Australia is both an energy producer / exporter and consumer / importer of refined fuels and electricity generation plant, solar thermal, solar PV, wind turbines or steam & gas turbine.
We mine Uranium and refine to Yellow Cake, we have an interest in both developing new markets and New Nuclear Technologies.
The need for long-term, sustainable, safe & reliable energy creates unlimited commercial potential for centuries with massive on-going national benefits for Australia.
Australia is uniquely situated with both high-quality research & development institutions and people, the immediate need for distributed large-scale power and the resources & minerals to do it.
An integrated Nuclear Fuel and Electricity generation system, from mine, to refining & concentration, to fuel reactors, to production line SMR's, to fuel recovery, reprocessing and long-term disposal is required.
Serious innovation and research into a single comprehensive system, as a system not unrelated parts, could easily yield 10x profitability & price-reduction.
Which means backing multiple innovative research projects into alternatives to 1920's Gigawatt Thermal Power Stations, which can be hazardous if not designed failsafe, attract terrorist attention and require cooling water at levels Australia cannot meet.
We require clever factory built micro nuclear reactors built with new designs, based in new science:
- Zero risk fissile material, can't be converted to weapons or dispersed
- truck mountable, operable on-truck, within minutes of arrival.
- Failsafe designs
- Dry (waterless) cooling, if any active cooling is needed
- small, safe, reliable units remotely monitored & managed. "set & forget" operation.
- 'high' end-end efficiency, at least 100x increase in energy capture & conversion to electricity
- high burn-up, targeting 100% U-235 burnup, even if Thorium fuels MicroReactors.
- integrated short & long-term storage to operate reactor optimally and "match load" perfectly.
Australia can do this, we can invent the future of Nuclear Energy, not pursue costly, problematic 1920's Thermal designs, imported from overseas, made by "Dinosaur" Big Conglomerates, with no interest in our national priorities, interesting only in protecting their income streams and monopolies.
Steve Jenkin, Canberra
Wed 6 Nov 2024 12:47:12 AEDT
The Menzies Cabinet chose to invest in Cloud Seeding, not developing Computers, for good commercial reasons (small market here & firms diversity).
We had very good people in Computing, but the Menzies Govt didn’t invest in building the best research and education facilities.
We could’ve become the New Scots “Engineer" for Computers: Aussies in every major computing installation globally and known to be 'good' or 'great'.
We were that good, even in 1974 when I started.
We were that good, even in 1974 when I started.
Around 1960, the Liberals walked away from Nuclear: shut down the school at UNSW and walked away from the Jervis Bay power station the foundations of which had already been poured.
In the 1970’s, Australia had the chance to “Value Add” to our Coal & Iron Ore exports, invest in modern blast furnaces & steel mills and become the world leader in Steel production. It woul've supported ship building & heavy industry here, yet we let South Korea and Japan beat us comprehensively, when we started so far ahead with every advantage: capital, land, technology, trained & skilled people, marketing, and cheap, plentiful raw materials.
In 2000, John Howard squandered the windfall from the Mining Building Boom, when he could’ve set us up for the 21st Century by investing in many fields.
How many other ways have we given away our future?
Compare Australia to New Zealand: a fraction of our size and they beat us on almost every technology and manufacturing metric.
0. Can't talk Renewables without Energy Storage Taxonomy & cost/MJ, energy density, power density [ load demand ] & round-trip losses.
All power systems fail, even if only locally or transmission, and require multiple levels of storage. A few 1-2hr batteries don't fix this.
All power systems fail, even if only locally or transmission, and require multiple levels of storage. A few 1-2hr batteries don't fix this.
- v. short : 0.1 - 1 sec. capacitors
- short : 10 - 100 sec, ultra caps, high-power
- medium: 1,000 - 10,000 sec (2 hrs)
- medium long : 100,000 sec (1 day)
- long : 10 days - 100 days ( 1 season )
- permanent : 1 year - 100 years ( transportable, storable, safe/ non-toxic )
1. Replace large AC grids: massive losses & Stability Control.
Many small local grids with HV DC interconnects + GW inverters, and like US & Europe, frequency stability and phase matching at scale - with all the attendant synchronisation and stability/feedback problems evaporate or shrink to irrelevance.
Many small local grids with HV DC interconnects + GW inverters, and like US & Europe, frequency stability and phase matching at scale - with all the attendant synchronisation and stability/feedback problems evaporate or shrink to irrelevance.
