UK Looking To Extend Life of Nuclear Plant By 20 Years Amid Energy Crisis (ft.com) 122
The UK is looking at a 20-year extension of the Sizewell B nuclear power plant on England's east coast to 2055 as Boris Johnson aims to bolster domestic energy supplies following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. From a report: The extension is one of several options under consideration as the prime minister draws up a new "energy supply strategy," which will be published next week against the backdrop of highly volatile international gas prices and an escalating cost-of-living crisis. Johnson's new approach will not see him cut Britain's carbon targets, including the plan to reach net zero by 2050, and will see an increase in targets for various renewable energy sources, according to officials. However, it will also seek to improve security of supply of hydrocarbons by increasing North Sea oil and gas production and potentially keeping some of Britain's few remaining coal-fired power plants open slightly longer than expected -- rather than relying on imports.
"The Gap" (Score:2)
This current surge of oil pricing and the political instability of some supplying participants should be the moment when we all agree to suck up the immediate costs of real divestiture of fossil fuels. But push has come to shove, and instead the US is opening the taps on the reserve, and countries are plotting their alternative sources, such as ramping up internal production.
So now we know. As long as the short term cost is perceived to be high, we aren't changing anything.
As far as I'm concerned, "Yay nucl
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Everyone, including the US, need modern nuclear reactors for the medium term. Especially ones that can use spent fuel from older reactors. Everyone's too lazy to fight the NIMBYs and just make it happen. Extending their lifespan is fine if they are truly staying updated and replacing faulty parts. But that's not a replacement for new reactors.
an war can stop that NIMBY BS fast (Score:2)
an war can stop that NIMBY BS fast
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an war can stop that NIMBY BS fast
Atoms for peace.
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The problem is nobody wants to build nuclear power in the UK. Even with massive subsidies they couldn't get anyone interested. EDF only agreed in the end because they were getting investment from China and could use their own design.
Even if CANDU was a solution (it's not), there is no way to get one built in the UK.
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The NIMBYs are even worse for wind and solar, and the needed grid expansion to enable them. Nuclear can be built at existing nuclear plants, some of which are already licensed for extra reactors.
Many permitted sites are not currently connected or connected sufficiently, and in some cases for wind (e.g. the huge ones on Dogger Bank in the North Sea) already connected for wind. So the reality is somewhat more mixed than you suggest.
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Considering how many of our laws are pro-fossil fuel, I wouldn't be surprised if all of the anti-nuke stance of the government is entirely driven by fossil fuel interests that aren't invested in nuclear.
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Realistically "they" are going to do anything they want that the masses aren't rioting in the street against nationwide (which is inconvenient for business) in the nation of your choice. Better nuclear than fossil fuels, but it's still a false dichotomy.
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"The immediate costs would be the starvation of hundreds of billions, and the collapse of almost all economies."...
(Subbing in "millions") I understand your point. But it doesn't have to be that way. The divestiture would need to be heartless against the optional, and rigorously protective of the absolutely mandatory.
But that's not how we work. So... I agree and disagree.
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This is SuperKendall
A.K.A. StupidKendall.
Abandoning nuclear power was an epic fail. (Score:3, Insightful)
It was a monumental failure for the US to largely "meh" nuclear power over the last 30 years. Just like Germany was dumb as shit to do it recently.
I know, I know. "Muh costs!" "Muh meltdowns!" "Muh failed starts!". All the same bullshit excuses, we lacked the will and were distracted by an unlikely combination of oil-bros and enviro-bros. If we had dumped a few trillion over the last decades into nuclear power research, development, and build-outs we'd be set by now for clean, safe energy. And not doing so is now going to make those trillions look like laughable peanuts compared to the direct (environmental) and indirect (wars and global upheaval) costs compared to having done it.
Instead, we're plain fucked. Just keep burning oil and praying that solar and wind dreams will somehow materialize to the scale we need. Protip: They won't. For decades.
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I have been pro nuclear power since the first oil shock back in 73, but I have to ask by just what magic would throwing a trillion dollars at this have made it work ? The only thing blindly throwing money at problems does is make bureaucrats and government contractors absurdly wealthy/
I also wonder why you think we don't have the capability already. We already have walkaway safe reactors and the capability to either reuse or safely store waste over geologic time periods.
