intervention is
at the start of the process instead of the end. So far, it has not
produced dramatic results, but some movement has occured.
We could buy a Canadian plant (CANDU). Unlike any of the US designs, they
can be refueled online. But because they use natural uranium, they have the
drawback of not subsidizing the US military uranium-enrichment
establishment. I doubt one could garner political support here.
Not so much of an issue any more. The US military is currently in
possesion of something over 100 tonnes of weapons Plutonium that it
would like to get rid of. This is from many hundreds of weapons that
have been declared surplus following the fall of the USSR. The former
USSR has a similar quantity they want to get rid of. One possibility
is to burn it in power reactors. The CANDU design is capable of
using it as fuel with only very modest changes. The fuel would be
used in a form called "MOX" and you can read something about it here.
http://www.aecl.ca/
There is a search on the main page, search for MOX.
Socks
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| User: "greywolf42" |
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| Title: Re: HGTR Nuclear Plants and Freeman Dyson |
21 May 2004 03:08:53 PM |
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<puppet_sock@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:c7976c46.0405201334.217f7642@posting.google.com...
"greywolf42" <mingstb@marssim-ss.com> wrote in message
news:<10apq974etr2926@corp.supernews.com>...
[snip]
In my opinion, the lead time of building a plant is not the primary
obstacle
to building new nuclear plants in the U.S. The primary obstacle is that
nuclear plants are inherently suited for baseload generation. They are
high-capital cost, low operating cost plants. In today's 'deregulated'
energy systems, one makes money with peaking-power plants that have low
capital cost and high operating cost.
The high capital cost is not *directly* the problem.
As I noted above, I disagree. For the reasons I mentioned above.
The issue is,
the nuke regulatory process has this thing called an intervention.
Interested parties can come forward and make a case to get the plant
stopped.
This is true of any plant or facility in the U.S. And it is fundamentally a
sound policy. If one can demonstrate that a facility is truly too hazardous
to the surrounding community, it should be stopped.
The current process has this *AFTER* the construction phase.
It is also performed prior to the construction phase. Several plants have
been stopped during construction review (i.e. the Tomales Bay nuke. There
was this little problem, because Tomales Bay *is* the San Andreas Fault.)
Again, this is fundamentally a sound process. However, the standard of
proof is far higher after construction is completed.
So it can happen, and has, that a utility will spend billions to
design, build, and get licensed to run, a nuke plant, then not be
allowed to operate it.
This is not a perfect world, certainly.
At least one nuke in California was completed,
then never operated, not a kwhr.
I don't believe there was such a California plant. This did *almost* happen
to Shoreham Plant on Long Island. They operated at 5% power for a few
weeks, while testing prior to commercial operation. And the State of New
York (i.e. taxpayers) *bought* that plant from the utility in order to
prevent it's operation.
I think Seabrook, NH did suffer the fate you discussed. Many others
abandoned partially-built plants.
There are few utilities that can
stand such a hit. There are few that will take the risk.
Indeed. It is one of the drawbacks of large, baseload plants. The
investment is large, and the leadtime is long enough to allow local
opposition to grow. The short-leadtime peaking power plants are online
almost before anyone knows they are coming. And the investment risk -- if
stopped -- is lower.
There is some motion on changing this so that the intervention is
at the start of the process instead of the end. So far, it has not
produced dramatic results, but some movement has occured.
There has been no significant change in the regulations to my knowledge. A
lot of political posturing, but nothing substantive in either regulatory
change or changes in the regulators.
Historically, until the mid-1970s, regulated utilities were able to charge
ratepayers for construction work in progress (CWIP). Since these utilities
had to get regulator approval for construction, it was seen as a normal part
of doing business. It also meant that the utilities had no need to borrow
money for construction of power plants -- which made electricity cheaper to
the consumer. However, in the 1970's, a wave of anti-utility "reform" swept
the nation and it was asserted that utility stockholders should carry the
"risk" of construction. So, CWIP was outlawed. All this did, of course,
was mean that utilities had to borrow money to build plants. And the
interest charges (on top of the actual construction charges) went straight
to the ratepayers as soon as the plants went online. Not surprisingly,
electric rates started to go up substantially (this was the era of 20%/year
loans).
Considering the current fiasco of "deregulated" utilities and manipulated
markets, one can look back on the pre-1970s cheap, regulated, CWIP utilities
with a fair amount of nostalgia.
We could buy a Canadian plant (CANDU). Unlike any of the US designs,
they can be refueled online. But because they use natural uranium, they
have the drawback of not subsidizing the US military uranium-
enrichment establishment. I doubt one could garner political support
here.
