N^4

Nuclear Technology Basics: Part 9 Molten-Salt Reactors

2012-01-19T13:39:00.002-06:00

Introduction

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Molten-salt reactors represent the most versatile and efficient types of reactors ever designed in the history of nuclear power engineering. Molten-salt reactors do not store their fuel in solid fuel rods. Instead, the nuclear fuel is chemically bonded with a halogen such as chlorine or fluorine to form a mineral salt. This mineral salt is liquid at the operating temperature of the reactor, which is pumped through the reactor systems. The molten salt mixture has a much higher operating temperature, allowing molten-salt reactors to take advantage of the Brayton cycle, and it is also unpressurized which removes the need for high pressure ductwork and allowing for a simpler reactor design. Conversely, it is impossible for these reactors to experience a meltdown since the fuel mixture is already molten and the density of the molten core decreases with increasing heat, and it pushes the amount of material needed to sustain critical mass out of the reactor core, slowing down the reaction.

There have been molten-salt reactors that have been built in the past as working experimental reactors, but there has yet to be an existing commercial example of an MSR-type reactor. The FUJI reactor project in Japan is a planned prototype that has been based on MSR technology, but funding for the project has been stalled at the moment. Of all of the Generation IV designs, the MSR reactors show the most promise.

1. Liquid Salt Very High Temperature Reactor (LS-VHTR)

This is a molten salt variant of the VHTR (Very High Temperature Reactor) design.

Liquid-Salt Very High Temperature Reactors are similar to the VHTRs discussed previously in part 7 of this series of posts, except that they have a liquid core instead of a solid core. The liquid core allows for a greater degree of control over the fission reaction as well as enabling more effective removal processes for the reaction poisons in the fission by-products. In addition, the liquid core achieves higher ratios of thermal efficiency because of its greater conductivity of heat compared to solid-cored reactors. Finally, the physical properties of the liquid core make a runaway fission event impossible because the liquid core expands when heated. If the core becomes overheated, it will expand to the point to where the core's density will be too low in order for fission to continue.

The core is contained within a housing where fission takes place and the entire core is submerged in a pool of molten salt to regulate the temperature of the reactor core. A heat exchanger removes excess heat from the pool of molten salt to maintain a stable equilibrium within the coolant pool.

As fission takes place in the reactor, heat from fission heats up the material in the core where the hot liquid is pumped out of the core chamber into a duct near the top of the core in the primary coolant loop. It is carried to a heat-exchanger where a secondary loop of molten-salt coolant is heated up and is then sent to the turbine and generator. The cooled down salt in the primary coolant loop returns to an intake at the bottom of the reactor core where it is then heated up again to complete the circuit.

Moderator Type: Graphite

Technology: Generation IV

Existing Examples:

Advantages:

2. Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR)

This is an even more revolutionary reactor design than the LS-VHTR. The reactor has a core of molten salt rather than a solid core, except it uses thorium as its nuclear fuel rather than uranium. It is much more efficient in terms of fuel utilization than a traditional thorium-based reactor and it can also be used as a breeder to create more fuel. This reactor design is very flexible in terms of what types of radioisotopes it can use to carry out fission and could even use the spent material left over from LWRs as fuel. Finally, its high operating temperature could be used as a heat source for many industrial processes rather than having to rely on natural gas and could hypothetically be an economically viable source of hydrogen production.

The reactor design is similar to that of the LS-VHTR, except that a circuit at the bottom of the reactor core allows part of the molten salt to be diverted to a chemical processing plant for fuel breeding purposes and to remove reactor poisons. The reactor uses a gas turbine to take advantage of the Brayton cycle for higher thermal efficiencies instead of a steam turbine. Instead of being submerged in coolant, the core of the reactor has valve that is sealed by a plug of frozen material that would defrost in the event of the reactor overheating which would allow the molten salt to be dumped into an emergency holding tank for the molten salt to cool down and solidify in.

Moderator Type: Graphite

Technology: Generation IV

Existing Examples:

Advantages:

3. Liquid Chloride Thorium Reactor

Moderator Type: Graphite

Technology: Generation IV

Existing Examples:

Advantages:

4. Liquid Fluoride Uranium Reactor

Moderator Type: Graphite

Technology: Generation IV

Existing Examples:

Advantages:

5. Liquid Chloride Thorium Reactor

Moderator Type: Graphite

Technology: Generation IV

Existing Examples:

Advantages:

Stop Internet Censorship In Its Tracks!

2012-01-18T18:28:00.002-06:00

Prevent internet censorship. Help stop SOPA and PIPA by calling your congressman to explain why these bills are a bad idea.

Today Is Christmas!

2011-12-25T16:52:00.004-06:00

Christmas is probably the most important holiday in the calendar of most European nations as well as in the United States. Many countries in Asia have also started celebrating Christmas in some fashion as many cultures have holidays and cultural traditions surrounding the winter solstice, which is December 21st. After all, who could say no to receiving gifts from friends and family or pass up cookies, candy, or Christmas dinner?

I hope that everybody gets what they asked for this year and I do hope that they remember that "family" should also include their pets if they have any, so please make sure that they are having a good time on Christmas as well. Please remember not to drink too much alcohol, and make sure that you have somebody that can drive you home safely if you have overindulged.

Finally, I found an interesting documentary on the history of Christmas. It may surprise people to know that Christmas in the United States is a relatively recent invention because the Puritan colonists that settled in New England thought that Christmas was a sacrilegious holiday because of the frequency of drunken and gluttonous revelers and imposed fines on anybody who was caught celebrating.

This is the first of a five part series on YouTube but I found it very interesting to watch.

Today is Halloween!

2011-10-31T03:20:00.005-05:00

Aside from a few religious fundamentalists and malcontents, Halloween is typically a fun occasion in which people dress up in fun costumes and go to parties. Children frequently go trick-or-treating by going from house to house to collect candy from strangers. While Halloween itself is a melange of mythologies from various cultures, it is one of most popular non-governmental holidays during the year in the American calendar.

Sadly, more and more people are trying to restrict or outright ban children from trick-or-treating; citing fears of children running into pedophiles and degenerates, gorging themselves on too much candy, teenagers causing trouble, or objections on religious grounds by framing Halloween has having irreligious connotations. I fear that this aspect of Halloween may soon be doomed simply because of how paranoid and over-protective people are becoming about their children. Although my childhood was far from ideal, I fondly remember the time I spent making my Halloween costumes and getting whole trash bags full of candy when I finally decided to retire for the evening. As with all holidays, the true meaning behind celebrating them is to have a good time, and I feel that the joys of Halloween should not be allowed to languish.

As you can see, my blog seems to have been engulfed by some sort of strange biomass that is slowly infiltrating the premises. Some people are terrorized by vampires, werewolves, and ghosts, but those people are lucky by comparison as sitting in a room with the walls covered in pink, squishy, meat is quite disturbing. I have changed the music selection on the radio in celebration for Halloween while I figure out how to reclaim my infested facility and the robots that have also fallen to this disgusting mass of tissue.

Fantastic Friday: How About Some Music?

2011-07-22T21:46:00.003-05:00

I have been having trouble with my blog radio as it will only play one song on the playlist now. I do not know what the problem is, but I might have to overhaul it if it continues. So, I will give you some music of a different nature this Friday.

For those of you who are unaware, there was a series of albums produced by Josh Homme of Kyuss and Queens of the Stone Age fame known as the Desert Sessions. The Dessert Sessions was a project of Josh Homme and various other artists who would go out in the middle of the Nevada desert, hook their equipment up to a generator and start playing to see what would happen. All five albums are entirely improvised and feature material from names such as Chris Goss and Mark Lanegan. The result is an interesting mixture of material ranging from psychedelic, drug-induced guitar haze, to acoustic folk and blues. However, it all evokes the feeling of traveling across a massive, sun-baked desert alone and stoned out of your mind; while your flesh broils in the blistering heat or is scoured by blowing sand storms.

All five compilations are well worth getting but some of them are sadly out of print. My favorite collections of the series are 1&2 but my favorite single song is probably "Making A Cross" from volume 7&8. It is perfect music for listening to while driving as well as a lazy afternoon on the porch with a beer or for a late-night shot.

Fantastic Friday: What A Week!

2011-07-15T23:56:00.003-05:00

For today's Fantastic Friday I give you a YouTube series called Epic Meal Time. Epic Meal Time features a group of young Canadian men who get together to make some of the most outrageous and fatty meals in existence. Each episode features a dish with unholy amounts of meat and cheese and they make a point of using bacon in every recipe. The end result is a sort of meat-nirvana that only the most dedicated eaters can ever hope to attain. The main host pretends to be constantly drunk and angry, and the sound of a bird cawing plays whenever he swears. They have a whole bunch of episodes and they come out with a new one every Tuesday. This week's episode features the "Epic Stockyard Burger", a bacon, cheese, bone marrow, and beef monstrosity that is stacked and then deep fried. I pity vegetarians, as they miss out on bliss such as this.

Nuclear Technology Basics: Part 8 Liquid Metal Cooled Reactors

2011-07-14T23:58:00.011-05:00

Introduction

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Liquid metal-cooled reactors are both moderated and cooled by a liquid metal solution. These reactors are typically very compact and could also potentially be used for naval propulsion. While there are a few currently existing liquid metal-cooled reactors that are being used for electricity generation, most examples are prototypes that have been built around the world as experimental reactors.

1. Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactors (SFRs)

Sodium-cooled fast reactors use a sodium-potassium alloy that remains liquid at room temperature. While the compound reacts violently on contact with air or water, its effects on steel are minimal. This makes NaK a possible coolant and moderator choice for a fast neutron reactor such as this one. Using water as a neutron moderator would effectively reduce the speed of the neutrons to those of thermal neutrons unless it was under massive amounts of pressure, while the NaK coolant and moderator does not need to be pressurized.

Fast reactors have advantages over reactors of other types as they achieve a high fuel "burn-up" ratio and greatly reduce the long-lived actinides that are present in the spent fuel when compared to other reactor types. This has made SFRs an attractive energy option for many countries around the world. Unfortunately, the Integral Fast Reactor project (IFR) was cancelled in the US because during the Clinton administration because of political reasons despite only being thee years away from completion. As of yet, a standard SFR design has not emerged from one of the many prototypes that have been built.

The NaK compound is pumped through the bottom of the reactor where it is heated up by the core. Hot coolant in the primary coolant loop is pushed into the heat exchanger, which is used to heat up coolant within the secondary coolant loop and the heated secondary coolant is used to turn a turbine connected to the generator. After leaving the turbine, the coolant flows into a condenser connected to a heat sink to help absorb some of the excess heat energy. The cold secondary coolant is pumped into the top of the heat exchanger while the primary coolant enters to bottom of the reactor again, completing the cycle. The control rods are inserted into the top of the reactor vessel.

Moderator Type: Liquid metal

Technology: Generation IV

Existing Examples: Three, but many more are being planned and built.

Advantages

-This reactor design has a high fuel burn-up ratio.

-NaK does not corrode steel.

-The reactor design is very compact yet has a high power output for its size.

-Liquid metal-cooled reactors are not pressurized leading to simpler piping systems.

-The liquid metal coolant cannot turn to steam unlike water during a meltdown, making a steam explosion impossible.

-Some variants of this design can be used as breeder reactors.

Disadvantages:

-The high temperature of the reactor could also pose design challenges.

-Sodium reacts violently with water and air.

Variants: BN-350, BN-600, Clinch River, Dounreay Prototype, Fermi 1, Experimental Breeder Reactor 1, Experimental Breeder Reactor 2, Fast Breeder Test Reactor, Integral Fast Reactor, J ōyō, Monju, Phénix, Prototype Fast Breeder, S1G, S2G, SNR-300, Sodium Reactor Experiment, Superphénix, Rapsodie

2. Lead-Cooled Fast Reactors (LFRs)

Fast reactors can also be used with a lead-bismuth coolant and moderator. Lead has a low degree of neutron absorption and does an excellent job of reflecting neutrons. In addition, lead is a very effective radiation shield and its extremely high boiling point makes lead-bismuth eutectic (LBE) an effective coolant even at higher temperatures. While LBE is somewhat corrosive to steel unlike NaK, it is unlikely that this poses a major problem as this issue can be overcome with proper engineering.

The design of the lead-cooled fast reactor is is slightly different from that of the sodium-cooled fast reactor. the LBE coolant on the outside of the coolant module flows downward where it is drawn into a pair of chambers in the center. The core of the reactor is contained with in a block in the center as well which heats the coolant as it is pushed upwards towards the top of the coolant module. This design has a pair of heat exchangers that are inserted into the top of the coolant module with the control rods in the center. Primary coolant transfers its heat energy to the coolant in the secondary coolant loop through heat exchangers where it is sent to a pair of turbines. After circulating through a secondary heat-exchange system to cool the LBE down, the returning secondary coolant is pumped through the top of the reactor to be drawn into the reactor core to complete the circuit.

Moderator Type: Liquid metal

Technology: Generation I V

Existing Examples: None that have been completed, but several LFRs are in the construction phase around the world.

Advantages

-This reactor design has a high fuel burn-up ratio.

-The entire reactor core can be removed and replaced during refueling procedures.

-The reactor design is very compact yet has a high power output for its size.

-Liquid metal-cooled reactors are not pressurized leading to simpler piping systems.

-The liquid metal coolant cannot turn to steam unlike water during a meltdown, making a steam explosion impossible.

-Some variants of this design can be used as breeder reactors.

Disadvantages:

-Lead-bismuth eutectic is slightly corrosive to steel.

-The lead-bismuth eutectic coolant can cause problems if it is allowed to solidify within the coolant circuits.

-The high temperature of the reactor could also pose design challenges.

Variants: OK-550, BM-40A, SVBR-100, Hyperion Power Module, MYRRHA

Fantastic Friday: For the Love of Quake!

2011-07-08T23:28:00.007-05:00

I am not much of a gamer. The games that I do like and play are mostly older games for classic platforms such as the SNES and the Sega Genesis. As such, my knowledge of recent games is somewhat lacking, because I find most current computer games to be rather lacking in originality or fun. This is because many PC games are little more than an exercise to show off the graphical capabilities of the game rather than the gameplay itself. This is particularly problematic with the first-person shooter genre of games as they all seem to be imitators of each other, complete with boring enemies and rife with cliches.

I despise the Halo series as I find the main character to be little more than your average mindless military grunt like you see in almost every first-person shooter. Bioshock had some interesting ideas, but far too many of them got cut out in the final two games of the series, as a quick glance at the concept art books will show you. The Half-Life series is a refreshing change from the usual first-person shooter pablum as its protagonist, Gordan Freeman, is a theoretical physics researcher rather than the usual big and stupid marine. However, one of my favorite older games of all time remains the first Quake game.

It was originally for the PC but it has come out on numerous platforms. Unlike its later sequels, the enemies of the first Quake game were a strange mixture of horror-inspired monsters and formerly human soldiers that had apparently been captured and augmented by the enemy to make them mindlessly obedient in carrying out orders to kill you on sight. The antagonists of Quake all had very distinct characteristics in terms of how they attacked you and what their strengths and weaknesses were. All of the enemies were very well thought out and implemented and the environments that you fought them in were extremely varied. The game had a rather sparse plot, as you were supposedly a lone soldier left behind in a base after everybody else had been killed, as an enemy that was codenamed "Quake" had come through a sort of interdimensional device that your base was working on before the attack.

The game had four "episodes" of levels that were somehow related to each other. You could choose which episode you wanted to play in after selecting which entrance of difficulty you wanted to enter at the beginning of the game. You did not have to play the episodes in a specific order, but the episodes increased in difficulty so it is usually advisable to start with the first episode as it was the easiest one.

The first level of each episode was unique as it featured some sort of futuristic military base. However, the "base" levels had the same dismal and oppressive feeling that characterized the rest of the Quake levels. The walls were dingy and scratched, and were often covered in blood stains. Pools of grimy water and poisonous sludge were not uncommon and while the "base" levels lacked the horrifying textures of some of the later levels, they did imply that the current inhabitants were nearly mindless and that they were not the original builders as the current denizens seemed to lack the intelligence or autonomy to repair or maintain these crumbling structures.

The enemies that you fought in the "base" levels consisted of shambling human soldiers called "grunts", along with rabid rottweiler dogs, and the slightly more dangerous "enforcers" which were like grunts that have been upgraded. Grunts were humans that had cybernetic implants put into their brains by Quake that gave them feelings of bliss whenever they killed somebody. Grunts are not much of a challenge to defeat as two shots with the shotgun weapon that you start the game with was more than enough to put them down permanently and their reactions and movements were slow. Grunts were only challenging in large groups as they were quite accurate with their guns and could overwhelm you if taking on too many at once. When defeated, you could pick up a grunt's backpack which contained a few shells of shotgun ammunition. Rottweilers were even less of a threat than a grunt because all they could do is run towards you and attack you with a lunging bite. They had even less defense than a grunt and two blasts would quickly make them drop. The enforcers, which were the resident "tough guys" of the base levels were tougher than grunts as they wore full combat armor and were faster and had more defense than a grunt as it took four shotgun blasts to defeat them. In addition, they had some sort of energy weapon that fired blobs of light that cause quite a bit of damage to your character if he was hit. Unlike the grunts which could only snarl or growl, the enforcer apparently retained some degree of intelligence as it could utter simple phrases like "HALT!", "STOP!" or "FREEZE!" when it spotted you. When killed, an enforcer dropped a backpack containing "cells" which was ammunition for the "thunderbolt" weapon which you got later in the game.

After completing the "base" level at the beginning of each episode, you entered the world of your antagonist, which was some sort of dimension filled with rotting castles or malign dungeons. While the grunts, rottweilers and enforcers were absent in these levels, you had scrags, knights, death knights, fiends, zombies, rotfishes, ogres, spawn, vores, and shamblers.

Scrags are floating enemies that look like a cross between an armless man and a snake. They spit some sort of poisonous blob of fluid at you with a high degree of accuracy and damage if it hit you. Knights were twisted humanoid creatures wearing rusty armor and wielding battered and blood-covered swords that they used to great effect if they ever managed to get close enough to attack you with them if you did not fill them full of buckshot or nails first. Ogres were brutish humanoids that carried small grenade launchers and held chainsaws in the other arm. They were one of the most common enemies in the game and their grenades could be a real hassle at times. Continuing on with the rather easy enemies, the rotfish were undead piranha-like creatures that would chomp on you in the water and could easily be defeated by a single shotgun blast. Zombies were undead corpses that attached you by throwing pieces of their own flesh at you, and while they could be easily knocked down by any weapon, they would quickly rise up again and start attacking you unless you blew them to pieces using your explosive weapons.

Later on, you would encounter the more dangerous, mid-level enemies such as the death knight, spawn, fiend, and vore. Death knights are larger, tougher, and faster versions of the regular knight and could quickly kill you with a few swipes of their massive swords or their magical ranged projectiles. Spawn are bouncing blobs of slime that would harm you on contact and had a nasty habit of inflicting even more damage when killed as they tended to explode in your face when defeated. The fiend was a highly aggressive, eyeless, and clever beast that reacted by quickly charging at you and lunging across great distances to tear you open with its hook-like forelegs and would quickly rip you apart with them at close range as they did a lot of damage. Vores are bizarre, tripedal creatures that send explosive projectiles that homed in on your presence when they spotted you and a vore could take a lot of hits before killing it.

The undisputed "king" of the Quake monsters is the shambler. Shamblers are hulking, foul-tempered beasts that could send a powerful burst of lightning to reduce you to a pile of ashes, or rend your body to bloody chunks with their massive claws at close-range. Their heads lack visible eyes; and large, jagged, and frightening teeth jutted out of their mouths. They could soak up a lot of damage before falling, and they were especially resistant to your grenade launcher and rocket launcher which were normally very powerful weapons in the game. A shambler stops at nothing to defeat its enemies, even if it means crushing any allied monsters in its way. The shambler is never something that you want to see or take lightly.

Although Quake is a "mess" from a concept standpoint, there has never been anything like it before or since. The mish-mash of varied monsters and environments just seems to somehow work within the atmosphere of the game and Quake revels in its morbid, chaotic, and violent glory. While violence in video games often comes off as being over-the-top to the point of being cartoonish or laughable, the muted palette of Quake along with the otherworldly level architecture make the grisly world of Quake a truly chilling experience.

While the following sequels of the Quake franchise featured a race called the Strogg, they were little more than boring rip-offs of the Borg from Star Trek. Quake deserves a true sequel, but making one that captures the essence of the original game would be very difficult as Quake has an intensity that is not easily replicated by many modern games. This is an example of a game that transcends genres.

Nuclear Technology Basics: Part 7 Graphite Moderated Reactors

2011-07-03T14:07:00.011-05:00

Introduction

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Many reactor designs use graphite as a moderator. Graphite is not as effective of a moderator as heavy water, but it is cheaper and it also has a low degree of neutron capture like heavy water. This makes it possible to use un-enriched or natural uranium as fuel. Graphite is somewhat susceptible to corrosion and annealing because the moderator blocks are often located in the hottest part of the reactor. Graphite also has a tendency to expand with prolonged neutron exposure. However, modern reactor designs have mitigated these issues so graphite remains a viable choice for a neutron moderator. The earliest energy reactor designs were graphite moderated, but some generation IV designs also use graphite as a neutron moderator.

1. Gas-Cooled Graphite Moderated Reactors (GCRs)

These reactors use graphite as a neutron moderator, but use pressurized carbon dioxide gas to cool the reactor. The primary example of this reactor type is the now obsolete MAGNOX design, so named for the "magnox" alloy of magnesium and aluminum which was used in the cladding of the reactor's core. The MAGNOX reactor grew out the nuclear weapons production program in Britain, but it also served a dual role for energy production.

The reactor itself consists of a pressure vessel similar to the BWR, with the fuel rods inserted in the top of the pressure vessel like in the LWR. The fuel rods of the reactor are surrounded by blocks of graphite, serving as the neutron moderator. These are situated inside the pressure vessel where carbon dioxide gas is heated by the fuel rods and flows upward and out of the hot gas duct connected near the top of the pressure vessel. The gas is pushed through a heat exchanger where water circulating within a closed loop is heated by the hot carbon dioxide and the resulting steam is used to turn a turbine. As the gas cools, it exits via the cool gas duct at the bottom of the heat exchanger and is sent back to the pressure vessel where it is heated again to complete the cycle.

A more advanced type of GCR was developed from the MAGNOX reactor, which is known as the advanced gas-cooled reactor or AGR. The AGR is similar to the design of the MAGNOX except that the heat exchanger of the AGR is contained within the reactor vessel itself instead of being outside of it like in the MAGNOX reactor. The AGR requires its fuel to be enriched unlike the MAGNOX design because the cladding of the AGR is made out of steel which has a tendency to capture neutrons. The original design of the AGR used beryllium cladding but this proved to be too costly, as beryllium is a very difficult material to process because of its high melting point and its affinity for oxygen at very high temperatures.

The AGR was built to overcome some of the MAGNOX reactor's shortcomings as the AGR was specifically built for energy production rather than the dual production of military grade plutonium. It was seen as a potential challenger to LWR designs, as the AGR was designed to allow refueling while the reactor was still in operation like in the MAGNOX reactor, but the fuel rod removal equipment was shown to be very prone to failure. In addition the design of the AGR was overly complex which added to the costs of construction and operation. In short, GCR reactors have a history of being fraught with technical difficulties and it is unlikely that any more of these types of reactors will be built.

Moderator Type: Graphite

Technology: Generation I-II

Existing Examples: Eighteen GCRs continue to operate in the UK, both of the MAGNOX and AGR designs.

Advantages

-Using a gas as a coolant allowed for higher operating temperatures and thermal efficiency.