There is very little left that's need
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R&D
R&D never stopped. Just because the USA chose to not build anything beyond Gen II (even the most recent reactor to come online is based on a 40 year old design) doesn't mean that companies gave up R&D or that the rest of the world didn't leave the USA behind. Gen III and Gen III+ reactors are in operation around the world, the NRC has approved them for domestically as well. Gen IV reactors are in development stage.
No R&D wouldn't have changed.
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Lol, so wait. So you...think that if we had dumped a shitload of money into R&D over the last decades that we would ..not? be ahead of the curve? What would they have spent the money on, chicken dinners and parachute cord?
My point was if we had spent a shitload of money on R&D into how to make more efficient, safer, cheaper to build reactors that we would have.. more efficient, safer, and cheaper to build reactors. It's literally a tautology.
So we have GenII/iii+ reactors out there, could have gen4.
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It's an international business, so one question is whether the money you are discussing would have been significant compared to existing investment worldwide over the same period. Then the second question is whether there would be the expertise to absorb the funding, otherwise you are just overheating the industry. That might be acceptable if it's considered to be a sufficient priority. The third question is whether $trillion over an unspecified number of years into nuclear only would provide better results
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Lol, so wait. So you...think that if we had dumped a shitload of money into R&D over the last decades that we would ..not? be ahead of the curve?
No. I said you're begging the question. We did spend money on R&D. Spending more doesn't change anything if you don't actually build any of the resulting designs. R&D happened. We have many advanced reactor designs approved for construction. We have even more in the pipeline. Throwing more money at it is pointless. We could have invented fusion power and cured cancer, all completely irrelevant if the USA isn't building anything.
We could be on Gen6 by now
That is literally not how R&D works. You can't throw money at solut
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We already have walkaway safe reactors
No. We do not.
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Ignorance + Arrogance is a bad mix
https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com]
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j... [forbes.com]
https://energycentral.com/c/ec... [energycentral.com]
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Well, the nuclear fanatics cannot see reality. They demonstrate that time and again. Some are also simply shameless liars.
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Ignorant, arrogant, and delusional, a triple play.
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Nicely describes you, doesn't it?
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I see you even made me your foe. Awwwe isn't that cute? What are you going to do next shake your fist at the screen?
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To have a realistic effect on climate change or anything else we pretty much have the nuclear reactor designs that are ready to go as they take time to build. Continuing to research new options is a good idea, but we'd have to start building the available, tested, debugged designs now, not wait for 10 or 20 years of research and testing and debugging. Even with current designs, it will take time to build enough reactors to make a difference because of the bottlenecks in construction capacity. Because of those bottlenecks, research can take place in parallel. Bringing up future designs without suggesting also building current ones is tantamount to a request to delay action.
I really don't know why you are saying this to me. This is my initial statement in this thread.
I have been pro nuclear power since the first oil shock back in 73, but I have to ask by just what magic would throwing a trillion dollars at this have made it work ? The only thing blindly throwing money at problems does is make bureaucrats and government contractors absurdly wealthy/
I also wonder why you think we don't have the capability already. We already have walkaway safe reactors and the capability to either reuse or safely store waste over geologic time periods.
There is very little left that's needed to implement a wholesale shift to nuclear power. Well except to defang the green robber barons.
As to having a realistic effect on climate change, it hardly matters. Even if the west goes to zero emissions, India and China will more than make up the difference, not to mention Africa coming online.
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As to having a realistic effect on climate change, it hardly matters. Even if the west goes to zero emissions, India and China will more than make up the difference, not to mention Africa coming online.
If no one makes an effort because someone else is going to do something they don't like, then no one ends up doing anything. What happened to leadership to those places you mention and doing the right thing? India has announced a net zero target. China is installing a lot of nuclear and renewables.
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It's easy to announce a target much harder to actually bite the bullet and achieve it. Both India and China are rapidly increasing their CO2 output. So their actions and their words don't match.
But while we are at it, just what is the "Right Thing" and for whom and why?
As for leadership, I'd rather lead from the rear and watch other people take the pain from being at the front.
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It's easy to announce a target much harder to actually bite the bullet and achieve it. Both India and China are rapidly increasing their CO2 output. So their actions and their words don't match.
Both have indicated that their output will increase for a while before dropping. They are also putting in significant amounts of non-carbon provision. I don't see yet that your statement is provable either way at the moment.
But while we are at it, just what is the "Right Thing" and for whom and why?
What do you think it is?
