New Nuclear Power Plants in the next 5 years

Guinnessy writes "As oil, coal, and gas become increasingly expensive, energy utilities take another look at nuclear power. The nuclear reactor builders are jostling for business as more than 26 plants may be ordered or constructed over the next five years in Canada, China, several European Union countries, India, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, and South Africa. Companies in the US and UK may order an additional 15 new reactors. Physics Today magazine has a global roundup of the new plants on construction, and how the builders are getting around some of the potential road blocks in their path. I'm sure many slashdot readers would be surprised to know that some new plants will be coming online so soon."

coal

[Sgt_Jake]

Here's a fun fact - who knew that coal produces more nuclear waste than a nuclear power plant? By a lot. Not to mention the mecury and other heavy metals and by-products of coal. Go NUKES! And I would like to be Mr. Burns if I may... excellent...

Pebble Bed

[putko]

This doens't have to end badly for the planet.

Pebble Bed reactors are the future: they are supposed to be safe, cheap and modular. They'll be mass-produced, and allow cities or factories to power themselves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor [wikipedia.org]

Re:coal

[Anonymous Coward]

Surprise! For example, Coal Combustion: Nuclear Resource or Danger [ornl.gov]

... releases from coal combustion contain naturally occurring radioactive materials--mainly, uranium and thorium.

I wonder if new nuclear plants are one of the surprises Bush was hinting at for reducing dependence on foreign oil?

Re:coal

[Firethorn]

Coal byproducts aren't radioactive.

That's the thing. They are radioactive [ornl.gov]

While coal burning indeed doesn't produce radiactivity like nuclear power does, there's actually so much radioactive material in it such as uranium that we'd get more power from refining it for the radioactives and sticking it in a reactor than burning it.

There's a former power plant worker out there that's DQ'd for life from working in a nuclear power plant because he absorbed too much radioactivity from his house. The bricks were made from coal ash.

Meanwhile, when you burn the coal, radioactive materials end up not only in the ash but go up the flue.

Re:coal

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/ colmain.html [ornl.gov]
http://greenwood.cr.usgs.gov/energy/factshts/163-9 7/FS-163-97.html [usgs.gov]
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/nucleare nvissues.html [doe.gov]
http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/coal.htm [epa.gov]

WTFUD?

What About Nuclear Recycling

[johndeerejedi]

The article was very disappointing because I didn't see any mention of the pyrometalurgical reprocessing and fast reactor design that would allow much more efficient use of the nuclear fuel. Current reactor designs and pebble bed only use about 3-5% of the Uranium (the U235 in the enriched Uranium), whereas the reprocessing method I mentioned above uses nearly all the heavy metals (actinydes) from Americium to Plutonium, including the Uranium 235 and U238.

There's a really good article (only a preview available) at Scientific American [sciam.com] which explains the pyrometalurgical process and the fast reactors that allow this.

On the other hand, the reactors mentioned in the article won't hurt anything if the reactors I'm talking about get built later. They can supposedly burn up the nuclear waste from existing reactors.

Re:coal

[Anonymous Coward]

Coal byproducts aren't radioactive.

Yes, they are, or at least some of the byproducts are--notably the ones that come out of the exhaust. All kinds of fun radioactive minerals are mixed in with coal, the world over. It's everywhere, and in every mine... They range from the lightest radioactive isotopes, to the heaviest naturally occurring varieties... When you burn the coal, some of it's bound to escape. Even if we went all out with crazy scrubbing techniques, it would still be there, and it would still come out of the chimney, even if in smaller quantities.

The parent was wrong in that he said that coal produces more radioactive waste than nuclear plants. This is obviously wrong. The net effect of what he was getting at, though, was right on.

Daily, more radioactive particles are released to the atmosphere due to coal plants than the cumulative accidental releases of wastes of nuclear energy throughout the lifetime of the technology--at least in the US, and most of the rest of the world. The margin would be even wider, and I'd include all of nuclear research and implementation for the whole world, but Chernobyl and the detonation of nuclear weapons offset the balance... But that's hardly fair. Those activities were not energy related, except for Chernobyl.

Even the waste that is produced from nuclear energy is useful. Here in the U.S. we do not recycle nuclear materials. In France, they reduced the amount of waste they have to dispose of by nearly 80% simply because they recycle their materials. Most of their power comes from nuclear plants. What they do is very smart. Instead, we chose to bury tons and tons of material, which could be processed and used to produce energy... Because we're afraid of Plutonium, and nuclear science, in general. Paris remains the "City of lights" because the French are not paranoid... And yet we're the ones waving the white flag to the Arabs, and calling the French cowards at the same time! The irony is delicious, isn't it?!!

Those are the facts, Jack... Chose to do with them what you will.