-Some designs can use naturally occurring uranium without requiring further enrichment.

-It is more efficient in its fuel utilization than light-water moderated designs.

-It can be refueled without having to shut down the reactor.

-The resulting spent fuel can be stored in a more compact manner because it generates less heat when coming out of the reactor as it is less reactive.

Disadvantages:

-The fuel rod removal systems of these reactors was prone to technical problems.

-The design of the reactors was overly complex it often led to malfunctions.

-These reactors were more costly to build and operate than some reactor types.

-The first reactors of this type were not optimized for power production.

Variants: MAGNOX, AGR

2. High Power Channel-Type Reactors (RBMKs)

This was a Russian design, and it was the reactor responsible for the infamous Chernobyl incident. This was both because of inherent flaws in this reactor's design as well as the fact that the staff on duty during the Chernobyl incident had attempted to run an unauthorized experiment with the reactor during its operation. With that being said, this reactor type is now considered to be obsolete.

The Reaktor Bolshoy Moshchnosti Kanalniy (RBMK) means "high power channel-type reactor" in Russian. It was similar to the MAGNOX design except it was water-cooled instead of gas-cooled and it heated water directly into steam within a pair of steam separators located inside the reactor pit which was used to turn dual turbines for energy. Because of the graphite moderator, the RBMK can run on unenriched uranium and the fuel rods can also be changed while the reactor is still in operation.

Part of the problem with this reactor design is the fact that it had a very high void coefficient. As the reactor is water-cooled, increases in temperature and pressure can cause the coolant to boil away and turn into steam, and the intensity of nuclear fission rises as the heat increases as the graphite moderator enables fission to continue. The control rods in the Chernobyl reactor were also controlled manually rather than automatically during an emergency. The Chernobyl accident resulted in a loss of coolant flow, which caused massive amounts of heat to build up in the core of the reactor triggering a positive feedback loop. The overheated core immediately vaporized the coolant within the reactor causing a huge steam explosion, similar to that of an overheated boiler within a steam engine.

The resulting steam explosion scattered radioactive particles from the core for hundreds of miles. The graphite surrounding the control rods was ignited by the heat of the reactor core and the roof of the reactor contained bitumen which also started burning. The official death toll released by the Soviet government was a total of thirty one deaths, and most of these were reactor workers and rescue personnel but many more people were thought to be sickened by the release of radioactive particles. To this day, an exclusion zone surrounding the reactor has been declared off-limits to humans but wildlife appears to be thriving there and the degree of ambient radioactivity has dropped considerably since the incident. If the Chernobyl reactor had a containment dome over it like all modern reactor designs do today, the effects of the meltdown on the workers and nearby populace would have been negligible. However, while the Chernobyl disaster and the resulting casualties was indeed a tragedy that could have been prevented with the proper engineering precautions, it was by no means the most severe industrial accident in the modern world. When compared to the Bhopal incident in India or the Banqio dam collapse in China or the yearly death toll resulting from a fossil fuel-based infrastructure dwarfs that of Chernobyl several times over.

Ever since the Chernobyl incident, the few remaining RBMK reactors still in operation have had their safety systems updated to prevent something like this from ever happening again. As it is, RBMKs only exist in Russia. Because this design of reactor is considered to be obsolete, it is unlikely that any new RBMKs will be built in the future.

Moderator Type: Graphite

Technology: Generation I-II

Existing Examples: Eleven in Russia, one in Lithuania.

Advantages

-It can use naturally occurring uranium without requiring further enrichment.

-The reactor generated a lot of electricity with its dual-turbine design

-It can be refueled without having to shut down the reactor.

Disadvantages:

-This design has a very high void coefficient.

-The control rods were under manual instead of automatic control

-The safety features of this reactor design are obsolete

-The Chernobyl disaster has effectively ended interest in the RBMK design.

Variants: None, other than RBMKs with modified safety features.

3. High Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactors (HTGRs)

Improvements on GCRs has led to interest in developing gas-cooled reactors with a higher operating temperature that would allow for a greater degree of thermal efficiency and a higher degree of fuel utilization than the previous GCR designs. In addition, these reactors are also of a simpler design and use gas turbine systems for power generation leading to a more compact turbine assembly. Unlike previous GCR reactors, HTGRs use helium rather than carbon dioxide as a coolant because of the fact that it is inert even at higher temperatures leading to less corrosion on the piping systems of the circulating coolant.

Early experimental HTGR designs such as the Fort Saint Vrain Generating Station in the US, and the THTR-300 in Germany experienced technical problems or financial difficulties. However, the pebble bed reactor (PBR) shows great promise. The PBR is revolutionary in that its fuel is contained within spherical pellets of graphite that are piled within a chamber inside the reactor vessel. The pyrolytic graphite shells surrounding the fuel cores serves as a neutron moderator while the helium gas that circulates through the spaces between the pebbles serves as a coolant, avoiding the complex piping systems needed for designs that utilize fuel rods. These fuel pellets are circulated through the reactor every thirty seconds or so to be inspected for damage, allowing worn pellets to be removed and new ones to be put into circulation without shutting down the reactor for refueling. In addition, the reactor can hypothetically use graphite shelled pellets of thorium or fuel made from decommissioned nuclear warheads. Finally, the PBR pellets lack the fuel density to allow a meltdown to happen making a meltdown of the reactor physically impossible.

Of course, the PBR carries its own disadvantages, mainly that the PBR design utilizes a once-through fuel cycle and the graphite-sealed fuel pellets are very difficult to recycle in addition to increasing the volume of spent fuel to be disposed of by up to fifty percent. While there is certainly no shortage of fissile material that can be used in a PBR, once-through fuel cycles that make it difficult to engage in nuclear reprocessing are inherently wasteful.

Even though the PBR was originally a German design, political pressure within Germany's government has effectively stalled any and all research for nuclear power generation for the foreseeable future. There was interest in the PBR in South Africa, but political hurdles surrounding the construction of the Koeburg reactor has scared away investors and the reactor project was mothballed in 2010 by the South African government. The only active PBR project that remains is in China where the HTR-10 prototype at Tsinghua University is scheduled to be commissioned in 2013.

Moderator Type: Graphite

Technology: Generation III

Existing Examples: None currently in operation.

Advantages

-The fuel pellet design makes meltdowns physically impossible.

-The reactor core is cooled by helium gas which is chemically inert at high temperatures.

-The coolant system of the PBR is cooled passively and its simple design eliminates the extensive piping of active cooling systems.

-It can be refueled without having to shut down the reactor.

-Alternative fissile fuels can hypothetically be made into pellets to be used by this reactor design.

Disadvantages:

-The PBR uses a once-through fuel cycle.

-The pellet design of the reactor makes the reprocessing of spent pellets very difficult.

-The graphite shells of the spent pellets increases the total volume of material to be disposed of by up to fifty percent.

Variants: Dragon, TTR-300, Peach Bottom Unit 1, Fort St. Vrain 1, PBR, PBMR

4. The Very High Temperature Reactor (VHTR)

The VHTR (Very High Temperature Reactor) is a generation IV design that could be said to be an extension of HGTR reactor designs. It is also cooled with helium gas and uses graphite as a moderator. The core of pebble bed VHTRs would be similar to the PBR while prismatic block VHTRs would have its fuel shaped into fuel rods that are inserted in holes drilled into the hexagonal graphite blocks surrounded by control rods. The helium gas would be heated by circulating around the control rods to be carried to a heat exchanger to heat up water to spin a turbine.

True to its name, the VHTR concept operates at temperatures reaching 1000°C. This would make it very useful for providing process heat to carry out many industrial applications such as cheap hydrogen production and hydrocarbon reactions. The reactor would be extremely safe in addition to having a very high degree of thermal efficiency because of its high operating temperature. While this reactor design would have a once-through fuel cycle, the VHTR has a much higher fuel utilization ratio and the resulting spent fuel would have a much shorter half life than fuel from traditional LWRs. Prototype VHTRs are under development in China and the US has expressed interest in the VHTR for its Generation IV program.

Moderator Type: Graphite

Technology: Generation IV

Existing Examples: None currently in operation.

Advantages

-The fuel pellet design of the pebble bed variant makes meltdowns physically impossible.

-The reactor is an extremely safe design.

-The reactor core is cooled by helium gas which is chemically inert at high temperatures.

-The coolant system of this reactor is very simple.

-It can be refueled without having to shut down the reactor.

-Alternative fissile fuels can hypothetically be made into pellets to be used by this reactor design.

-The very high temperatures lend themselves to higher thermal efficiencies.

-The reactor would serve a dual purpose as a source of process heat for thermochemical production.

Disadvantages:

-It uses a once-through fuel cycle.

-The pellet design of the PBR variant VHTR makes the reprocessing of spent pellets very difficult.

-The graphite shells of the spent pellets of the PBR variant of the VHTR increases the total volume of material to be disposed of by up to fifty percent.

Variations: PBR VHTR, Prismatic Block VHTR

Fantastic Friday: Best Macaroni and Cheese Ever!

2011-07-01T23:48:00.002-05:00

I thought that I would share one of my favorite recipes of all time. This is a version of baked macaroni and cheese that is made with bechamel sauce. Although the reputation of macaroni and cheese has suffered immensely with those abominations in a box such as Kraft, you will no longer allow such culinary mockeries in your kitchen again. This is a simple and fast recipe that even the most inept cook will find success.

Included here is the sauce that you will need for the recipe.

As a bonus, I am including a rare recipe that I saved from a newspaper article many years ago. It is for "onion marmalade" which is a savory spread that goes well with roasted meats or cold cut and cheese sandwiches. It is made from onions that have been carmelized over low heat for a long period of time, making them mellow and sweet instead of their characteristic pungent flavor when raw.

Enjoy, everybody!

Nuclear Technology Basics: Part 6 Heavy Water Reactors

2011-06-30T21:53:00.008-05:00

Introduction

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Heavy water reactors use water, or deuterium oxide as a moderator. Deuterium oxide has a lower neutron absorption ratio than regular water, allowing the use un-enriched, natural uranium as fuel. Although most heavy water reactors are cooled with heavy water, the Swiss Lucens reactor was gas-cooled.

1. The Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR)

Most examples of the PHWR are of the CANDU (CANada Deuterium-Uranium) design which originated in Canada. The PHWR is a radically different design from the light water reactor family because the fuel bundles of the reactor are contained within their own pressurized tubes rather than the reactor containing one large pressure as is seen in the BWR. This is because Canada lacked the large steel forging presses required to manufacture large pressure vessels and found it easier to make a series of smaller tubes, one for each fuel rod bundle. Surrounding pressure the tubes is the reactor core, and the control rods are inserted at a perpendicular angle. Each tube contains pressurized heavy water which flows around the fuel bundles within, serving as a moderator during the primary coolant loop. Heated primary coolant flows into a heat-exchanger within the steam generator where it causes the temperature of the surrounding fluid in the secondary coolant loop to heat up and turn into steam which turns the turbine. After the steam has condensed into water again, the secondary coolant is pumped into the bottom of the steam generator to repeat the cycle. The returning primary coolant from the heat exchanger is pumped into the pressure tubes to be heated up again by the fuel bundles.

Moderator Type: Heavy Water

Technology: Generation II

Existing Examples: Twenty-nine in several countries.

Advantages

-It can use naturally occurring uranium without requiring further enrichment.

-It is more efficient in its fuel utilization than light-water moderated designs.

-It can be refueled without having to shut down the reactor.

-The resulting spent fuel can be stored in a more compact manner because it generates less heat when coming out of the reactor as it is less reactive.

Disadvantages

-Heavy water is relatively expensive, even though this cost is partially offset by the reduced cost of fuel processing.

-Because the fuel for PWHR reactors is not enriched, fuel is used up at a faster rate.

-It generates higher volumes of spent fuel because of the greater frequency of refueling.

Variants: Advanced CANDU, CANDU 6

2. Heavy Water Gas Cooled Reactors (HWGCRs)

These reactor designs used heavy water as a moderator but used carbon dioxide as a coolant. Although there were experimental reactors of this type, such as the KS 150 and Lucens reactor, both of these experimental reactors proved to be fraught with problems. Since then, there have been no existing reactors of this type.

Fantastic Friday: Wrangling With Woo

2011-06-24T15:34:00.011-05:00

Magical thinking and other forms of anti-scientific nonsense are as pervasive in the developed world as ever and they show no signs of abating. In recent decades, these attitudes have become established in everything ranging from the prevalence of "organic" foods in grocery stores, the popularity of alternative "medicine", anti-vaccination movements, and errant fears over genetically engineered foods to name a few. The anti-nuclear hysteria that has re-arisen in the aftermath of Fukushima Daiichi is just the tip of the iceberg.

Although on the surface, most woo appears harmless, it can have very disastrous consequences for some people. This is because it can distort the process of scientific research, or cause the results of a legitimate study to be highly politicized by people who are not familiar with the field in question, or who are willfully trying to distort and mislead in order to fit an ideological agenda. In political terms; the "left" has become immersed in a strange mixture of naturalistic fallacies and neoluddism while the "right" (In the US at least) has been taken over by religious fundamentalism which makes a point of promoting young earth creationism and other Christian mythology. Unfortunately the war against science has gone mainstream as is under continual attack from political movements on all sides of the aisle. These are just a few areas where politics have trumped science

-Fears of radio frequency radiation have been around for years, despite there being no evidence for any of these concerns being justified. However, the World Health Organization recently issued a report saying that radiation from cellular telephones may cause cancer.

Now this will lend an air of undeserved credibility to RF-phobes without any studies pinpointing a definite link between cellular telephone exposure and what constitutes an unsafe dose, and other necessary details. Hypothetically, something may cause a condition, but until there is solid evidence that it does, the empirical assumption is that such a claim is invalid.

There is a five-part lecture on this topic given by Professor Christopher Davis who has a background in electrical and computer engineering. It is well worth listening to the whole thing. This is the first video, the other four parts can be found by following the links underneath it.

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

-Anti-vaccination activists such as Jenny McCarthy and Viera Sheibner and the rest of their ilk have been whipping parents up into a frenzy over vaccines, citing fears over mercury, and formaldehyde; or for fears that they might be responsible over conditions such as childhood cancer and autism, when the only report that they are using as the basis for these claims has been the infamous Wakefield study which has since been retracted by the General Medical Council as being fraudulent and Andrew Wakefield was stripped of his medical license last year.

However, the damage has been done as the anti-vaccine movement continues to distort information and spread misinformation to suit its needs, out of some misguided idea that they are doing it in the name of public health. Many of these diseases such as diphtheria, polio, and whooping cough were deadly for children before the vaccines against them were available, and while other illnesses like measles and mumps were mostly benign, they could cause permanent sensory impairment in some cases. Because of vaccines, these diseases are no longer a common occurrence. Unfortunately, this has lead society to forget the havoc these pathogens could cause, especially in newborn infants.

This child's brush with death and permanent deafness could have been prevented if her mother had given her the MMR vaccine like her physician recommended. Her daughter is now paying the price. Even as we speak there is an outbreak of measles that is happening in the US that has in no doubt been helped along by public fears against vaccination. There is no reason why anybody should suffer from these preventable illnesses in the 21st century yet they are making a comeback. The anti-vaccination movement is responsible for the deaths or permanent disability of people around the world because whenever vaccination rates go down, herd immunity also goes down, making it more likely that diseases can find carriers. Nobody is going to be championing the resurgence of polio if and when it returns at this rate, and I doubt that pressure ventilation systems would become a fashion statement.

-Alternative medicine is a catch-all phrase for medical treatment using folk remedies, traditional practices, or supernaturally-based therapy rather than modern medical science. Alternative medicine has not been shown to be supported by scientific evidence, and the only benefit that anybody seems to derive from it is the placebo effect. While the placebo effect can be beneficial, it often means that people who suffer from serious medical conditions often put off real medical treatment which can cause their illnesses to worsen.

The motivation for this movement is somewhat understandable, as many people in the US cannot afford access to medical treatment as medical insurance companies here are notorious for their dysfunctional practices. The US medical system is in need of a serious overhaul. But this is from an administrative and financial standpoint as modern medicine has been proven to work and therefore the issues behind the broken American medical system ARE mostly administrative and financial. The issue is one of access rather than the effectivity of modern medical treatment.

Because many people lack access to basic medical care, they turn to whatever options are open to them. Although homeopathy, ear candling, and faith healing and the like have not been proven to be effective, an entire industry has sprung up to cater to the alternative medicine movement and play on people's feelings, even though alternative medicine accomplishes nothing other than fooling people into paying for things that do not work rather than seeing a real medical professional.

Unfortunately, the alternative medicine movement is growing, and it is showing no signs of stopping. The NHS in the UK has even started allocating funding for treatment to visit alternative medicine practitioners, yet none of these treatments have ever been shown to work. Quackery exists in many forms and now it seems that many people are supporting it and encouraging it. Speaking of "quackery", there is an in-depth discussion on the subject by pathologist, Dr. Ed Uthman. It is in four parts. I recommend watching it in its entirety.

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

-It has become fashionable to deride foods produced on "factory farms" in favor of "organic foods". Promoters of organic foods claim that they are safer to eat, contain more nutrients, are better for the environment, or have benefits that are not found in foods produced by conventional farming techniques. Organic foods have become a huge industry in the past twenty-years as it is marketed brilliantly by its producers. As growers of organic foods cannot compete in cost or quantity of foods grown using conventional means, they justify the higher prices of their products based on their own moral or environmental superiority.

This is largely false, because "organic" foods are often worse for the environment. Organic produce uses more land to grow while generating lower yields, ultimately leading more land to be converted into farmland. Chemical fertilizers are not allowed, so growers of organic foods must resort to using animal manure. Bacterial contamination from manure has led to outbreaks of food poisoning across the world because it is difficult to wash off pathogens using water alone. While organic food growers claim that they do not use pesticides, this is not true as "natural" pesticides such as rotenone and nicotine are permitted under the "organic" label. Although the judicial application of pesticides is a necessary evil when growing any food on a large scale, "organic" pesticides have not been specially formulated in a laboratory to meet certain standards and are often just as dangerous if not worse than their manmade counterparts.

In regards to other labels such as "free range", chickens in an outdoor environment are often subject to many parasites that cause the birds suffering such as gapeworm in addition to preventing them from reaching a desirable weight as a result of increased parasite loads. Predation is also an issue from prowling animals, and this raises the question on whether or not "free range" actually brings any sort of tangible benefit to the animals at all.

The third attack on conventional foods comes from people who are wary of genetically engineered plants and animals in our food supply. Humans have been "genetically" engineering their produce and livestock for thousands of years. By all accounts, there is nothing "natural" about modern day corn or the Holstein cow as they have both been bred by humans to produce higher yields of a desirable product in a shorter period of time than their wild ancestors. Their very existence depends on humans to raise and care for them. With genetic engineering, it will enable humanity to select for desirable traits in a shorter period of time using less money rather than running selective breeding experiments over several years. Eating further "genetically modified" food would be no more or less dangerous than eating food that has been modified for humans since its domestication by humanity. While I do not excuse the business practices of Mosanto, that is a legal and political issue and it has nothing to do with the application and implementation of genetic engineering technology.

Some clarification on "organic" foods.

-Religious fundamentalism has been fighting back against the encroachment of science upon its perceived domains in the modern world. Politicians of both the left and right pay homage to imaginary beings to increase their chances of getting elected, while science in public school curriculums is being subverted by groups trying to sneak in creationism under the guise of intelligent design or claim that Noah's ark was indisputable fact. Faith-based initiatives continue to receive funding from the US federal government despite there being a codified separation of church and state within the law of my country and it is considered politically acceptable for presidents to publicly claim that they were told to launch military campaigns against foreign nations by their god. Both men and women continue to have their genitals butchered for religious reasons worldwide, and suicide bombers have blown themselves up and the surrounding area under the illusion that doing so will allow them to enter some sort of erotopian afterlife.

There continues to be no evidence that there is a god or any other sort of supernatural entities, yet people waste so much time and cause themselves so much suffering in trying to appease something that really is not there. Abuses are allowed in the name of religion that would be shouted down if perpetuated by any other sort of institution. The effects of religious beliefs foisted on children by their parents can have lasting psychological damage, and religious schools can often impair or inhibit children from receiving a proper education.

While one cannot be absolutely certain of everything, the things that we do know about the nature of the universe and the beings that are in it has shown that the existence of gods is highly unlikely, and even if they did exist they would be unnecessary as the universe seems to be self-maintaining. Why do we allow religion to control people's minds and direct their thoughts when it has proven to be a very destructive phenomenon? Although it would not be acceptable for atheists to bully and harass theists for their religion, there is certainly no place for religion in guiding the decisions of our political leaders as their actions would have consequences for us all.

Fantastic Friday: Book Review, Z Is For Zombie

2011-06-24T14:44:00.004-05:00

The popularity of the zombie mythos has contributed to many books and movies as of late. One need only glance at recent video games such as the Left 4 Dead series or the movies 28 Weeks Later, Zombieland, and Shaun of the Dead to get a sense as to how much of an extent popular culture is obsessed with zombies. Although people have yet to write a romance story aimed towards teenage girls involving zombies ala the Twilight series it does not look like the human fascination with animated, rotting corpses is going to die down anytime soon. Zombies are still rising from the graves in our heads and continue to shamble onward through the corridors of our minds.

I admit I do have somewhat of an interest in the zombie genre myself, particularly when it knows not to take itself too seriously. I came upon Z Is For Zombie by Adam-Troy Castro by accident when browsing various fiction books published by HarperCollins. I was not sure what to expect, so I decided to read it on a whim.

I was not disappointed. The book cleverly gives each of the twenty-six letters of the English alphabet its own page on a subject dealing with zombies; such as "A is for Apocalypse", "B is for Buried", etc. written in a very tongue-in-cheek manner. In addition, a delightfully morbid illustration accompanies the subject for each page. The artists certainly did not skip on the gruesome details here. The illustrations are all in greyscale but the color of blood or viscera is rendered in various shades of pink and red in contrast to the monochromatic images. It was an interesting choice for effect as it made the scenes of carnage stand out more.

This was a fun little book, but I do have some rather small criticisms. The book was sweet but short as it only spanned sixty-four pages and a person could probably finish it in five minutes or less. I am also not sure what category to put this book in. Although I am sure that I lot of us remembered how much we delighted in hearing about violence and gore when we were children, overly concerned parents might snatch such a book as this out of their little hands. Also, since the book is so short, older individuals might not want to read it and simply dismiss it out of hand as being a "children's book" without wanting to read it. Such is a pity, for I think most people would find Z Is For Zombie worth spending a few minutes with.

In conclusion, Z is For Zombie makes an excellent book for a Halloween party or a rainy afternoon. I highly recommend it for anybody with an interest in the subject of zombies or survival horror. This is a nice little gem that is too unique to miss.

New Blog Feature

2011-06-23T13:05:00.003-05:00

For a long time, I have been thinking about having a "Friday Fun Day" on my blog like many other bloggers do. This is because I am not an entirely serious person as some of you can probably guess from my music player widget in the sidebar as well as the fun I had in designing the layout of my blog. Starting tomorrow, I am going to experiment with having a day dedicated to "miscellany" as I would like to post my reviews of recent books that I have read for NetGalley in addition to posting material on the topic of atheism/rational skepticism. Although it may seem like I am trying to crowd everything into Friday, there are other things that I want to blog about as well occasionally, yet I do not think that it is worth creating several blogs to do this with. N^4 is and will remain my only blog for the foreseeable future simply because I fear that another blog would become neglected in trying to balance the demands of different blogs at different times.

