[inky blacks]

Hope it works! - IB

http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fS...icleId=2402742


INTERNATIONAL


China plans revolutionary pebble-bed reactor

February 8, 2005


Beijing - China plans to develop a revolutionary, "pebble-bed" nuclear reactor which would be both meltdown- and proliferation-proof, and come on stream in five years time, the Financial Times reported Tuesday.


A Chinese energy consortium has chosen the city of Weihai in northeastern Shandong province to build the 195-megawatt gas-cooled power plant, the newspaper said, citing an unnamed official representing the consortium.


The plant would be the first radically new reactor design for decades, putting China at the forefront in nuclear energy research that offers a "meltdown-proof" alternative to conventional nuclear power stations, it said.


"Pebble bed" reactors are fuelled by thousands of small graphite balls with minute uranium cores which provide the fuel for the nuclear reaction.


The consortium includes electricity producer Huaneng Power International, Beijing's Tsinghua University and China Nuclear Engineering and Construction, the Financial Times said.



No one from the companies was available for comment Tuesday.


Supporters say the technology is safer in terms of nuclear proliferation due to the expense and difficulty of processing the spent fuel from the graphite balls, the report said.


Advocates of pebble bed reactors also argue they offer cheaper, safer and easily expandable nuclear power stations.


This appeals to China, which is struggling to meet huge growth in energy demand while avoiding environmental disaster.


"Pebble bed" technology was pioneered in Germany, which shut down its last prototype reactor in 1989, while South Africa's project for such a reactor remains in doubt, the newspaper said. - AFP

 

[noah katz]

Interesting.


What would be good is if we could put our nuclear know-how into developing this, and succeed before them, so we could sell them something for a change.

 

[inky blacks]

I agree Noah, but there is so much hysteria in the USA about nuclear power I think there is no chance of that. I have seen posts here by people in the nuclear industry and I would like to hear what they think about this technology. I know this is off topic, but it is a very interesting development. If you look at the numbers, without nuclear power it is difficult to see how humanity is going to survive on this planet very long. Fusion would be nice, but it may never be practical. Safe and affordable fission might sell in the USA if the Chinese first showed it worked. I think the question is will this design really produce enough energy to make it worthwhile. Past tests in other countries did not produce the amount of usable power they had hoped for. The Chinese must have something new up their sleeves. I hope they are can do it.


IB

 

[Mac The Knife]

Quote:

Originally posted by inky blacks Hope it works! - IB http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fS...icleId=2402742 ... the 195-megawatt gas-cooled power plant,...

195 MW


Why even bother. That's gotta be the smallest output of any nuke plant that I've ever heard of. Hell, each of the three reactors at Palo Verde put out over 1GW apiece.

 

[inky blacks]

I think the idea is to have many small and safe power plants that cannot melt down and negate the need for long power lines while reducing the level of fear and danger. For example, each small city might have its own plant. The nuclear plants would be small enough so that one could build the main parts on an assembly line and thus reduce cost. How much would a Honda Accord cost if they were built by hand, one at a time?


IB

 

[Frank]

I held some of these pebbles in my hand at my brother in laws house in Germany. He was one of the designers of this reactor back in the 70s.

He's still pissed at the Green party for killing nuclear power in Germany.


Frank


No! They were not radioactive at the time.

 

[Brandon B]

If you read some more articles on the topic, they tried to get this going in the U.S. industry and pretty much got stonewalled. So they took it somewhere where there was interest (and money).


It is not a Chinese originated endeavor.


BB

 

[mcfoo]

The Chinese are probably putting this out (start of Kyoto protocols) to hide the fact that they will be building many, many coal fired power plants over the next decades that will be spewing multi-tons of greenhouse gasses.

 

[Mitch Sink]

Quote:

Originally posted by inky blacks If you look at the numbers, without nuclear power it is difficult to see how humanity is going to survive on this planet very long. IB

Hi,

http://www.patagonia.com/enviro/repo...?seepromo=home


Some excerpts:

Denis Hayes was director of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory during the Carter Administration, and advised the Kerry campaign on energy issues. A lawyer and former professor of engineering at Stanford University, he is a fellow of the American Solar Energy Society.


The sunlight that fell on roads in the United States last year contained roughly as much energy as in all the fossil fuel consumed last year in the world.