Not so much of an issue any more. The US military is currently in
possesion of something over 100 tonnes of weapons Plutonium that it
would like to get rid of.
You are an optimist. Why do you think that the DOE has not disposed of any
of the spent fuel from commercial reactors? And has no plans whatsoever to
do more than 'retreivably store' what they eventually get?
This is from many hundreds of weapons that
have been declared surplus following the fall of the USSR.
Officially. Unofficially, they are to be reallocated. Take a look at the
DOE plans for Livermore, now that Rocky Flats is officially shut down.
The former
USSR has a similar quantity they want to get rid of. One possibility
is to burn it in power reactors. The CANDU design is capable of
using it as fuel with only very modest changes. The fuel would be
used in a form called "MOX" and you can read something about it here.
http://www.aecl.ca/
There is a search on the main page, search for MOX.
I have no doubt that CANDU plants can be modified to handle enriched
uranium. My point was that they don't *need* it. Hence they cannot be used
to subsidize the military U-separation plants.
--
greywolf42
ubi dubium ibi libertas
{remove planet for return e-mail}
.
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| User: "W. Watson" |
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| Title: Re: HTGR (was HGTR) Nuclear Plants and Freeman Dyson |
20 May 2004 08:05:56 PM |
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I was beginning to wonder if physicists had been brow beaten down over the idea of
nuclear power plants because of the few responses my post created. Glad to see
someone is alive on the subject.
Yes, you are correct. HTGR is the acronym. My slip. When the book was written, 1988,
that was the estimate to construct one. He was aware of 3 Mile Island and Cherynobl
when the book was written. He spends about a page discussing safety. Quoting him
after he discusses some very detailed and deep analyses on safety made back then,
"The results of the analyses are then startling favorable to the HTGR. ... The
billion dollar accident of the HTGR kills zero people immediately and seventy people
by delayed effects." He then mentions one might not be accurate, but that it is clear
the HTGR does not kill people wholesale.
I'm not physicist and only layman-like in my understanding of nuclear reactors, so I
only ask about this because it's an amazing claim made 16 years ago. I'm just looking
for a dicussion and a view in 2004. It seems like nuclear power plants may become an
important issue with the price of gas rising quickly. However, I'll hold to this
topic for the moment.
greywolf42 wrote:
W. Watson <wolf_tracks@invalid.inv> wrote in message
news:gxAqc.1887$be.845@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net...
In Freeman Dyson's 1988 book Infinite in All Directions, he talks about
HGTRs
(helium-cooled, gas-generated, turbine reactors), and notes how
extraordinarily safe
they are. The downside in his view is that they must be capable of being
built within
3 years, instead of the 10-12 years expected back then, to make them
acceptable and
viable to the public. Has anything changed?
High temperature gas reactors (HTGRs) are not significantly safer than any
other low-enriched fission power plant. [I don't know if Dyson transposed
the letters from the standard terminology, but the machines are the same.]
There is no machine or technology that cannot be made safer than it is ...
or safer than something else. It just takes money. But there is no
perfectly safe machine, anywhere. There are some really bad design ideas,
of course. Russian reactors (Chernobyl) were built without containments --
just like U.S. military reactors, chemical facilities, and LNG facilities.
No nuclear plant "requires" 10-12 years to construct. 3 to 6 years is
reasonable from an engineering standpoint, and is common around the world.
Just not in the U.S. In the U.S., there was a major effort for
'reengineering' all the nuclear plants under construction shortly after
Three Mile Island. Throughout the early 1980s, plants under construction
were redesigned and restructured. This effort resulted in doubling or even
tripling the construction times for plants then under construction. (I
recall the longest was 15 years.) Presumably, the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission would have no need to change design requirements in the middle of
construction of newer plants.
In my opinion, the lead time of building a plant is not the primary obstacle
to building new nuclear plants in the U.S. The primary obstacle is that
nuclear plants are inherently suited for baseload generation. They are
high-capital cost, low operating cost plants. In today's 'deregulated'
energy systems, one makes money with peaking-power plants that have low
capital cost and high operating cost.
The other major change is that there are no longer any domestic U.S.
companies building nuclear power systems anymore. GE, Westinghouse, B&W,
and General Atomic (the only US company to build an HTGR) are all out of the
business.
We could buy a Canadian plant (CANDU). Unlike any of the US designs, they
can be refueled online. But because they use natural uranium, they have the
drawback of not subsidizing the US military uranium-enrichment
establishment. I doubt one could garner political support here.
