Nuclear Reactor Development History

https://whatisnuclear.com/reactor_history.html

by simonebrunozzi • 6 years ago

161 36 6 years ago

whatisnuclear.com

java-man3• 6 years ago

ORNL flew in and built a small reactor at the Geneva conference in 1955.

wow.

acidburnNSA6• 6 years ago

Author here. Just got an alert from server. I enjoyed writing this in January and am happy to see it here. Happy to discuss more or make corrections.

java-man3• 6 years ago

Thank you! Very interesting read and solid work.

Any plans to publish a book?

acidburnNSA6• 6 years ago

You're welcome. It was a labor of love.

After completing this, I thought geez I should just make this a book. It's a relatively fringe subject, but hey maybe it'd be a good use of a sabbatical or something.

There is a lot of investor interest in advanced nuclear reactors because of climate change, so it could be useful to make this info more broadly available.

godelski• 6 years ago

For anyone reading this I also suggest acidburn's article on waste[0] and economics[1]. (I always recommend searching for his comments in HN nuclear discussions)

Also, always good to see you and congrats on a post of yours getting to the front page.

[0] https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html

[1] https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html

andromeduck• 6 years ago

Also worth checking out: https://anchor.fm/chris15401/episodes/Existing-Nuclear-and-I...

petrohi• 6 years ago

This is great! Would be also interesting to have side-by-side history of US, Russian and French nuclear power programs.

simonebrunozzi• 6 years ago

OP here - thanks for writing it! Really enjoyed it!! Curious if you wrote anything more specific about future of nuclear power, and if you have any readings to recommend.

acidburnNSA6• 6 years ago

Thanks for posting it. It's always a dream to get on here.

The follow-up piece to this one is the Economics page, and this section in particular talks about what's likely necessary to have a good future in nuclear [1] (it's a collection of conclusions from expert groups on the topic, mostly focused on economics).

[1] https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html#improving-modern-nu...

The MIT Future of Nuclear in a Carbon-Constrained World report is excellent [2].

[2] https://energy.mit.edu/research/future-nuclear-energy-carbon...

winter_blue2• 6 years ago

Just curious: what sort of monitoring software do you use on the server that it notifies you of traffic spikes?

acidburnNSA6• 6 years ago

I have a 100-line Python script that I wrote that runs hourly via cron. It scours my apache access log and counts up the number of times each referrer has shown up in the past hour. If it's above a threshold, it emails me with the referrer names in order. So I just get email that basically say: "Hey you're on hacker news" or "Hey check this reddit thread" or whatever.

ggm3• 6 years ago

Please add information from the European and Asian experiences.

samatman• 6 years ago

FTA: "Note: This is written largely from the US perspective. Developments in other countries are not well covered here. Also, the chains of events are difficult to classify so the time linearity of the following is not perfect."

Perhaps you could write a similar page about European and Chinese development of nuclear power. Who knows, you might end up on the front page of HN as well!

ggm3• 6 years ago

I don't play a nuclear scientist on TV. I wish I could write this, because i think it would be interesting. But I wish I could read it more.

fuoqi2• 6 years ago

The article should be called "US Nuclear Reactor Development History". Good read nevertheless.

stmw2• 6 years ago

On two related notes:

1. for the first time since the 1970's, support for nuclear power is non-partisan in the US - both parties have endorsed it.

2. a good addition to the list would be mentioning a YC company, Oklo (https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200615005643/en/Okl...)

jabl2• 6 years ago

The second sentence on that page: "This page is a grand tour of reactor development programs from 1945 to about 1970, also known as the nuclear heyday." So yeah, no wonder Oklo is not included.

As for bipartisan nuclear support in the US, IIRC Clinton shut down the IFR (one of the most promising advanced reactor + reprocessing concepts) in the early 90'ies, largely due to anti-nuclear sentiments.

roenxi• 6 years ago

The 90s were a long time ago. Possibly in the intervening years support has grown for evidence-based policy.

maxdo• 6 years ago

why KRUSTY wasn't launch to the space if test were successful?

sandGorgon• 6 years ago

So what is the best reactor design today ? Globally. Which takes care of Fukushima and Chernobyl style incidents and is much much safer?