So, starting tomorrow, my blog will have its first post in a feature I will call "Fantastic Friday". Fantastic Friday will be like a variety show where I will post anything ranging from cooking recipes, book reviews, playthroughs of computer games, to thoughts on philosophy and atheism. Just remember to follow the safety procedures at all times when visiting, lest casual Friday go too far. The last thing I need is a big mess for all of the maintenance robots that run my blog to clean up in addition to lawsuits from angry parents and relatives.

Nuclear Technology Basics: Part 5 Light Water Reactors

2011-06-11T17:58:00.014-05:00

Introduction

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Light water reactors are the most common type of nuclear reactor that has been built in the world so far. These reactors use regular water as a neutron moderator in addition to a coolant. Although there are different sub-types of light water reactors, they are all similar in their design and operation.

1. The Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR)

This design was covered in detail in my last post regarding nuclear energy. It uses a heat exchanger consisting of heated water in the primary coolant loop flowing through a pipe that is surrounded by cool water in the secondary coolant loop. This takes place in the steam generator where the heated water in the primary coolant pipe produces steam from the feedwater that is pumped in from the secondary coolant loop. The steam is then used to drive the turbine and produce electricity.

Moderator Type: Normal water

Technology: Generation II

Existing examples: Ubiquitous around the world.

Advantages:

-It is a very familiar Generation II design that has been around since the mid-20th century.

-The majority of reactors used for electricity generation are of this design.

-It is also very safe as the fuel rods are held upwards using electromagnets. If the electricity is disabled, the fuel rods will automatically drop into the reactor vessel and cause the reactor to shut down.

Disadvantages:

-It must use fuel rods that have had their uranium-235 content enriched up to four percent, necessitating increased costs for fuel production.

-Ninety percent of the available uranium-235 within the spent fuel pellets remains un-fissioned, which means that the spent fuel pellets must either be reprocessed into usable fuel or disposed of.

-The reactor must be shut down to engage in refueling.

-Some of the actinides that remain in the spent fuel such as cesium-137 and strontium-90 are a cause for concern and have half-lives that are measured in decades. Although many of the remaining radioisotopes in spent fuel from light water reactors are only weakly radioactive, they have half-lives measuring thousands of years.

-Although there are no hurdles to reprocessing spent fuel from a technical and industrial standpoint, sociopolitical hysteria has effectively blocked any and all discussion of such a practice and has also prevented the construction of a centralized location where the spent fuel can be moved for long-term storage.

-A combination of politics and perceived investment risks has effectively prevented the construction of any new nuclear electricity generation facilities for decades in many countries.

Variants: European Pressurized Reactor (EPR), Advanced Passive 1000 (AP1000)

2. The Boiling Water Reactor (BWR)

The BWR is similar to the PWR in that it uses ordinary water as a coolant and neutron moderator. However, unlike the PWR it lacks a pressurizer and steam generator as water is heated into steam within the reactor vessel itself. This is the second most utilized reactor design in the world.

Moderator type: Normal water

Technology: Generation II

Existing Examples: Ubiquitous, as with the PWR.

Advantages:

-The design is one that nuclear engineering projects are very familiar with.

-It is of a simpler design than the PWR.

-Because of the nature of the BWR there are options for passive and active safety systems that are not available with the PWR.

-Like the PWR it is a very safe design.

Disadvantages:

-Because of the nature of coolant circulation within the upper half of the reactor chamber, the reactor still requires active coolant flow to remove residual heat even after the reactor has shut down.

-The control rods are inserted in the bottom of the reactor chamber rather than the top which requires an active hydraulic system rather than a passive fail safe using electromagnets like in the LWR.

-The reactor must be shut down to be refueled.

-A large portion of the uranium-235 in the fuel rods remains un-fissioned like with the PWR.

-The nature and quantity of the spent fuel produced by BWRs is the same as with PWRs and the same sociopolitical hurdles stand in the way of closing the fuel cycle or building a centralized location for spent fuel in some countries.

Variants: Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (ABWR), Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (SBWR), Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR)

3. Supercritical Water Reactor (SCWR)

This is a theoretical design that would utilize water as a coolant and neutron moderator. The water is heated and pressurized past the critical point in which liquid water and gaseous steam become virtually indistinguishable. Because of the higher operating temperature, it would be able to reach a higher degree of thermal efficiency than either the BWR or the PWR. Supercritical water is a less efficient moderator than water in its liquid state but it is also a better conductor of heat. Because of this, less moderating fluid might be needed. This might lead to the operation of a SCWR as a fast neutron reactor. The control rods would likely be inserted into the top of the reactor chamber like in the PWR. The design is being researched by several dozen countries across the world.

Moderator Type: Normal water in a supercritical state.

Technology: Generation IV

Existing Examples: None, as the reactor is still theoretical

Advantages:

-The greater thermal efficiency would allow the reactor to utilize the Brayton cycle

-The higher efficiency of the reactor would allow for a smaller reactor and smaller components

-The design of the SCWR is simpler making it cheaper to build and maintain.

-Fast breeder SCWR designs would be able to "burn up" more of the actinides produced during fission, leading to less actinides in the spent fuel and the spent material produced would have a half-life of an average of three hundred years.

-Breeder variant SCWRs would be quite flexible in the fuel they would be able to use as feedstock ranging from spent fuel from other reactors to thorium, to decommissioned nuclear warheads.

Disadvantages:

-Supercritical water presents unique challenges from a metallurgical and chemical standpoint when designing the ductwork for the circulating coolant and moderator.

-Activating a SCWR requires more complex operations than a BWR or PWR.

-Designing the reactor core to avoid a positive void coefficient would require a fairly high degree of complexity which would raise the cost of construction.

Variants: Fast Spectrum Supercritical Water Reactor (FSSCWR), Supercritical Heavy Water Reactor (SCHWR)

Conclusion

Light water reactors are the most common reactor types in the world today. This is because they have proven to be both reliable and relatively simple to operate, and have become to be regarded as "traditional" within the nuclear industry. However, they are by no means the final word in nuclear fission technology. The SCWR does show some promise, but there are other reactor designs that would be even more impressive in their application for electricity generation and for breeding more fuel.

That concludes my post on the light water reactor family. Next time, we will look at heavy water reactors. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to ask me as I welcome your interest.

Easter Sunday

2011-04-24T23:05:00.005-05:00

Easter is a holiday that is important to Christians because they believe that it is the day that Jesus Christ rose to heaven after being crucified by the Romans. However, as with most religious holidays different religions have been stealing each other's events and repackaging them for their own. In the case of Easter, it started off as a celebration of the vernal equinox as this signified the end of winter and the beginning of spring. It was not until the first Council of Nicaea in 325 C.E. that Easter became a floating Christian holiday.

I am am an atheist, but I still enjoy the trappings of Easter because of the fact that I like chocolate and Easter candy. I really like the different chocolate eggs that are made by the British chocolate company, Cadbury. The peanut butter-filled eggs are my favorite, but the cream-filled eggs are good as well. I bought some of those for myself today in addition to a chocolate rabbit. I also colored hard-boiled eggs on Friday simply because it is fun to do. For dinner, I made a roast leg of lamb and had an enjoyable evening. Although I do not believe in or follow the religious mythologies behind Easter, I think that the holiday is more about the renewal and the awakening of plants and animals during the spring after the monotony of winter.

The grass is finally starting to turn green where I live and leaf buds are appearing on the trees. Early spring is a rather depressing time of year because everything is drab and dirty after the snow melts and things do not begin to brighten up where I live until late March. Spring in most of the midwest is a rather short affair, and Illinois is no exception because the transition between winter and summer weather is rather abrupt here. The summer is my favorite time of year because that is when the weather is most conducive to swimming and other activities in addition to the fact that is usually when the local gardens and trees are in full bloom and the fragrance of their flowers hangs on the humid air.

I hope that today was an enjoyable day for my readers and I hope that their local weather is pleasant. At the moment, I am boiling a whole pot of lamb and beef bones that had been in my freezer for awhile as I am making stock for future use. I will see if I can get part 5 of my Nuclear Technology Basics series tomorrow as I want to start talking about different types of light water reactors.

Nuclear Technology Basics: Part 4 Reactor Components

2011-04-13T01:18:00.007-05:00

Introduction

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

The process of nuclear fission can be carried out by several different fissile isotopes, depending on the design of the nuclear reactor. Most reactors that have been built in America for energy generation are what are called light water reactors or simply "LWRs" as an abbreviation. Light water reactors are thermally-based reactors that use regular water for both coolant and as a neutron moderator as opposed to heavy water which has a high ratio of deuterium which is an isotope of hydrogen that has a greater atomic mass than normal hydrogen.

In future posts I will go over the different types of light water reactors, but in this case I will use the layout of a typical pressurized water reactor or "PWR". PWRs constitute the most common type of nuclear reactor in the world, including the US. Although many different types of reactor designs exist, the PWR remains the most common design because of both politics and technical familiarity with engineers in the nuclear field.

While I normally frown on Wikipedia as a source of accurate technical information, I did find a nice animated diagram of a PWR reactor layout there.

So, here are the basic components of our nuclear reactor:

1. The Reactor Vessel
The reactor vessel is the component within a nuclear reactor that contains the reactor core and where coolant circulates to prevent the core from overheating. Some designs lack a reactor vessel but the BWR and the PWR types of light water reactors both have this component in their similar designs. The basic layout is that of a cylindrical tube made out of a steel alloy containing manganese and molybdenum because of its durability, while the interior of the reactor itself lined with a layer of stainless steel to prevent corrosion from rust since it comes into contact with the coolant fluid, which is water in LWR designs. The top of the reactor vessel is designed to be removable to facilitate the replacement and insertion of fuel assemblies. Coolant is pumped in through the inlet nozzles where it flows around the fuel assembly; removing heat in the process. The heated coolant is then pumped out of the reactor vessel and into the steam generator.

2. The Pressurizer

The coolant circulation system and the steam that is produced within the steam generator is under constant pressure. Maintaining the degree of pressure within the coolant circulation system and the steam generator is an important task and this is carried out by the pressurizer. An increase in the temperature of the circulating coolant causes the density of the fluid to drop, and the volume of the liquid to expand in volume. This pushes the fluid into the pressurizer, causing the steam within the top of the component to become compressed, and pressure levels to increase. A drop in the temperature of the coolant increases the density of the water, causing it to contract. Fluid drops out of the pressurizer, reducing the degree of steam compression within the top of the pressurizer. Should the pressure increase too much or decrease below safe levels, the pressurizer will bring fluid pressure levels back to a safe equilibrium by either spraying cold water through the top of the pressurizer which would cause the compressed steam to cool down and turn back into water. Lower than normal pressure levels will cause the pressurizer to activate a series of electric heaters embedded within the walls of the component to raise the ambient temperature of the water within the pressurizer. Should pressure levels continue to fall, safety systems will cause the reactor to shut down automatically.

3. The Control Rods

The control rods regulate the speed and ratio of fission within a nuclear reactor. Each control rod is composed out of materials that can capture and absorb neutrons without undergoing fission themselves, such as indium, cadmium, and boron to name a few. When nuclear fission occurs within the nuclear fuel rods, control rods serve to prevent some of the neutrons from striking fissile atoms within the fuel assembly which slows down the nuclear reaction. The speed of fission can be increased by lifting the control rods further out of the reactor vessel, leaving more neutrons available to initiate fission. Lowering the control rods into the reactor vessel can decrease the rate of fission as they absorb more the neutrons that were being emitted by the fuel rods. In the event of an emergency, the control rods will be pushed into the reactor vessel at their maximum depth in order to slow down the rate of fission as much as possible.

4. The Neutron Moderator

A neutron moderator is a material that serves to slow down the speed of fast neutrons so that they will cause a fission reaction when they strike the nucleus of a fissionable atom. As reactor designs are grouped by their moderator type, light water reactors use ordinary water as their neutron moderator but moderators can be made out of many substances. In water moderated reactors, a bluish glow can be seen around the control rods as charged particles are moving faster than the speed of light within the medium. Since the electric field of the particles is unable to keep up with them as they travel, photons are produced in an optical equivalent of a "sonic boom", producing light towards the blue wavelengths of the color spectrum.

5. The Containment Structure

All nuclear reactors in the world are now constructed with a containment building over the reactor vessel to protect the reactor from damage and to physically prevent the release of radiation in the event of a core meltdown. The containment building is a solid concrete or steel shell that is several feet thick that is extremely durable and tests have shown their ability to withstand earthquakes or impacts with aircraft with minimal damage. The containment building is what prevented the release of any significant degree of radiation during the Three Mile Island incident in 1979 and what prevented the damaged reactors at Fukushima Daiichi in Japan from irradiating the populace after being subjected to a massive earthquake. If the infamous Chernobyl reactor had been built with a containment building over the reactor vessel, the effects of the meltdown on the surrounding area would have been negligible.

6. The Steam Generator

The PWR light water reactor design has a steam generator, the BWR design does not. Hot coolant flows from the reactor vessel into pipes that are surrounded by secondary coolant within the steam generator. The pipes containing the hot coolant cause the fluid surrounding them to heat up and begin to boil and generate steam. Heat energy is transferred from the hot pipes into the secondary coolant causing the primary coolant to cool down as it is pumped back into the reactor vessel. The steam generated by the boiling secondary coolant rises and is forced through a moisture separator into the turbine chamber.

7. The Reactor Turbine

Within the reactor turbine, steam is pushed through the center of the turbine which then turns the blades of the turbine assembly as it expands outward. Most turbine designs have a moisture separator after the first high-pressure turbine which separates the condensed water from the steam and forces the steam through a series of low pressure turbines. This is how pressurized steam is converted into mechanical energy.

8. The Generator

The generator coverts mechanical energy into electricity. A rod runs from the generator to the turbine that spins along with the motion of the turbine. Within the generator, the rod is wrapped with a piece of wire that is surrounded by magnets. Electrical current is generated within wires surrounding the magnets on the side of the generator shaft as it spins, which is then sent out of the nuclear power plant.

9. The Condenser

Steam passes into the condenser chamber after passing through the turbine where cool water circulated from a water box causes the steam to condense into water. The water is then circulated within the secondary coolant loop to the steam generator. Then it is used to generate steam from the heated pipes of the primary coolant loop.

This was just a brief summary on the major components of a "typical" nuclear reactor such as a pressurized water reactor, or PWR. On my next entry, I will be taking a look at how reactor designs differ, starting with the different types of light water reactors. The PWR is by no means the final word in nuclear reactor technology.

Follow Up on Fukushima Daiichi

2011-04-10T19:01:00.004-05:00

The situation at the Fukushima Daiichi reactor is largely under control. Although I have been dismayed by the degree of exaggeration and outright falsehoods that were evident in the coverage on the status of the Fukushima Daiichi reactor, I should not have been surprised considering how ignorant the general public often is about how nuclear reactors work and what measures are in place to ensure the safety of the workers and the surrounding area when something goes wrong. The electricity provided to Fukushima Daiichi by emergency diesel-powered generators was not affected from the second earthquake on April 7th. A leak near Unit-2 has been sealed, preventing the further release of water contaminated with highly radioactive nuclides. The source of radioactivity is unknown at this time.

The spraying of water on the exposed fuel assemblies within Units -1 through -4 continues and nitrogen gas is being pumped into Unit-1 in order to prevent any further explosions involving hydrogen gas build up. Makeshift dams out of silt and steel plates are being installed in the ocean surrounding the reactor site in an attempt to contain some of the mildly contaminated water that was released offshore. While the risk to civilians and most personnel from radiation exposure has been minimal since the beginning of the incident, radiation levels surrounding the site continue to drop dramatically, and the Japanese government has lifted restrictions on consuming milk and produce from farms surrounding Fukushima Daiichi as of April 8th.

Here are some numbers detailing the total casualties that have resulted from Fukushima Daiichi since the first earthquake, courtesy of the Depleted Cranium blog:

Deaths: Two workers died from injuries resulting from the first earthquake, which was unrelated to the operation of Fukushiima Daiichi itself.

-Update: A third worker died on May 14 as he was an older man in his 60's and he had an underlying heart condition that was aggravated when he was carrying construction materials at the plant. This was unrelated to radiation exposure or the operation of the facility itself.

Injuries: Twenty three workers have been injured at Fukushima Daiichi. Eight of those people were involved in accidents involving the operation of non-nuclear equipment during the earthquake while fifteen people have received minor injuries during the hydrogen explosions shortly after the earthquake. Two people have received minor radiation burns that did not require further treatment after being evaluated at a hospital.

Radiation Exposure: Seventeen workers had to undergo radiation decontamination procedures on-site after minor radiation exposure, but not enough to warrant further decontamination measures off-site.

Prognosis For Workers Exposed to Minor Radiation: Excellent, possibly a slightly increased risk of developing cancer but this is statistically negligible when compared to the probability of developing cancer as a function of age for the average person in the general population.

Effects on the General Public: None

Injuries to the General Public: None

Casualties Resulting From the Earthquake and Tsunami: 30,000 and counting.

Radionuclides in the Water Table:

There has been some discussion about the safety of Japan's water supply in regards to contamination by iodine-131. There have been warnings issued about the levels of iodine-131 recorded in Japan's water supply on the twenty-third of March as they were above the 100 Bq/Kg (Becquerels per kilogram) limit set by Japan for infants, but still well below the 300 Bq/Kg limit for adults. Japan's guidelines for exposure to iodine-131 are also extremely conservative as the WHO's limits for iodine-131 are 3,000 Bq/kg. In any case, levels of iodine-131 in the water table have dropped dramatically since March 23rd because iodine-131 has a half-life of only eight days and the levels of iodine-131 have been below the Japanese 100 Bq/Kg limit for infants since the 24th of March.

Now, with all of this being said I hope that we can all put our fears of nuclear power to rest as many of them were unwarranted and there is also the fact that the incidents at Fukushima were relatively minor when one considers the fact that the structure was designed to survive earthquakes at a maximum of 8.0 on the Richter scale when the first earthquake that hit the island of Honshū was 8.9. If Fukushima had been any other sort of power-generating structure, the potential for casualties would have been much higher as natural gas and coal generating facilities are prone to explosions, and hydroelectric dams often break during earthquakes. The problems at Fukushima should serve to reinforce the lesson on how safe nuclear energy really is considering the intensity of the earthquake.

Special Post on the Nuclear Energy Situation in Japan

2011-03-13T19:32:00.016-05:00

The earthquake that occurred in Japan was magnitude 8.9 on the Richter scale. Aside from the damage caused to Japan's infrastructure from the earthquake, a ten-meter high tsunami flooded the northeastern coastline of the island. As of today, 1,597 people are reported dead, 1,923 injured, and 1,481 people missing across sixteen regions but these estimates may soon rise in the next few days.

There has also been widespread panic over the state of Japan's nuclear power stations. Several nuclear facilities have been severely damaged in addition to the rest of Japan's northern industrial centers. Because of the shoddy reporting from the media as is typical with anything concerning nuclear energy, it is difficult to sort out fact from fiction. As people are already comparing what is happening in Japan with Chernobyl, I feel that it is important that I try and clear up any dangerous inaccuracies.

The Fukushima Daiichi facility

This station is in the town of Ōkuma, on the northeastern part of the island of Honshū. It is composed of six boiling water reactors, leading to a combined power output of 4.7 gigawatts. All six of the reactors have suffered damage but in varying degrees.

Unit-1 (SCRAMed) is the oldest reactor on-site. Because of its age, it was originally scheduled to be decommissioned in roughly two weeks after this blog post was written. Water used to cool the reactor came in contact with the superheated fuel rods, causing instant vaporization and separation of the water into hydrogen and oxygen gas. The hydrogen built up and ignited resulting in an explosion that has destroyed the concrete shell over the reactor vessel, but the vessel itself remains intact. The reactor also suffered from a loss of cooling after on-site generator failure from the impact of the tsunami. The reactor SCRAMed (Automatically shut down) during the coolant flow malfunction, but borated seawater has been used to cool the reactor because of the residual heat still coming from the core. The reactor itself is probably damaged beyond practical repair, but temperature and pressure levels remain under control, and the containment dome remains intact.

Unit-2 (SCRAMed) has switched to auxiliary cooling in the wake of the tsunami, and the reactor itself remains in good condition. However, the turbine, generator, and surrounding machinery have been badly damaged. It is likely that Unit-2 will be able to be restarted after it has been repaired.

12:02 AM (CST) Update: The auxiliary coolant system seems to have failed and an explosion has occurred. It is not yet known what the cause of the explosion was, but steps have been taken to cool the reactor core with borated seawater as with Unit-3 and Unit-1. The containment dome remains intact and undamaged.

Unit-3 (SCRAMed) suffered a temporary loss of cooling similar to that of Unit-2, but recent investigation has revealed that auxiliary cooling systems have taken over. The safety release valve has been opened by workers to relieve pressure. Borated water has been injected into the reactor vessel to reduce the residual heat of the reactor core.

1:55 PM (CST) Update: An explosion of hydrogen gas similar to the incident at Unit-1 has occurred at Unit-3 at 11:01 AM JST (9:01 PM CST). The reactor vessel is still thought to be intact, but it is not yet known what the overall status of Unit-3 is and how much radiation, if any has been released into the outside environment. The effects of the explosion are still being investigated.

11:57 PM (CST) Update: Unit-3 has been written off as a loss as the borated seawater will irreparably damage the reactor. However auxiliary cooling systems have been inadequate so operators are going to have to resort to such measures to reduce the heat of the reactor core. A partial meltdown did occur but the containment dome remains intact and no significant amount of radiation has escaped from the core.

Unit-4 has been shut down in order to allow for inspection. Coolant levels are adequate and there appear to be no signs of leakage and the containment vessel seems to be intact.

3-15-2011 12:02 AM (CST) Update: A small fire has been reported at Unit-4. It has been contained and extinguished without incident.

3-15-2011 12:05 PM (CST) Update: The fire appears to have resulted from the cladding of Unit-4 igniting after coolant levels covering the bundle of fuel rods has dropped, allowing heat to build up. As the reactor was only recently shut down, the temperature of the fuel rods was much higher than if the reactor had been shut down a few days ago. Some radioactive material might have been released with the evaporating water surrounding the core, but the quantity and concentration is still unknown and it is likely that the danger level is small to nonexistent.

Unit-5 has been shut down in order to allow for inspection. Coolant levels are adequate and there appear to be no signs of leakage and the containment vessel seems to be intact.

Unit-6 has been shut down in order to allow for inspection. Coolant levels are adequate and there appear to be no signs of leakage. The containment vessel seems to be intact.

The degree of radiation in the immediate vicinity of the plant has increased. Small amounts of radioisotopes were dissolved in the steam vented to relieve pressure inside the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi. However, this is not a cause for concern as the concentration of these isotopes within the steam is very low, and most of them are very weakly radioactive. Determining the actual levels of radiation released by the nuclear facility can be problematic, because elevated radiation levels can also be attributed to the naturally occurring radioisotopes found in ash from fires and other particulate matter that has been swept into the area.

To date, there have been no deaths at Fukushima Daiichi, but ten employees have received medical attention and two workers are reported missing. Three workers have been reported to have been exposed to abnormally high doses of radiation, but I have not found any reliable information yet concerning the details of how much radiation they were exposed to, and what the source was thought to be. Despite the alarmism, there have been no credible reports of the nearby populace being contaminated with radioactive fallout.

3:31 AM (CST) Update: There has been one death at Fukushima Daiichi in an accident during the operation of a crane, yet it is unrelated to the incidents at the reactors themselves.

The Onagawa Facility

The Onagawa nuclear station is located near the town of Onagawa on the island of Honshū. It consists of two 825 megawatt reactors and one 524 megawatt reactor. The earthquake damaged the generator and turbine systems, causing all three of the reactors to SCRAM even though the reactors themselves sustained minimal damage and cooling systems remain intact. A fire occurred in Onagawa-3 resulting from a malfunctioning turbine but it was immediately controlled and put out without incident. No casualties at the Onagawa nuclear power station have been reported.