2. Water consumption: troublesome in Oz normally - close to sea + heating problems, no evaporation, compare to massive impacts felt in European drought
3. 'Efficiency' is multi-factored, with powers of 10 gains possible:
- Energy Quality: thermal temps (~500C) vs 190MeV (10^12C) - discarding very high quality energy is 'criminal'
- 1% burn-up,
- fuel reprocessing includingspent fuel cooling ponds,
- reactor exhaust temp ( Carnot efficiency),
- turbine & heat recovery systems,
- heat rejected to environment => can be used for area heating and agriculture
4. Nuclear 'batteries' - 10MW - 50MW - for disaster recovery, immediate install or environmentally sensitive areas.
Non-fissile cores, small -> factory built in volume, dry (waterless) cooling, self-contained & self-controlling, fail-safe, truck transportable, fast setup / tear-down
Non-fissile cores, small -> factory built in volume, dry (waterless) cooling, self-contained & self-controlling, fail-safe, truck transportable, fast setup / tear-down
Energy & Oil / Fossil Fuels
- Oil is feedstock for essential materials - asphalt, petrochemicals, plastics, pharmaceuticals, ..
We will be extracting Oil, possibly Methane, for centuries as feedstock to current & new industries.
It's an extremely valuable & irreplaceable resource, squandering it by burning needlessly is short-sighted and irresponsible.
Current Energy conversation conflates & ignores 4 major technology issues:
- rebuild Grid to 21st Century stds of Megavolt DC interconnects & GW inverters
Having the world's largest AC grid is wrong, stems from years of neglect & underinvestment - Aust must double generation capacity to power the transport task.
A huge investment & construction opportunity. - Commentators & Politicians deliberately conflate "Electricity" use between the minor Domeastic / Residential sector
and the major consumers: commercial / industrial / manufacturing / mining / agriculture / public services (street lights, airports) - emergency generation, area power after disasters (natural or not) within hours or a day.
Disruption of the Silicon Revolution: we do things differently now, 65 years into the Silicon Revolution.
SpaceX shows 1960's Big Tech is dead and buried: expensive, slow, unreliable and non-performant.
It's a 1950's idea to building megascale monoliths based on old designs, with a centralised grid pushing it out to consumers, creating many single-points-of-failure (no resilience), with no 'demand quenching' / demand response, forcing supply (generators) to meet any level of demand, with billions and billions tied up in plant that will be used 0.5%, 40hrs, in a year.
"load levelling" both with local storage and demand-response, like water supplies, is able to minimise generator overbuild, maximise utilisation and for large centalised megascale plant, allow them to operate at optimum efficiency, prolonging life and maximising their ROI. Yet the Nuclear Putsch is silent on this.
Coincidentally, "negawatt", Amory Lovins 1985 proposal, brings forward capital investment in more efficient new technology, to permanently reduce demand.
Avoided consumption is always the cheapest power generation possible, with zero maintenance & fuel costs, and always will be.
Avoided consumption is always the cheapest power generation possible, with zero maintenance & fuel costs, and always will be.
21st Century technology is much improved, cheaper, better, smaller than 1950's, more so 1920's thermal plant. distributed, small, local generation + storage vs Centralised Mega-Generators (1920s tech)
Disruption is still a big thing: started in 1960 with Silicon transistors, still going, showing no signs of slowing, only growing into new fields.
Proof is SpaceX: revolutionised space transport, cheap, safer, more reliable, faster, more capable
Aust is great at Invention, "punch above our weight" significantly.
Lots of deep problems to be enumerated with Sustainable Energy, let alone researched & addressed.
Many small, nuclear generators - non-steam/thermal hopefully, plus storage & transport.
10M-50M electric.
[ ironically, the MW-thermal of ANSTO's HIFAR, 50yrs in operation was 10MW-t, about 3MWe ]
[ ironically, the MW-thermal of ANSTO's HIFAR, 50yrs in operation was 10MW-t, about 3MWe ]
Thorium modular reactors with one or two large high-flux irradiating sources creating fuel.
We'd need small volume Uranium enrichment to 20% U-235.
Capturing MeV energy directly from fission would need plasma high-energy extraction,
or completely new, nanoscale technology. Not necessarily directly from U-235 or Plutonium.
A new, large version of space borne RTG - Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, not based on Plutonium Oxide is possible.