As for leadership, I'd rather lead from the rear and watch other people take the pain from being at the front.
Do you think Western nations should reduce CO2 output?
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"What do you think it is?"
I don't know Eliza. That's something you came up with and apparently is important to you. I have no idea what your value system is, but I do have a bit of intuition that it's a bit narrow minded and doesn't deal well with justifying its assumptions or explaining itself.
"Do you think Western nations should reduce CO2 output?"
I'd say your question is wrong and demonstrates a fundamental ignorance of the topic. The correct question is just what is the real risk from climate change vs
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I do have a bit of intuition that it's a bit narrow minded and doesn't deal well with justifying its assumptions or explaining itself.
Then you'd be wrong, as I re-examine my value system and how it is justified on a fairly regular basis.
"Do you think Western nations should reduce CO2 output?"
I'd say your question is wrong and demonstrates a fundamental ignorance of the topic. The correct question is just what is the real risk from climate change vs what can actually be done to mitigate it vs what are the real costs from mitigating it.
That's also a good question to ask. However, you seemed to be saying that there wasn't much point Western nations doing anything because China and India are big countries and the reduction from Western nations would be swamped. However, there would be more CO2 released if Western nations don't make a contribution too, so I am brought back to asking if you think Western nations should be doing something. If
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As I said, we do not. Your references prove my point. There are some theoretical concepts that were never really validated in practice and ongoing experiments. Sure, the THTR-300, for example was, at least in theory already "walk-away safe", but it was a complete failure as a reactor with numerous problems and more downtime than uptime. It now is counted as one of the worst technological failures in Germany of the last 55 years.
So in any practical sense we do not have such a reactor design that is both real
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Germany actually has *TWO* of those failed Thorium reactors.
Radioactive piles of shit, we can not even clean up, because all the fuel is a huge pile of carbon mixed with thorium and uranium.
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Indeed. Very, very expensive failures. Even the small 15MW test reactor continues to be a severe hazard and eventual cleanup cost is expected to exceed 1 Billion EUR. There is also the little gem that they have still no idea (40 years after decommissioning) how to dismantle the reactor vessel safely and are just going to wait another 50 years in the hopes that somebody will come up with an idea how it can be done and hence it may well be more than 1B for the decommissioning in the end. For a really small te
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Well, the German test reactor was run with balls of Thorium and Uranium, coated in coal. The idea was to "burn" the stuff like in a coal oven. However as the stuff heated up, the fuel balls started to glue together - the outside got soft. (It seems no one came to the idea to make a test run with simple graphite balls in a hot chamber) ...
Now the balls are in a clumped together big pile. You basically have to hack the fuel into pieces to get it out.
No idea how it is cooled ATM
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The crucial missing piece is permission, but that will not be forthcoming from the anti-energy Biden administration. The NRC issued licenses for Nuscale and some other life extensions to 80 years, then they recently revoked them all over some bullshit [substack.com]. Nuscale has already spent $500M to engage with the NRC, for what is just an ordinary conventional reactor at a small enough size to make passive safety trivial, and this is the result (in the US). Since its inception, the NRC has not licensed a single new rea
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Absolutely.
It's been primarily a political problem and the fact we have entrenched interests who profit from frustrating the problems resolution.
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There is very little left that's needed to implement a wholesale shift to nuclear power.
Except a shit-ton of money to do all that engineering, construction
and testing for it to work reliably.
Whatever price is quoted, figure at least an order of
magnitude greater before any juice begins to flow.
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Already flowing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
This has been around forever. Then again it's no surprise it doesn't register the green movement was only briefly about protecting the environment.
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taking place shortly after the Fukushima disaster.
The decision was made 10 years before. We voted Schroeder, Kuenast, Tritin into office to finally get rid of nuclear power. After a > 50 years fight.
But then came Merkel, and she reverted it.
And then came Fukushima.
And then Merkel realized: if she does not backpedal and reinstitute the previous government's decision, she will have riots in the streets and most likely gets violently deposed. So: she reverted her stupid decision she made 10 years before, a
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We should be doing "infill" nuclear (Score:2)
A lot of current US nuclear power plants were originally sited for more reactors than they currently have. Completing those plants in the current situation should be a no-brainer - much of the needed infrastructure is already available, there's long experience with the designs and maintenance requirements, and permitting should be much easier than starting new plants from scratch (assuming permitting objections are based on rational experience, and not knee-jerk stuff).