The Higashidōri Facility

The nuclear power plant near the town of Higashidōri is located on the northern tip of Honshū. It consists of four units, with Higashidōri-1 and the planned Higashidōri-2 being controlled by the Tōhoku Electric company, while the other two reactors planned to be built on-site are run by Tōkyō Electric. Higashidōri has been shut down following the disaster to carry out inspection and maintenance. The extent of the damage, if any, at Higashidōri remains unclear but no reports have surfaced concerning the failure of any critical systems. However, the earthquake might have damaged the three reactors at Higashidōri that are still in the construction phase. No casualties at Higashidōri have been reported.

The Tōkai Facility

This nuclear power station is in Tōkai on the central-eastern coast of Honshū. Unit I had reached the end of its operating license and was decommissioned while Unit II remained operational. The reactor SCRAMed during the earthquake, but the auxiliary cooling system took over. No casualties at Tōkai have been reported.

The Rokkasho Reprocessing Center

While not a nuclear power generating facility in of itself, this is where Japan fabricates most of its fuel for its nuclear power stations and reprocesses spent material. Although it does not appear to have suffered any catastrophic damage, it is currently running on auxiliary power because of the loss of electricity to much of northern Honshū. Normal operation has been suspended until primary power comes online. No casualties have been reported.

This is currently what I have found out about in the aftermath of the earthquake and the following tsunami in Japan. I have also heard of an eruption of the Shinmoedake volcano but it is not yet clear if it was triggered by the earthquake in Sendai. I welcome any comments suggestions, or updates on the current status of Japan's nuclear infrastructure in the coming days.

Nuclear Technology Basics: Part 3 The Process of Reprocessing

2011-03-11T11:29:00.016-06:00

Introduction

Part 1

Part 2

As stated previously, most of the nuclear energy plants in the world are based on light water reactors and their variants. One disadvantage with the light water reactor design is that it only utilizes a small percentage of the Uranium-235 that is available within a fuel rod. Over ninety percent of the volume of spent fuel is uranium-235 that can be reprocessed to produce more fuel for nuclear energy plants and greatly reduce the volume and radioactivity of material to be disposed of. While the practice of fuel reprocessing remains a politically sensitive issue in many parts of the world, the fears that it will somehow lead to the increased proliferation of nuclear arms are erroneous.

There are different types of reprocessing methods, and some are still in the experimental stage, or only exist on paper. The most common type of nuclear fuel reprocessing is the PUREX (Plutonium and Uranium Recovery by EXtraction) method. The PUREX process was originally invented by Herbert H. Anderson, and Larned B. Asprey during their work on the Manhattan project in 1947. However, the spent material from fuel-grade uranium is too high in plutonium-240 to allow for the production of nuclear warheads.

PUREX and Its Derivative Processes

Nitric acid is used to dissolve the spent fuel in the reprocessing center where insoluable debris is removed in order to prevent contamination of the of the solute. A Tributyl phosphate/kerosene mixture is then used to claim the available plutonium and uranium from the nitric acid solute, leaving the transuranic elements such as curium and americium behind. Ferrous sulphmate is used to separate the reclaimed uranium from the plutonium as it reduces plutonium's oxidation state to +3 allowing the plutonium nitrates to be separated from the uranium nitrates. This liquid extraction process must be repeated several times to get an acceptable amount of plutonium and uranium reclaimed from the spent fuel. Uranium and plutonium are typically converted to their oxide forms for ease of storage and fabrication into MOX (Mixed OXide) fuel.

The UREX (URanium EXtraction) technique is based on the PUREX method to prevent the separation and extraction of plutonium. The plutonium is reduced with acetohydroxamic acid before any metal extraction takes place. This greatly increases the difficulty of recovering neptunium and plutonium isotopes in the solute. UREX was designed to add an extra measure of proliferation resistance during fuel reprocessing, although this is largely unnecessary.

Transuranics are radionuclides that have atomic numbers greater than 92 in the periodic table. They are produced in nuclear reactors or as a result of nuclear chemistry experiments. These elements typically have half-lives that are greater than twenty years, and can produce moderate to high amounts of alpha radiation. The PUREX reprocessing method can be modified to carry out the TRUEX process which allows for the extraction of the transuranics, which reduces the radioactivity of the resulting MOX fuel. TRUEX is nearly identical to PUREX, except that octyl(phenyl)-N, N-dibutyl carbamoylmethyl phosphine oxide and tributylphosphate are added to the solution after the uranium and plutonium have been extracted to allow for the extraction of transuranics. Some of these transuranics such as americium, have industrial uses. The SANEX (Selective Actinide EXtraction) process has been proposed to allow for the extraction of specific radionuclides. Although the SANEX process is still theoretical, researchers are looking into the viability of using bis-triazinyl bipyridines or dithiophosphinic acids as reagents.

Another reprocessing method based on PUREX is the UNEX (UNiversal EXtraction) process. This was developed to facilitate the separation and extraction of the more toxic actinides left behind in spent fuel; such as cesium-137, strontium-90, and other minor actinides. The UNEX process is identical to the TRUEX process, except that the extracted actinides are diluted with polar aromatic compounds.

Other Methods

In the past, spent fuel was often processed by using solvation techniques involving reactions with a chemical reagent that served to increase the concentration of the solute within a solution to serve as a carrier for the desired elements. The bismuth phosphate, hexone, and butex techniques were phased on in favor of the current PUREX system because of the large amount of extra material to be disposed of that was created in these prior techniques.

Pyroprocessing

Pyroprocessing is the name given to reprocessing methods that involve the application of high temperatures and metallurgical properties of radioisotopes rather than water and organic solvents. Pyroprocessing methods for fuel fabrication from spent nuclear material would have several advantages over the current PUREX method. This is because pyroprocessing techniques would be more streamlined and would also allow for on-site reprocessing of spent nuclear material. In addition, some pyroprocessing methods would facilitate the extraction of several different radioisotopes at the same time without having to carry out further extraction steps. In addition, many pyroprocessing methods are more efficient at extracting useful fissile material as the remaining waste that would result would be smaller in volume as well has have a significantly shorter half-life.

The most promising pyroprocessing potential lies with the molten-salt reactor (MSR) designs of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory designs of the 1960s in the US. The liquid core of a molten salt reactor can be chemically separated into its different elements for reprocessing without having to suspend them in solution. In addition, the remaining radionuclides contained within the core would allow for a greater degree of burn-up resulting in less material to be disposed of. Finally, the reactor would not have to be shut down during fuel fabrication because the molten fuel could be continually pumped in and out of the reactor chamber.

Christmas Stasis

2010-12-23T14:02:00.003-06:00

I have been extremely busy since last weekend with packing my stuff, graduation, and moving to a new location. I will also be spending Christmas at the home of one of my aunts and so I will be out of town until the twenty-sixth of this month. Because of this, my blog series on nuclear technology will be suspended until next week.

In addition, I will wish you all a merry Christmas in advance. Whether or not you identify as Christian, the holiday should be a joyful occasion. This is because to me as well as many other atheists, Christmas is an important cultural holiday and the values of goodwill, love, peace, and prosperity are just as relevant from a secular standpoint as they are from people who profess belief in supernatural deities.

Who among you does not like a tree full of beautiful lights and decorations? Who would turn his head from the wonderful Christmas dinners, candy and cookies, snacks? How many of us would freely part from the exchanging of gifts that we experience during Christmas? Our relatives and guests might be a bit loud and raucous at times after the wine, beer, and egg nog flows freely but Christmas has a miraculous way of preventing resentment from becoming full-scale arguments.

So, the nuclear reactor and the machines that run my blog will continue to operate all throughout Christmas as they do every day until my return on the 26th where we will pick up where we left off with the plutonium fuel cycle. For those of you who have to travel far, I do hope that the roads are safe and that the TSA does not become too taxing on your nerves with their fraudulent security theaters. In addition, I wish that everybody gets plenty to eat this Christmas and that they get all that they have asked for or wanted this year.

Finally, in order to keep up with the festivities, I have decided to decorate this facility for the Christmas season and play some fitting music. I hope you do not mind listening to Burl Ives, Bing Crosby, and Dean Martin for awhile. Enjoy!

Merry Christmas everybody!

Nuclear Technology Basics: Part 2 Thorium Fuel Cycles

2010-12-12T22:21:00.005-06:00

Introduction

Part 1

Although most nuclear reactors in the world today use fuel cycles based on the element uranium, it is also possible to use thorium as a source of nuclear energy with some types of nuclear reactors. A thorium-based fuel cycle has several advantages over one that is based on uranium, making it an increasingly attractive option to invest in from an energy production standpoint.

Thorium is element 90 in the periodic table. Like uranium, thorium is a naturally occurring actinide metal that is slightly radioactive when found in nature. Although as many as 33 different isotopes of thorium are possible, the thorium that is found in nature is mostly thorium-232. Thorium ores can be found in abundance all across the world, particularly in India and the western steppes of the US. Since there is currently little use for thorium from a commercial standpoint, there has been little effort to exploit these resources.

By itself, thorium-232 is not fissile, but if a neutron source is provided such as uranium-235, it can "jumpstart" thorium-232 into a fission chain reaction by causing it to absorb a neutron and become thorium-233. Thorium-233 has a half-life of twenty two minutes at the end of which it emits an electron, causing it to decay into proactinum-233. After 27 days, proactinum releases a second electron and becomes uranium-233.

232Th (n,γ) 233Th (β−) 233Pa (β−) 233U (n,2n)

Uranium-233 has a higher neutron yield than Uranium-235 when it undergoes fission, and therefore releases more energy per neutron absorbed. The decay of Uranium-233 would lead to the creation of numerous isotopes that would be useful from a medical and industrial standpoint and would be able to breed more uranium-233 within the reactor from the neutron irradiation of thorium-232. From a weapons-proliferation standpoint, the thorium-fuel cycle would be very difficult to divert into making fissile warheads. This is because proactinium can also decay into Uranium-232 which emits hard gamma radiation which is a hazard to people who would tamper with the reactor material in addition to the fact that although it is fissile within a reactor, it interferes with fast fission reactions like those within a thermonuclear bomb.

232Th (n,γ) 233Th (β−) 233Pa (n,2n) 232Pa (β−) 232U

Thorium-based fuel cycles have much in the way of economic potential and could be utilized by using off-the-shelf technology. The US experimented with thorium-based reactors during the molten-salt reactor experiment at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory during the mid-1960s until the project was abandoned in favor of uranium-based light water reactors for political reasons. Russia, China, and India are currently looking into the viability of thorium for nuclear energy production, and India is currently using thorium in its pressurized heavy water reactors (PHWRs) and its liquid metal fast breeder reactors (LMFBRs). Ideally, the full potential of thorium could be utilized in a liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) but it remains to be seen if the LFTR concept gains enough political momentum to allow it to be commerically realized.

Nuclear Technology Basics Part 1: Uranium Fuel Cycles

2010-12-05T19:17:00.022-06:00

Introduction

Most reactors in the world today utilize the uranium fuel cycle to sustain fission, but there are other fuel cycles as well such as ones based on thorium and plutonium. Light water reactors (LWRs) typically have a once-through fuel cycle in which results in various degrees of spent fuel to be disposed of. Breeder reactors and various reprocessing centers can greatly reduce the quantity and half-life of material to be discarded, but nuclear reprocessing is banned in some countries because of errant political concerns rather than for any technical reason such as is seen in the US.

Uranium is a common element that is found in many locations across the world, usually in the form of Uranium oxide. Uranium oxide is a yellowish-brown powder, and is often referred to as "yellowcake". Large deposits of uranium are found in Australia, Africa, Canada, Spain, Russia, and the US where it is mined and sent to an ore processing center. Uranium mines may be either open pit mines when the uranium is close to the surface, or in underground mining tunnels for deeply-buried deposits. Most uranium in the US and Australia is mined using in-situ leeching methods where the uranium oxide is dissolved from the surrounding rock in solution using water that is acidified by carbon dioxide. A LWR reactor requires around .2 metric tonnes of uranium oxide per megawatt produced for its continual operation.

The uranium isotope, U-235 is the primary isotope of interest for power generation. In chemistry and nuclear physics, an isotope of an element is an atom that has a different number of neutrons from the typical number of an atom from that type of element. Uranium has 33 different isotopes, and all of them are radioactive with varying degrees of radioactivity and half-lives. Only .7% of the atoms in naturally occurring uranium oxide are U-235 on average, while the most abundant isotope of uranium is U-238 which accounts for 99.28% of uranium atoms found in nature. Rarer still is the naturally occurring isotope of Uranium U-234 which is slightly more than half a percent of uranium found in deposits on Earth.

In order for mined uranium oxide to be viable for usage in a LWR it must be brought to a fuel fabrication facility where uranium oxide is converted into uranium hexafluoride where the percentage of U-235 is concentrated up to three percent. This is done either through the gaseous diffusion process or the centrifuge process. In either case, "tailings" are produced as a by-product of the process. Uranium "tailings" are largely devoid of the U-235 isotope and consist mostly of U-238. This "depleted" uranium is only weakly radioactive and has many commercial uses because of Uranium's density, ranging from aircraft counter-weights, radiation shielding, boat keels, and munitions. Although uranium itself has a toxicity comparable to lead from a chemological standpoint, uranium is not easily absorbed by living organisms if ingested. The greatest danger comes from the accidental inhalation of the material if it is finely ground into a powder, because the particles can become lodged in the lungs so respiratory protection should be worn when working with powdered uranium compounds. However this is true for many fine particulate substances and is not necessarily unique to uranium. The fears of "depleted uranium" are largely unfounded and baseless.

When the uranium hexafluoride has been enriched to the desired level, it is converted into uranium dioxide which is a fine powder. The uranium dioxide is mechanically pressed into small pellets for use as fuel within a nuclear reactor fuel assembly. The pellets are stacked within tubes made from a metallic alloy of zirconium and serve as fuel rods in the nuclear reactor vessel.

Within the reactor vessel, the Uranium-235 isotope undergoes nuclear fission. Uranium-235 captures and absorbs a stray neutron to become the unstable isotope, Uranium-236. U-236 commonly decays into isotopes of barium, tellurium, krypton, and zirconium and releases energy and two or three neutrons in the process.

These stray neutrons impact other nearby atoms, causing the process to be repeated. In addition, the decay of the daughter products of uranium can create isotopes of other elements as well. Three of the more common decay chains of Uranium U-235 are represented by these equations:

U-235 + n ===> Ba-144 + Kr-90 + 2n + energy

U-235 + n ===> Ba-141 + Kr-92 + 3n + 170 MeV

U-235 + n ===> Zr-94 + Te-139 + 3n + 197 MeV

Interestingly enough, the atomic masses of the isotopes created from the decay of uranium-236 are usually around the low 90s to the mid to upper 130s because of the law of Conservation of Mass in regards to matter. The total mass of the isotopes resulting from the decay of uranium-236 and the neutrons that are released equals a mass of 236, just like the uranium-236 that they decayed from.

After a year or so, 33% of the fuel rods within a nuclear reactor are removed and the reactor is refueled with new fuel to keep the fission reaction going. The spent fuel rods are submerged in a pool of water within the power plant so that they can cool down long enough for further processing and for some of the more radioactive, shorter-lived isotopes to decay. After a few years, the assemblies containing the spent fuel are taken out to be disposed of.

The fission products that were created during the nuclear fission process can be divided into short, intermediate, and long-lived half-life categories.The half-life of an element is the average amount of time for the atoms within a sample of material to have undergone radioactive decay into another element. Most of the fission products have short half-lives that are less than a year. Although many of these isotopes are highly radioactive, they undergo decay during their period in the spent fuel pool and do not present a problem from waste disposal standpoint. Isotopes with an intermediate half-life can be somewhat problematic as they can range anywhere from a year to a century or two and can emit moderately high levels of radiation such as with the case of strontium-90 and cesium-137. These elements can be transmuted into less dangerous isotopes through further neutron bombardment but it is much more cost effective to simply dilute them with inert compounds to the point to where their radioactivity no longer poses a problem. Isotopes with half-lives lasting longer than three centuries can make up to 20% of the spent fuel to be disposed of, but one must keep in mind the inverse relationship between half-life and radioactivity.

Although the half-life of some of these fission by-products can be up to several billion years, they are only weakly radioactive to the point of being barely above the background levels of radiation that all of us are exposed to in our daily lives. As a case in point, potassium-40 has a half-life of 1.3 billion years, and it can set off alarms from radiation detection equipment. However, it is quite abundant in foods with large amounts of potassium in them, such as bananas and it is also found in our bones. However, it is very weakly radioactive as a person only gets an exposure of a few picocuries per year. Eating one banana a day for each day in a year would increase your exposure to radiation by 3.6 milirems per year and the average person receives several hundred milirems per year from naturally occurring background sources with no ill-effects.

Exposure to Radon Per Year By County (Red means high levels of radon)

New Cases of Cancer Diagnosed Per Year By County (High rates are purple)

In countries such as France that use nuclear reprocessing the useful isotopes are separated from the spent fuel assemblies. Since over 90% isotopes within a spent fuel assembly consist of un-fissioned uranium-235, and fissionable plutonium-239 this greatly reduces the volume of the material to be disposed of. The material from a spent fuel assembly can be reduced through reprocessing to a piece of material the size of a cigarette lighter with a half-life of three centuries. The fuel created from this process is known as mixed-oxide fuel, or "MOX" fuel. There are many different types of fuel reprocessing. The most common type is the PUREX method, although research is being conducted into "pyroprocessing" techniques.

Unfortunately, it is often politics that drive policy not common sense and the US is no exception. Although the once-through spent fuel disposal method is wasteful from the standpoint of throwing away a source of useful nuclear fuel, there is not much of it at all. There are three categories of "nuclear waste"; low-level waste, intermediate waste, and high-level waste.

Low-level waste consists of anything from pens and pencils from the offices within a nuclear power plant to the gloves and protective gear worn by personnel. Low-level waste from a nuclear power plant is often very weakly radioactive if it is radioactive at all, and is typically burned or buried close to the surface of a special landfill. Intermediate waste includes things like the actual components of the reactor itself in addition to the materials used in the construction of a nuclear reactor. There is usually not much in the way of intermediate waste to be disposed of and it is often buried in a shallow repository. High-level waste consists of the spent fuel that is marked for disposal.

This material is a metallic solid that has been encased in glass, lined with concrete, and sealed into an extremely durable cask. Tests have demonstrated the ability of these casks to withstand impacts with freight trains. Doomsday scenarios featuring terrorists stealing spent fuel material in order to construct bombs leave out the fact that the concentration of Uranium-235 needs to be enriched up to at least 90% for it to be weapons-grade material. Spent fuel does contain plutonium-239 which can be used for a plutonium bomb, but it is also contaminated with plutonium-240 which is a poison for a nuclear bomb as it absorbs neutrons without fissioning, effectively stealing the neutrons that would be able to strike plutonium-239 that would cause the rapid fission reaction. Fission would occur, but not in the rapid fashion that you would need it to for a nuclear bomb. To make things worse for a terrorist, it would be very difficult to separate the plutonium-239 from the plutonium-240 and it would require highly specialized equipment. It would simply be cheaper and easier to build a special reactor dedicated to producing weapons-grade material like most nations do.

Finally, the amount of high level waste to be disposed of is quite small. All of the high-level waste ever produced in the US as a by-product of nuclear energy could easily fit into a room the size of a high school gymnasium, just two stories high. Compare this to the mountains of coal ash and carbon dioxide generated by the burning of fossil fuels which will be just as toxic millions of years from now as it was the day that it was created.

In part two, we will be taking a look at thorium-based fuel cycles and how nuclear reprocessing works in detail. I hope that this post was easy to read and understand and that it was not too long or boring. Stay tuned!

Nuclear Technology Basics: Introduction (Fun With Fission)

2010-11-28T00:33:00.005-06:00

Well, I have just returned from Thanksgiving break. As promised, I will begin a series of posts concerning nuclear reactor technology and how different types of nuclear reactors differ from one another. In the near future, I will also include a glossary entry on my blog that people can reference at a later date in case they come across terminology that is not clear to them.

At the most basic level, all thermally-based power plants share the same mechanics of how they generate electrical energy. A heat source is used to generate steam, which causes a turbine to spin from the pressure provided by the steam which is being used as a working fluid. The action of the spinning turbine is connected to a generator which converts mechanical energy into electrical energy by the rotation of the turbine. Coal, oil, biomass and natural gas facilities use the combustion of these fuels to provide heat to create steam while solar thermal power stations use light from the sun and convert it into a source of heat. Geothermal energy is also thermally-based because it relies on heat from under the ground in geologically active regions in order to operate. Non-thermally based methods of electricity generation such as wind, hydroelectric, and wave energy turbines are directly spun by the movement of wind or water. Photoelectric solar stations generate electricity from solar cells using the photoelectric effect.

In the case of nuclear energy, heat is harnessed from a sustained nuclear chain reaction to drive a steam turbine. Nuclear reactions concern the interaction of an atom's nucleus with the nuclei of other atoms. Heat and subatomic particles are often produced as a result of a nuclear reaction, depending on what type of nuclear reaction it is and what elements are involved. A nuclear chain reaction is when the products of one nuclear reaction trigger additional nuclear reactions within a whole group of nearby atoms in a positive feedback loop. There are two main types of nuclear chain reactions, nuclear fission and nuclear fusion.

Nuclear fusion is when the nuclei of a pair or more of atoms become fused together. The fusion of the atoms releases large amounts of energy. Nuclear fusion is what powers stars in space and has also been achieved within a human laboratory. While nuclear fusion could hypothetically be used as a source of terrestrial power, this has proven to be quite difficult. Surrounding each atom is a positively charged field known as the electrostatic force that tends to repel other atoms away before a pair of atoms can become close enough for their nuclei to fuse. It requires massive amounts of energy to overcome the repulsion of the electrostatic forces between neighboring atoms. Although the development of a nuclear fusion reactor has been a high priority for many governments around the world for many decades, nuclear fusion reactions being carried out in a laboratory have yet to result in a sustainable fusion chain reaction as it seems to require more energy to cause atoms to fuse than what is actually released during the fusion process when attempted on Earth. Because of this, it is likely that a working fusion reactor is still many years away from being a reality.

Nuclear fission is the second type of nuclear chain reaction. It is basically the process of causing atomic nuclei to fragment by ramming them with subatomic particles, which in turn causes the subatomic particles that result from the fragmented nuclei to crash into the nuclei of other atoms and repeat the process. Fission reactions produce heat and other forms of radiation depending on what the products of the fission reaction are. Since the successful operation of the first fission reactor in 1942 at the University of Chicago, all reactors that have been built by humans have been fission-based. Interestingly enough, the existence of naturally occurring fission reactors has also been observed in nature such as the Oklo fossil reactors in Gabon, Africa where the isotopic ratio of uranium deposits within the area allowed nuclear fission to sustain itself. In addition, the georeactor theory in the geological field postulates that the Earth's magnetic field and the heat that is produced from its core might arise from the activities of a naturally occurring reactor in its interior similar to what has been seen at Oklo. However, the georeactor theory has little in the way of evidence that supports it at this time although this may change in the future.

That is enough for now, as I do not want to get too long-winded with each post. The next part of this series will be a look at the basics of nuclear fuel, reactor design, and the fuel cycle itself. Feel free to ask any questions that you might have.

Thanksgiving Day Post

2010-11-25T20:09:00.003-06:00

Today is Thanksgiving, which is an important holiday in the American calendar. Although Thanksgiving is said to commemorate the feast that the Native American tribes had with the early puritan colonists, the actual holiday itself was not established until 1863 by president Lincoln during his Thanksgiving proclamation. Up until then, many states scheduled their own "thanksgiving" events as an irregular observance, often during years when there was an especially bountiful harvest.