Running v. high temp reactors with heat storage (molten Silicon + many stage recovery), allows continuous, steady reactor operation (A Good Thing), with the Heat Storage able to be supplement by Solar or 'negative cost' electricity from the Grid
Australia, The Hot, Dry Continent prone to Droughts & Floods, cannot support large conventional thermal power generation.
With our environmentally sensitive coastal waters and penchant to cluster beside the sea (~90% of population live with in 50km of the sea) and all the State Capitals (66% of population) being by the sea, the British & American option of seawater cooling is unacceptable.
$120+B for 5 AP1000 +2SMR (RR 470MW)
= 5x$20B + 2x $10B
Why not take $10B for a single Rolls Royce SMR and invest in multiple lines of research, including demonstration production lines?
Peter Dutton’s flimsy charade is first and foremost a gas plan not a nuclear power plan
Simon Holmes à Court
Straight from the Donald Trump playbook the opposition leader left Australia with more questions than answers
21 Jun 2024
The Coalition’s announcement is too vague to cost precisely and nobody really knows what SMRs will cost, but a reasonable estimate using assumptions from CSIRO’s GenCost would be in the order of $120bn, or to coin a new unit of money, one-third of an Aukus.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/21/peter-dutton-nuclear-power-plan-gas-energy
Dutton announced that the Coalition would build five large reactors and two small modular reactors by 2050. This would be about 6.5 GW of new capacity, which at best could be expected to generate 50 TWh a year – less than 15% of the new generation needed.
Coalition nuclear plan flips back to SMRs after latest meeting with lobbyists
Giles Parkinson
Apr 12, 2024
The Australian reported that the Rolls Royce SMR is priced at around $5 billion for a 470 MW facility, which appears an heroic assumption given it is less than one third of the price of the only SMR to actually obtain a licence to date, the NuScale project in the US that was cancelled last year because it was too expensive for consumers.
Burnup is expressed in gigawatt-days per metric ton of uranium (GWd/MTU).
Average burnup, around 35 GWd/MTU two decades ago, is over 45 GWd/MTU today.
Average burnup, around 35 GWd/MTU two decades ago, is over 45 GWd/MTU today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronvolt#Temperature
In certain fields, such as plasma physics, it is convenient to use the electronvolt to express temperature.
The electronvolt is divided by the Boltzmann constant to convert to the Kelvin scale:
1eV ~= 11,000K
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercritical_steam_generator#Definitions
These definitions regarding steam generation were found in a report on coal production in China investigated by the Center for American Progress.
- Subcritical – up to 705 °F (374 °C) and 3,208 psi (221.2 bar) (the critical point of water)
- Supercritical – up to the 1,000–1,050 °F (538–566 °C); requires advanced materials
- Ultra-supercritical – up to 1,400 °F (760 °C) and pressure levels of 5,000 psi (340 bar) (additional innovations, not specified, would allow even more efficiency)
The theoretical maximum efficiency of a 'heat engine' determined by the ratio of the 'Hot' and 'Cold' sides, measured from absolute-zero (Kelvin).
"supercritical" steam engines work between (hot) ~550C = 811K
and ~20C = 293K, or approx 850K to 300K - which is impressive.
However, this is at 3,000 - 5,000 psi: pushing limits of materials available
(read 'very expensive' & prone to fail).
Modern aircraft use jet turbines have exhaust temps in the 1400C-1700C range : ~2000K,
explaining why 'gas turbines' are much more efficient & desirable generators in modern electricity networks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot_heat_engine#Carnot's_theorem
This maximum efficiency ηI is defined as above:
- W is the work done by the system (energy exiting the system as work),
- QH is the heat put into the system (heat energy entering the system),
- TC is the absolute temperature of the cold reservoir, and
- TH is the absolute temperature of the hot reservoir.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnup
Converting between percent and energy/mass requires knowledge of κ, the thermal energy released per fission event.
A typical value is 193.7 MeV (3.1×10−11 J) of thermal energy per fission (see Nuclear fission).
With this value, the maximum burnup of 100% FIMA, which includes fissioning not just fissile content but also the other fissionable nuclides, is equivalent to about 909 GWd/t.
Nuclear engineers often use this to roughly approximate 10% burnup as just less than 100 GWd/t.
The actual fuel may be any actinide that can support a chain reaction (meaning it is fissile), including uranium, plutonium, and more exotic transuranic fuels.
