Assembly Line Nuclear Reactors Are Quietly Building Steam in the Northwest

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/assembly-line-nuclear-reactors-are-quietly-building-steam-in-the-northwest

by DiabloD3 • 11 years ago

65 72 11 years ago

motherboard.vice.com

bkeroack• 11 years ago

This is great. I've always thought that the reaction to Fukushima should not have been "get rid of nuclear power generation because it's too dangerous", but rather: "using a handful of giant reactors is too dangerous, scale them down and spread them out so that a local disaster has limited ability to cause catastrophic harm".

kibwen• 11 years ago

I'm curious about the tech behind these new reactors, such as the specific design and the reactants involved. Specifically it would be great if we could obviate any energy-related excuse to produce reactants that could double as the fuel for nuclear weapons.

soperj• 11 years ago

There have been reactors available for a long time that don't use enriched uranium. The CANDU reactor was invented in the 60s and is the only type of reactor in use in Canada. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor

maaku2• 11 years ago

The fuel process used by nearly every reactor in existence is used specifically because it can provide weapons-grade material. It is not the reaction chain you would choose if you were merely interested in generating electricity.

Besides the CANDU reactor mentioned by the sibling comment, there is also thorium reactors, which react an element far more abundant than Uranium, and doesn't result in weapons grade products.

pjscott• 11 years ago

Standard, boring light water reactor with unusually good passive cooling. The exciting part is the modular, assembly-line nature of how it's produced.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NuScale_Power

Turing_Machine16• 11 years ago

I agree with your larger sentiment, but disagree that current reactors are too dangerous.

Let's look at what happened at Fukushima:

1) Massive earthquake 2) Massive tsunami 3) Devastating fire 4) Complete loss of power to all control circuitry

An extreme worst-case scenario if there ever was one, and yet no one died.

rosser3• 11 years ago

...and yet no one died.

Yet.

EDIT: Don't mistake; I'm (conditionally) very pro-nuclear power. But the fallout (pun not intended) from Fukushima is far from over, so to be all, "Welp, dodged that one" is a little disingenuous.

kazinator2• 11 years ago

5) Severely aged equipment, not subject to proper inspections, repairs and upgrades. 6) Organized crime running the plants.

oska2• 11 years ago

You missed 5) Narrowly avoided making large parts of a space constrained country unfit for habitation.

Think I'm being alarmist? The Japanese PM at the time of the crisis has publicly stated that he was seriously considering having to evacuate Tokyo. [1],[2],[3]

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/28/world/asia/japan-considere...

[2] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/revealed-secret...

[3] http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/japans-former-pm-...

duaneb• 11 years ago

I would imagine a worst-case scenario would be something much worse than an earthquake and tsunami, which are, while not usual, certainly expected.

And while nobody died (yet), that's not the problem... the problem is that so many resources had to be invested just to ensure nobody was hurt that makes the prospect of building more nuclear reactors in similar positions scary.

IMHO nuclear reactors should be built to deal with problems of the magnitude of an earthquake or a tsunami as a base line. Fukushima was built with this in mind, I'm sure, but it's hardly a worst-case scenario.... Worst-case would be something like a direct hit from a comet when all the engineers who know how to run it are already dead.

EDIT: It's also that we should be designing these things to run in 100+ years when equipment is failing, the disasters could be an order of magnitude worse than expected, etc.

WalterBright• 11 years ago

As a former aircraft engineer, my take is the Fukushima design had too many single points of failure. It's like an airplane - despite flying being inherently dangerous, it is incredibly safe. The plant design could be made far safer with rather minor improvements.

hackuser• 11 years ago

1) Massive earthquake 2) Massive tsunami 3) Devastating fire 4) Complete loss of power to all control circuitry
An extreme worst-case scenario if there ever was one, and yet no one died.

I don't know that it was extreme. If the earthquake was a significant risk, and the tsunami was a likely result of the earthquake, the rest is no surprise.

Does anyone know how likely the earthquake and following tsunami were?

hristov2• 11 years ago

(1) People will die if they haven't already. Nuclear related deaths are drastically under-reported, because all governments try very hard to make nuclear look safe. When people die from Fukushima they will be reported dead from cancer and other diseases and not from the nuclear fallout. This may already be happening.