A magazine editor by the name of Sarah Josepha Hale wrote a series of letters to president Lincoln urging him to declare Thanksgiving as an official holiday. America was being torn apart by civil war and Mrs. Hale felt that nationalizing the custom of thanksgiving would help restore a feeling of unity throughout the US. The holiday was vaguely based on the Puritan harvest festival at Plymouth Plantation during 1621, which lasted three days from late September to early October. However, the idea behind Thanksgiving as set forth by Mrs. Hale was more of a celebration of "home and hearth" before the dead of winter rather than a specific historical event.

Since the Thanksgiving proclamation, Thanksgiving has been a national holiday that is celebrated on the last Thursday in November. Although the Puritans were more than likely eating venison at Plymouth, turkey is traditionally eaten on the holiday because West Point students were customarily served turkey during Thanksgiving, which had generally been a northeastern culinary tradition until then. Because of this, many West Point troops had been exposed to turkey, which helped cement its place on the Thanksgiving dinner table. After the end of World War II the famous Norman Rockwell image of a roast turkey serving as the symbol for "Freedom From Want" made turkey the national icon for Thanksgiving.

I myself had an enjoyable Thanksgiving today. The turkey was roasted upside-down to make sure that the breast area does not become desiccated during the cooking process. The dog, myself, and everybody else had plenty to eat and everybody seemed to have a good time. My favorite cut of a turkey is the leg or "drumstick" as I prefer dark meat to white meat when it comes to poultry flesh. The "white meat" on birds consists of fast-twitch muscle fibers, which are used for short bursts of intense activity, while the "dark meat" contains slow-twitch muscle fibers, which are mainly meant for sustained physical activity. Slow-twitch muscle fibers contain more myoglobin, which is a protein in muscle tissue that gives it a darker color.

I wish everybody an enjoyable Thanksgiving and I hope that they make sure they get enough to eat and that the company of their dinner guests is not too trying on their patience. The best part of Thanksgiving is often the leftover food the day after, as it is just as good if not better than the day before. Finally, one must not underestimate the remaining turkey skeleton, which is highly valuable for making soup stock out of after the last of the meat has been picked off by ravenous humans.

Happy feasting everybody!

All Fission Reactors Are Not Created Equal

2010-11-23T09:55:00.003-06:00

For the next few days or so, I will be taking a look at the different types of nuclear reactors that have existed or have only been theorized about on paper. The reason being is that there are so many different potential reactor designs that it is often confusing to people outside of the field of nuclear engineering to determine how reactor designs differ and what the pros and cons of each design are. To make matters worse, the names of these reactors are often abbreviated to different acronyms making it even more difficult for laypeople to understand what the different terms mean.

This will be a bit of an undertaking, as there are literally hundreds of different reactor designs. Some have only existed on paper, others were only experimental prototypes, while others have been built but have since been decommissioned, either from age, lack of economic viability, or from politics. Although some reactor types are highly impractical or dangerous and have rightfully been consigned to the dustbin of history, there are some designs that would have been quite impressive from an economic and commercial standpoint.

At the moment, I am wondering how to proceed in terms of how I will talk about this. I am leaning towards a series of posts, with each post concerning a different "family" of reactor types based on what they use as their moderator materials. However, I am open to ideas from anybody who might offer suggestions.

Nuclear Energy in Asia is Going Full Steam Ahead

2010-11-22T10:42:00.001-06:00

India has started construction of a new nuclear facility in Gujarat. It will be a pair pressurized heavy water reactors (PHWRs) that will generate 700 megawatts each. Planning started in January of this year after the site for the reactor was excavated within a short time frame of four months. Construction began today, and the reactor is expected to be online by 2015.

If India can do this, then why should it be so difficult to build new reactors in Europe and the US?

Possible New Reactor in Green River, Utah

2010-11-22T10:27:00.000-06:00

The Emery County corporation has started to push the limits of its current energy infrastructure in Utah. Because of this, there has been a serious effort to construct a new nuclear facility near the town of Green River. The planned design would be a power plant with a pair of reactors that would generate 1,500 megawatts each. The nuclear powerplant would be a boon to the nearby community as well as the state of Utah with the positions that it would be able to offer people in its construction as well as its operation.

However, the plant has met opposition as opponents have attempted to prevent the facility from getting rights to water from the Green River that would be used for cooling. Most of the water that is circulated within a light water reactor is then returned to its source, while only a small amount of water is actually evaporated during the cooling process.

If this planned reactor goes forward, it would mark the first time since the 1970s that the construction of a new nuclear reactor was completed. If this project is successful, it might help revive nuclear energy in the US by encouraging the construction of new reactors in other locations. In any case, this is a promising sign that the "nuclear renaissance" will be more than just words.

First New Uranium Mine in Years

2010-11-21T14:58:00.003-06:00

Phase I of the South Texas Palanga uranium mining project has been completed by the UEC (Uranium Energy Corporation) under-budget and on schedule. Phases II and III are expected to be completed in 2011. This marks the first time in several years that uranium demand has allowed for the opening of a new mining facility. Mining operations will commence using in-situ leeching methods, where water that has been acidified with carbon dioxide gas will be pumped into the mining site. This is what allows the uranium to be extracted from the surrounding limestone as the uranium is dissolved in the water when it is pumped out again during mining operations.

The economic activities of the uranium mining industry have been depressed for years because of the lack of demand for nuclear energy in the US since the mid-1980s. In the early 2000s the price of uranium bottomed out and it has only been in the last three years that the uranium market has been showing signs of recovery. As the price of uranium has increased since then, there has been a renewed interest in re-opening old mines and prospecting for new sources of high-grade ore.

Many people raise fears that the world supply of uranium will peak in 80 years. One must keep in mind that this estimate is based on existing production rates of uranium ore and nuclear fuel fabrication. There are many mines across the world that have been forced to close either through political pressure, or because existing world uranium demand could be easily met by a smaller number of mines. The amount of uranium required by most reactor types is quite small, especially when compared to the fuel consumption rates of fossil-fuel generators like coal and natural gas. The fissile isotopes of uranium are extremely compact compared to other energy sources. A single fuel pellet like those used in a nuclear reactor is the equivalent of 1,780 pounds of coal from an energy standpoint. Although hundreds of these pellets are used to fabricate fuel rods in a light water reactor, the amount of uranium required to fuel a reactor is still a rather tiny amount.

In the event of a large build-out of new nuclear reactors, it would not be too difficult to increase the production of uranium ore to meet an increased demand since uranium is such a common element. However, up until now there has been little need to do so. In fact, should the easily recoverable sources of uranium ever run out like the most dire scenario erroneously predicts, existing stockpiles of spent fuel could easily be reprocessed for more fuel. Finally, uranium can be extracted from seawater. Although the cost of recovering uranium from using this method would be roughly ten times conventional mining methods, it would still be economically viable as the operational costs of nuclear electricity generation are relatively insensitive to price increases of fissile material.

N^4 Has Been Redesigned!

2010-11-19T17:07:00.002-06:00

I thought that my layout for N^4 was getting a bit stale, so I overhauled it. It turned out better than I thought. The new options for Blogger also allowed me to get rid of that damn space between my blog articles and the sidebar that Firefox kept insisting on doing for some reason. As a bonus, I also put in a new header image.

Potential New Markets for Nuclear Energy

2010-09-20T17:44:00.006-05:00

Part of the slowly emerging interest in nuclear power has been taking a look at regions of the world that would be especially suited for building new nuclear reactors. Several countries in the Middle East such as Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have expressed interest in having nuclear energy programs. Iran has also been the focus of much news as of late over concerns that its current goal to expand the role of nuclear energy in its energy infrastructure might be a front for developing nuclear arms. However, the process of creating fissionable material for warheads is quite different than the process of generating electricity and a nuclear weapons program would be difficult to keep hidden.

In any case, the middle east would be well-served to invest in nuclear energy as many countries in the region depend heavily on fossil fuels for electricity generation which has negatively impacted the environmental and human health in the region in addition to complicating its political identity. In addition, many people within this area of the world live in arid conditions making agriculture, animal husbandry, and access to water for human consumption difficult. Part of the interest in nuclear energy in the middle east has been driven by its potential application for desalinization. Thousands of gallons of freshwater could be created daily from seawater using the waste heat from a nuclear facility for the fraction of the cost of other desalinization procedures.

In the British isles, Britain has been seriously considering new nuclear development as many of its existing nuclear facilities are aging as no new nuclear facilities have been built in years. This reflects a similar situation as we have seen in the US. As coal and natural gas have major drawbacks in regards to pollution from carbon dioxide and in the case of coal; ash and soot, the British government has started to re-evaluate the viability of nuclear energy in Britain's energy portfolio. Ireland has traditionally been vehemently against any sort of nuclear development choosing to rely on burning peat, low-grade coal, and imported natural gas. The rapid pace of economic development has lead to considerable demand for more energy in the nation, and Ireland has been mulling over the potential of nuclear energy to alleviate a potential energy shortage. Although anti-nuclear sentiments remain strong in the country, this may change as people become more educated about the inherent safety of nuclear energy as well as its minimal environmental impact. This is especially poignant when considering the amount of pollution that the burning of peat and fossil fuels causes when Ireland has recently become concerned about its environmental health.

Australia remains an important source of uranium yet its traditional stance against nuclear energy has prevented any reactors being built and has chosen to largely use coal for energy instead. The impact of Australia's large coal mines have scarred the landscape. The amount of carbon dioxide and particulate matter produced from Australia's coal plants is immense, especially when one considers that some of it is also very low-grade lignin which is even more polluting than bituminous coal when burned. To make matters worse, various "environmentalist" groups have recently put pressure on Australia's government to limit uranium mining and exploration yet remain strangely silent when it comes to the continual operation of Australia's coal infrastructure. There have been calls in Australia for the development of nuclear energy but it remains to be seen if Australia's defacto ban on nuclear energy will remain for the future as many countries in Europe have either lifted or stalled their moratoriums on nuclear energy.

Finally, Asia has been aggressively expanding its investment in nuclear energy, particularly China, Korea, and India. These countries are poised to be the leaders in new nuclear technological development as the nuclear energy market in the US has stalled. Although there has been renewed interest in building new nuclear reactors in the US, it pales in comparison to the rapid degree of nuclear development in Asia.

Nuclear Energy in Africa

2010-04-02T18:43:00.003-05:00

It looks like Africa is showing a growing interest in investing in nuclear energy. Although many African countries have been plagued with political problems that have made stable economic development difficult, a thriving nuclear sector would be a boon to the continent and might help it overcome its economic hurdles.

Several African nations attended the International Conference on Access to Civil Nuclear Energy held in Paris and appear to be willing to work with France to expand their nuclear infrastructure. Nuclear energy is capital intensive but it has the advantages of reliability, high efficiency, in addition to all of its costs being upfront instead of being hidden like with fossil fuel-based energy.

Unfortunately, nuclear energy does not qualify for carbon credits through the "Clean Development Mechanism". This is largely a political position by the organization as these carbon credits can apparently only be used to build other forms of renewable energy such as wind turbines and solar plants. However, as nuclear energy is virtually a carbon-free energy source this is an unfortunate omission. An argument can be made that nuclear energy releases carbon dioxide during the construction and mining phases, but this is minimal and still less than the amount of carbon dioxide that is released during the construction of wind turbines and solar panels. Additionally, nuclear energy produces much more energy and requires much less land than a wind farm or a solar plant. Finally, the materials used in the construction of solar panels often contain toxic substances in addition to rare elements. This makes the anti-nuclear position of the Clean Development Mechanism grossly inaccurate.

My Eyes Have Been Opened!

2010-04-01T15:08:00.005-05:00

I have seen the light! Gaia came to me in a dream last night and told me that she was the mother goddess and that nuclear power was poisoning the Earth and destroying the ecosystem! She showed me apocalyptic visions of the future in which humanity was reduced to roving bands of miserable survivors after the environmental holocaust. The few people that were left had taken to scavenging what remained of the land while defending themselves from attack by raiders.

I cried from the pain of the vision that the mother goddess showed me and prayed to her that it would not come true. I have decided to become a wiccan and worship Gaia. I am now a strict vegan and promise to only buy and wear green products and organic foods. I hope to make most of my clothing myself out of hemp, but even if I do need to buy clothing, it will be eco-friendly. Even my underwear will be green. I am going to drop out of school and live independently of the grid, using decentralized wind and solar energy. It is unlikely that I will become ill because I will not be ingesting toxins in my food which are ubiquitous in the western factory-farming industrial complex. However, in the rare event that I do get sick, I will not support the western medical establishment by going to a doctor. Instead I will use alternative medicine such as homoeopathy, enemas, and ear-candling to flush the evil, disease-causing toxins from my system. I was vaccinated as a child so I might get cancer as the damage has been done. But I hope that I will be able to prevent it by tapping into my Chakra centers and realigning my aura.

My days of being brainwashed by big energy and big agriculture have ended. I hope that other people will learn to follow my example which I will promote in various green blogs, chatrooms, and Internet forums of a low-energy, sustainable future. The basic layout of this blog is not going to change much since it is already the color green but I will edit my links and blogroll to feature more ecofriendly news sources and websites. I wish to make up for my days of being an agent of Big Nuclear and the large amounts of money that they have given me to support its agenda. Remember, my friends...use negawatts, not megawatts!

APRIL FOOLS!!

The State of Nuclear Medicine and Research

2010-03-28T20:02:00.006-05:00

Aside from energy generation, another useful aspect of nuclear fission is its ability to produce isotopes for many medical and industrial uses. Reactors that are designed to create these isotopes are typically called research reactors as they do not have much in the way of power output compared to their cousins, the dedicated nuclear power plants. However, isotopes such as technetium-99, chromium-51, gallium-57, etc. must be produced in research reactors by radiating parent isotopes and many research reactors are also used for nuclear scientific testing.

Unfortunately, many research reactors are badly in need of an overhaul as the world demand for radiopharmaceuticals has increased over the years and the number of these specialized reactors still operating has dwindled as many of them are shutdown over hysteria or age. The few that are still operating are running at full tilt and the increased stress on their components is causing them to wear out even faster and many research reactors are badly in need of major repairs. However, to temporarily shut down a research reactor usually means that it is depriving people of valuable isotopes that are needed for many medical procedures and tests. The shortage of research reactors across the world also means that ones that are still operational have to balance their obligations between isotope production, and the queues of researchers that have lined up to use the reactor for experiments and have been waiting for several years to do so.

The Depleted Cranium blog has an excellent post on the status of this phenomenon and the history of how the world came to be in this mess. Research reactors have not been immune to the same idiocy and short-sightedness that has surrounded nuclear power generation and they have also suffered because of it. The construction of new nuclear research facilities should be a world top priority because both science and peoples lives are being endangered with the status of our current situation. I whole-heartedly recommend that my readers visit the post on Depleted Cranium as it really does show how dire the situation is.

Article on Thorium in Wired Magazine

2010-02-18T21:43:00.001-06:00

Take a look

The LFTR design might be catching on after all.

Is Nuclear Power a Terrorist Target?

2010-02-09T18:53:00.008-06:00

Not likely.

Nuclear power stations are extremely durable buildings that have been constructed to withstand earthquakes, low flying aircraft, and even dedicated artillery might have a difficult time cracking the containment dome. This is because containment buildings are solid reinforced concrete several feet thick. Concrete is known for absorbing explosive force and can also withstand a high degree of compressive force. Even if the containment dome was breached, it would be extremely difficult to shut down all of the safety systems in order to trigger a nuclear meltdown. Even so, the resulting damage and death toll would be quite disappointing for terrorist purposes.

Terrorists are not stupid and would probably much rather choose a target that was easy to damage or destroy in addition to causing massive collateral damage or a large death toll using limited means. Hospitals are prime targets, and in the energy field, nuclear is not necessarily unique in the destruction that could result if a power station was targeted. As seen in China, a broken dam could cause property to be flooded out for miles leaving thousands of people either dead or displaced like what happened in the infamous Banqiao dam disaster in 1975. This dwarfed the amount of casualties that resulted from Chernobyl yet Banqiao has largely gone unnoticed by the public while we still treat nuclear power as inherently dangerous. Terrorists could just as easily target (As well as being much easier) a hydroelectric facility or even a natural gas plant and it could have major consequences for the surrounding area.

Recently, a natural gas plant in Milford, Connecticut exploded resulting from an accident while workers were doing a routine purging of air from its pipelines. Five people have been confirmed dead and the total damage caused is still being estimated and the rubble is still being cleared from the area. Although this was caused by an accident, an explosion of this nature could just as easily be triggered by a hidden bomb planted by a terrorist.

"This is the most devastating explosion and collapse that I've ever responded to," Zak said. "Some of the structural engineers on our team compared it to the L'Ambiance Plaza collapse in Bridgeport, but that was an entirely different type of incident." That 16-story residential structure, under construction, collapsed in 1987, killing 28 construction workers.

Why is nuclear energy unfairly targeted with labels such as "dangerous" and "unsafe" when examples like this hardly ever become major news stories. Every time there is even a relatively minor incident at a nuclear facility, media sources panic as if it was some sort of impending disaster. Yet a brief glance at energy related accidents world-wide would prove otherwise.

In fact, the annual nuclear-related deaths per terawatt is even lower on average than that of wind power!

Also, look at the statistical difference in impact when looking at coal power and nuclear power side by side.

Why do we need to pick on nuclear power so much?

The ADS Reactor

2010-01-26T17:53:00.003-06:00

I do not know much about the ADS (Accelerator-Driven System) reactor, but I have heard it mentioned by a small group of supporters from time to time. I would like to know more about it if possible. The basic principle is one of a sub-critical reactor core that produces free neutrons during the process of spallation, but I am not sure what the spallation process would theoretically be. Finally, I have heard about the ADS reactor reducing the amount of actinides produced but I am not sure what the quantity of leftover material to be disposed of would be compared to that of the traditional LWR.

How does the ADS design stack up to the LFTR and would it be worth pursuing in favor of the LFTR? Does it also have a high enough operating temperature that can be used as process heat for the synthesis of many chemical compounds like the LFTR and VHTR? Where is the research in the development and construction of such a reactor as the ADS? How much would it theoretically cost to build one? Does it have the scaling problems that many reactor designs do?

If anybody knows the details of the ADS reactor, feel free to tell me, as I am eager to learn more about it.

Thorium Comic

2010-01-25T11:35:00.001-06:00

This is interesting. The Energy From Thorium blog posted a webcomic regarding thorium energy. Take a look

An Obscenely Bad Idea

2010-01-22T02:54:00.003-06:00

Normally I try to keep my views on politics that are not related to nuclear energy and other technological and scientific developments off of this blog, because I feel that N^4 is not the place for that sort of thing. However, I feel I must speak up about the most recent ruling by the US Supreme Court regarding campaign contributions by corporate interest groups. In effect, it has ruled that there is no cap or limit in terms of how much a company can spend on an election campaign to influence its outcome. The amount of corporate influence in our country's major elections is already intolerable, and now this practically a validation that the voices of corporations are more important than the rest of the voting public. As it is, many of our political "representatives" are already bought and paid for as they effectively do the bidding of who ever has the deepest pockets. In this case, it is almost like the equivalent of applying a thick layer of grease to the highway to hell as we are all forced to ride it through its inevitable downward spiral.

I have had some doubts that our political system was up to the task of looking after the welfare of our nation's citizens, but this ruling has made its inherent dysfunction blatantly obvious. Prior to this ruling, I have also kept my views on healthcare off of this blog because I felt it was a subject that was best left untouched as my blog is not normally meant to be a political soapbox. However, I have been following the whole debate with a feeling of rising anger as I saw how people that were elected to represent us were fully prepared to deliver us bound-and-gagged to the very corporate racketeering scheme that people were seeking shelter from. Needless to say, my confidence in my government has largely taken a complete nosedive after my trust in it had already been languishing for years.

The implications of this ruling are obvious. It takes the first amendment and places it for sale to the highest bidder as it says that free speech can now be bought and sold like any other commodity. Those with limited financial means are now considered to be "less free" as they would not be able to afford to purchase as much "freedom" unlike some of our well-heeled corporate representatives. Our political system is broken, and evidently beyond repair at this point as it has largely resisted any attempt at reform.

So, once again I apologize to my readers for the brief outburst of indignation but this has made me very angry indeed. It does not matter whether you consider yourself a conservative or a liberal at this point your right to free speech has been given a price sticker. Unless you can afford to buy up all of the media outlets, thinktanks, and funnel soft money to political candidates, your first amendment rights have now largely been revoked. We might as well dress up in our new company-issued uniforms complete with a ball gag and handcuffs and bow before our corporate overlords. Our Supreme Court has failed us all.

Changing Minds, but is it Enough?

2010-01-19T13:17:00.004-06:00

When I started this blog two years ago, it was out of a combination of frustration and anger at how quickly people dismissed nuclear energy like it was some sort of arcane and unholy type of technology. Even though the facts were otherwise, many people still opposed it tooth and nail as they either ignored the benefits or thought that the data itself was part of some sort of conspiracy promoted by "Big Nuclear". I was never against nuclear power at all, even when I was relatively misinformed about it but I did have some reservations about what to do with the spent fuel as I like many other people thought that it was dangerous and difficult to deal with. However, I still thought that was magnitudes better when compared to coal and natural gas. As these fuel sources were very dirty indeed and as it was the late 20th, early 21st century I thought that it was ridiculous that we were still depending on fossil fuels as our main source of energy. Yet I also knew that wind and solar power lacked the energy density and reliability to be able to produce the amount of electricity on a regular basis that a developed country like the US needed.

Then my eyes caught an article in Scientific American around 2005 talking about nuclear energy and what sorts of reactors could be built and the pros and cons of the different designs. I was fascinated as I read about designs that could be used to breed more fuel or greatly reduce the quantity and half-life of existing stockpiles of spent fuel as well as close the nuclear fuel cycle to ensure a virtually infinite and environmentally friendly source of energy. I also began to grow very angry, as the only thing holding nuclear technology back seemed to be a combination of NIMBYism, fossil fuel interests, and just the overall lack of will that would be needed to restructure our energy producing infrastructure.

I began to research nuclear power online as a hobby in addition to reading whatever I could find on it in various books and publications. My amazement was underlined by seething anger at how the US had let coal and natural gas expand and entrench themselves over the decades as we had not built a new nuclear reactor in this country since the 1970s. Our back was turned on nuclear power out of a combination of fear, pointless bureaucratic redtape, and the canceling of many planned reactor projects after the oil crisis thirty-seven years ago. This was all due to politics and scaremongering rather than a legitimate reason to condemn nuclear power.

This was a direct reversal of the attitude that characterized the previous two decades as nuclear powerplants were being built at a rapid pace and nuclear reactors were quickly adapted to be used for naval use. The cold war and a feeling of optimism towards nuclear science and technology spurred rapid development in this field and it also threatened to put coal power out of business. However, the nuclear industry was practically moribund by the early eighties through a misinformed but successful campaign against nuclear energy that had grown out of the fear of nuclear warfare and was helped along by fossil fuel lobbyists and their paid off politicians. Ironically, nuclear power has had the best safety record of any energy sector in the US and even across the world yet it had been rejected in favor of coal which kills thousands of people worldwide through its normal operation.

