Environmental thinking and Nuclear Power

[Marenta]

So, this is a topic near and dear to my heart, because it's been my job for the last 8 years. And, since I was 12 I've wanted to be a scientist. Hell, I wanted to be a Petrochemical Engineer initially.

I'm going to list a few sites that will give you guys some general information about Pros and Cons of Nuclear Power. Of course, if you want specifics, I can answer any questions you have.

But, before I list the sites, I'll leave you with a few tidbits.

Radiation and Contamination are not the same thing. Unlinke in Hunt for Red October in which they use the terms interchangably.

You ever notice how if you put electronics on cement for a little while they won't work? That's because cement has ionizing radiation in it, enough to kill the internals.

You will get more exposure taking a 30 minute walk outside in the sun every day for a year than I will standing 6 hours of watch every day for a year next to a nuclear reactor.

Beware Bananas! When we discharge radioactive waste overboard in the ocean, you actually get a higher internal dose rate from eating a banana than you would if you drank all ~12000 gallons of water that we discharge every time.

A lethal acute dose is ~500 rem. My time in the Navy has gotten me 981 millirem. (Close to 1 rem.) Every time you take a flight, you actually get 60 millirem just from flying 37000 ft high and being that much closer to the sun. Ouch! (I took a TLD from work and we actually measured the dose on it, got 67 mrem, we took 7 away for just daily exposure to natural ionizing radiation.)

A rad is a unit of energy absorbed from ionizing radiation, equal to 100 ergs per gram or 0.01 joules per kilogram of irradiated material. A roentgen is a unit of exposure dose that measures x-rays or gamma rays in terms of the ions or electrons produced in dry air at 0° C and one atmosphere, equal to the amount of radiation producing one electrostatic unit of positive or negative charge per cubic centimeter of air. A rem is the amount of ionizing radiation required to produce the same biological effect as one rad of high-penetration x-rays or a unit for measuring absorbed doses of radiation, equivalent to one roentgen of x-rays or gamma rays. They are all a unit of measure for radiation.

A reactor is stable when it goes Critical. Unlike in 24, when they claimed that criticality meant that it was unstable.

To SCRAM is a safeguard that all reactors have where control rods slam into the core and shut the process down. It means Super Critical Reactor Axe Man. When the concept of a reactor was formed, they had the control rods on ropes, and if the reactor were to go "Super Critical" or uncontrolable, men with axes were to cut the ropes and drop the rods. Therefore, SCRAM. So, when my computer locks up, I SCRAM it out.

Your Thyroid is the first place to get attacked by radiation. RadioIodine will flood the thyroid and cause thyroid cancer very rapidly. This can be prevented if you take a Potassium Iodide (KI) or drink Red Wine. Any type of Iodine will flood your thyroid, causing the RadioIodine to not seep in. However, if you are in the environment, you might have other more important things to worry about.

And, on to the links...

A good site for both:http://www.nuclearpowerprocon.org

Pros:http://www.nrc.govhttp://www.world-nucl ... 0...power/

Cons:http://www.pollutionissues.comhttp://ww ... w.nrdc.org

[Edit: Feel free to discuss other energy solutions as well, not just nuclear power.]
Modified by Marenta at 9:22 AM 8/5/2008

[rn79870]

Slight hijack here for your benefit Marenta. this below site is a very good read about a girl who rides her Kawasaki through Chernobyl. Complete with pictures and explanations. I'm sure you'll enjoy the read.http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chapter1.html

End hijack///

When it comes time to tear down a nuclear plant, how much dangerous material are we going to have to deal with? Can the land itself ever be used again for any other purpose, or is the land itself contaminated?

[Marenta]

When it comes time to tear down a nuclear plant, how much dangerous material are we going to have to deal with? Can the land itself ever be used again for any other purpose, or is the land itself contaminated?

The total waste depends upon the power history of the plant, the size of the plant, the volume of the plant, and the maintenance of the plant.

The Navy's plants operate on power transients, so you can't take our plants as the basis. However, commercial plants always operate at a steady rate. They will always be going at the same output 100% of the time unless they are testing or doing a scheduled outage (which is rare, or 1.5 years for the NRC.) So, the power history for the commercial plants is going to be stable, but it will always be stable at a very high power, which means the buildup of very radioactive isotopes is vastly greater than that of the Navy's plants, since the commercial plants don't have the down time to let them decay away.