The nuclear plant closest to my home
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A lot of current US nuclear power plants were originally sited for more reactors than they currently have. Completing those plants in the current situation should be a no-brainer - much of the needed infrastructure is already available, there's long experience with the designs and maintenance requirements, and permitting should be much easier than starting new plants from scratch (assuming permitting objections are based on rational experience, and not knee-jerk stuff).
The nuclear plant closest to my home is Calvert Cliffs [wikipedia.org]. It's pretty well run, and has two reactors with space for a third. The last effort to win approval for a third reactor was in 2010; given the upcoming need for non-fossil-fuel electricity in this area, they should try again, and the NRC should fast-track any permits needed, based on previous safety records.
As they say: past performance is not always a guide to future performance. They should look at a few more factors like the new designs suggested (should be safe) and whether they could get the staff for new ones (government incentives for training might be good, although that's a subsidy for private companies it wouldn't necessarily be for an individual company, but rather a sector).
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Absolutely. Fueled in good part by dumb politicians amplifiying whining of small anti-nuclear groups. It's one of the most efficient and stable ways of attaining cheap energy, and I'm glad some people started seeing sense again.
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One of the problems with nuclear power is the massive safety constraints applied to the industry, which are not equivalent to other forms of power generation. As I think has been pointed out before, burning coal releases far more radioactivity than running a nuclear reactor. There is also the nuclear waste processing problem. I believe the amount of waste that needs to be stored for centuries can be reduced by transmuting the radioactive materials using neutron flux from a working reactor. This tends to pro
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As I think has been pointed out before, burning coal releases far more radioactivity than running a nuclear reactor. /. myth. Your pick.
No, it does not.
That is an american myth, or a
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One of the problems with nuclear power is the massive safety constraints applied to the industry, which are not equivalent to other forms of power generation. As I think has been pointed out before, burning coal releases far more radioactivity than running a nuclear reactor.
It's a false equivalence as the issue is risk. If a coal plant goes badly wrong, the amount of radioactivity that could be released as a consequence is negligible.
It's also not very important, as the world is moving away from coal.
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If a coal plant goes badly wrong, the amount of radioactivity that could be released as a consequence is negligible.
The point is not a coal plant disaster, like the equivalent of Chernobyl. Fossil fuel plants emit radiation when operating normally.
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If a coal plant goes badly wrong, the amount of radioactivity that could be released as a consequence is negligible.
The point is not a coal plant disaster, like the equivalent of Chernobyl. Fossil fuel plants emit radiation when operating normally.
The radiation emitted by coal plants in normal operation is diffuse and not a threat to health in any meaningful or measurable way. Plenty of other things coming out of them are a threat to health, a cause of acid rain (depends a bit on whether there are scrubbers), or climate change. But radiation in normal operation isn't a threat to health. The concern about nuclear power is both any potential for disaster, which can release radioactive material in a fairly concentrated way and the storage of waste mater
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You are right that the dangers of radioactivity from burning coal are not the main environmental issue. If radiation were a significant problem, this would have shown up in health statistics when the coal-powered industrial revolution was at its peak. The reason for trotting out this radiation info about burning coal is to counter radiation paranoia.
As far as I can tell, one of the reasons why nuclear power is so expensive to implement is the political problem of anything involving radioactive materials. A
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As far as I can tell, one of the reasons why nuclear power is so expensive to implement is the political problem of anything involving radioactive materials.
I wouldn't call such a human safety issue political, as human safety on this level has pretty broad support. I suppose it could be, if you consider that some authoritarian regimes in the past showed scant regard for human safety with regards to pollution, mostly from coal but I can't really envisage broad support for such an attitude to human safety in North America, Western and Central Europe, etc. Support for less safe nuclear power is going to be pretty low.
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I wouldn't call such a human safety issue political, as human safety on this level has pretty broad support.
There is a tendency these days, that no threat to human health is acceptable. Pretty much everything you do has some risks associated with it. And not doing anything also has its risks. When you cook a meal over a hot flame or heating element, you risk burning yourself. But if you don't cook the meal, you could starve.
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There is a tendency these days, that no threat to human health is acceptable.