In 1980 the Carter administration produced A New Prosperity, iii

a collaborative effort by several national laboratories and leading universities. In elaborate detail, this volume described technologies and policies that would dramatically increase America’s overall energy efficiency and permit the nation to obtain 28 percent of its total energy needs from renewable sources by 2000.


Best Wishes,


Mitch

 

[inky blacks]

The sun does not shine at night and the wind only blows strongly in certain areas and even then not all the time. Batteries are expensive and need replacement over time. Solar and wind are inherently expensive and troublesome. The demand for energy will only increase and aside from fossil fuels, nuclear is the only viable alternative. Solar and wind might be 10% of a solution, but not much more. Simple energy conservation with better insulated houses is practical as is mandated better gas millage for cars and trucks. But a earth without nuclear is going to be a cold, dark, and poor place.


Radioactivity is not evil, and without it there would be no plate techtonics, no carbon cycle, and no human life on earth at all.


IB

 

[Brandon B]

You left out how hard it is to drive down a road covered with solar panels. Or are we taking additional land space for that?


That said, there are materials advances that will make solar much more viable as ONE of the energy sources we will use as we phase out fossil fuel use over the next 100 years. Other than that, I'm on the same page as you, inky.


BB

 

[MrWigggles]

Quote:

Originally posted by mcfoo The Chinese are probably putting this out (start of Kyoto protocols) to hide the fact that they will be building many, many coal fired power plants over the next decades that will be spewing multi-tons of greenhouse gasses.

There is a definite chance that that is partially true.


Some things to keep in mind:


1. It is important to note that China and India are neither obligated to meet Kyoto reduction levels since both are considered developing countries and thus off the hook. This is one of the explicit reasons USA didn't get behind the accords (let's keep the speculation on implicit reasons to minimum please).


2. Their energy consumption is the worlds energy consumption. They don't spend Gigawatts of energy for their personal use but to make products that world buys from them. Chinese are relatively energy efficient because energy is relatively very expensive there. They have pioneered the use of compact flourescent lamps for lighting and use man power wherever possible (lets keep the man vs. machine conjecture to minimum as well please)


3. 198 MegaWatts is about the amount of power from 1,000 automobiles (running at full power). It ain't much, but if the reactor is small enough and safe enough then so be it. Just put them everywhere as Inky points out.


The anti-proliferation argument is the best one I know of, however the quote:


"Supporters say the technology is safer in terms of nuclear proliferation due to the expense and difficulty of processing the spent fuel from the graphite balls, the report said."


still concerns me. If it takes 5 of these mini-nukes to make the power of 1 full-size nukes, then we are going to have a lot of reactors floating around and a lot of graphite balls to keep track of.


If in the future, these nukes become popular and then we lose track of the graphite balls and then 20 years from now someone finds an easy way to process the spent fuel, we will have a serious problem. If I am being overly pessimistic, I sure hope so.


Despite the clever name, this topic is way off topic for projectors but is extremely important. With the current tripple redundant safety measures that the NRC requires I am not concerned about meltdowns but proliferation is extremely important to control IMO.


Has anyone bothered to ask Iran why in the world that a country that is sitting on such a huge oil reserve would need to develope nuclear power? I think the answer is obvious; they want the enriched uranium and the spent fuel to create all sorts of nuclear weapons.


If you want a good idea of what a dirty bomb can do, watch the movie "Dirty War". In the movie, they demonstrate a dirty bomb attack in London. The human losses are not all that staggering (10,000 or so) but a huge portion of London becomes uninhabitable for 30 years. If terrorist want to screw up the economy of "The West" while killing as few people as possible, a dirty bomb makes a lot of "sense".


-Mr. Wigggles

 

[MrWigggles]

Quote:

Originally posted by Brandon B You left out how hard it is to drive down a road covered with solar panels. Or are we taking additional land space for that? That said, there are materials advances that will make solar much more viable as ONE of the energy sources we will use as we phase out fossil fuel use over the next 100 years. Other than that, I'm on the same page as you, inky. BB

Inky and Brandon,


We have a ways to go in the solar panel world, but some very cool discoveries/advancements have occurred to make solar panels more of a reality:


1. The IEEE has developed a new standard that allows a home owner or comercial property owner to use a relatively inexpensive DC/AC inverter in conjunction with their solar panels such the user would become the supplier and put power back on the grid. In some cases, the power meter would run backwards!! But in most cases the power from the panels on your home would be enough to run your house hold energy consumption in the day time (primarilly cooling costs). This technology is available now and your power company has to permit you to install it if you want to by law.