The size of commercial plants are also very very large. They range between 500 to 2000 MW cores. Which means that in a lifetime (around 10 to 15 years) they can produce anywhere from 250 to 1000 tons of radioactive material. This material is shipped to a few facilities around the nation (INL, PNNL, Bechtel-Bettis, ORNL) to be refined and used again in nuclear generation and studies or buried in Borated Poly barrels and then put into Leaded cement blocks into a cement storage facility that has been lined with Borated Poly.

The volume of the plant is all the water. The water will be reused. The water is actually contaminated, but it can be cleaned and filtered and made into heavy water for reuse in nuclear facilities. It is controlled, and it tastes like crap. ICK! I hate the taste of Primary water, it burns and makes you want to throw up. I digress. Anyway, it is called Controlled Pure Water (CPW) after it has been processed, and it will be used again and again and again. It is Deionized and kept extreamly pure. The quality controls for the water are extreamly strict for nuclear plants, trace amounts of anything in the water could be enough to make the plant give strange results. It's a symbiote system that must be chemically maintained, and that's my job in the Navy.

Any maintenance performed usually has some waste. There's daily maintenance, and weekly, monthly, all of the time line maintenance has some sort of waste. It might or might not be Radiological waste, though. Not all of the systems in a plant are controlled, There is a primary and a secondary side to the plants. Most of the maintenance actually will be performed on the secondary side, the non-radiologically controlled side. Because, it's the side that tends to be operating, or moving the most.



There's a good graphical representation of what I mean. The white "smoke" you see coming out of the cooling towers is actually steam from the rivers or lakes or whatever body of water is near. That picture is actually a picture of a boiling water reactor (BWR) there is another type that is used and that is a pressurized water reactor (PWR). The basic principle is that the reactor will heat up water, the water will heat up a separate system of water allowing it to boil and make steam, which will turn a turbine, the turbine will be connected to a generator and make electricity (or turn a shaft and push a ship through the water) and the steam is exhausted into a cooling tower where it will meet cool water and turn back into cool water.. And, the cycle repeats.

So, total, overall.. You're looking at around... 100,000 to 200,000 tons of material, some being useable again, some being decontaminated, some being buried, some being shipped and used for research, and some being released.

The land itself is actually very well kept, the ground underneath will be like that of any other building. There are no pipes containing radioactive fluids going underground, it all is maintained inside the facilities. In fact, most of the Nuclear facilities in the US have actually set up animal wildlife reserves on their land because most people are so afraid of Nuclear Power, they don't want to go near the plants. One in specific is the plant in Richland, WA which is kept by Energy Northwest.
Modified by Marenta at 11:02 AM 8/5/2008

[96Qowner]

I happen to live on the upper Great Plains (the Saudi Arabia of wind), so I tend to be a wind power fanatic. I was going to reply to your initial post that wind towers are far more economical and non-polluting, but I didn't know the average size of a nuclear generation plant, and of course, the nuclear plant produces a steady flow of electricity, whereas the wind towers are erratic and unpredictable.

This area is seeing an amazing buildup of wind production capacity - announcements in the past few months of over 1500 MWatts coming online locally in the next couple years, and that's just my State - similar plans all across the Plains. The generation capacity is typically spread among individual 1.5 MW generators in one large-scale farm of 50-100, covering a square mile or so.

So, I wonder what the initial construction costs are for nuclear. I know that it can amortized over a VERY long time, and I actually love nuclear energy, but if the cost is too very much higher than cutting-edge coal production (complete with CO2 sequestration), I'd be hesitant to dump too many bucks into it. Nuclear freaks people out. It might be a nightmare to try to construct many more in the USA - protests, redesigns, years-long authorization procedures, etc. It's a shame.

For the cost of a nuclear plant, you might be able to build 5 times the capacity through wind, perhaps making up for the unreliability of the generation.

(If we could just store it somewhere - recently read about a guy proposing kinetic storage by pumping water into hydroelectric reservoirs.)

[rn79870]

I would agree that wind power is about as safe as it comes, however, there is a down side.

If you drive through the Banning - Beaumont pass (I-10 from SoCal to AZ) you'll pass a ton of the windmills on both sides of the road. The picture it presents is both a pretty one and a mess at the same time. My complaint would be that it takes so much land to make a project usable. But then, I'm not an engineer...

[AZhitman]

I'm a "Nuclear Plant Kid", so this is a topic very near and dear to me.

Dad built nuclear power plants (worked for Bechtel) and worked on some of the biggest and best in the US: Wolf Creek, White Horse Beach, Grand Gulf, Palo Verde...