I see where you are coming from, but given we allow all sorts of things that have demonstrable health impacts, I don't think that it is universally the case. In terms of a nuclear accident, that's quite a significant threat, so protecting against that in a reasonable way (current reactor designs, permits, safety checks) seems, well, reasonable. The fact that there are few nuclear accidents that cause a significant human health risks seems to suggest the system is probably working. You might argue that there
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Cornwall is a notably radioactive place in the UK, due to the geology, but considered a healthy place to go on holiday. I am pretty sure the tourists are more poisonous than the radioactivity.
It's only an issue in Cornwall if you are indoors in a building which has an issue with ingress of radon. That is handled by required inspections of buildings and certificates to indicate that the building does not have an issue with radon. But then it's only really an issue with continued exposure, not a two-week visit, so your example is not a very good analogy or example as it's based on risk analysis and inspections and permitting, just as nuclear power endures.
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It was a monumental failure for the US to largely "meh" nuclear power over the last 30 years. Just like Germany was dumb as shit to do it recently.
I know, I know. "Muh costs!" "Muh meltdowns!" "Muh failed starts!". All the same bullshit excuses
Nuclear Industry excuses.
we lacked the will and were distracted by an unlikely combination of oil-bros and enviro-bros..
If only nuke-bros had gone after the oil-bros instead of the enviro-bros who were going after the oil bros.
If we had dumped a few trillion over the last decades into nuclear power research, development, and build-outs we'd be set by now for clean, safe energy.
If only nuke-bros had lobbied for protecting the prototype Integral Fast Reactor instead of going after the enviro-bros perhaps scrutiny on the oil-bros would have been maintained.
However the oil-bros were able to go after both sides of politics to eliminate what was probably the most promising reactor technology the world had seen because they weren't being scrutinized by t
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If we had dumped a few trillion over the last decades into nuclear power research, development, and build-outs we'd be set by now for clean, safe energy.
Most likely not. As money does not help to break the laws of physics, neither does time.
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Lol, what laws of physics? Money certainly helps clarify and develop better technologies around the laws of physics, as does time. Your arguments all seem to revolve around either outright lies or denialism of actual reality.
"What, man on the moon?! With our shitty technology, why never!" - you, probably, in 1965.
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It was a monumental failure for the US to largely "meh" nuclear power over the last 30 years. Just like Germany was dumb as shit to do it recently.
I know, I know. "Muh costs!" "Muh meltdowns!" "Muh failed starts!". All the same bullshit excuses, we lacked the will and were distracted by an unlikely combination of oil-bros and enviro-bros. If we had dumped a few trillion over the last decades into nuclear power research, development, and build-outs we'd be set by now for clean, safe energy. And not doing so is now going to make those trillions look like laughable peanuts compared to the direct (environmental) and indirect (wars and global upheaval) costs compared to having done it.
Instead, we're plain fucked. Just keep burning oil and praying that solar and wind dreams will somehow materialize to the scale we need. Protip: They won't. For decades.
The thing is, in the UK wind and other renewables have been reducing the amount of fossil fuel (mainly LPG) for years. 4 years ago fossil fuels made up 1/2 of our power generation, now it's around 1/4. So they are actually supplanting fossil fuels and our power usage is growing. This is more to do with the promise of going carbon neutral by 2030 or 2035.
Also the cost of renewables, particularly wind is dropping as the economy of scale gets involved. Wind is now under £50 per Mw/H where as the price
Duh (Score:2)
Huh (Score:2)
UK government knew about this for a long time (Score:2)
The UK government hired a gentleman to study the energy needs of the UK and what should be done about it. His name was David MacKay. He told the nation what needed to be done.
https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
This was known by the UK government 10 years ago.
https://www.ted.com/talks/davi... [ted.com]
There's ample data to prove that UK needs nuclear power, and it's in a book Dr. MacKay wrote and released for free.
http://www.withouthotair.com/ [withouthotair.com]
That book demonstrates quite clearly that all nations of the world will need
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I am not nuclear power engineer ; but hell I'll play one on slashdot!
I was under the impression that reactor vessel itself gradually became brittle and experience void formation and structural compromise from the higher energy particles released in fission. I thought these things had a rather fixed - length safe service life and were not something that you can just extend indefinitely with enough TLC.
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> reactor vessel itself gradually became brittle and experience void formation and structural compromise from the higher energy particles
Yeah, and the timing belts in our cars wear out, but we replace the wear items instead of scrapping the car.
It's not cheap but it's better than letting the valves slam themselves apart. Pipe down, Toyota owners - we know.