After seeing the ridiculous comments and hysterical fears surrounding nuclear power being touted by various "environmentalists" I decided to create this blog in the hopes of taking an honest look at nuclear power. This was part of an effort to help people realize the environmental benefits of an infrastructure largely based on nuclear energy as well as the fact that nuclear power is the only clean form of energy that can be used practically anywhere on earth and deliver a constant supply of energy regardless of weather conditions. Scaling back production and energy usage would never be the answer because as we increase our technological development, the demand for energy increases. However, it is through more technology, not less that we can hope to make a better world for everyone. The past is gone, but trying to revisit the past by rejecting technological progress would be foolish because the "past" presented by various primitivist and neoluddite groups is based on a highly idealized and impractical vision of what previous generations of humanity really faced. Ironically, the popularity of these movements has been aided by the technology brought to them by the internet and computer revolution. I would very much doubt that humanity would want to go back to the days before running water, electricity, heating, cooling, hygiene, sanitation, and modern medicine. We can thank all of these previous comforts for our greatly improved lifespans. A few hundred years earlier, a middle-aged man or woman of 40 would be considered elderly.

As I look around, I see that people are slowly starting to realize that nuclear energy is not nearly as bad as various sources portray it as being. There is a lot of misinformation and outright lies regarding nuclear technology as there are many organizations that have made it their business to vehemently oppose nuclear power on all fronts, especially when they have or are allied with entrenched fossil fuel interests. I have a cautious degree of optimism as I watch people starting to push back against this tide of nonsense and hope that we can start looking forwards to a clean, energy rich future again as nuclear power is the only option that we have that can deliver on this promise. We need to get the liquid fluoride thorium reactor development path up and running again after its cancellation during the early 1970's as this design shows a stunning degree of versatility and efficiency at practically little to no cost to the environment.

AREVA Discussion

2010-01-16T23:40:00.005-06:00

Yes, I had my AREVA conference call in the morning yesterday, and it turns out that AREVA is stepping up its efforts to start building more EPR (European Pressurized Reactor) and PWR (Pressurized Water Reactor) type reactors in the US. In addition, they are heavily pushing the VHTR (Very High Temperature Reactor) for the GenIV research path in the US in addition to the GCFR (Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor) in Europe, particularly France. Currently, AREVA has no plans to develop any thorium based reactors.

Although the VHTR would not be my first choice for the GenIV development path, it does have its advantages in the fact that it would utilize a much higher actinide burn up ratio in addition to being more efficient in terms of power output to fuel usage. Finally, one of the main reasons why AREVA is pursuing the VHTR is because of the high amount of heat that the reactor gives off during its operation that can be put to use for many industrial applications ranging from hydrogen production, petroleum distillation, and desalination. AREVA mentioned that one of the main challenges that they foresee is getting the design approved through the NRC, which is a notoriously fickle administration. The GCFR has been chosen for Europe because of the political viability of a closed nuclear fuel cycle which has traditionally met with some difficulty in the US. GCFR reactors can use many different fuel grades for energy including material that is left over from the operation of LWR (Light Water Reactor) and PWR reactors. The GCFR can be used as a breeder and it operates at a high enough temperature in that it can take advantage of the Brayton cycle.

It was a very productive and interesting meeting and I am glad that I was able to attend as I no longer have a class during Friday morning. I look forward to next month's topic and hope that this is going towards a greater role and acceptance of nuclear energy in our future. Once again, I thank AREVA for their time and efforts.

AREVA Conference Call

2010-01-11T19:10:00.002-06:00

AREVA is hosting another conference call this week. It has been awhile since I have been able to attend one of these but I have had a Friday class last semester that prevented me from participating. Now that I no longer have any classes scheduled on Fridays for this semester this is no longer a problem.

I will put up a follow up post regarding the subject of the conference call and what I have learned for those of you who are interested. Once again, I have an opportunity to learn what is going on in the nuclear industry from inside experts. I am excited.

South Korean Companies Win Nuclear Bid

2009-12-28T04:34:00.002-06:00

South Korea won against Areva in a bid to build four light water reactors. This was a huge victory for the nation as it will bring it recognition in the UAE in addition to proving that it is major world leader in nuclear technology. The reasons cited for the bid being given to South Korea over the French based company of Areva is because Areva has fallen behind schedule and gone over budget in its project in Finland. South Korea also underbid Areva by a significant amount which also was a point in its favor.

For more details, take a look at the Nuke Notes post by Dan Yurman and the original article on the Wall Street Journal.

It is Christmas Once Again

2009-12-22T22:06:00.002-06:00

I am wishing everybody an early Christmas since I will be out of town until the 26th. Please reflect on the true meaning of Christmas which is to have a good time and reflect on the happy memories that Christmas has brought you. Some will claim that the true meaning of Christmas is the birth of Jesus Christ, but the Roman inventors of Saturnalia and other winter solstice holidays would vehemently disagree on that point. As Christmas was contrived from many cultural traditions across several early cultures, both Christian and not it would be unfair to classify it as a purely "Christian" holiday. This is why many Christian sects forbade the celebration of Christmas ranging from the Puritans of colonial times to the modern Seventh Day Adventists. I feel sorry for those who are not able to experience Christmas since it has always been an enjoyable time of the year for me.

Underneath all of the religious and mythological trappings of Christmas, the ORIGINAL meaning is simply the celebration of life and joy during the icy depths of winter cold. It is a time of food, candy, cookies, gifts, colorful lights, majestically decorated trees, relatives, etc. All of these things go to make our lives richer as Christmas is a day for remembering and bringing joy to others as well.

I sincerely wish you all

A Merry Christmas.

Odds and Ends

2009-12-22T21:48:00.003-06:00

I have added the informative blog, BraveNewClimate to my blog roll as it has been recommended to posters on the Energy From Thorium forum. The blogger, Barry Brooks does an excellent job in reporting on developments in climate science as well as critically examining the potential feasibility of "green" energy sources such as "renewables". Take a look at his December 17th post on the potential of the LFTR in Australia.

In other news, Florida might be making the shift from coal power to nuclear energy as Seminole Electric canceled its latest plan for a coal power station. As Seminole Electric has also been considering nuclear power as one of its future energy options, this might be a point in favor of nuclear power. Florida is relatively poor in natural gas, and transporting natural gas over long distances is an expensive undertaking.

The Economist on Gen IV nuclear technology

2009-12-14T03:35:00.004-06:00

Alright my fellow nukeheads, take a look at this interesting post on different reactor types by the Economist magazine.

"The sixth shortlisted design, the molten salt reactor (MSR), works by dissolving nuclear fuel in a fluoride solution, which acts as both the fuel and the coolant in the reactor core. The molten salt, which has good heat-transfer properties and can be heated to temperatures above 1,000{degree}C without boiling, is moderated using graphite. The circulation of the fuel in this way eliminates the need for fuel fabrication and allows for continuous online reprocessing. It also makes the design well suited to the use of existing fissile material, which can be easily blended into the fuel mixture. And like fast reactors, the MSR can be designed to burn up many of the longer-lived byproducts of the fission process, resulting in nuclear waste that is much less radioactive than that produced by the once-through cycle."

The article is a pretty good introduction to several reactor designs and the technical aspects of each. I recommend it as a primer for those of you who are curious as to where we stand with nuclear research. Happy reading.

Christianity and Politics

2009-12-05T15:09:00.003-06:00

At the risk of drifting too far into politics, I would like to comment on the phenomenon of Christian conservatives who have aligned themselves with the Republican party in the American political system. Does the current day Republican party turn many atheist would be supporters away because of its emphasis on religiously motivated social conservatism?

I have watched the documentary "Gay Republicans" with interest as it showed the conflict that arose between homosexual Republicans and the apparent ideology of the current day Republican party. Do Republican atheists feel a similar disenfranchisement with the American GOP? Is this enough to prevent them from voting for or supporting the Republican party during elections?

Speaking from my own experience, I disagree with the Democratic party on many things. However it seems as if the base of the Republican party is formed from Christian fundamentalists, (Often militant ones at that) Young Earth Creationists, theocratically motivated authoritarians, as well as an underlying feeling of homophobia. GOP might as well stand for God's Own Party. However, this could just be personal bias on my part since it seems like you only hear about the trouble makers.

For the atheists that are reading this blog, how much does the religious wing of the modern Republican party affect your viewpoint of the party as a whole? Does it discourage or frighten you? Are atheist Republicans and conservatives a diminishing minority in our political system as a result? Your feedback would be greatly appreciated.

State Regulators Prefer Nuclear Power?

2009-12-05T00:51:00.004-06:00

Well, what do you know...many state utility commisioners and regulatory staff think nuclear power is a good balance between energy production and environmental impact:

Link

Who woulda thunk it?

India: The Next Leader In Nuclear Technology?

2009-11-27T16:22:00.003-06:00

India has been researching the use of nuclear technology at breakneck speed. India is relatively deficient in coal and it has a lot more thorium than uranium. Because of this, India is currently pushing the AEC reactor design, but it could just as easily develop the LFTR paradigm as well.

China is also planning a large build out for new reactors, but the Chinese are also pushing coal as well as there are quite a few large coal deposits in eastern China. The degree of innovation displayed by Indian nuclear researchers is impressive, as well as the fact that it could make India's economy a force to be reckoned with as cheap energy spurs technological development. In addition, India's nuclear program is not hampered with regulations against nuclear reprocessing like in the US. This puts America at a disadvantage once again as we risk being left behind in the dust in our failure to embrace clean nuclear energy.

Interestingly, when you look at many countries that have an abundance of coal such as the US, China, and Australia, they also have ample supplies of uranium and thorium. However, the availability of coal has lead to its promotion in the national policies of the energy agendas of these countries. This is in spite of the fact that coal causes massive amounts of pollution both from carbon dioxide and the contamination from heavy metals. Injuries and deaths from coal are also a common occurrence from everyday operation in the coal industry.

There really is no longer any reason for the continual use of coal as the baseload energy source of choice. We have had the technology to replace coal with nuclear power for decades, and new reactor designs such as the LFTR are even more impressive than traditional light water reactors. At this point, coal is the soot-covered chain that is holding us back from cheap, clean energy in the form of nuclear power.

Thanksgiving Joy

2009-11-27T13:46:00.003-06:00

I had a wonderful Thanksgiving yesterday. I went to my mother's apartment for dinner and thoroughly enjoyed myself. She managed to find a huge twenty-five pound frozen bird at the grocery store two weeks ago. It just barely fit into the roasting pan, but I will remember it as one of the best turkeys I have ever had. Sadly, even if it is just my mother and I for Thanksgiving, our leftovers never really last very long as they are so delicious. Even as we speak, our turkey is already half gone.

Since my parents have separated since August, I am still getting used to not having any animals around. My dog and my three cats have gone to live with one of my aunts since my father has become violently mentally ill and my mother cannot have pets in her apartment. Part of the fun of visiting my parents was petting a large fluffy dog underneath the table as he was asking for handouts. I will hopefully see Joey and the rest of my pets tomorrow.

Anyway, Thanksgiving is traditionally held up as an example of "giving thanks" for our lives and things that we are grateful to have. Although Thanksgiving is thought to be a purely secular holiday, it contains a religious element for many people as well. Prayers are often sent to various gods, thanking them for successes or giving people the opportunity learn from failures as people reflect on the end of the year.

In retrospect, Thanksgiving should also be about enjoying yourself. Late October and November are typically the most drab and depressing times of the year where I live. The leaves have all fallen off of the trees and the grass is withered and brown. The air gets cold and usually brings freezing rain with the chilly temperatures. We can all use a holiday like Thanksgiving to cheer us up with family and friends before the onset of winter.

Atomic Insights Stomps on Silliness

2009-11-27T03:31:00.003-06:00

As Rod Adams on the Atomic Insights blog points out, existing nuclear power plants are extremely well run and highly efficient facilities. Their equipment and components are routinely checked and updated as they have to be in order to provide a steady output of power during their operation.

This is why when people like Christian Parenti portray nuclear power plants as being decrepit structures harking from the Cold War era, it is a grossly inaccurate portrayal. A nuclear power station is an extremely durable structure that is built to last. The containment dome is an extremely thick shell of reinforced concrete that can withstand that ravages of time, weather, and the occasional aircraft impact. The reactor itself is operated by highly trained and competent technicians who make sure that everything is operating smoothly. The strong culture of safety behind the nuclear industry speaks for itself, because the accident of Three Mile Island did not result in any deaths or injuries despite there being a core meltdown.

The fact of the matter is, that this sort of fear mongering about nuclear energy is never warranted, and causes people to panic needlessly. The paranoia of nuclear power is what is giving coal and natural gas their business as we see more fossil fuel burners being built to meet increasing energy demand. The nuclear genie is already out of the bottle, so we might as well put it to use.

Replacing Fossil Fuels by Using More Natural Gas?

2009-07-27T18:38:00.009-05:00

One thing that I do not understand is why natural gas is being pushed so much by "environmentalists", particularly because natural gas does produce quite a bit of carbon dioxide when burned. Not as much as coal, mind you, but enough to be a major contributor of carbon dioxide pollution. Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar are hardly efficient and are basically a roundabout way of burning natural gas as natural gas burning generators have to take up the slack when the wind is not blowing or the sun is not shining. There are also vehicles that run on liquified natural gas as opposed to gasoline. If we look at the annual estimated end use statistics for natural gas since 1949, you will see that consumption has risen greatly*.

Consumption Graph

Also, looking at this graph, you can see that the annual wellhead price for natural gas has risen sharply to meet demand since the year 2000*.

Price Graph

Natural gas is as much as a fossil fuel as coal and oil yet much of the renewables paradigm is leading to a rapid increase in natural gas consumption both on the atmosphere as well as depletion of consumers wallets. Because of the rapid fluctuations in price that natural gas is subject to, this increasingly expensive fuel energy source is an impractical alternative for running an energy grid. It will also make coal cheaper by comparison and lead to increased usage of coal in the long run as natural gas prices continue to climb at a much faster rate than coal prices.

To make a long story short, natural gas is a fossil fuel and like all fossil fuels has major disadvantages. The renewables movement only increases our reliance on fossil fuels in the form of natural gas and coal while derailing interest and funding from viable sources of energy such as nuclear power. I do not mean to come off as being harsh in regards to solar and wind power, but the only practical application that either of these two energy sources seem to have is for the operation of small appliances or for pumping water.

*As provided by the US Energy Information Administration.

Those Krazy Katholics Are At It Again

2009-07-26T18:33:00.003-05:00

In case you thought that all of the sexual abuse scandals involving the Catholic church were over and done with, we have another round of cover-ups by a Bishop who wanted to hide the misdeeds of the priests in his parish. Refresh my memory, but how many "moral authority" by default cards does a religious organization get before it is considered a degenerate cult? After all of this, I would SERIOUSLY think twice about letting my child be an altar boy if I were a parent and a Catholic one at that.

Oh, and religion turning a blind eye towards sexual abuse is not strictly confined to the Catholics...just look at what self-proclaimed Christian prophet Tony Alamo was doing. The transportation of grossly underage girls across state lines for sexual purposes is hardly befitting for a man who claims holiness in his actions.

Here we see him claiming that this is some sort of government conspiracy against him as well as "Jesus" by extension...

Tony Alamo is found guilty on all ten charges...

Suffer the little children indeed.

Could This Be the Beginning of the Thorium Age?

2009-07-26T17:29:00.002-05:00

Lots of exiting things have been happening on the horizon for the future of thorium-based energy, particularly in the form of the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) concept. I would like to draw your attention to a recent Tech Talk sponsored by Google. Kirk Sorensen, an expert on the LFTR as well as being a brilliant man gave an informative as well as enlightening speech on potential of the LFTR in regards to the future of energy. It is quite a long video, but I strongly recommend that those of you who are interested in the future of clean energy watch it in its entirety. Not only can the LFTR provide a cheap source of plentiful, environmentally friendly electricity, the waste heat from an LFTR can be used for many applications ranging from an economic means of desalinization to the production of synthetic fertilizers and fuels with no need to use petroleum or natural gas. Hydrogen can be thermochemically produced from water at the operating temperature of an LFTR, and carbon can be extracted from the atmosphere. By doing this, you can synthetically produce alkanes that form the basis of organic chemistry such as the production of polymers and the refining process of petroleum into liquid fuels. By doing this, you could produce synthetic fuels like dimethyl ether or methanol and they would be carbon neutral when burned since the carbon used for their production was originally extracted from the atmosphere.

Next, there have been a whole series of LFTR-related recent posts over at the fascinating blog, The Nuclear Green Revolution run by Charles Barton, a man whom I admire. His father was a researcher over at the Oak Ridge project during the Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) experiments of the 1960's before the MSR project was de-funded for political reasons. He offers a personal insight into both the convoluted history behind MSR-type reactors as well as the political issues that caused the project to be canceled in the first place. Mr. Barton has a series of essays looking at the economic means of lowering the costs of construction and operation of nuclear reactors as well as promoting new nuclear research.

Preface

1. The Keys to Lowering Reactor Costs: Economies of Scale or Serial Production?
2. The Keys to Lowering Reactor Costs: Advanced Materials
3. The Keys to Lowering Reactor Costs: Inherent Safety
4. The Keys to Lowering Reactor Costs: Nuclear Waste
5. The Keys to Lowering Reactor Costs: Labor Costs
5a. Addendum: Estimated US Energy Use in 2008: ~99.2 Quads
6. The Keys to Lowering Reactor Costs: Some Siting Considerations
7. The Keys to Lowering Reactor Costs: Investment Costs
8. The Keys to Lowering Reactor Costs: Research and Development

Confessions of a Nuclear Blogger, Part I

Finally, we have a post by davidwalters over at the Daily Kos comparing the economics of scaling behind the different potential sizes of the LFTR. He also has an interesting analysis of a means of their deployment as well as their potential to be used for naval transportation. An LFTR-powered cargo ship would be orders of magnitudes cleaner than ones that use conventional sources of energy, such as marine diesel which is one of the dirtiest grades of liquid fuel in existence.

Whither the Nuclear Renaissance?

2009-05-15T19:44:00.004-05:00

I have heard mixed opinions from the Obama administration in regards to nuclear energy. Energy secretary Steven Chu seems to have a cautiously positive opinion of nuclear power. At the same time it seems the stimulus bill passed in February had the loan guarantees for nuclear construction written out of it while spending billions of dollars on "renewables" even though renewable energy sources by their very nature are both expensive and unreliable. I am left wondering what Obama really plans to do about nuclear power.

He at least acknowledged it during his campaign but when he said in needed to be "safer" it made me think that he was uninformed about how safe nuclear power really is. Very few industries in the world have safety records that could compare to nuclear energy in terms of the lack deaths or injuries in the years since nuclear energy was first developed. The two infamous incidents, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island are frequently referenced by wide-eyed activists but the Chernobyl reactor did not have a containment dome that could have prevented the entire disaster as all new reactors across the world have now. At Three Mile Island, human error and lack of maintenance combined lead to a very serious malfunction, yet the safety systems built into the design of Three Mile Island prevented anybody from being injured or killed by the incident. To drive the point home even further, I have never heard of a single incident of somebody being injured or killed by spent fuel. Yet despite all of this, an embarrassingly large segment of the world population is eager to listen when activists paint the nuclear industry as being a modern day "Frankenstein's monster" poisoning the land and the nearby people with a mysterious force called radiation. Much of the public's imagination (Often fueled by science fiction B movies) has taken to thinking of radiation as being something that causes spontaneous and severe mutations such as animals growing to several hundred times their normal size or sprouting extra limbs. The more "informed" merely think that a nuclear power plant by its very nature will somehow cause the nearby populace to fall ill and be struck down by maladies such as cancer and radiation sickness.

Also, on the face of it, the idea seems rather absurd as to why Steven Chu seems unwilling to consider the MSR designs for Gen IV funding because of proliferation fears. The proliferation risk of an MSR design is quite low because the entire reactor would have to be shut down in order to divert the produced U233 into weapons production. The U233 will be contaminated with U232 and U234 that decay producing hard gamma radiation and terrorists working in a hastily constructed garage or cave would be hard pressed to steal enough for a bomb without instantly dying of radiation poisoning. There is also the question about how a terrorist would manage to steal liquid U233 from the molten core of the MSR which is surrounded by a massive field of radiation especially since you would have to shut down the MSR and reroute the plumbing of the reactor for such an operation. With that being said and done, it would be a lot easier to raid a radiology clinic for nuclear material.

Finally, the appointment of Gregory Jaczko as the new Chairman of the NRC has me concerned. Part of the problem of constructing new nuclear facilities is the inefficient and often nonsensical approval process that a power company must go through in order to obtain an operating license. I have heard some reports that Jaczko is in agreement with some anti-nuclear environmentalists groups and that he voted against renewing the operating license for the Oyster Creek reactor in New Jersey as well as collaborating with Rep. Ed Markey (D) for imposing more stringent regulations on classifying spent fuel when the nuclear industry is already choking on overregulation in general.

This is not to say that previous presidential administrations have been any more open minded in regards to promoting nuclear energy. The Bush administration amidst many of its other problems paid lip service to nuclear power while simply allowing it to languish during its pursuit of fossil fuel energy in the form of coal, oil, and natural gas. In fact, a large part of presidential candidate McCain's energy policy during his campaign was the promotion of "clean coal" of which there is no such thing. Opposition to nuclear power sadly seems to be a bi-partisan phenomenon in the US.

Perhaps I am being overly pessimistic here. I would like to get a discussion going as to what my readers think we might expect in regards to nuclear energy under this administration. Are nuclear energy promotion efforts really being noticed, or are they just a minority in the void of the internet that is too willing to pat itself on the back as coal and natural gas take center stage in the future as they have in the past?

My Long Silence is Over

2009-05-10T01:17:00.003-05:00

I apologize to my readers for the prolonged absence of new posts. I have been extremely busy this semester and have also had some serious issues with my right eye developing endophthalmitis. It resulted after a minor injury involving a two millimeter long shard of corningware becoming lodged in my right eye after an old pot I was boiling ramen noodles in exploded on my stove. Corningware, because of its partially recrystallized structure, tends to shatter with explosive force rather than merely break when it fails.

I had gotten somebody to drive me to the emergency room where the shard of corningware was removed from the right side of my right eye where it had narrowly missed my lens and cornea. However, a few days later my eye had become infected by bacteria that had probably been introduced into the interior of the eye when it had been punctured. I had been taking some perscribed tobramycin eyedrops as a preventative measure until my eye healed but the strain of bacteria that infected my eye was apparently resistant to it. I went to a clinic where I had to have an antibiotic called polymixin B injected directly into the interior of my eye and had to apply polymixin B eyedrops to the eye three times a day in addition to taking an antibiotic called Zyvox orally. Towards the beginning of the infection, I felt miserable and my eye looked very ghastly indeed. At one point the physician that I was speaking to at the clinic said that if the treatment with the polymixin B and the Zyvox was unsuccessful, I would seriously have to consider enucleation (eye removal) to control the infection.

Thankfully, the treatment worked and my vision in the eye has returned to normal with no apparent permanent loss of vision. I am fortunate that I did not suffer any permanent injury to the eye as I was not sure how I would handle having monocular vision. Everyday activities such as driving a car, reading, or even drawing and painting for my studio art classes became a major challenge as I did not have any depth perception while wearing a patch over my right eye. It was only for four weeks yet I could barely stand it. I do not know how people who have only one functional eye can manage their disability for the long term.

Despite my apparent abandonment of my blog, I have done my best to keep up with the news regarding my fellow nuclear bloggers as well as reading the recent posts on my blog roll. I could not attend the last two AREVA conference calls as I have been extremely busy but I am sure that Dan Yurman over at the Nuke Notes blog can fill me in on the details. I will have more time during the summer so I hope to put up at least two posts per week again.

Here Is Your Chance to Be a Nuclear Technician!