This fuel content is often referred to as the heavy metal to distinguish it from other metals present in the fuel, such as those used for cladding.
The heavy metal is typically present as either metal or oxide, but other compounds such as carbides or other salts are possible.
Fast reactors are more immune to fission-product poisoning and can inherently reach higher burnups in one cycle.
In 1985, the EBR-II reactor at Argonne National Laboratory took metallic fuel up to 19.9% burnup, or just under 200 GWd/t.[4]
The Deep Burn Modular Helium Reactor (DB-MHR) might reach 500 GWd/t of transuranic elements.
In a power station, high fuel burnup is desirable for:
- Reducing downtime for refueling
- Reducing the number of fresh nuclear fuel elements required and spent nuclear fuel elements generated while producing a given amount of energy
- Reducing the potential for diversion of plutonium from spent fuel for use in nuclear weapons
On the other hand, there are signs that increasing burnup above 50 or 60 GWd/tU leads to significant engineering challenges and that it does not necessarily lead to economic benefits.
Higher-burnup fuels require higher initial enrichment to sustain reactivity.
Since the amount of separative work units (SWUs) is not a linear function of enrichment, it is more expensive to achieve higher enrichments.
There are also operational aspects of high burnup fuels that are associated especially with reliability of such fuel. The main concerns associated with high burnup fuels are:
Increased burnup places additional demands on fuel cladding, which must withstand the reactor environment for longer periods.
Longer residence in the reactor requires higher corrosion resistance.
Higher burnup leads to higher accumulation of gaseous fission products inside the fuel pin, resulting in significant increases in internal pressure.
Higher burnup leads to increased radiation-induced growth, which can lead to undesirable changes in core geometry (fuel assembly bow or fuel rod bow).
Fuel assembly bow can result in an increased drop times for control rods due to friction between control rods and bowed guide tubes.
While high burnup fuel generates a smaller volume of fuel for reprocessing, the fuel has a higher specific activity.
In once-through nuclear fuel cycles such as are currently in use in much of the world,
used fuel elements are disposed of whole as high level nuclear waste,
and the remaining uranium and plutonium content is lost.
Higher burnup allows more of the fissile 235U and of the plutonium bred from the 238U to be utilised, reducing the uranium requirements of the fuel cycle.
Some U.S. electricity generating plants use dry cooling
AUGUST 29, 2018
U.S. Energy Information Administration
Cooling systems are often the largest source of water use in power plants because of the large amount of heat that must be removed to condense the steam used to drive turbine generators.
Historically, this cooling was provided by water sources such as rivers and lakes, but the number of power plants using dry cooling-a cooling system that uses little to no water-has increased in recent years.
Dry cooling systems have relatively high capital costs and require more energy to operate.
These factors result in lower overall power plant efficiency, but dry cooling systems use about 95% less water than wet systems.
U.S. electric power sector continues water efficiency gains
JUNE 14, 2023
U.S. Energy Information Administration
As the country's generation mix moves away from the most water-intensive sources of generation,
U.S. electric power sector water withdrawals for power plant cooling remained relatively constant in 2021,
increasing by just 0.3% from 2020 to 47.7 trillion gallons of water.
The slight increase compares to a 2.5% rise in U.S. electricity generation in 2021.
Thirsty Energy: Water and Energy in the 21st Century
24 October 2010
World Economic Forum
How best to optimize the use of water and energy
Table 1 (pg 23)
Water Consumption in Thermoelectric Power Plants per unit of Net Power Produced Closed-loop Cooling
Litres per MWh Gal per MWh
Nuclear 2,700 720
Subcritical Pulverized Coal 2,000 520
Supercritical Pulverized Coal 1,700 450
Integrated Gasification 1,200 310
Combined-cycle, slurry fed
Natural Gas Combined-cycle 700 190
Source: Water Requirements for Existing and Emerging Thermoelectric Plant Technologies.
US Department of Energy, National Energy Technology Laboratory, August 2008.
Message from the Energy Community Leader 2008 Energy and Water - Sustaining the Flow
By James E. Rogers,
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Duke Energy Corporation, USA
In the last century, global consumption of our planet's finite freshwater supply has grown at more than twice the rate of world population growth,
leaving an increasing number of regions chronically short of water, according to the United nations.
By 2025, nearly 2 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity,
and two-thirds of the world population could be living under stressed water conditions.