(2) Your argument about this being the worst case doesn't hold either. This is not nearly the worst case. I can think of many worse cases, such as a well educated and trained terrorist getting a job in a reactor.

In fact what happened in Fukushima is not particularly unlikely. What happened was something to be expected for a type of reactor that was built to last 40 years and was installed in an earthquake zone.

BurningFrog• 11 years ago

It was more than just a massive earthquake. At 9.0, it was the 4th biggest quake recorded seismically, and the biggest in over 1000 years of Japanese history.

iterationx4• 11 years ago

No one died? Many people on the USS Reagan died and are dying now.

Zigurd• 11 years ago

Using reactor designs we would no longer allow to be built, way past their designed lifespan is the problem. Nuclear power has to have a straightforward approach to being affordable, not by endangering lives and property by extending the life of old plants. This is a high priority because being able to build nuclear power plants quickly, and operating them safely, is really the only way to have a soft landing after the oil age.

bayesianhorse5• 11 years ago

What I see is companies/societies/lawmakers unwilling or unable to shut down perfectly fine reactors just because they are too old.

What I also see is democratic countries struggling to agree on safe sites to even store nuclear wast mid-term, much less long term. Better uses or treatments for nuclear waste may be possible, but are not even close to becoming practical.

deepinsand• 11 years ago

I've heard that one of the major hurdles to smaller scale deployments is security (easier to secure a larger facility than many small ones).

jessaustin8• 11 years ago

Scaled-down nuclear reactors will not see wide use because neither governments nor investors will fund them. Governments fund big stuff that generates kickbacks and weapons fuel. Investors fund stuff that could conceivably make a profit.

jessaustin8• 11 years ago

I'm shocked, shocked, that the pro-nuke astroturfers have expelled so much hot air on this thread obfuscating about cancer rates (they aren't dead yet, and if so you have to name them!), coal (because we all love coal!), and the Three Gorges (TIL shoving a new powerplant down the throats of an unwilling populace isn't cool when the Chinese do it), and haven't had the chance to consider the dire economic case for nukes.

As in, the fact that no nuclear power plant anywhere has been built or operated without government funding and coercion. They get us coming and going: there will be a plant here, and the deadly waste it produces will go there, the opinions of residents and electricity consumers be damned. The industry didn't have to balance its books, as long as it kept enough nuke-happy retired generals lobbying for the nuclear-death-war option. Now that that's not such a wonderful priority anymore, suddenly we're seeing all this "innovation". From the same industry that likes to put backup safety pump generators in a subbasement dug next to the Pacific Ocean. Pull the other one. Your lack of meaningful response is delicious.

tinco• 11 years ago

Is it clear which design these smaller generators are using? I am a pro-nuclear power guy, but I'd be slightly concerned with the idea of having more of the conventional ones being used as if they're no big deal, even if they're smaller.

cjslep• 11 years ago

Depends on which small modular reactor. NuScale mentioned in the article is an Integral Pressurized Water Reactor[0]. A PWR is conventional, but I am not sure where your concern stems from since PWRs and BWRs are the most common reactors in the USA and are some of the most thoroughly studied, especially when it comes to passive safety system design and maintenance.

[0] http://www.nuscalepower.com/ourtechnology.aspx

bayesianhorse5• 11 years ago

"Scares" aside, is this really a good idea? Nuclear waste is an essentially unsolved problem of already epic proportions. Incidents too unlikely to ever happen have happened. Any nuclear material running around on trucks is in danger of being involved in catastrophic accidents or just stolen and used for dirty bombs or worse.

Some of these concerns may be alleviated by the reactor design....

Turing_Machine16• 11 years ago

" Nuclear waste is an essentially unsolved problem of already epic proportions."

No, it isn't.

After a couple of hundred years it's no more radioactive than the rock from which it came.

The people who told you it was going to be lethal for umpteen billion years?

They were lying to you.

morsch• 11 years ago

We haven't solved the problem of storing the waste for hundreds of years, either.

Assembly Line Nuclear Reactors Are Quietly Building Steam in the Northwest

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