--
greywolf42
ubi dubium ibi libertas
{remove planet for return e-mail}
--
Wayne T. Watson (121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N, 2,701 feet, Nevada City, CA)
-- GMT-8 hr std. time, RJ Rcvr 39° 8' 0" N, 121° 1' 0" W
Your mother was right. Wear your hat and sunglasses in the summer sun.
This is especially true if you're older. -- NYT Science Section, May 2004
Web Page: <home.earthlink.net/~mtnviews>
sierra_mtnview -at- earthlink -dot- net
Imaginarium Museum: <home.earthlink.net/~mtnviews/imaginarium.html>
.
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| User: "greywolf42" |
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| Title: Re: HTGR (was HGTR) Nuclear Plants and Freeman Dyson |
21 May 2004 02:17:31 PM |
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W. Watson <wolf_tracks@invalid.inv> wrote in message
news:UBcrc.3983$be.2908@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net...
I was beginning to wonder if physicists had been brow beaten down over the
idea of nuclear power plants because of the few responses my post created.
Glad to see someone is alive on the subject.
It was a prior incarnation of mine. I helped build them, operate them,
decommision them, and regulate them for many years.
Yes, you are correct. HTGR is the acronym. My slip. When the book was
written, 1988, that was the estimate to construct one. He was aware of
3 Mile Island and Cherynobl when the book was written. He spends about
a page discussing safety. Quoting him after he discusses some very
detailed and deep analyses on safety made back then,
"The results of the analyses are then startling favorable to the HTGR. ...
The billion dollar accident of the HTGR kills zero people immediately
and seventy people by delayed effects."
He then mentions one might not be accurate, but that
it is clear the HTGR does not kill people wholesale.
That is not significantly different from the worst-case accidents of
light-water reactors. (I'm recalling the Rasmussen studies ... to which I
presume you are referring.) And fission power plants (with containments)
are safer than any other form of power generation.
Only a fool or a governement builds a nuke without a containment.
I'm not physicist and only layman-like in my understanding of nuclear
reactors, so I only ask about this because it's an amazing claim made
16 years ago. I'm just looking for a dicussion and a view in 2004.
It seems like nuclear power plants may become an important issue
with the price of gas rising quickly.
I disagree only because of the economic realities of the current political
situation with regard to "deregulation" of electric utilities.
However, I'll hold to this topic for the moment.
{snip higher levels}
--
greywolf42
ubi dubium ibi libertas
{remove planet for return e-mail}
.
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| User: "W. Watson" |
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| Title: Re: HTGR (was HGTR) Nuclear Plants and Freeman Dyson |
22 May 2004 11:05:42 AM |
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My only comments are here.
I'm not sure which study he cites. General Atomics was involved in some of it in some
way. Here's a relevant passage:
"And both groups came out with similar conclusions: in a certain well-defined sense,
the HTGR is roughly a thousand times as safe as a ligh-water reactor or equal power."
He then goes on to describe this statement in a long paragraph that follows.
Unfortunately, Amazon does not have the searchable text online, so I'll have to drop
out here. However, I'm ready to go on to the next related topic. The book by Gold and
Dyson on the plentiful petroleum reserves in the deep biosphere below the surface of
the earth produced by non-oxygen consuming ancient bacteria. I'll post that as a
separate topic later.
greywolf42 wrote:
....
It was a prior incarnation of mine. I helped build them, operate them,
decommision them, and regulate them for many years.
Yes, you are correct. HTGR is the acronym. My slip. When the book was
written, 1988, that was the estimate to construct one. He was aware of
3 Mile Island and Cherynobl when the book was written. He spends about
a page discussing safety. Quoting him after he discusses some very
detailed and deep analyses on safety made back then,
"The results of the analyses are then startling favorable to the HTGR. ...
The billion dollar accident of the HTGR kills zero people immediately
and seventy people by delayed effects."
He then mentions one might not be accurate, but that
it is clear the HTGR does not kill people wholesale.
That is not significantly different from the worst-case accidents of
light-water reactors. (I'm recalling the Rasmussen studies ... to which I
presume you are referring.) And fission power plants (with containments)
are safer than any other form of power generation.
Only a fool or a governement builds a nuke without a containment.
....
.
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| User: "tj Frazir" |
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| Title: Re: HTGR (was HGTR) Nuclear Plants and Freeman Dyson |
21 May 2004 10:35:30 PM |
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they are boath steam reactors.
except the gas reactor exchanges heat with thee reactor steam then
drives the turbine instead of the steam.
Its idiotic ,,,safer yet more parts and more that could go wrong like
getting H into the reactor .
Its a heat exchanger and has a heat loss in the exchange .
You will pay out the bottox for gas till the liquid piston engine 500
mph 270 hp comes to town
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