Water is critical to energy production and for reducing air emissions from producing energy. yet,
the water/energy nexus is often overlooked.
At the World Economic Forum annual Meeting 2008 last January,
I recall UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon warning that what most businesses are doing to address the water issue amounts to "a drop in the bucket."
But for many electric utilities around the world, that is not the case.
With changing weather patterns causing more frequent weather extremes in some areas,
the availability of water is frequently receiving more attention.
In fact, in the United states, utility companies recognize that water quantity is becoming a significant permitting issue.
In the United states, electric utilities are one of the larger consumers of water,
although agricultural irrigation is by far the greatest water consumer.
But unlike irrigation,
and depending on the type of power generation, cooling system and pollution control systems used,
power plants return a significant amount of the water withdrawn to the source.
As advances in power production efficiency are made,
water use efficiency typically increases as well.
Parliamentary Library RESEARCH NOTE
Information, analysis and advice for the Parliament
4 December 2006,
Water requirements of nuclear power stations
Table 1: Cooling Water Withdrawal and Consumption (Evaporation to the Atmosphere)
Rates for Common Thermal Power Plant and Cooling System Types (converted from US gallons to litres)
Source: Water & Sustainability (Volume 3):U.S. Water Consumption for Power Production-The Next Half Century, Topical Report March
2002, EPRI, Concord. Viewed 1 November 2006. http://www.epriweb.com/public/000000000001006786.pdf
Subject: IEEE Spectrum on two new nuclear reactors in USA.
Date: 23 May 2020 at 15:19:50 AEST
I thought their aside on "Nuscale" was really important.
Of all the many SMR designs, they've pursued this to get certification - up to Phase IV of six.
Not going to be done by the end of June, but you'd think "soon".
Application Review Schedule for the NuScale Design
Nuscale - Small Modular Reactors [60MW electrical]
The reactor measures 65 feet tall x 9 feet in diameter
It sits within a containment vessel measuring 76 feet tall x 15 feet in diameter.
The reactor and containment vessel operate inside a water-filled pool that is built below grade.
The reactor operates using the principles of buoyancy driven natural circulation;
hence, no pumps are needed to circulate water through the reactor.
Wt: ~700 tons in total are shipped from the factory in three segments
… The steam is directed to a small skid mounted turbine that is attached by a single shaft to the electrical generator.
The NuScale plant, with its innovative design, has created the new standard for rigorously proven safety through the Triple Crown for Nuclear Plant Safety™: to safely shut down and self-cool, indefinitely, with:
• No operator or computer action
• No AC or DC power
• No additional water
With NuScale design's simplicity, only a handful of safety valves need to be opened in the event of an accident to ensure actuation of the ECCS.
Similarly, no pumps or additional water are required to provide core cooling for an indefinite period of time.
NuScale Power's complete alternate power system concept eliminates the need for safety grade DC power to accomplish ESFAS functions for shutdown and core cooling.
Use of standard LWR fuel allows leveraging extensive experience and infrastructure for the storage, handling, and shipment of Used reactor fuel.
Our facility is designed for ease of Used fuel transfer to a dry cask storage system.
Within approximately 5 years, the thermal load of the Used fuel assemblies is reduced significantly,
and can be moved to a secure dry storage area.
The plant site layout includes space allocation adequate for the dry storage of all the Used fuel for the 60-year life of the plant.
Slow, Steady Progress for Two U.S. Nuclear Power Projects
Plant Vogtle in Georgia installs more Westinghouse reactors
while Oregon-based NuScale awaits final approval of its small modular reactor design
20 May 2020
There are 53 nuclear reactors currently under construction around the world.
Only two are in the United States, once the world's leader in nuclear energy development.
And those two reactors represent expansions of a preexisting two-reactor facility, Plant Vogtle in Waynesboro, Ga.
Separately, a company in Portland, Ore., called NuScale Power is now working with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to develop a next-generation reactor built around a smaller-scale, modular design.
These two projects together represent the leading edge of commercial U.S. nuclear-fission reactor development today.
The AP1000 pressurized-water reactor, designed by Westinghouse, is a 21st-century "new" reactor.
It's been deployed in just two other places, in China,
with two AP1000 reactors at the Sanmen Nuclear Power Station in Zheijang province
and two at the Haiyang Nuclear Power Plant in Shandong province.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),
the AP1000 reactors at these locations operate at 1,157 megawatts and 1,126 MW, respectively.