Knowing government utilities, though, maybe they'll hope for a 300,000 mile belt. It's not impossible.
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The reactor vessel can't be repaired or replaced.
All they do is increase the frequency of inspections looking for defects, and relax the safety limits.
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The reactor vessel can't be repaired or replaced.
All they do is increase the frequency of inspections looking for defects, and relax the safety limits.
Indeed. Until one relaxation is to much or an inspection gets screwed up. Or there is some incident that does require emergency cooling and the whole damned thing shatters from the thermal shock. Good engineers never lie to themselves about the technical realities. It kills people, sometimes a lot of them. It seems good engineers are not to be found anymore in the nuclear industry.
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And they got very, very luck with that one. First, the chimney filters were not planned and one guy insisted on then. This was an air-cooled design and the air goes directly from the reactor-core into the chimney. Second, when they used water to fight the fire, they could also have had a steam explosion or other disaster. Instead it worked. They did not know whether it would work, it was an act of pure desperation.
BTW, the whole pathetic point of that reactor was to pretend to be on equal footing with the U
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... and that wasn't a nuclear power station.
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... and that wasn't even a nuclear power station.
Fixed that for you.
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That was in 1957, and not a nuclear power station. Is that the best you got?
If you want to show nuclear power is not safe then maybe you can come up with examples that are more recent and at an actual power station. I'm not going to talk about the safety of automobiles today by bringing up the lack of restraining belts in 1957. I'm also not going to bring up some military vehicles as examples when talking about cars for civilians.
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Nuclear Reactors have a Service Life (Score:2)
Well, it *can* be replaced -- but that's a lot like throwing away your old car and buying a new one, instead of *fixing* the old one.
Comparing a nuclear reactor with a car analogy is a ridiculous oversimplification. I would be like fixing a car that was crumbling like a set of old curtains that had been in the sun for too many years, then praying that the vehicle would reach its destination.
The thing being replaced would be *the reactor* and the likelihood of a loss of cooling accident would keep increasing. The only real option for running it longer is to decrease the power output to get a little more energy return out of it.
That's
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The thing being replaced would be *the reactor*
Yes, that's literally what I'm saying. What wasn't so clear about it?
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The thing being replaced would be *the reactor*
Yes, that's literally what I'm saying. What wasn't so clear about it?
Ok, I'd be interested in how you would do that without building a new one?
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Yes. Basically anything that gets irradiated is almost impossible to replace in a working reactor without scrapping the whole thing. You can't just rip it all out and put a complete new reactor + support mechanisms in either, because it takes decades to safely decommission the old one.
For example, the old Magnox reactors in the UK are not scheduled to be completely decommissioned until around 2090.
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You cannot replace a reactor pressure vessel. Not possible. You need to tear down the whole reactor and build a new one.
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I thought these things had a rather fixed - length safe service life and were not something that you can just extend indefinitely with enough TLC.
Not indefinitely, no. But with work (TLC) you can extend the functional life.
Each bit you extend costs more and more and more... and slowly you erode the safety margins. Eventually it becomes too costly and overall unsafe to continue to operate.
A couple decades is certainly doable -just expensive.
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Nuclear power is safe.
Nuclear power plus political pressure or profit pressure isn't safe.
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Nothing is "safe". It's a matter of balancing costs to benefits.
Given the history of the energy sources available to us today we can see nuclear power is the safest of them all. That doesn't make it "safe", it makes it "safest".
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Also not a nuclear power engineer, but what you describe is exactly what happened at Hunterston B.
Re:they can go forever (Score:4, Insightful)
There are, however, additional things which can be done. It is possible to rearrange the fuel, so that more active fuel is placed at the centre, and less active fuel at the periphery. This greatly reduces neutron leakage from the core into the RPV, and this can greatly extend the operating life.
There are other options to reduce stresses on the RPV. For example, the limiting event is a core quenching and reflooding following a loss of coolant, where very large volumes of cold water are poured onto an overheated core and RPV. It has generally been assumed that this reflooding would be performed with cold water, and therefore the ductile-brittle transition temperature must be at the lowest possible cold water temperature. However, it is possible to reclaim some margin by redesign of the flooding process. For example, it is not necessary that the water be cold, just that it be water. Holding emergency water tanks at 60-80 C for reflooding at a higher temperature can recover substantial margin, by both increasing resistance to brittle transition, but reducing magnitude of the thermal shock.