A little education goes a LONG way, and there really are NO unaddressed "down sides" to nuke power... People who even THINK of TMI and Chernobyl ignore the reality and the true lack of risk they represent (no NRC in Russia).

We waste more landfill space on disposable diapers than we do housing nuclear waste, and it could be argued that the prior is significantly more detrimental to the envronment than the latter...

Also, perhaps Marenta can comment on the safety of reactors - They're designed to withstand a direct hit from an incredibly large weapon (such as a cruise missile), and the weapon will create the collateral damage - not the radioactive contents of the reactor.

[mtcookson]

Wolf Creek

That's awesome. I actually live maybe an hour and a half from there and have driven by it quite a few times, I always like looking at that thing but I need to drive up and see it sometime as its hard to look at going 70 mph down the highway.

[Marenta]

So, I wonder what the initial construction costs are for nuclear. I know that it can amortized over a VERY long time, and I actually love nuclear energy, but if the cost is too very much higher than cutting-edge coal production (complete with CO2 sequestration), I'd be hesitant to dump too many bucks into it. Nuclear freaks people out. It might be a nightmare to try to construct many more in the USA - protests, redesigns, years-long authorization procedures, etc. It's a shame.

For the cost of a nuclear plant, you might be able to build 5 times the capacity through wind, perhaps making up for the unreliability of the generation.

(If we could just store it somewhere - recently read about a guy proposing kinetic storage by pumping water into hydroelectric reservoirs.)

Okay.. well.. this is going to freak you out.. a commercial nuclear power plant will cost from 1 to 20 billion dollars to build.

Now, keep in mind, this can factor in a GREAT number of things. Location, size, type, and fuel.

Reactors can essentially keep on running forever. The fuel can run between 10 to 15 years, and then you replace it with unspent fuel. You can send the spent fuel to a research facility or a disposal facility, whichever. If it gets sent to a research facility, it can actually be turned back into fissile material again and be used quite probably 3 or 4 times over. We do have a number of Breeder reactors, but the problem with Pu is that it's just crap for sustaining power for energy, although we do have a few labs that have experimental reactors that can recreate Uranium, however, it's the unstable fast U238 and heavy U239, not the steady U237 that we generally tend to want for the reactors. When U breaks down, it can break down into a number of things, but it will most probably do so as Xe and Kr which are gases, which will rapidly Beta decay into Cs and Rb which are solids, which means that we could try to do fusion.. but, we all know that fusion at our level is a fruitless endeavor. So, Uranium exists naturally in all substances, same with Krypton and Plutonium and Xenon and Potassium and Iodine and Radon, which are our main culprits for ionizing radiation from surrounding materials. But, the largest stores of Uranium have been found in the Kentucky/Tennessee Valley areas and in the Australia flats. Mining and purification of Uranium is a very intricate and costly process, but yielding it is a very lucrative business endeavor.

All Nuclear Power plants must have a water source, there must be a heat sink. All power plants, like coal which actually burn the coal, must use a heat sink. The problem with coal, is that the emissions are extremely toxic. And, the problem with putting the emissions underground is that we are not yet sure if they are actually contaminating anything in the ground yet either. The subterfuge method is very costly, and it reduces the output of coal to a fraction of what the plant should be. The filters and vents that the emissions must go through in order to be scrubbed before going underground reduce the output so drastically, that I know Duke Energy Corporation is considering revising the plant they have in Vigo County, IN. Coal Gasification hasn't been used long enough to determine the effects on the environment, we have yet to see what it will do, though.

The type is also a big factor. You can build a PWR or BWR, Westinghouse and GE (these are the big two), 500, 1000, 1500. To date, the largest reactor is a 1600 MWe reactor being built in Finland between a french and german company. Let me give you a reference point.. I can't exactly tell you how big my reactor was.. but.. let's just say it was around.. 0.5 x 1000.. or aroundish that number, kinda close, not exactly, MWe. My ship has 2 reactors.. now, these reactors stand 3 stories tall.. they can fit a car inside the vessel, comfortably. It would take approximately 15 to 20 people touching fingertip to fingertip to go around the entire vessel. You could sit inside the piping. Everything for this stuff, is just that big. So, imagine what something 3 times the size would be like? Say, Chernobyl? The reactor (RX for short) vessel head (by the way, the specifications for sealing a vessel head onto a RX are 4,000,000 ftlbs torque per closure bolt minimum, up to 10,000,000; that's for the DoE standards, there are usually anywhere from 30 to 150 closures on a RX vessel head, do the math, that's a lot of pressure to pop off) weighs around 1000 tons and she's on a ledge. They left the sarcophagus open to the air to allow for heat to dissipate for the radioactive decay, well, if the vessel head ever falls, that's a lot of fallout that's going to get re-released into the atmosphere again. Stupid stupid stupid.