2009-01-23T15:00:00.003-06:00

The NEI blog posted something interesting today. Over at NEI they found a nuclear power plant simulator. It is an interesting little flash game that lets you set the control rod and coolant levels as you try to produce as much power as possible without causing a nuclear meltdown. You have two settings to choose from. "Normal" simulates a normal reactor, while "Difficult" simulates a reactor that has fallen behind on maintenance.

The demo version of game itself can be played at AE4RV by following this link. You can also play the full version of the game by downloading it. Consider this a small little indulgence at work or at school when you should be doing other things.

Biology is in BIG Trouble

2009-01-18T12:00:00.007-06:00

Creationists are causing a nuisance again. This time, they managed to get the Louisiana Science Education Act passed. This forces the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to let instructors teach whatever nonsense the instructors want to teach in place of established scientific theories. In other words, you can bet that this will be the perfect opportunity for intelligent design and other disguised forms of creationism to rear their ugly heads in the public classroom again. As if to drive the point home even further, the book Explore Evolution, by the Discovery Institute (A well-known creationist organization) is expected to be selected as the biology book of choice all across Louisiana. Shame on you, Bobby Jindahl!

Texas is about to fuck itself over as well. The Texas Board of Education spends massive amounts of money on textbooks every year. If the nutty creationists who sit on the Texas Board of Education get their way, this will have a negative influence on the entire biology textbook industry geared towards high school and grade school. This is because publishing companies will start producing more books that espouse intelligent design and other creationist nonsense in order to appeal to their main customers.

To all Louisianians and Texans reading this post, I suggest you go to your state government and public education representatives NOW and RAISE HELL! The future of science depends on you. Creationists are trying to dismantle science in an agenda to impose their narrow-minded ideology on the entire country.

Do not give up without a fight! The Texas Board of Education votes on this matter next week! The details can be read here on the Bad Astronomy blog.

Impressions of AREVA

2009-01-11T15:26:00.002-06:00

I attended the conference call hosted by AREVA on the 9th and it was a very interesting experience. AREVA was looking into setting up a blog of its own detailing its activities and was looking for feedback from members on the Nuclear Advocacy Webring. AREVA's representative allowed us all to ask questions and converse with each other in order to come to a consensus about the direction that it should take as part of its outreach policy.

I was thoroughly impressed with the friendly and open atmosphere during the conference call. All of us shared an interest in the future of nuclear energy and combating the idiotic and silly myths that have surrounded this valuable energy source. AREVA hopes to schedule more meetings like this in the future based on the success of this one.

Finally, I offer my thanks to the nuclear advocacy webring for being so supportive to all of its members. It is important that we work together to help combat the anti-nuclear hysteria that is so prevalent in some parts of the developed world. If we ever hope to take the challenge of helping the environment seriously, then nuclear power is the way forward.

Areva Conference Call

2009-01-08T13:17:00.003-06:00

I have been contacted by Areva today regarding a conference call meeting regarding bloggers supporting nuclear power. This is an honor, as I am very grateful for the opportunity to expand my knowledge on the subject by listening to some of the most knowledgeable people on this subject anywhere. I thank Areva for its consideration and for noticing my humble blog.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with AREVA, it is a French-based multinational corporation that specializes in nuclear energy production, nuclear fuel mining, spent fuel disposal, and fuel reprocessing. The majority of AREVA is publicly owned and traded by the French government, so it is largely a public company. AREVA is also part of the Global Energy Partnership Alliance (GNEP), so this is a very high profile company.

AREVA has a presence in several countries across the world. It owns uranium mines in Canada, South Korea, and Niger. It manufacturers reactor components for several countries with an active nuclear infrastructure, including the US. As part of a recent deal, AREVA has even started working on construction contracts with the surging Chinese nuclear power industry.

Once again, I sincerely thank AREVA for contacting me. I am glad that our efforts in the Nuclear Advocacy Webring are not going unnoticed. I will make every effort to attend the conference call.

It Is Christmas Once Again

2008-12-25T02:10:00.004-06:00

I would just like to take the time to wish my readers a nice Christmas and hope that they got all that they asked for on their lists. I also hope that they get plenty of good food to eat and that their guests do not become too much of a burden. Finally, while you are making sure that everybody is having a wonderful time, do not forget to enjoy yourselves as well.

Although I am an atheist, I celebrate Christmas because the true meaning of Christmas which is happiness and celebration during the dreariness of winter is something that we could all appreciate. All of the religious trappings such as the legend of the birth of Jesus and Solstice celebrations are merely window dressing obscuring what is important, which is to have a good time. Christmas was never originally a Christian holiday because the idea had been stolen lock stock and barrel from the Roman holiday of Saturnalia as well as borrowing extensively from the Yule celebrations of the Germanic tribes. The legend surrounding the birth of Jesus Christ was added much later by early Christians as part of an adaptation of the pagan holiday.

This could be said to be similar how the tradition of Halloween was adapted and eventually secularized from the Celtic tradition of Samhain. Few people who go out trick or treating know the cultural origins of Halloween and how it originally became established. I know that some people have started branding Halloween as a pagan holiday as of late and are therefore refusing to celebrate it, but if that is the case, than Christmas is guilty of that offense as well.

In fact, during the Cromwell rebellion of Great Britain during the 1600's; the celebration of Christmas was banned by Cromwell because he correctly thought that it was pagan by nature and wanted to set a good example for the Puritans to follow. Needless to say, Christmas was immediately reinstated with the reestablishment of the British monarchy during the reign of Charles II.

So keep in mind that the tradition of Christmas is as pagan as holidays come. To all of those people who are saying that non-Christians are ruining the holiday, step back and consider who's holiday it was to begin with. Very few things including religious ideas are truly original, as they are merely adaptations of the things that came before them in history. Merry Christmas, everybody!

Merry Christmas From Old King Coal

2008-12-25T01:47:00.008-06:00

It looks like the citizens of Harrington, Tennessee have been naughty this year. A coal slurry retaining wall has broken, contaminating four hundred acres worth of property with coal ash and demolishing fifteen homes in the process. That is more than enough coal for anybody's stocking, no matter how bad they have been.

The aging Tennessee Valley Authority site has been damaged as a result of the heavy rains that have been hitting the area in recent weather patterns. This has caused the retaining wall of the coal slurry reservoir to break and overflow. Clean up is going to be an extensive process lasting several years, possibly enough to warrant classifying the area as a Superfund site.

The reason why this is such a disaster is that coal slurry is vile stuff. Coal slurry is coal ash that has been mixed with water to make the particulate matter less apt to blow away and contaminate the quality of the air. Coal slurry contains numerous heavy metals such as lead, mercury, cadmium, arsenic to name just a few hazardous substances. The irony is that problems like this go largely unnoticed by media sources while the same agencies go into hysterics about the isolated issues of some nuclear power plants.

Let this be a lesson to the people who are against nuclear power of what reliance on coal power actually means. Disasters like this are by no means uncommon in the coal industry because by nature coal power is a dirty business. The sooner we switch to nuclear power the sooner that events like this will become a thing of the past. King Coal rules his kingdom with a sooty fist and all of us are suffering from his oppression.

Rick Warren? Give Me A Break!

2008-12-19T09:11:00.003-06:00

I guess Obama decided to once again curry favor with the Religious Right by picking a staunch fundamentalist to give his Inauguration Day speech. Rick Warren is openly against atheists, homosexuals, and is a Young Earth Creationist to boot. Why do slimeballs like this always get into power?

I hope that we will not have to put up with leftwing theocrats during the Obama presidency like we have had to stomach rightwing theocrats during Republican rule. America was NOT founded on religious principles, but a clearly stated separation of church and state. By choosing people like Warren to represent our political leadership, we are dragging ourselves to the bad old days of that 'ol time religion of intolerance and bigotry. Is this what we really want?

Shearon Harris Plant Renews Operating License

2008-12-19T08:46:00.004-06:00

Okay, first of all, I apologize to my readers for not updating in awhile but I have been swamped since mid-November with Thanksgiving and finals. It has been a busy three weeks. Thankfully, that is all over for now so I can continue to post about things that we all know and love.

Anyway, the Shearon Harris nuclear power plant has been green-lit to have its operating license renewed. The Shearon Harris nuclear plant is located in New Hill, North Carolina where it generates around nine hundred megawatts of power. As the 40-year operating license limit for nuclear power plants was arbitrarily chosen by the NRC this will allow 12% of North Carolina's total energy supply to remain online. The future for nuclear power is looking bright, indeed.

Elizabeth Dole's Campaign Actually Backfired

2008-11-14T15:09:00.004-06:00

It is doubtful that this was the only reason that Dole lost against Hagan but it does show that it making slurs against atheists in public is no longer being considered acceptable in some social spheres. Within a very short time of Dole airing her infamous ad, her political opponent soon began getting several thousand campaign contributions during a campaign fundraiser in Boston. These contributors were composed of not only disgruntled atheists, but also religious people who thought that Dole's ad was highly offensive and inappropriate even for a campaign ad.

Historically, in public polls atheists are regarded as being the least popular minority by the general populace in regards to being fit for political office. This is why "under God" was added during the Pledge of Allegiance during the red scare in order to distinguish Americans from the "godless" Soviet Union. I am glad to see that people are beginning to challenge the negative perception that atheists have in the US and I hope that atheism will no longer be regarded as a dirty word by many people.

Web Seminar Reactions

2008-11-14T14:44:00.004-06:00

I listened to the free web seminar on nuclear energy that was broadcast yesterday. I was very impressed as it contained accurate information presented in a professional manner. I am glad that I had the opportunity to attend such a gathering.

The web seminar examined the current state of the nuclear industry worldwide and what should be done in terms of researching new nuclear technology. It also examined some of the economic drivers behind nuclear power development such as the projected ten year approval and construction time for new reactors. One reason why it takes so long is because this is an estimate based on market uncertainty because of the difficulty for proposed reactors to get loan guarantees. This is also in addition to assumptions about taking construction delays into account because of local opposition near the construction site. If both of these barriers could be mitigated, the process of licensing and construction of new reactors could proceed at a much faster pace.

I do have somewhat more hope for the development of nuclear power after listening to the seminar as I am glad to see that there is a serious effort being made to revive what was once a dying industry. I hope that people will learn to get over their fears about nuclear energy and embrace it as being the energy source of choice as opposed to coal. Finally, I offer my gratitude to Dan Yurman for doing such an excellent job reporting at the seminar.

Robert F Kennedy Junior?! Oh HELL NO!

2008-11-07T16:16:00.005-06:00

There is an ugly rumor ciculating around that Obama is considering putting Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency. It is too early to confirm or deny the probability of this happening, but if it does the fate of energy production in the US is in BIG trouble. Not only was he fighting to shut down the Indian Point nuclear power plant, but he also wants to phase out all fossil fuels INCLUDING nuclear power! He feels that solar, wind, and biomass would be enough to satisfy the growing US demand for energy!

This experiment has already been tried by Germany, and look what happened. Der Vaterland is now on its way to being covered by a massive grey cloud as a result of all of the coal smog that is being churned out. Germany outlawed the construction of new nuclear plants back in 1998. This caused a major energy shortage so now new lignite-burning coal plants are being built to take up the slack when the promise of renewable energy fails to deliver which is unfortunately most of the time. If we follow suit, it would be even worse than Germany since we do not have any nearby countries to buy electricity from since Germany is riding on France's nuclear infrastructure.

Why do "environmentalists" keep lumping nuclear power in with fossil fuels? I will say it now, and I will say it again, WE NEED NUCLEAR! Nuclear is the only option if we want to rid ourselves of fossil fuel dependence. If you care about the environment, you are going to have to support nuclear power. It is the only alternative that is free of emissions yet produces enough energy for base load power generation. Wind and solar actually lead to increased dependence on fossil fuels in the form of backup generators using natural gas. Wind and solar power are too unreliable to contribute to the energy grid in any practical fashion. Biomass is the exception in that while it is reliable, it also produces large amounts of pollution in the form of smog and particulate matter as it basically comes down to burning obscenely large amounts of wood and garbage on a daily basis.

I apologize if I have offended any of my dear readers here with my small emotional outburst but I am tired of bad science and bad economics being used to justify impractical energy policies for political expediency. I am not sure if Robert F. Kennedy Junior would make it through the Senate conformational hearing but this is exactly what I meant in my earlier post in regards to my fear of the anti-nuclear politicians of the extreme left.

Perhaps I am overreacting. I do not regret my voting decision, but I am worried that we might see a return of the anti-nuclear brigade in Washington rather than a serious evaluation of our national energy policy. However, it is still better than facing another round of the neo-authoritarian religious right in the form of the current day Republican party. I digress.

Thoughts on Obama...

2008-11-05T09:49:00.010-06:00

The Democratic candidate, Obama triumphed over McCain in the national election last night. In addition, the Democrats also won a few more seats in the Senate. I admit that I voted for Obama and Senator Durbin in my state despite my strong disagreements with some of the more extreme elements of the Democratic party.

As I have said before in a previous post of mine, both parties are by no mean perfect, but the Republicans frightened me even more. Since the 1980's, the Republicans seem to have strongly allied themselves with the religious right which has taken every opportunity to insert itself into the public education system. As a result, we still have fundamentalist Christians challenging the teaching of evolution in public schools in addition to pushing bible study classes and school-led prayer. The quality of science education has suffered greatly under their attacks as many school districts are afraid to even mention evolution in biology class for fear of being shouted down.

Religious fundamentalists have been chipping away at the separation between church and state little by little since the Reagan administration. They could hardly have asked for a better candidate to further their agenda when George W. Bush took office in 2000. He was an ignorant, scientifically illiterate, easily influenced man who could serve as their mouthpiece as they moved their goals forward. This allowed such disasters as the "faith-based initiatives" to be passed in addition to denying public funding for stem cell research.

Trying to define an embryo as a person is nothing short of ridiculous. It does not have an active consciousness, and it is entirely dependent on the uterine environment for its existence. Biologically speaking, the closest thing it could be compared to is a parasite. This is because if the placental barrier ever broke down, the immune system of the mother serving as the host body would consider the embryo as a foreign invader and promptly destroy it.

An embryo could be best said to be a POTENTIAL child, as it is not a child. People do not seem to realize that potential is not the same as actual. Everybody in the world has the potential to win an Olympic medal as well as win the lottery or be involved in other potential scenarios but it would be absurd to say that these would be a realistic probability for most of the populace. There is also the fact that the spontaneous natural abortion rate of human embryos is quite high, due to innate flaws in the structure of many embryos that render them non-viable.

With that being said, the stem cell research ban is religiously motivated, rather than having any sort of scientific or rational justification for being in place. Because of the enormous potential to medical science that stem cell research represents, it is inexcusable that the US government is not dedicating public funding to this field. There are thousands of millions of people each year that are in need of an organ transplant or suffer the amputation of a body part. If we had the technology to grow and regenerate failing or lost body parts, we would eliminate a major source of suffering for many people world wide. Unfortunately, religious fundamentalists do not see it that way and are attempting to ruin it for everybody else much like the perpetual wet blanket at your birthday party. We should deal with them the same way by promptly showing them the door.

Another nightmarish aspect of the current day Republican party has been its stance on civil rights. I do not understand how the Republican party considers itself to be the party of "small government" yet creates bureaucratic messes such as the department of Homeland Security, passes bills such as the Patriot act and the FISA bill, as well as create such idiotic legislation such as Proposition 8 in California. During the Bush years, we have seen the steady erosion of the constitution and other safeguards on government power. The executive branch under Republican rule with the aid of a do-nothing Congress has grown into a bloated monster with little in its way to stop it from trampling all in its path.

Indeed, the Republican party has gleefully aided and abetted Bush as he created detention centers that hold and torture people without charges, even with little reason for those people to be there in the first place. The same Republicans that chastised Clinton for the abusive power and overuse of executive privilege did not seem to mind when the Bush administration claimed executive privilege in order to avoid turning over incriminating evidence by court order. Even Vice President Cheney became so bold as to practically claim that his office was in a "fourth branch of government" and therefore not subject to the demands of bothersome executive orders.

I once had hope for John McCain way back in 2000 when he seemed to be a refreshing change of pace from the assorted undesirables in the Republican party. However, he soon became a continuation of the same failed policies as the Bush administration as his voting record was 90% congruent with Bush. To make matters worse, McCain could be seen embracing Bush in a big open armed hug as if he decided to leave all of that silly talk of "change" behind. For all intents of purposes, the "maverick" had now become another Republican steer. Even worse, he chose Sarah Palin as his running mate after branding Obama as being "inexperienced.

Sarah Palin was little more than a gimmick in an attempt to woo away bitter Hillary Clinton supporters from the Democratic party. By choosing a female Vice President, this was an obvious ploy to take advantage of demographic politics. This proved to be a mistake, because Palin's personality could be described as "vapid" at best and she had even less experience than Obama. To make matters worse, she was a fundamentalist Christian who voiced her open support of the religious right and young Earth creationism at every opportunity. Even if I had wanted to vote for McCain, there would have been a very real possibility that he would have died before the end of his term from health related issues because of his age and past medical history. This would mean that Palin would finish his term, which would have been a disaster of EPIC proportions.

This is not to say that I am not without reservations in regards to Obama. I did not like the way that he voted "yes" on the FISA bill that gave telecommunication companies retroactive immunity in regards to warrantless wiretapping investigations. I am also not sure what he plans to do about the future of energy production as demand is only going to grow in the US.

The green wing of the Democratic party has been heavily pushing solar, wind, ethanol, and other forms of alternative energy for several decades now. After billions of dollars being funneled into "alternative" energy, it remains clear that it is still not a viable alternative for energy production at all. The only realistic options at this point are coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear.

Nuclear would be the best choice as it provides low cost energy at a very efficient scale. As another advantage, it is a much cleaner form of energy compared to coal, oil, or natural gas. It does not produce emissions and the only byproduct of nuclear energy is a small amount of spent fuel that can easily be stored on site or in a geological repository like in Yucca Mountain. Uranium is as plentiful as tin and even at greatly increased levels of demand, it would last for millennia. The only reason why the price of uranium is going up at the moment is because much of the uranium fuel used in the US actually comes from decommissioned nuclear warheads and our stockpile is running low. The uranium industry is in shambles because of the rate of reduced demand since the 1970's which has artificially increased the relative scarcity of available uranium ore. If we actively pursued uranium exploration again and also reprocessed spent fuel instead of using a wasteful open fuel cycle, the price of uranium would once again drop dramatically.

Newer designs of reactors such as the molten salt reactor do not even have to use uranium as fuel, but can run on thorium instead (See my prior posts on the Molten Salt Reactor). Thorium is even more plentiful than uranium and a closed Thorium fuel cycle can be used to breed more fuel. Even better is the fact that the isotopes produced in the Thorium fuel cycle make it practically impossible to divert into producing fissile material for nuclear warheads. As an added bonus, the high heat of some of the newer designs of nuclear reactor can be taken advantage of to produce hydrogen for a fraction of the cost of conventional methods.

All is not rosy, however. The environmental movement which has allied itself with many members of the Democratic party remains vehemently anti-nuclear despite all of the benefits that nuclear power brings. It has used its lobbying clout to effectively kill off any active research into nuclear energy and set up multitudes of roadblocks in the way for the construction of new nuclear reactors since the 1970's. President Carter, a well-meaning but rather ignorant man, passed a ban on the reprocessing of spent fuel due to an irrational fear of his that it would lead to nuclear weapons proliferation. During the Clinton years, President Clinton cancelled all funding for the Integral Fast Reactor despite its advantages over the Light Water Reactor because of Clinton's anti-nuclear stance. The infamous Al Gore is also dead set against nuclear power as he continues to push for "alternative" energy that does not get anybody anywhere, except the natural gas industry. Indeed, the natural gas industry is rubbing its hands with glee as it sees business increase as natural gas powered generators are being built to take up the slack of wind and solar installations due to the unreliability of solar and wind power.

There is also the fact that in the US, coal is king. There is an existing incentive to build coal plants more than any other form of energy because of the cheap construction costs involved. Coal has massive external costs, but as with most things, short term goals are usually pursued over long term objectives no matter how much more sense it makes to think in the long run. Because coal is so deeply entrenched in our energy policy, the coal lobby has massive political clout in terms of influencing what paths to energy the US takes. Taking into account the amount of ignorance and gullibility as demonstrated by the average political leader as well as the average citizen, there is a very real possibility that the our main plan for the future will be investing heavily into the hoax that is "clean coal".

Obama did mention that he is not ruling out nuclear for the future energy plan of the US, but it remains to be seen if he actually intends to follow through on that claim. There is also some disturbing evidence that he might instead listen to the "alternative energy" segment of the Democratic party and promptly ignore nuclear power entirely like previous Democratic leaders have. However, despite all of the reservations I might have about Obama I still feel that he is a significantly better choice rather than risking putting the Republican party in power again for the time being.

Some Suggestions, Please...

2008-11-01T23:57:00.007-05:00

This is still a fairly new blog, so I am not sure if I have enough of a reader base to get many comments on this post. However, I am looking for some suggestions or feedback for reading material or things to take note of or pay attention to when it comes to environmental awareness. Please note, that although I frequently chastise the "Green movement" on my blogs, I do so not because I do not care about the environment. It is because I care about it enough to realize that most of the sorts of things that "environmentalists" waste time staging protests over are not the things that they should be worrying about.

Most of the time, environmentalist protests are mere publicity stunts that only accomplish in pissing people off without doing anything useful for the environment at all. The average "environmentalist" seems to be somebody who protests about issues that are a threat to a philosophy governed by neo-luddism; i.e. scaling back production and consumption because modern technology is "evil". This as opposed to a true environmentalist who is concerned enough about the environment to identify what the real problems are as derived by credible scientific research and suggests practical solutions to them, instead of wanting to drag everybody back to the middle ages.

I care about the environment not just because I am a biologist and I like plants and animals. It is also because from a pragmatic standpoint, you cannot isolate humanity from the natural environment. Whatever heavy metals leak into the water table or poisonous substances drift into the air, you and I will eventually ingest or inhale. There is no running away from that fact. Other species may long be affected before humans are by this phenomenon, but a dirty environment would not do anybody any favors. I also admit that for me, there is a bit of a sentimental dimension to this as well. I would much rather look at a beautiful forest or a rustic coastline, rather than miles of solar panels or wind turbines.

Anyway, the reason for this post is that I want to know what would be the best sources of information for credible environmental news or research? I do not consider myself an expert on this subject by any means. However it is often hard to determine what "big" issues are based on valid evidence and what are not as you read the daily news, as even otherwise intelligent leaders are buying into pseudoscience. The government mandated wasting of money in the form of subsidies for wind, solar, and ethanol across the world is a prime example of this. None of these three sources of energy are economically feasible. All they are doing is driving up costs for food and energy, in addition to destroying valuable or beautiful land just so the Greens and various politicians can feel good about themselves. The fact that even otherwise intelligent people have bought into this fiasco hook, line, and sinker disgusts me to no end.

I have been recommended a book called The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjørn Lomborg during a conversation with a friend of mine who is a respected geologist. I have not had a chance to read it yet. Has anybody else who is currently reading this blog read this book? What other recommendations would my readers make?

Scotch Tape Emits X-Rays! OH NOES!!11

2008-11-01T23:26:00.005-05:00

Just when you thought that you were safe from radiation by boycotting the evils of nuclear power, along comes a report detailing how scotch tape actually produces a fairly large amount of X-rays when peeled. One of the researchers had successfully produced an X-ray image of his index finger using the emissions produced by this unusual phenomenon. So, to all of you Greenpeace lurkers out there, here is one more thing to add to your boycott list!

Well, okay, there is a limitation to generating X-rays using this method. Scotch tape only produces X-rays when peeled in a vacuum. This means that unless you have a vacuum chamber set up at your house, you will not get any X-ray exposure from peeling Scotch tape. So fear not, Christmas shoppers; you can now breathe a huge sigh of relief. Of course some of you (...cough, cough, Greenpeace members!..cough, cough) are still going to be boycotting Scotch tape after reading this anyway because of the paranoia surrounding radiation.