In 2005, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) certified the AP1000 design, clearing the way for its sale and installation at these three sites more than a decade later.
Last year, Dan Brouillette, the U.S. secretary of energy, wrote in a blog post: "The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is all in on new nuclear energy."
NuScale's modular design-with 12 smaller reactors, each operating at a projected 60 MW-met NRC Phase 4 approval at the end of last year.
According to Diane Hughes, vice president of marketing and communications for NuScale,
"This means that the technical review by the NRC is essentially complete and that the final design approval is expected on schedule by September 2020."
NuScale's first customer, the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, plans to install a power plant with NuScale reactors at the Idaho National Laboratory site in Idaho Falls.
The plant, Hughes said, is "slated for operation by the mid-2020s based on the NRC's approved design."
The idea of harnessing multiple smaller reactors in a single design is not new, dating back as far as the 1940s.
"Nuclear power is unlike almost any other energy technology, in that it's the one tech where the costs have gone up, not down, with experience," he said.
"The way to think about it is that the more experience we have with nuclear power, the more we learn about potential vulnerabilities that can lead to catastrophic accidents."
However, Hughes of NuScale counters that, unlike the 54 competing small modular reactor designs that the IAEA has records of, NuScale is
"the first ever small modular reactor technology to undergo...NRC design certification review."
Subject: We desperately need a new Long-Term Energy Storage system
Date: 14 November 2020 at 20:23:38 AEDT
We, as a country and planet, need to find something other than fossil fuels that store energy in concentrated form that keeps and can be transported.
I'm not sure Hydrogen is 'it'.
Pumped Hydro, even sea water, isn't Long-Term - not transportable and can't stockpile a six month supply.
Liquid H2 takes a lot of energy to keep cool, compressed H2 a lot of embodied energy + hard to store.
Ammonia - NH3 - lower pressure & liquid at room temp - but toxic and corrosive.
There's the Vanadium redox flow cell - I like the sound of it, but never took off.
Has to be economic at small (1MW) size, be distributed and scale up as needed.
Those "Nuclear Batteries" - modular reactors have been promised for 5-10 years, still no sign of movement :(
To quote the Dish, "we're screwed" :(
World's largest coal producer warns of bankruptcy risk
Peabody Energy, the world's largest private sector coal producer, has said there is a risk it could go bankrupt for the second time in five years, reports the Financial Times.
It adds: "[Peabody has] raced to renegotiate debts in the wake of tumbling demand for the fossil fuel.
The New York-listed miner is at the centre of upheaval in energy markets as natural gas and renewables replace coal on the North American power grid.
The economic fallout of coronavirus has also sapped demand for coal used in steelmaking, an important market for Peabody's Australian operations."
Meanwhile, Reuters reports:
"South African investors have pulled out of a local multi-billion dollar coal-fired power plant project,
putting its construction at risk as opposition to the use of fossil-fuels in the country grows despite crippling power shortages.
Across the world, investors are coming under increasing pressure to ditch coal,
the most polluting of fossil fuels, and switch to greener energy.
Subject: Re: Petition to Federal Paliamenmt to Legalise Nuclear Power in Austrlaia
Date: 1 April 2022 at 14:25:43 AEDT
I think Nuclear should've been an important technology for transition to fully renewables + long-term storage.
We know have to rush to get things done. Australia & most of the world has run the clock down on these alternatives.
We agree on large "Old technology" reactors are too big, too hard to build and operate and end up not being cost effective against wind power + storage.
Look at the cooling task per GW generated: 40 tonnes / second, with a 10C-20C temp rise. and more like 1 tonne / sec for evaporation.
Evaporative cooling is necessary if you're not by the sea.
I think it was 10-15 years ago I first heard about Hitachi and their SMR's - Small Modular Reactors.
Supposed to be built in a factory, so 'fast, perfect & cheap'.
With a 'replaceable' reactor - pick it up and return to the factory after 25 yrs or so.
They are still "Vapourware". I wish they weren't, but not yet for sale.
Rolls Royce has a 'Small' Reactor it's building - 500MW IIRC. [ I've written a briefing note for you on this before]
Much faster / simpler site build, but still under development.
Still with a need for tonnage cooling.
I don't know of any commercial Fast Breeders still working or any development efforts for new generation FB's.
I agree, Small is Best and Breeding Your Own Fuel - either Plutonium or Thorium - would be a perfect solution.