The last thing really is the cost of running it over time. Once it's built, it has minimal costs to keep it running. It's virtually self-sustaining. The reason, I suppose, that people are so afraid of Nuclear Power, is that they're just uniformed. I have actually been to Yucca Mountain (a privileged life I lead as a child, yes) and to the facilities at INL and Goose Creek, SC. I just wish that people could see how well the material is actually kept. The facilities are maintained so well. Hell, when I needed a cat nap, I would go lock myself into the RAM storage area onboard ship and take a nap, RAM is so comfortable. Anyway, the point is, 99% of it isn't even radioactive, it's just paper that "might" have been in contact with something that "could" have contaminants in it. Most of the fuel, though, is kept so very tightly, it'll just decay away and become part of the earth's composition again like it was before.

[96Qowner]

My best friend from high school runs the accelerator at Stanford. And I was a physics major - ain' afraid of nuclear. People are just ignorant.

For jollies, you should check out the operating coal gasification plant in Beulah, ND - been running for a couple decades and they pump the CO2 into oil wells to increase production. Pretty cool. We have lots n lots n lots of coal in the USA.

http://www.dakotagas.com/

http://www.basinelectric.com/E....html

But, yeah, I have no objections to building more nuclear, provided it can be cost efficient. Several billion seems kinda steep.

[Marenta]

My best friend from high school runs the accelerator at Stanford. And I was a physics major - ain' afraid of nuclear. People are just ignorant.

For jollies, you should check out the operating coal gasification plant in Beulah, ND - been running for a couple decades and they pump the CO2 into oil wells to increase production. Pretty cool. We have lots n lots n lots of coal in the USA.

http://www.dakotagas.com/

http://www.basinelectric.com/E....html

But, yeah, I have no objections to building more nuclear, provided it can be cost efficient. Several billion seems kinda steep.

Okay.. here's how to make it seem not so steep..

It costs around $54/kWe for a Coal plant to build... it costs around $59/kWe for a Nuclear plant.

The largest Coal plant I know of is Gibson Station (which is right next to where I grew up) IN which is 3145 MWe.. almost twice over of the largest nuclear power plant in the world. Imagine how much that thing cost to build.

Too bad we haven't yet really discovered a great way to harness geothermal. If we could just get that going, then we'd be set.

[rn79870]

Marenta...Could you give some input on the validity of Obama's energy plan with respect to Nuclear energy. I'll post it here for all to see..

Safe and Secure Nuclear Energy: Nuclear power represents more than 70 percent of our noncarbon generated electricity. It is unlikely that we can meet our aggressive climate goals if we eliminate nuclear power from the table. However, there is no future for expanded nuclear without first addressing four key issues: public right-to-know, security of nuclear fuel and waste, waste storage, and proliferation. Barack Obama introduced legislation in the U.S. Senate to establish guidelines for tracking, controlling and accounting for spent fuel at nuclear power plants. To prevent international nuclear material from falling into terrorlst hands abroad, Obama worked closely with Sen. d!ck Lugar (R – IN) to strengthen international efforts to identify and stop the smuggling of weapons of mass destruction. As president, Obama will make safeguarding nuclear material both abroad and in the U.S. a top anti-terrorism priority.

Obama will also lead federal efforts to look for a safe, long-term disposal solution based on objective, scientific analysis. In the meantime, Obama will develop requirements to ensure that the waste stored at current reactor sites is contained using the most advanced dry-cask storagetechnology available. Barack Obama believes that Yucca Mountain is not an option. Our government has spent billions of dollars on Yucca Mountain, and yet there are still significant questions about whether nuclear waste can be safely stored there.

Of course, that is from Obama's camp so it has an Obama spin. I'm not asking for an endorcment of anything more than his plan. Is he on the right track with respect to nuclear issues?

[Marenta]

Okay, with regards to Yucca Mountain, it's built to withstand a blast like Norad is. The storage there supposed to be top notch, but they won't let people talk about the specs, and it's understandable. With as much money as the government has spent, it's no wonder why they don't want to let any of the information out because obviously we don't want any other country to steal our ideas for keeping nuclear materials safe.