2. The panels are starting to get very efficient. technologies that do 50% efficiency are now available with panels that are up to 80% efficient coming in the near future. The biggest problem at this point is supply. Germany subsidizes the use of solar panels so the panels are in very short supply at the moment. The other issue is cosmetics. Not everyone wants solar panels on their roofs or has a southern facing roof line to make solar panels viable.


3. Obviously at night the sun doesn't shine but it is getting to the point where energy consumption at night is very low (except heating for some areas of the US). The term "light bill" will be a complete misnomer in ten years. Our lights won't consume hardly any energy. Compact flourescents have already made a start in this direction. LED's will finish the job. Other household electronic devices should also fallow suit.


-Mr. Wigggles

 

[mcfoo]

Ways to go, indeed. My house is all electric, no fireplace. My meter runs in one direction only and very fast. And all night.


Maybe we'll have to get rid of our basement home theaters so we can install storage batteries, but probably not in Ohio. BTW I bought a "100 watt" flourescent light. It's almost too dim to read by.

 

[MrWigggles]

Quote:

Originally posted by mcfoo Ways to go, indeed. My house is all electric, no fireplace. My meter runs in one direction only and very fast. And all night. Maybe we'll have to get rid of our basement home theaters so we can install storage batteries, but probably not in Ohio. BTW I bought a "100 watt" flourescent light. It's almost too dim to read by.

Your "100 Watt" flourescent bulb only consumes about 20 Watts. The 100 Watts is an incadescent equivalent rating. I would take it back if you can't read by it. Usually I find them to be very concervative in their ratings. 20 Watt CFL's usually look brighter than 100 Watt incadescent.


The whole point of the IEEE design is such that you don't need storage batteries. You put power on the grid during the day and then take it off during the night. Ideally your meter runs backwards by as much during the day as it does forwards at night.


No batteries, no electric bill.


-Mr. Wigggles

 

[MrWigggles]

Andrikos,


The Audubon Society discourages wind power because the turbines kill tons of birds.


-Mr. Wigggles

 

[rogo]

Distributed generation -- whether nuclear-fission-based or not -- is the future.


And that will include conventional solar, thin-film solar, wind, natural-gas fuel cells, hydrogen fuel cells, and a whole host of other technologies in development.


We could easily dramatically alter our energy generation / consumption profile in a decade or so to slice the amount of emissions, improve redundancy by an order of magnitude, make the system less vulnerable to terrorism, become an exporter of clean energy technology, and move dramatically toward energy independence. We just have to want it.

 

[inky blacks]

Quote:

Originally posted by MrWigggles Andrikos, The Audubon Society discourages wind power because the turbines kill tons of birds. -Mr. Wigggles

You know I've wondered about that. Are you serious or just joking? Do you have a link to back up that comment?


BTW The problem I see with compact fluorescents is that such a high proportion of them leak and fail that they are not worth buying, at least the affordable brands.


IB

 

[kelliot]

Quote:

Originally posted by Andrikos What Wigggles said. In addition buy the 6500K bulb, the light is very day-like and easy on the eyes. I hate the yellow incandescent light. Fascinating thread, very interesting points of view. I'm a huge proponent of solar (and wind to a lesser degree) but if you don't live in a VERY sunny area, you'll never make up the cost of the panels in the 30 year lifetime of the panel. Arizona is the perfect place to do this and you don't even see passive solar heaters, never mind active solar panels. Only a handful of progressive people are using them because they can afford them... $5/W is just too expensive for massive use. It'll remain a niche till the costs are a 10th or a 100th to the present. A bit unlikely in the foreseeable future.

IMO, when energy costs go up and cost of solar comes down to the point where the consumer can recover the cost in 3-5 years, solar will take off. Until then its going to be a niche.

 

[TheFerret]

I'm still waiting on the eagerly anticipated Mr. Fusion.