The other thing which can be done is to heat treat the reactor vessel, which can recover most of the ductility lost due to neutron embrittlement. This has been performed and validated by the Russians. While not validated and licensed in the West, it is expected to work and to be technically feasible, it's just that there has not been any commercial need to develop the technique to a commercial level.
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I am not nuclear power engineer ; but hell I'll play one on slashdot!
I was under the impression that reactor vessel itself gradually became brittle and experience void formation and structural compromise from the higher energy particles released in fission. I thought these things had a rather fixed - length safe service life and were not something that you can just extend indefinitely with enough TLC.
Yes. Neutrons do damage the steel. In the worst case a temperature shock can literally make the pressure vessel shatter. That is why in some old reactors the water for emergency cooling gets pre-heated. If they extend and extend and extend, eventually they _will_ lose the pressure vessel. And if there was any foul play (as in some french reactors that have faked safety certificates for parts of pressure vessel or a Japanese reactor were they "fixed" a pressure vessel damaged in production), that failure wil
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looks like UK intends to run the reactors until they fail. good luck.
Nah, it looks like they are going to be playing Theseus' Reactor [wikipedia.org] for a while. Fusion power will eventually become commercially feasible, so fission reactors won't be around forever.
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The reactor vessel is aged. Can't replace it without rebuilding the whole facility. Makes more sense to build a new reactor, which they've been trying to do and failing.
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The reactor vessel is aged. Can't replace it without rebuilding the whole facility. Makes more sense to build a new reactor, which they've been trying to do and failing.
Yeah, this is what is baffling to me. Wouldn't it make more sense to fast-track Sizewell C, get it up and running, then decommission Sizewell B in 2035 as scheduled and replace it with a new Sizewell B (D?) on the same site?
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Yes but see the way all these things work is that NIMBYs can block "new" nuclear reactors (fear-based and yell-based), but they can't really block extensions of existing reactors (mix of science based and money-based).
Unfortunately it means that dangerous old bad design/BWRs similar to Fukushima can go on running, while the new designs just get rejected. In the US, for example, the Diablo Canyon will be like the last one on the west coast to be shut down, when really the one sitting on an EQ fault is the on
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Meanwhile France has been a strange oasis of sanity. Gee strange how they've been able to keep carbon emissions low so easily, maybe they know something the rest of Europe doesn't.
As usual, by exporting the emissions. Uranite isn't mined in France.
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Are you saying France's nuclear (uranium) has the same total lifecycle carbon emissions per megawatt as EU-imported natural gas? Because anything less than that and your comment doesn't make sense.*
Maybe you have a misunderstanding of how much carbon is produced by each process. Nuclear isn't even close to the carbon production when it's mined and refined compared to when hydrocarbons are burned. Per megawatt, of course.
*=Well it kinda does, but in the same way the French are "exporting their carbon product
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That said, it is clear from decades of painful experience that water-cooled solid fuel reactors simply cannot be made safe while remaining economical. It's past time to abandon them in favor of molten fueled reactors. By replacing the vast expense of engineered safety with intrinsic safety - operating the nuclear components at 1-2 bars pressure instead of 200-300, and intrinsically retaining the
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The first nuclear power plant should be shut down after the last coal or gas burner is switched off, no sooner.
Safety not a concern, then?
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Obviously not if he thinks molten fuel is a good idea.
It's like molten salt, great fucking idea until it goes wrong which it will.
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looks like UK intends to run the reactors until they fail. good luck.
Nah, it looks like they are going to be playing Theseus' Reactor [wikipedia.org] for a while. Fusion power will eventually become commercially feasible, so fission reactors won't be around forever.
Not really. The most critical part, the pressure vessel, cannot really be repaired and cannot be replaced replaced. And it gets more and more brittle from the Neutron bombardment. This part is the primary reason why nuclear reactors have limited lifetime. The original estimates are conservative, sure. But you need that safety-margin. One undiscovered manufacturing flaw and suddenly you have a lot less margin.
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Well imagine some scenario where some eco-freedom-fighter invents and releases some kind of ice-9 type particle that renders all global petroleum oil deposits useless for power generation or refining in some irreversible way, and then destroys all coal production means around the world in some irreversible way. Yeah I know it is impossible but this is a thought experiment.
Would it hurt - hell yes
Would mankind adapt and survive - of course,
Would it take long - I don't think so, The motivation to change is l