That was a rant. I don't think they should keep the specs private. But, they have most of the spent fuel in permanent areas right now that are pretty damned good containment, where you will see minimal increases in background radiation on a RADIAC. (See one of my previous posts about spent fuel.)

About tracking of fissile material, okay, yeah, that's an issue, kinda. Not really. Maybe. The spent fuel, is actually kept guard by DoE, DoD, US Marshall, Bettis, Bechtel, Naval Reactors, NRC, and the actual site rad con sends their own RadCon out to go with it. So, when this stuff gets loaded onto a train, all these men/women are carrying loaded weapons and have permission to fire at anybody that comes near the material. Actually, in the Navy, there are 2 billets for ELTs (my job) that can be filled when you are E-7 or higher as that job. Riding a train, carrying a gun, escorting spent fuel and other highly radioactive material. It's a dream job, we all want it. But, since so many bombs were made with Uranium and Plutonium, and they're now being disassembled, you can actually get the fissile material from the bombs being disassembled and make it into a reactor. But, here's the catch, you gotta go through the UN to do it, kinda makes it a bit difficult, but, it gets you a lot of material really quickly and really cheaply.

And, as for a right to know, every year each nuclear power plant (navy included) must submit a Nuclear Regulatory Report. It is a culmination of every single piece of data that is important to the plant. How many SCRAMS were done, how many were on purpose, how many were not on purpose. How many casualties were there. How many discharges were performed, how much was discharged, were there any inadvertent discharges. How many chemical additives were added, how many times, where were they added, how many out of spec chemistry situations did we have, what did we do to fix them, how bad were they, what were they from. How much RAM did we produce, where it is all now. This is all public information, and you can view it all on a plant-by-plant basis. Usually it is released in January-February and it should be on the plant's website or the main energy website.

And, as far as internationally goes, only Japan has as strict of Nuclear regulations as we do. And, even the commercial plants don't run as strict as the Navy does. My plants have 3 back ups for a fail safe. So, if the fail safe doesn't work, it has 3 different back ups to ensure that it WILL work. Europe's Nuclear power programs are pretty good, but they're pretty skittish, because they're so close to Ukraine, I wouldn't blame them, either. Germany has a lot of Nuclear Power plants, but as soon as the fuel is all spent, they're shutting them all down. They're just scared, they don't like it, and I can't blame them.

The Russians had some bad operating procedures, they had some VERY VERY VERY VERY bad design flaws. So, it was bound to happen.

[AZhitman]

My "quickie read", Bob, leads me to believe that BO is spot-on for the first part...

My only issue with his "plan" is that he makes it sound as if all those safeguards and criteria are not already in place (they are) and that he's introducing them as novel requirements (he's not).

But I can overlook that if he can get us to building more reactors. Everywhere. Soon.

[skylndrftr]

Marenta a couple questions

1) Isn't Yucca mountain a part of the old DOE nuclear testing range? Its already where we tested them whats it matter what we put downstairs?

2) My understanding with Chernobyl was that yes it was partially design flaws, but weren't they using it on weekends to make plutonium?

Japan and France are hugely Nuclear, its frankly pathetic we're not. Yes things like wind or solar are good options but the technology isnt there yet.

[Marenta]

But I can overlook that if he can get us to building more reactors. Everywhere. Soon.

In case you didn't know, AZ, there's already 23 new reactor plants being phased in.. 9 of which are in the process of being built or breaking ground now.

1) Isn't Yucca mountain a part of the old DOE nuclear testing range? Its already where we tested them whats it matter what we put downstairs?

In short, yes. It's already exposed, kind of. By fallout. It's actually not the direct testing range of bombs (Trinity site, Bikini Atoll [Spongebob Squarepants anybody?]) but there were a few testing facilities there, nothing like direct exposure to blasting, though. The problem that they're wondering about is exposure to wildlife and other things like people who drive by Yucca, if their exposure is going to exceed 15 mrem. Chances are, it's not even going to exceed 0.

2) My understanding with Chernobyl was that yes it was partially design flaws, but weren't they using it on weekends to make plutonium?

