Eric-- Your are right. fuel waste is shared by all fission reactor designs. The problem is that there was and is inadequate attention that fuel cycle design issue. Governments around the world have been working on that issue for about 60 years. There is not a good solution that’s within economic and political “reason”.
Regarding simplicity of design, one might have thought that storing spent fuel in a water tank 5 stories above ground would have caught someone’s attention as to not being implicitly safe at Fukushima. It did not. They DID KNOW without adequate water for cooling the fuel would catch fire and make a mess. Bob Cook From: Eric Walker Sent: Friday, January 22, 2016 12:56 PM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: Re: [Vo]:Re: DoE Funds Two Advanced Nuclear Programs Am I mistaken in thinking that the disposal of fuel waste is an issue that is shared by all fission reactor designs? It seems to me that after Fukushima, passive safety and simplicity of design are no-brainers for fission power. Perhaps the pebble-bed reactor has critical issues. I wonder how the Chinese effort is going. Eric On Fri, Jan 22, 2016 at 2:10 PM, Bob Cook <frobertc...@hotmail.com> wrote: One problem of pebbles in a reactor is that they are not welded into place. Long-lived pebbles are hard to make stay in one place with pneumatic forces from He flow and thermal transitions, expansion from pebble internal pressures and other loadings in a reactor. They do not hold radioactive stuff as well as welded tubes of Zr. However, they are cheap and easy to make. I would not want one near me. The X-energy web page notes that the design concept has been around since 1944. I think I know why it did not catch on. The only good thing about the suggested reactor design is that it is relatively small and probably can be contained within a good pressure vessel. Maintenance, refueling and decomissioning of a reactor plant could be a significant headache. Disposal of pebbles, particularly those that are broken, does not have a good conceptual design in hand. I would like to know where Axil got his information about the German population deciding to ban nuclear power—I do think it focused on pebble bed reactors. I think the safety of their large existing reactors, some with the same ill-design for fuel storage that caused the Fukushima reactor disaster to get way out of hand, was the primary cause of the decision. Bob Cook