Wikipedia says "However, as at August 2020, no Gen IV projects have advanced significantly beyond the design stage, and several have been abandoned."

fuoqi2• 6 years ago

What criteria do you use to determine "best"? Safety, construction cost, fuel efficiency, capacity factor?

Pretty much all modern designs are much safer than designs of Fukushima and Chernobyl reactors developed in 60s.

One of the most recent designs (classified as generation 3+) with operational reactors is VVER-1200, operational reactors: Leningrad-2, Novovoronezh-2 and soon Astravets (Belarus). Next iteration VVER-TOI is under construction in Kursk-2 and Akkuyu (Turkey). Both of those designs easily satisfy post-Fukushima safety requirements.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VVER

Other reactors can be found here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_III_reactor#Generat...

Also arguably operational BN-600 and BN-800 can be considered Gen IV reactors (though they currently lack necessary fuel processing lines).

KneeDeepInThe__• 6 years ago

Practically, it's the PWR- Pressurised Water Reactor. I say practically as there are always new developments, like Thorium-Salt reactors that made the headlines a while back, but these are the reactors that are producing the majority of nuclear electricity and haven't had a single major accident. They contain less fissile material in the reactor core, they are purely Boron moderated (so Chernobyl 2 couldn't happen) and there is no risk of contamination as the pressurised water in the reactor core cannot mix with the water turned into steam for the turbine.

They do have a few downsides, like frequent fuel rod swaps and boric acid buildup, but in the real world this is the safest working reactor we have today.

jabl2• 6 years ago

Practically, it's the PWR- Pressurised Water Reactor. I say practically as there are always new developments, like Thorium-Salt reactors that made the headlines a while back, but these are the reactors that are producing the majority of nuclear electricity and haven't had a single major accident.

Three Mile Island was a PWR. Of course, it wasn't a major accident in the sense that no significant radioactivity escaped the plant, but it was a major economic hit for the operator, and gave an unfortunate boost to various anti-nuclear groups.

I think in practice, BWR's are considered about equally safe as PWR's. Yes, Fukushima was BWR's, but it's uncertain if same vintage PWR's with equivalent safety equipment would have fared any better.

They contain less fissile material in the reactor core

Compared to what? A fast reactor of equivalent size, sure, but this isn't really the thing holding fast reactors back..

they are purely Boron moderated

No, they are water moderated. Boron, which is an efficient neutron adsorber, is used to control the reactivity during the burnup. That is, with fresh fuel rods the boron concentration in the water is higher to compensate for the higher reactivity of the fuel.

There is ongoing research to design LWR's without boron, in order to avoid the corrosion issues and the equipment needed for controlling boron concentration. One way is to have rods filled with DU, which are slowly pulled out (and the volume replaced by water) as burnup proceeds. This approach has its own downsides, but, we'll see.

robotnikman• 6 years ago

The Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station is worth mentioning.

Interesting to note that its not located by any nearby large bodies of water.

imtringued• 6 years ago

According to this chart [0] the installed capacity of fossil fuel plants is 4TW. Lets cut it down to 2TW because we don't know how much of that infrastructure is actually utilized. Let's say I'm sold on nuclear and want 2TW of installed nuclear plant capacity. Each power plant should be able to generate 700MW. This means we have to build 2857 new power plants. Half of them need to be done by 2050. The other half should be in construction by 2050 but are allowed to take 10-15 years to be built. Surely economies of scale should be able to reduce nuclear plant costs to around 2 billion USD per plant [1] but that would still cost 5714 billion USD.

Open questions:

Which nuclear technology is available today that can be deployed 1400 times today as soon as today without any massive safety flaws? Theoretical reactor designs may sound cool but nobody is going to wait for them.