Oye.. to my knowledge, they weren't using the Chernobyl plants as breeder reactors. They're not designed that way. You theoretically CAN supply power to something with a breeder reactor, it's just damned near IMPOSSIBLE to do it in the amount that those reactors were doing it in. A breeder reactor is designed to work off of fast fission, and is therefore not good for power generation. Now, what they were doing in the basement of the facilities, I can't really say for sure, who knows?I will expound on the design flaws at work, they are numerous, as well as the personnel casualties. And, while you can wiki and google Chernobyl all day long; you might be able to put together the whole story and all the design flaws that made the RX bad, but I'll break it down since I get to read the DoD/DoE report about it, makes it nice.

[Marenta]

2) My understanding with Chernobyl was that yes it was partially design flaws, but weren't they using it on weekends to make plutonium?

*Note: I am going to be using a lot of terminology and acronyms in this post, please forgive me.*

Alright, let me go over the situation briefly before I get into the design flaws and human errors part. Basically, they were doing testing to see how long they could keep the generators going to supply power if the RX malfunctioned or shut down. Now, keep in mind, the RX is still at power in this scenario, but to simulate that it was S/D they removed most of the safety functions associated with the RX; like the SCRAM function, or the Fill function.When these safeguards are removed, they must be manually over-ridden and performed. That means, that if you turn the features back on, they will not work, even if the condition exists for them to work. So, you will have to put it in "Cutout/Manual/Over-ride" (any of these terms) and then physically go perform the function they are supposed to do because when they are removed, or shut down they are inoperable, so you can't operate the valve, or shut the switch. So, that part of the feature allows operators to physically operate the component. Anyway... on with the scenario.They were supposed to reduce the power down to a minimal amount during the day, but the power company complained that they needed the power, so it was postponed. The problem is that reactors build up Xe, which is a poison and will inhibit power. They had lowered Power to 50% and then had waited another 12 hours to lower power again below what it should have been. However, Xe at this time was on the down slope of peaking, so they had to take manual control of the control rods and raise RX power to commence the testing. So, they did not really know what RX power should be, the guide they were using was not documented very well, and he was an inexpirienced RX Operator.

So, that's basically the scenario. Here's the design flaws and the operator errors:

No Loadable poisons: The RX did not have pre-loaded poisons to help with an uneven flux distribution.Slow Control Rod movement: The Control Rods were relatively slow in moving, most US commercial plants are gravity/spring loaded assemblies.Positive Temperature Coefficient of Reactivity: If you add water, hot or cold (cold will be bad with positive or negative eek!) it will had reactivity, RX will go supercritical.Flow channels were small: the fuel plates were very large and the flow channels were very small, leading to many more steam voids.The Control Rod design: The graphite material was not strong enough to withstand the super hot temperatures or pressures, and it caught on fire, ejecting themselves catching numerous other things on fire.Control rod design 2: the control rods weren't designed to shut down the RX even if it had gone Super critical. The design criteria were to assume operator action in all events.Flow controlled steam: The steam demand turbines actually control flow into the core, so as the steam to the turbines lesses, the flow to the core lessens, no more cooling, more neutrons than the control rods could cover, run away reaction.

removing protective features: removing all the protective features is bad.turning over the watch: when you turn over the watch and fail to give a proper turn over of what's going onimproper log taking: not adquately documenting the occurance of what's happeningfailure to take action: Leonid Toptunov saw the irregularities in power and wanted to SCRAM the reactor, but second guessed himself and decided against itnot holding a brief: You never do anything without a brief, to ensure that everybody knows their partignoring indications: If something seems wrong, it probably is wrong, if all your indications are telling you something isn't right, it probably isn'tincreasing coolant flow: this is probably their worst mistake, since they have a positive temperature coefficient of reactivity, it only made their problem 15 times worse

So, I can list probably 30 more things for each design and human that went wrong, but there's no need. It doesn't change the fact that it happened. We can only learn from it. America did the same thing, it's only thanks to our lucky stars that ours was contained.

[rn79870]

I know that the powerplants on a CVN and a SSN are highly classified, and maybe I'm out of line here, but is there really that much more technology on one of them than in a standard nuke power plant? Don't they both create power by creating steam? (feel free to if I'm asking you to go where you're not suppose to go)

[Marenta]

I know that the powerplants on a CVN and a SSN are highly classified, and maybe I'm out of line here, but is there really that much more technology on one of them than in a standard nuke power plant? Don't they both create power by creating steam? (feel free to if I'm asking you to go where you're not suppose to go)

Naw, the only thing that's classified about the Navy Nuclear program is the numbers.. I can't tell you how many control rods we have. I can't tell you the operating bands for temperature or pressure or power or flow or any of that. I can tell you the basic design, how it works, how it's set up, what kind of systems the Navy uses, and those kind of things.