I've looked hard into these technologies and not been able to find any development or prototypes that are within 25 years of being commercial.
This is one of the most interesting new initiatives - "Radiant" by a group of ex-employees of Space-X
"micro" reactor - 1MW targetted, with Helium coolant (!!! cost !!!)
https://interestingengineering.com/ex-spacex-engineers-are-building-a-cheap-portable-nuclear-reactor
Photo in this article
The fuel type they want to use is known & researched - possibly proven (not sure).
Might be tricky getting a guaranteed supply of the fuel.
TRISO Particles: The Most Robust Nuclear Fuel on Earth
If within 10 years some companies can develop a production line for 1MW TRISO reactors and a production line for the fuel, this could be a thing.
If the commercial production blows out past 20 years, they won't have a chance of being competitive in any normal environment - space or extreme places, where cost isn't the prime metric.
The USS Nautilus was commissioned in 1954 with a 10MW propulsion system.
Apparently they can go as high as 150MW
The French subs were probably around 50MW, sealed for 30 years.
There are so many uses & advantages for 10MW-50MW reactors, especially with multi-decade fuel life,
that if they could be built anywhere near competitive price compared to diesel engines, we'd be knee deep in them.
The commercial rewards to the US & French maritime nuclear reactor constructors for cracking this market would've been massive.
It hasn't happened for a lack of desire or lack of identified need.
thanks very much for your note and for taking time to outline what should be viable & effective solutions.
If you ever find links to development work or working "at-scale" prototypes of any of this technology, I'm very interested in hearing about it.
I think we've missed the window of opportunity.
Politicians had to invest in the research, then fund development, ending in 2000 - not starting then - for us to have them as a real alternative now.
Hinkley Point C
10 yr build
100 cranes on site
400 acre site
850,000 cubic metres of concrete already poured
120 tonnes /second cooling water (via 3 10m tunnels, 2 miles out to sea)
run for at least 60 years
2x 1.65GW output
Advanced EPR reactors, French design
A$50B+
£92.50 / MW-hr vs £50 / MWh for new wind power
[ now £106 - inflation ]
price guaranteed for 35 years
Subject: Rethinking Nuclear
Date: 14 August 2022 at 15:46:56 AEST
I was reading a piece on Nuclear power & historical safety (book been released).
I've never heard of a design that is inherently self-regulating & safe…
May have mentioned I once heard a science story on a Natural Reactor in South Africa
- Uranium ore got concentrated in a pool, which hit critical & boiled. Once it frothed up, went sub-critical.
With a bed & even sides lined with Triso particles (rice sized) and some U-238 dissolved in water, this could be made small & low-output.
Stick it in a pressure vessel and the boiling temp increases.
Need pipes to extract heat in a closed loop. I prefer water as a working fluid - dense and takes up a lot of heat, cheap & plentiful too.
Cooling water isn't safety critical in this design - the tub just boils, froths up and goes back to an equilibrium.
Could have emergency 'control rods' - but that sounds like poor engineering design to me - make it inherently self-limiting and all the over-the-top safety systems evaporate.
As well, there'd be no easily extracted enriched fuel in the reactor - nothing that anyone could steal and fashion into a bomb.
The air-cooled setup of 'Radiant', presumably with heat pumps, is one I like.
Allows it to operate anywhere and
Real "Micro-reactors", physically small, 200kW - 1MW output, would be produced & certified on a production line, then easily shipped to where needed.
Returned to factory for refurbishing.
Scaling up is like PC's in an Internet Datacentre - rack 'em and stack 'em
I'd love to know how much to build a 200kW prototype. Tricky part would be getting the yellow-cake and Triso fuel.
Even if the cost per unit and Levelised Cost of Power didn't match Solar & Wind, it would complement it wonderfully.
I've written to you before that the lead-time in designing and building GigaWatt class Nuclear power stations - and finding suitably skilled & experienced workers - is 15 - 20 years.
We need them "Now", but Howard et al didn't act in 2000 when they had the chance.
A self-regulating inherently safe & simple design could be taken from prototype to certified production in a very few years.
The startup by ex-SpaceX people, Triso fuel, helium cooling.
1MW in a 40' shipping container
1MW in a 40' shipping container
website is "Content Free" - only some pix & vague words
Subject: Most important news I've heard in 25 yrs on Nuclear Energy: China
Date: 24 August 2024 at 17:56:58 AEST
I've said to you that if we were going to get any Nuclear power here,
Howard had to have started it in 2000, but didn't.