I should have posted this earlier, like on Halloween. Oddly enough, this was known for quite some time by Soviet researchers, but it sort of got lost in the shuffle. The interesting thing is, that this might have some useful scientific applications such as building disposable X-ray machines.

This is Really Getting Old

2008-10-21T19:23:00.003-05:00

Theocrats are being dragged into the future kicking and screaming; especially when you have universities in in Kentucky rehashing the Scopes trial even though the issue has long been settled (Or should have been) within the scientific community. America has not been founded with a state religion despite what the religious right would have you believe. How often must people listen to these lunatics before they understand that religion does not belong on the curriculum of a public school?

The fact that religious right is so intent on inserting itself into the US public school system should be a warning as to what exactly it has in mind. It mirrors the "hook 'em while they're young" approach used by the tobacco industry. However, I would say that tobacco executives are more honest by comparison as religion has been running this scam for thousands of years.

The "Greens" Are Running Out of Arguments

2008-10-21T19:04:00.004-05:00

This has got to be one of the most idiotic reasons to oppose nuclear power that I have ever heard of. There are literally THOUSANDS of fish eggs produced by a single female with most fish, and of that number, only a few hundred would survive whether or not they were caught in a nuclear cooling tower. Fish eggs are tasty to a large number of animals; this is why fish evolved to produce large numbers of eggs to compensate for the amount of predation that their eggs face.

There is also the fact that even if all of those eggs actually hatched into fish fry, most of them would soon be gobbled down by creatures that like to eat baby fish. This also includes their parents in some cases. The fish roe and the fry that hatch from it are doomed in most ecosystems anyway, so it is no big loss to the environment.

Also, why single out nuclear power for this attack, when dams destroy millions of fish eggs and adult fish every year? This is not unique to nuclear power. This also fails to take into account that most LWR sites actually recirculate the water that is taken from an artificially constructed pond or lake, anyway. Finally, if we are going to talk about environmental damage to aquatic ecosystems then surely coal shares a large part of the blame for directly contributing to the phenomenon of mercury and heavy metal contamination of the surrounding water table.

Stupid Child Tricks

2008-10-05T21:25:00.006-05:00

I had a vasectomy last year at 23. I do not have any children, and I have never wanted any. Ever. Many people said that my decision was premature and rash, but I do not have any regrets about it. I will be quite frank, children make me cringe. I have neither the patience or the temperment to deal with one on a daily basis. Especially when something like this happens...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article4874657.ece

I am sorry, but this sort of behavior is INEXCUSABLE even from a child. In order for a child to do this even at such a young age is a sign of some sort of mental pathology. The child might be too young to face criminal charges but I do think that the child should be given a psychiatric evaluation, and be forbidden to go within 50 feet of anybody's pets or zoos. This sort of wanton destructive behavior on his part might eventually extend to other people around him if his mental condition is not diagnosed and treated now instead of waiting until something like this happens to his classmates.

Hope for Thorium Based Power?

2008-10-05T21:07:00.003-05:00

Senators Harry Reid and Orrin Hatch introduced the Thorium Energy Independence and Security Act of 2008 on the 2nd of October.

http://newsblaze.com/story/2008100213330200003.pnw/topstory.html

This would clear some of the hurdles in place with the DOE and the NRC that would prevent advanced fission reactors like the LFTR from being built in the US. It would also mean that the thousands of tons worth of surplus thorium that the US has buried in the southwest would finally have a use. Other than the surplus, the US has a very high concentration of minerals that could be mined for thorium ore in Lehmi Pass, Idaho.

If this bill passes, and I hope it does, it would mean that America's energy policy would have some direction after all. Wind and solar power are not going to cut it, and coal has long overstayed its welcome. As an added bonus, the fission byproducts that result from a thorium fission reacton are practically useless for making nuclear warheads out of.

Religious Lunatics Strike Again

2008-09-27T16:26:00.006-05:00

Anti-evolutionists on the school board of New Brunswick, North Carolina are pushing to have Creationism taught along side of evolutionary theory. According to resident Joel Fanti of New Brunswick:

"I wasn't here 2 million years ago," Fanti said. "If evolution is so slow, why don't we see anything evolving now?"

You DO see evolution happening. There is the current issue of the growing resistance of bacteria to antibiotic medications in the medical field that is causing many people to worry. Antibiotics that were once considered top of the line a mere decades ago have now been rendered useless through their overuse and the rapid rate at which bacteria reproduce causing resistant generations to appear very quickly.

Evolution can also be seen in action with multicellular organisms as in the speciation of the European blackcap bird. Its population is splittling into two different migration patterns. This is causing two different breeding populations in the European blackcap that will lead to speciation from geographic isolation if this trend continues.

This is also happening with insects. Some European corn borers are now starting to show a preference for hops and mugwort instead of corn and will emit pheromones that will only attract other individuals with this preference. Because of the rapid rate of reproduction seen in most species of insects compared birds, this might cause speciation to happen at an even faster rate than in the European blackcap. Only a person of extraordinary ignorance of the biological sciences would say that evolution is not currently happening.

Fanti himself offered to teach creationism at the school board meeting amid cheering and clapping of hands. Spurred on by the rally against evolution, board members voiced their opposition to evolutionary theory and their reluctance at being forced to teach it. Apparently, this is a backlash against other states being forced to remove creationism from the public school curriculum.

This is exactly why religion is so destructive. If these people had their way, they would probably replace biology with a class espousing biblical literalism. This is the umpteenth attempt by religionists to inject their nonsense into public schools where they can indoctrinate an entire generation of children. I am doubtful that they would be able to get this blatant violation of church and state past the Supreme Court. However, if this attempt fails the religionists will probably try something else. As it is, I am sure that North Carolina's taxpayers are not going to appreciate being stuck with the legal fees that this is going to cost the school board.

Mother 3 Translation Project

2008-09-26T21:52:00.005-05:00

The Mother 3 translation project is almost complete. Mother 3 is the third installment in the Mother game series (Earthbound in the US). Earthbound 0 was for the NES and a translated cartridge was made by Nintendo but never released in the US until a group of rom hackers copied the rom file from the Earthbound 0 cartridge that had been bought by a collector. Earthbound 1 was the only game in the series that saw a US release on the SNES system. Earthbound 1 was a huge loss for Nintendo as it only sold a few hundred thousand copies and Nintendo had poured a lot of money into the advertising. Because of this, it is probably why Nintendo refused to release Mother 3 into the US as Earthbound 2 in 2006.

Fortunately, there was a group of rom hackers on the Earthbound fan website http://www.starmen.net/ who decided to translate the game themselves. At first they were reluctant to do so, but this changed after seeing Nintendo practically abandon any attempt at releasing Mother 3 into the US. The hackers of the Mother 3 rom officially stated that they would abide with any wishes by Nintendo if their translation project was thought to be a violation of copyright law. However, Nintendo has yet to send a Cease and Desist order or threaten the translation team with any sort of legal action. Frankly, it almost seems as if Nintendo could really care less about the Mother 3 franchise at all.

The hacking part of the translation project is now complete today, and all that remains is the testing phase. This will probably take around a month as Mato checks the translation patch to see if there are any remaining issues. For all of you Earthbound/Mother fans, I would probably estimate a release sometime in October. Read the Mother 3 translation blog for further details.

http://mother3.fobby.net/2008/09/26/all-hacking-complete/#comment-21324

History of the Oak Ridge Project

2008-09-24T17:40:00.007-05:00

If I may direct your attention to the excellent blog, Energy From Thorium run by a man who's father used to be a researcher at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). ORNL was a government project that was setup during the mid 1960's to test the viability of a molten salt reactor. A molten salt reactor is unlike a light water reactor in that it does not use solid fuel pellets of enriched uranium. Instead, the radioactive isotopes are chemically bonded with a halogen such as chlorine or flourine to form a liquid mineral salt that recirculates around the reactor chamber during the reaction.

A molten salt reactor has several advantages over the traditional light water reactor design. First and foremost, it is physically impossible for a molten salt reactor to experience a meltdown since the nuclear fuel is already in a molten state as the reactor operates at a much higher temperature than a light water reactor. There is a cooled plug of sodium at the bottom of the reactor chamber that would heat up and melt during abnormally high temperatures. This would cause the reactor core to drain out into an underground container where it can cool and be safely disposed of during an emergency. Secondly, the actinides that result as a byproduct of nuclear fission would never leave the reactor chamber so there would be little, if any leftover material to be disposed of. As a third advantage, it has a much higher fuel efficiency to energy production ratio than a light water reactor for the same amount of fuel consumed. There is also the fact that molten salt reactors are quite flexible in the isotopes that they can use for energy.

As a variant of the MSR design, the MSR can operate on a closed nuclear fuel cycle between thorium and U233. This produces 10% more fuel than it consumes each year which can eventually be collected to start a new MSR. Finally, the use of flourine instead of chlorine for the fused salt mixture would be advantageous because of the ease of isotopic seperation. In short, this variant of the MSR design is known as a liquid flouride thorium reactor (LFTR).

There is an intriguing article about the history of the Oak Ridge project on the Energy From Thorium blog I mentioned earlier and how it was single handily ruined by one man named Milton Shaw. Because of this, the LFTR project has been dead and buried since the early 1970's. There were managerial issues that resulted from Shaw's mismanagement of the Oak Ridge staff and the bitterness that resulted.

Also, due to the political climate in the US which is deeply paranoid about all things with the word "nuclear" in the title, the LFTR has little hope of ever being built in America. However, all is not lost as France, Japan, India, and Russia are all evaluating the LFTR concept which will probably enter the construction phase very soon in these countries. The US will probably continue to waste time and money on "renewables" and "clean coal" for its energy supply in the foreseeable future, leading to rolling blackouts being the norm for much of the country at peak demand.

Atheist Blogroll

2008-09-22T12:33:00.005-05:00

N^4 has been added to the atheist blogroll. You can see the blogroll in my sidebar. The Atheist blogroll is a community building service provided free of charge to Atheist bloggers from around the world. If you would like to join, please visit Mojoey at Deep Thoughts for more information.

A Proposal...

2008-09-16T17:53:00.005-05:00

Ever since the creation of the Homeland Security Department, allowing guided tours of nuclear power plants by the public has been forbidden in the ensuing terrorism hysteria. I think that touring of nuclear installations should resume, as it would help educate the public about nuclear technology and its applications. It is not easy to destroy a nuclear power plant. Even in the worst case scenario, a light water reactor would not explode. If the core experienced a meltdown, the radiation released would be stopped by the containment dome. I doubt very much that a terrorist would pick a nuclear power plant as a potential target anyway. If an airplane crashed into a cooling tower, the plane would be smashed to rubble from the impact and there would be no visible damage to the building itself. This is because the outside structure of a nuclear power plant is comprised of solid concrete; six feet thick.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZjhxuhTmGk

Wall: 1 Jet: 0

So anyway, the Homeland Security department is really making a mountain out of a molehill here (As usual). The public should be able to understand the basic idea of how nuclear power works and that it is nothing to be afraid of. Reinstating guided tours of nuclear energy stations across the country would go a long way towards accomplishing this goal.

Besides, if a terrorist really wanted to do a lot of damage, kill a lot of people, and cause fear, it would be a lot more practical to attack something like a hospital. Not to mention that the security and handling procedures surrounding the isotopes used in the nuclear medicine department are often quite lax. In order to find material for a dirty bomb, terrorists might have better luck raiding a radiology clinic.

Doing the Neutron Dance in Germany...

2008-09-15T02:46:00.010-05:00

The Nuke Notes blog put up an interesting post recently,

http://djysrv.blogspot.com/2008/09/german-greens-reject-nuclear-fund-for.html

In order to appease their Green party allies, the German Christian Democrat party wants the currently operating nuclear power plants within the country to help pay for the construction and development of new "renewable" sources of energy such as solar and wind power to offset the large costs of building these new installations and covering their operating expenses. As if the idea of holding nuclear energy for ransom was not brazen enough, the German Green party feels that the Euro equivalent of $56 billion dollars is not enough and are holding fast to their plan of trying to completely phase out nuclear power.

This has been becoming a very contentious issue in the German government ever since the ill-conceived plan to completely rely on "renewables" for the bulk of its energy supply in 1998 when the Christian Democrats and Greens formed a political alliance during an election campaign. However, there is a growing number of dissenting voices in both the German government as well as the public who see the nuclear phase out as being very misguided. This is mainly because coal power plants are being built to take up the slack for energy production as solar and wind power fail to deliver on their empty promises as usual. If the nuclear phase out is not reversed, Germany is going to have to magically pull a replacement for a third of its energy supply out of its ass in 2030 when all of its nuclear plants are scheduled to be shut down. Sadly, it looks like this is going to mean lignite coal burning power plants. Brown must be the new "green". Germany can also be expected to continue its hypocrisy of buying electricity from France that was generated by nuclear power despite being opposed to the construction of any new nuclear plants within its own borders.

I do hope that the nuclear phase out policy is reversed by the German government very soon, because the construction of new nuclear plants in Europe is practically inevitable as the rising costs of natural gas and the inefficiency of solar and wind energy will practically force countries to explore clean and viable alternatives. Also, people will find out that coal and the word "clean" do not belong in the same sentence.

Here is an interesting article about the history of Germany's nuclear policy.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf43.html

The Watering Down of Biology

2008-09-06T12:15:00.001-05:00

The blog, Daylight Atheism brought a depressing article to my eyes today...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/education/24evolution.html

Apparently, not all states have requirements to teach evolution in schools as some academic programs do not even mention it. Even among the states that do cover evolutionary theory, few of them discuss the evolutionary path that led to humans. Even worse, religiously indoctrinated students often feel they need to challenge their biology teacher whenever the topic is mentioned.

This should be a warning sign of just how entrenched the whole idea of creationism is. The theory of evolution is FUNDAMENTAL to understanding biology and all of its related disciplines. Teaching a high school biology class without covering evolution would be like teaching geology without mentioning plate tectonics. This is why it is imperative that students understand the basic workings of the natural world, because religion cannot be allowed to cheat future generations out of a good education. It is the beginning of the 21st century, not the 4th; and "God did it!" is no longer a valid answer.

Not that it ever was.

American Nuclear Revival?

2008-09-05T21:57:00.001-05:00

http://www.nei.org/newsandevents/

The Nuclear Energy Institue created a series of ads to run at both the Democratic and Republican national conventions last week. This is the first time in a very long while that the Democrats have allowed nuclear energy to be freely and openly discussed within their party. Are the followers of Al Gore finally starting to come to their senses?

Granted, the difference between talking about an issue is different than actually acting on it. It could be that even though both parties have brought up the topic of nuclear power, they really do not intend to do anything about it. I wonder how the same environmentalists who have relaxed about nuclear power are going to react when they see them starting to be built? Are Amory Lovins and Helen Caldicott going to raise the battle cry against the nuclear demon rearing its ugly head again in the developed world? Time will tell.

Pointless Posturing...

2008-09-03T21:16:00.001-05:00

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/02/AR2008090202733.html

While there may be some concern about nuclear weapons proliferation by allowing India access to uranium, the US cannot be the final arbiter in terms of who is and who is not allowed nuclear reprocessing technology, as a closed fuel cycle is the only way to fully utilize the potential of nuclear technology. Furthermore, Israel is much more extremist in many aspects politically speaking, and the Israeli nuclear weapons program is one of the most poorly kept secrets in the world. There is also the fact that if a country is that hell bent on developing nuclear weapons, there is little that can be done to stop them, short of invading it, and an invasion of India would be VERY pointless.

Britain's Step In The Right Direction

2008-09-03T20:27:00.001-05:00

The nuclear power industry may yet be revived in the UK...

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN_Forgemasters_to_pump_up_capabilities_0309087.html

One of the major hurdles in reviving a depressed nuclear industry in any country is rebuilding its capability to manufacture the necessary components needed during the construction of the reactor. Because of the decline in construction orders for nuclear power plants, many manufacturers in the industry shut down this business sector. If the Sheffield Forgemaster plan goes through, this might revive interest in nuclear power if there were more companies in this sector to do business with.

Small blood-sucking arthropods...

2008-09-03T19:03:00.001-05:00

This is an observation on politics. Those of you who are familiar with the political system in the US know that there are two main political factions, the Democrats and the Republicans. Both of these political parties have traded blows and dialogue with each other since their formation more than two centuries ago. Now this is not to say that the two parties are identical, as there are some key differences between them, but both of them have some rather large faults as they have made the American political system grow so stagnant as we see it now.

Let us take a look at the Democrats first. The Democratic party formed in opposition to the Federalists in 1792. When it was founded by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, it was known as the Democratic-Republican party. The Democratic-Republican party championed state's rights, small government, and the interests of small landowners over the vested interests of corporate and governmental institutions. However, the Democratic wing of the Democratic-Republican party underwent a sea-change during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, favoring an increase in government spending in the form of social welfare and an expansion of governmental programs.

In 1912, the Republican party split off from the Democrats due to internal tensions between conservatism and liberalism in both the economic and social sense. The Democratic party split off with Wilson, the Republican party split off with Taft, and Theodore Roosevelt called his party the Progressive party. With the creation of the New Deal program by the second president Roosevelt (FDR), the Democratic party favored a strong central government over individual states rights as well as an expanded role for the government as a financial regulator. During the 1960's however, things began to get interesting. Up until the 1960's, the American southern states were traditionally Democratic until the Southern Democrats became infuriated over the civil rights legislation passed by president Kennedy. Democrats in the South quickly defected to the Republican party.

The Democratic party underwent another massive identity shift with the rise of the "green" movement during the late 1960's. This pushed its policies further to the left in the fiscal sense with the increased calls for environmental regulation of industry and business. The vilification of nuclear energy was swept up in this movement with the disasters at Chernobyl and the movie The China Syndrome released right before the Three Mile Island near-disaster caused many environmentalists to ally themselves with the Democratic party. This was to try and influence the government to impose strict regulations on what they saw as a threat to the environment.

The "deep green" movement continues to appeal to many politicians in the Democratic party today, who are eager to try and capitalize on this particular segment of the voting populace as it grows in power. Al Gore is a noted example of this phenomenon as he embraces the ideological philosophies of groups such as Greenpeace to form his opinion on what direction the nation's energy policy should take rather than looking at the feasibility of meeting the energy demand of the nation using intermittent and inefficient energy sources such as ethanol, solar and wind power, while shunning nuclear power because of ideological bias.

The Republican party is in many ways even more dangerous and misguided than the Democratic party because it seems to have completely abandoned the idea of social liberalism as well as fiscal conservatism, with the Regan administration while embracing religious fundamentalism. Since the 1980's the Republican party has become more and more puritanical, anti-homosexual, anti-science and more authoritarian as it purges the "moderates" from its ranks in order to enforce a top down ideology based on judeo-christian principles in order to pander to the religious right. The frequent mention of "smaller government" as being one of the principles of the Republican party has long since been abandoned with measures designed to make the government more intrusive into the private lives of American citizens, such as the domestic spying program put forth by the Bush Administration. To make matters worse, the quality of the scientific education offered in our public schools has been suffering greatly as religious fundamentalism tries to sneak creationism into the curriculum under the mask of "Intelligent Design" and other disguises, and this strategy seems to have gotten more than a few sympathetic ears amongst the Republican party. When the religious right has destroyed biology, they will probably swarm and systemically destroy all the scientific disciplines one by one. Astronomy and Geology are probably next.

To make a long story short, both parties are increasingly adhering to rigid ideological principles, each dangerous in their own way. Between the two, I think the Democrats are somewhat less dangerous, but unless we can prevent the "environmentalists" from tampering with a practical energy policy, we will soon be restricted to medieval technology. I consider myself an environmentalist in the sense that I believe that a rational approach to solving environmental problems with cleaner solutions based on SCIENCE rather than ideology is important. Our need for energy is going to have to come from somewhere and forcing energy rationing and fantasy "renewable" solutions down everybody's throats is not going to do the environment any favors at all because people will then resume cutting down trees left and right to use in wood-burning stoves since everything else will probably be outlawed.

Neurovore's Nuclear News Network

2008-09-03T13:43:00.002-05:00

Hello, this is my first post on my newly created blog. I have long been interested in the future and development of nuclear power, and I think that it has been greatly mismanaged in the US where I live. There is a lot of unwarranted opposition to nuclear energy, even though it seems to be the only feasible option for baseload power generation. The other alternative is coal, which is a very dirty energy source and it is both directly and indirectly responsible for many deaths worldwide. Renewables cannot be relied on for large scale electricity generation because of their intermittent nature. When the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing, there has to be a backup source of energy; and in the US this usually means oil, natural gas, and usually coal.

Coal is nasty stuff. It comes in three grades. Anthracite is considered the "cleanest" type of coal (Har, har). It is a hard, black, lusterous material that has a carbon content in the low to upper ninetieth percentile. Although it lacks the amount of volatile matter that bituminous and lignite coal have, it still produces many byproducts along with copious amounts of ash like all coal grades. Currently, most of the mining for anthracite coal takes place in Eastern Pennsylvania. Anthracite coal deposits also exist in Southern Canada along the Rocky Mountains, as well as in the Peruvian Andes.

Bituminous coal is the most commonly used grade of coal because of its availability and the fact that it is cheaper than anthracite coal. It is softer and often either black or brownish black in appearance. Bituminous coal also contains a higher percentage of volatiles as well as a substance called "bitumen", hence its name. Bitumen is a sticky, viscous substance that is directly responsible for much of the sludgy build-up that you find on many components at a coal power plant. It also contains many heavy metals; such as lead, mercury, chromium, nickel, and often arsenic. The sulfur in bituminous coal also directly contributes to the phenomenon of acid rain. Bituminous coal is mined in many locations in the world. Because of its frequency, there would be too many to list here.

By far, the worst pollution offender of the three grades listed here is lignite coal. Lignite is a soft, brownish coal that is composed up to 50% volatile matter. This crude form of coal is often rejected in favor of the other two grades because of its lower energy density and higher amount of pollution, but then I suppose if groups like Greenpeace were really worried about pollution they would be rallying for replacing coal with nuclear power. Lignite is also quite plentiful, particularly in Germany and Australia. Since Germany instituted a nuclear phase-out program it has been building coal power plants non-stop after finding that the empty promises of "renewables" are unable to keep up with the demand for energy that is growing each year within its borders. To make matters worse, lignite seems to be Germany's fuel of choice as it has so much of it.

Finally, Germany's nuclear phase-out seems to be little more than a political stunt to please the "greens" in its coalitionary government since the Social Democrats formed an alliance with the Green party during a national election. Germany is piggybacking on French nuclear infrastructure as it buys energy from France which has built more nuclear power plants to keep its neighbors happy causing France to laugh all the way to the bank. Apparently, it is perfectly okay to buy electricity produced by nuclear power plants while decrying nuclear technology as being the "work of the devil".

The US is not in much of a position to gloat, as it has not issued any new operating licenses for nuclear power plants for decades because of the bureaucratic mess that is the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Comission) and the fact that misguided local opposition from various activist groups tie up the construction of new reactors in court for several years pushing up the cost because of budget overruns caused by delays. The reactor licensing system needs to be streamlined, and stick to a standard reactor design, rather than having a piecemeal construction system based on making each power plant a custom affair.

To make a long story short, nuclear power is truly the best and most viable option for the world's future electricity needs. It is long past due to get over our fears about the hysteria perpetuated by movies such as The China Syndrome and the accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Not only is nuclear power better for the environment than any other form of energy that we currently have, it is also one of the most efficient forms of energy ever developed.