But, as far as the Navy goes, the Navy falls outside of the DoE jurisdiction because it keeps so much more restrictive controls over the program than the DoE does over the commercial plants. So, when the NRC does a walk through of a commercial plant, and the critique them they will hit them on a few things and probably give them an above average for a plant that is in fair condition. Where when Naval Reactors walks through our plant, we'll be lucky if we get a below average for a fair condition. They're purposely ruthless, just so we don't have to deal with the extra burden of the civilians.

Inside the plant, it's all like the submarine movies you've seen. It's all mechanical, and gray and black and loud. But, when you walk into EOS (Enclosed Operating Space, where we actually operate the entire reactor plant remotely) it's like you're standing on the bridge of the USS Enterprise. It's all digital, touch screen, bar graphs, meters, gages, numbers.. space age, just like you're in a sci-fi movie.

[AZhitman]

Fascinating.

This is better than fighting over candidates for sure!

[skylndrftr]

yeah definitely...to bad nuclear cars never caught on.

Marenta, there was recently some news story about one of the SSN's having a leak...whats that all about. BTW, I work with a couple navy nukes and there attention to detail is a beyond amazing. Good luck once you get out, companies LOVE you guys because of the mentality.

[Marenta]

Well, nuclear cars would be a disaster. You can't make nuclear cars safe. What would happen if you wrecked? Chernobyl again. No thank you. Same thing the army was thinking about doing with nuclear powered tanks and planes, stupid idea.

There's always "stories" about the Navy ships. I can confirm a few stories about what has happened nuclear wise, in the Navy. There has never been a major leak. There have been minor leaks, isoloable leaks.

There was the sub that ran into the shelf near Guam because they were using the wrong charts, that caused a minor leak.

There was a sub that had gotten it's entire crew fired because they were improperly documenting maintenance and chemistry. (When I say entire crew, I mean, the entire RX crew.)

There was a ship that had blown IX resin all over it's RX compartment, making it a high rad area.

There was a ship that knocked off a drain valve to the fill system and drained an entire fill header into the engine room.

All these are contained incidents, and no personnel were injured. RX personnel are trained to sacrifice ourselves to save the ship and other personnel in case of emergency. (In fact, my job was to go to the plant and monitor rad levels until I died, yay for being an E-6!) If the ship gets taken over, we're supposed to lock the plant up and burn it, destroy the plant by breaking gauges and meters, driving the RX offline permanently by adding PTB, and pretty much anything we can do to ensure that the people won't be able to get the information we have.. so, we use the JP5 in the plants to burn all the books. We also are supposed to sink with the ship. Kinda makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, thinking about it. :P

[Edit: I realized that in this post, I probably shouldn't have told everybody about what we're supposed to do incase we get caught. But, whatever. ]
Modified by Marenta at 12:40 PM 8/6/2008

[skylndrftr]

thats kinda freaky...

BTW is anybody else getting radiation detector ads whenever they view this thread? I like it!

[96Qowner]

Okay.. here's how to make it seem not so steep..

It costs around $54/kWe for a Coal plant to build... it costs around $59/kWe for a Nuclear plant.

Too bad we haven't yet really discovered a great way to harness geothermal. If we could just get that going, then we'd be set.

A 1.5 MWe wind tower costs about $2 million. You get some economies of scale when you combine them into wind farms - substations, transmission lines, etc. Most are sited in areas with 25-30% wind per day. So that's roughly $5/MWe? Still have that storage problem, but sheesh, one-tenth the cost?

But our big problem with energy isn't really in electrical production. We're short on crude oil, and very very few electrical plants still run on oil - single digit percentages. It's unlikely that we'll ever convert long-haul vehicles to electric, so the semis, trains, boats, barges, etc, will continue to need diesel. Our economy can't survive in its present state with less shipping.

Electricity looks easy to me, whether it's nuclear, coal, or wind. Diesel is the problem, hence the interest in coal gasification, if we're gonna spend a ton of money.

(and I agree with Greg - great thread - keep it coming)

[Marenta]

SE International, Inc.

There are 7 areas of measuring radiation.. Only 4 are used.. 3 are actually on a graph called the Gas Amplification Curves.

You have Ionization, Proportional, and Geiger-Muller regions of the Gas Amplification Curves.. and then you have Scintillation detectors.

Then are each used for different types of radiation detection and are used for different applications. One of my jobs on board the ship was the calibration, maintenance, and tracking of all of the RADIACs. Some of the RADIACs have sources of them and are considered RAM.

