True, indeed, yet, when a windmill or pv panel fails or gets wrecked it can be replaced in days especially if there is modular design behind it. Solar and wind are nearly useless without a decent energy storage unit behind it. Your example of fission was the PWR pressurized water reactor, but there was also the Boiling Water Reactor, and a ton of reactor designs that never made it out of the lab, like spectral shift reactors, dumbo reactors, molten salt reactors, gas cooled, etc. I am not optimistic on all this, because of costs to develop, development time, lead time, politics, and so forth. As of now its all gas turbines till we get a cheap way of storing abundant solar. Maybe.
-----Original Message----- From: John Clark <[email protected]> To: everything-list <[email protected]> Sent: Mon, Mar 23, 2015 12:32 pm Subject: Re: TEPCO admits Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1 core completely melted down On Sun, Mar 22, 2015 spudboy100 via Everything List <[email protected]> wrote: > People are rightly fearful of radiation exposure. Obviously everybody should be careful around radiation, but the trouble is that at the mere mention of the word most people's logic circuits shut down and they enter into a state of blind mindless panic. > There's lots of thorium and uranium to use. Far more than we will ever need. > To make commercial reactors appears too costly. One reason it's costly is that we still use Uranium reactors rather than Thorium, and even worse Uranium reactors that still use early 1960's technology; the environmentalists made sure there is far too much red tape to allow anybody to try something new. > One reason is the development costs for containment and cooling/moderation. With the old fashioned Uranium reactors we use today radioactive water is under enormously high pressure so you need a hugely expensive containment building in case of leaks, and all the plumbing must be super strong and thus super expensive. But in a LFTR the Thorium fluoride salt fuel is a liquid and although it's very hot it's not under pressure so you don't need a huge containment building, and even if there were a leak in the plumbing there would be no phase change (liquid water to steam for example) so it would just dribble out rather than escape explosively as in existing reactors. And being a liquid if it gets too hot it expands and gets less dense and thus the nuclear reaction slows down. And for good measure it would be easy to install yet another safety device. At the bottom of the reactor put in a freeze plug with fans blowing on it to freeze it solid, if things get too hot the plug melts and the liquid drains out into a holding tank and the reaction stops; also if all electronic controls die due to a loss of electrical power the fans will stop the plug will melt and the reaction will stop. No emergency pumps would be needed, only gravity. > If there was a conceptually better technology for fission use, we'd be home free. Not if environmentalists have their way, they tend to stage protest marches if anybody even thinks about nuclear power. that's why despite its enormous promise more people work at your average neighborhood Burger King than work full time on LFTR designs. > Even the costs to make safe molten salt reactors is way up there, merely for the research. Civilization could groove on thorium 233 and U235, but costs and safety still prevent use. Thorium 233 has a half life of only 22 minutes, Thorium 232 is the only naturally occurring isotope of Thorium and in a reactor it is converted to U233 not U235. U235 works well in bombs but U233 not so much. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