Who is going to pay for the prototypes and first dozen plants? How are you going to convince the rest of the planet to install your nuclear plants?

Is this ambitious timeline even possible? Can you train enough people and build an extensively optimized nuclear supply chain that can scale thousands of reactors?

What happens once the "building" rush is over? Will the supply chain die again and be hard to start back up?

Can every country be trusted to operate their own nuclear plants? Will they openly report flaws and safety problems in the power plant and take those reports seriously by turning off defective or unsafe plants until they restored the safety of the plant? Fukushima was easily preventable but there was no accountability and no incentive to prevent an accident. Nobody in charge felt responsible to actually add adequate safety measures.

Can we mine enough fuel to power these plants? Will mining activity have to increase to meet the new demand? Can that mining be powered by nuclear energy? Is mining for nuclear fuel worse than coal?

Is waste disposal feasible today in every country? Can this cost be reduced through economies of scale or is it fixed per unit of waste?

None of these things are impossible but they require time, money and trust.

People who don't care about climate change are not going to give you money for nuclear or renewables.

Time isn't exactly on our side. We are at a point where we have figured out lots of alternatives to fossil fuels, it is just a matter of sticking with one choice and actually doing it. Hesitation will cost a lot of time so it's now or never.

We are also short on trust. The UK doesn't like the EU. Other continents are not unified at all and it is common for countries to be at war in the middle east and Africa. Why would they want a power plant that is a juicy target for terrorism?

Because of these concerns I'm not going to hope for a nuclear future but I'll let myself be surprised if things turn out better than I predict.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/267358/world-installed-p... [1] https://schlissel-technical.com/docs/reports_35.pdf (summary: coal plant went over budget and cost 2 billion usd)

08-15• 6 years ago

Is this ambitious timeline even possible?

Of course it is. Pick a design that can be built right now, which means the Chinese or Russians have to do it, because everyone else (Siemens, Areva, Westinghouse, ...) seem to have forgotten how to build theirs. One reactor produces 600-1400MW, so we're talking roughly 1500-3000 reactors. You set a timeline of about 40 years, or 15000 days. This means, construction of a reactor has to start every 5-10 days. Construction of a nuclear plant takes about 4 years or 1500 days, unless treehuggers are allowed to interfere with frivolous lawsuits. This means, 150-300 reactors will be under construction concurrently. Worldwide, that doesn't sound too bad.

Let's build one reactor per week.

What happens once the "building" rush is over?

More building to replace aging plants. At the end of your 40 year timeline, the plants built at its beginning are (nominally) at the end of their life. (Not really, but then again, 40 years into the future, 2TW won't be enough.)

Let's build one reactor per week, forever.

that would still cost 5714 billion USD

So what? Those 2TW of generating capacity are still going to be built, if only to replace broken down old plants. Capital cost for power plants varies a bit by technology, but 2000G$ are going to be spent on power plants no matter what; if the future is solar, it's going to be a lot more than 6000G$.

Can we mine enough fuel to power these plants? Will mining activity have to increase to meet the new demand? Can that mining be powered by nuclear energy? Is mining for nuclear fuel worse than coal?

Yes, yes, mostly, no. If we actually embark on a massive nuclear program like this, we will run out of fuel fairly quickly (about 100 years). One generation of once-through burner reactors can be fueled easily, maybe two. After that, the Uranium may need to come from low grade sources, which is annoying, or breeders have to be used.

Is waste disposal feasible today in every country? Can this cost be reduced?

Yes, and why bother? Waste disposal is more a political problem than a technical one. It isn't actually expensive. Arguably, the "waste" isn't waste and should be recycled instead of being disposed of.

Why would they want a power plant that is a juicy target for terrorism?

Bullshit.

This is called "drive by slander". Why do you do this when you (otherwise) appear to like nuclear power as a solution to climate change?

Nuclear Reactor Development History

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