[Marenta]

By the way, I would also like to throw out there that this can be a thread about other energy production/conservation ideas and goals, not just nuclear power. I don't want it all to be just one topic, makes it too bland.

[skylndrftr]

, coal, or wind. Diesel is the problem,

(and I agree with Greg - great thread - keep it coming)

I agree

I have always thought trucks would be a much better use of hbrid technology. They don't need big motors at highway speeds (at least not AS big) and ultracaps or batteries would be great for getting them up to speed and storing energy using regenerative braking. The weight of the systems is also much less of an issue.

Also (not that this will happen but...) I think they would be a great place to use the laser/radar cruise controls. they are sold right now as a safety/comfort feature but imagine letting truckers run 10-20 feet nose off the rear end of the person in front...it would save sooooo much diesel. Drafting semi's is a scary thought though!

[Marenta]

I can't even imagine how much of a scary thought that is. After being around semi trucks my entire life, I don't even want to imagine what would happen if the vehicle in front was a jack *** and brake checked 'em, or the cruise control failed.. (Gee, like nothing fails in vehicles now a days.)

The problem with energy conservation all around, is that we're all preaching about how much we need to conserve energy, but, what are we really doing to actually conserve?

I know when I leave the house, I turn off the A/C and open the windows. When I'm home, I set the wall unit that I have in my room to 73 and low. My computer never stays on. I think the only thing that stays on all the time is my modem and router, and my fluorescent light above my kitchen sink, that's it. I think there might be a few other misc. items around the house such as a microwave oven clock or something.. but, if that's going to blow up the world, then I'll just trip the main breaker of my house every time I leave, then.

[AZhitman]

I have always thought trucks would be a much better use of hbrid technology.

Actually, I think flywheel technology is an even better idea... Not much out there about it, because the damn attorneys and beancounters have put the kibosh on it... but it's intriguing and COULD work.

[skylndrftr]

I can't even imagine how much of a scary thought that is. After being around semi trucks my entire life, I don't even want to imagine what would happen if the vehicle in front was a jack *** and brake checked 'em, or the cruise control failed.. (Gee, like nothing fails in vehicles now a days.)

Definitely a valid concern, but consider the safety level of airplanes. If we expect the safety in trucking to be like that, then we will get it.

I know when I leave the house, I turn off the A/C and open the windows. When I'm home, I set the wall unit that I have in my room to 73 and low. My computer never stays on. I think the only thing that stays on all the time is my modem and router, and my fluorescent light above my kitchen sink, that's it. I think there might be a few other misc. items around the house such as a microwave oven clock or something.. but, if that's going to blow up the world, then I'll just trip the main breaker of my house every time I leave, then.

so basically your saying if you were a presidential candidate I could make fun of you?

[Marenta]

If I were a presidential candidate.. I'm wondering how in the hell I got into politics instead of staying in science like a good little girl.

And, yes. You do make a very good point about the airplanes. While it is true that we can't expect it to fail, but we have to believe that it will. Keep in mind, the program I am in goes around thinking that at any time something will fail. Or, that we will lose a protective feature and we will be at a reduced capability for operating. We make the assumption that something will always fail that way we always have that margin to safety.

If we don't leave that margin to safety, then it's like letting a bunch of really pissed of women have free kicks to the junk; because we refuse to not stand there with our legs wide open, kinda thing, you know?

Most semis are lucky to get 6 miles to the gallon, at best.. I've seen some at 7. Average is 4 to 5, when Diesel is, in most cases, way higher than gasoline, of course truck drivers are going to be pissed. Because, the average truck driver actually pays out of his pocket for the diesel, and turns out the amount of money being paid for the loads, hasn't gone up one iota. If you're a company driver and you're starting, it's .22 to .31, if you've got seniority it's .47 up to .56. If you're an owner operator, it's .97 up to 4.00 per mile. Now, if you drive for the company, you get taxed and blah blah blah, but the company usually pays for tolls and fees and diesel and maintenance and stuff like that. If you're an owner operator, you have to pay for everything out of your pocket and then pay for whatever fees you need to keep leasing onto whatever company you're using to haul their loads. So, you end up making about .15 to .30 more per mile than the company drivers, but if you don't do your taxes right, Uncle Sam will rip you to shreds.

It's a sad sad world. I just wish that we could come up with something quickly, but for as smart as we claim we are, we just keep falling short on this one.