I also made an aside that new technologies - Mars colonies would need nuclear power - might give us affordable, usable SMR's on Earth.
It looks like China might be there in 2030 with a Thorium SMR.
I'm barracking for them.
Best news I've heard for Nuclear power in a very, very long time.
2MW Thorium test reactor, started 2011
A map in here:
The relative lack of water available for cooling pressurszed water reactors west of the Hu line (shaded yellow) is seen as a limiting factor for them.
an experimental supercritical carbon dioxide-based closed-cycle gas turbine to convert the thermal output to 10 MW of electricity.
Construction is slated to start in 2025, and be completed by 2029.
The project would also include a high-temperature hydrolysis component, for hydrogen generation.
Following the completion of the 10 MW project, in 2030 construction will begin on
commercial SMRs of at least 100 MWe.
60MW reactor in Gobi Desert, 2025
China to launch world's first thorium molten salt nuclear power station in 2025
China to launch world's first thorium molten salt nuclear power station in 2025
In a significant moment for nuclear energy development, China plans to set up the world's first molten salt nuclear power station in the Gobi Desert.
Subject: Rapid Iterative Development... What's wrong with "classic" big engineering approach
Date: 7 June 2024 at 07:30:57 AEST
You’ve argued previously about the glacial speed of current nuclear plant designs.
We have strong evidence from SpaceX that the “old school” perfect-design being test approach is slow, expensive and less ‘performant’ & safe than rapid iterative design.
You can quote their successes - many - when arguing your case for faster builds of nuclear plants.
The downside is when, not if, there’s a failure, the debris from a nuclear reactor is much, much trickier to clean up.
SpaceX has just had a double success on its 4th attempt launching Heavy Booster + Starship.
Both booster and ship achieved soft landings - after the world’s first unbroken transmission of reentry - through the plasma sheath (helps to have LEO comms)
With Falcon 9, they’ve done 350+ successful landings and no losses since ‘block 5’ (they did lose a booster at sea after landing).
They are currently lifting 90%+ of ‘mass to orbit’ with a perfect safety record.
Meanwhile, Boeing has its first flight of crewed ’Starliner’ - they got up safely and yet to dock with the ISS, then return.
SpaceX and it’s Dragon has taken 50 people to orbit without incident.
Both programs started in 2006.
SpaceX flew Falcon-1 in 2006, from a standing start in 2002 and have roared past everyone else, now into their third vehicle (F-1, F-9, Starship)
the latest using stainless steel and methane + LOX - never been done before.
Booster/Starship was 5,000 tonnes at launch, the heaviest rocket to ever fly.
They’re aiming for 8,000 tonnes in the final design iteration and 200t to LEO (expended, not ship returned).
How did those big, super-expensive engineering firms allow themselves to be so comprehensively sidelined?
The same way that Kodak invented the digital camera and then management drove them to extinction.
The CEO, Board and senior management all got massive bonuses / pay while they destroyed shareholder equity.
Shorter:
MBA’s suck, they’re risk adverse and focus on personal reward not company performance - and we let them get away with it.
George Eastman, the Steve Jobs of his day, was a risk-taking high-tech innovator that built an empire that most a century, but couldn't survive MBA's.
The firm invented the Digital Camera, the invention that killed Film - yet in the hands of risk adverse, short-sighted highly trained 'managers', they destroyed one of the most valuable companies ever, in the top three globally for brand recognition, taking bonuses while shareholders lost everything.
Australia's Population
Australia is an urban coastal nation.
In 2001, 85% of Australia’s population lived within 50 kilometres (km) of the coast,
but by 2019, that proportion had risen to 87% (ABS 2020b).
This equates to over 22 million Australians now calling the coast home.
While coastal population growth has previously been concentrated in urban centres,
it is now spreading to coastal townships and villages (Infrastructure Australia 2020).
Regional coastal development as a result of migration out of the cities caused by the COVID-19 pandemic may increase this trend (see the Urban chapter).
ANSTO and Nuclear Reactors
Australia is home to one of the world’s best nuclear reactors
Celebrating ANSTO and 70 years of Australia’s home-grown nuclear expertise
2023
Open-pool Australian lightwater reactor (OPAL)
High Flux Australian Reactor (HiFAR)
OPAL multi-purpose reactor
Neutron Activation Analysis and Neutron Irradiation