Re:Mr Burns Aside

[Anonymous Coward]

Whats the alternative?

Wow!

The alternative is not necessarily "clean coal" we can always dam Canadian rivers and flooding out native reserves for petty exchanges to compromise there life style ... if you have ever seen a true northern river you would understand ... standing 10 feet from shore is enough to make you tremble in fear ... the rivers feeding James Bay are enormous and violent ... the flow rate is enormous ... hyrdo projects have already created resevoirs the size of the great lakes ... just look at the map of northern quebec ...

Nuclear is risky science ... but given moral conisderation and proper respect I think it's the worlds only ethical option! We have to chance it ...

ps my understanding is windfarms are just not ready and will not be!

Re:100 or 200 years isn't a long time.

[amliebsch]

That 100 year estimate is only known reserves of U-235, which is the most basic, wasteful type of reactor. By breeding U-235 from the much more plentiful U-238, and by using Thorium, there would be enough nuclear fuel on the Earth to sustain our energy needs until around the time the sun burns out. The waste fuel from one year of a thousand megawatt reactor of this type would be about 1 cubic meter. So yes, nuclear is the answer.

Re:Nuclear Waste?

[Firethorn]

Then go with breeder reactors. 99% of your problem solved. The real reason for keeping the 'waste' around is that there's still alot of usable fuel in there. By some figures, conventional reactors only burn about 3% of the fuel.

When you get all the energy you can out of the fuel, the remainder doesn't stay radioactive for that long. Most of them are short to mid half-life isotopes, so they decay quickly.

Re:coal

[Eccles]

While coal burning indeed doesn't produce radiactivity like nuclear power does, there's actually so much radioactive material in it such as uranium that we'd get more power from refining it for the radioactives and sticking it in a reactor than burning it.

No we wouldn't, otherwise we'd be refining it from fly ash. As the ORNL article says, 99.5% of the fly ash produced by burning coal is retained by precipitators, not sent into the air, and thus could be processed and the radioactive material extracted after burning the coal. (Heck, it would be more concentrated that way.) Instead, Canada and Australia are the big uranium producers.

WRONG. We can produce hydrogen efficiently!

[dorkygeek]

By using green algae and sunlight, we can indeed produce hydrogen energy efficiently. See for example Hydrogen Production. Green Algae as a Source of Energy [plantphysiol.org], by Melis and Happe.

Re:Only difference is that if your vaunted terrori

[Wyatt Earp]

First of all, a nuclear plant, as made in Western Europe, the US, Japan and most of them everywhere else have someting called a Containment Dome.

While the Chernobyl accident caused great negative health, economic, environmental and psychological effects in a widespread area, the accident at Chernobyl was caused by a combination of the faulty RBMK reactor design, the lack of a containment building, poorly trained operators, and a non-existent safety culture. The RBMK design, unlike nearly all designs used in the Western world, featured a positive void coefficient, meaning that a malfunction could result in ever-increasing generation of heat and radiation until the reactor was breached.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power#Acciden t_or_attack [wikipedia.org]

RBMK is an acronym for the Russian reaktor bolshoy moshchnosti kanalniy which means "reactor (of) large power (of the) channel (type)", and describes a now-obsolete class of nuclear power reactor which was built only in the Soviet Union.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK [wikipedia.org]

"In September 2005, a report by the Chernobyl Forum, comprising a number of agencies including the International Atomic Energy Agency, the World Health Organization, UN bodies and the Governments of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine, put the total predicted number of deaths due to the accident at 4,000. This predicted death toll includes the fifty workers who died of acute radiation syndrome as a direct result of radiation from the disaster, nine children who died from thyroid cancer and an estimated 3,940 people who could die from cancer as a result of exposure to radiation."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_accident [wikipedia.org]

Not that much of Asia or Europe were "fucked" by Chernobyl.

Re:I'm worried about new plants in the US...

[birge]

Insightful? More like bigoted and stupid. Do you really want to be dismissing entire regions based solely on summary statistics? You realize that from a foreign perspective, you and the rural south are part of the same aggregate?

Re:Go ahead... put it in my back yard

[Firethorn]

Deal! Well, as long as you aren't going to be running an aluminum smelting plant or such. ;)

Heck, I'd also try to work there. Nuclear plants are great job oppertunities for local communities.

Re:Nuclear Power: The Way to Go!

[PitaBred]

1) First off, Chernobyl exploded because of idiocy in the Ukraine. You do not conduct an experiment on a nuclear power plant and turn all the safeties off. That is asking for trouble. However, NO FALLOUT WAS EVER RELEASED FROM THE FACILITY. The facility was 100% lost, but everyone was safe that was not inside the plant.
Um... NO [chernobyl.co.uk] . Not only no, but hell fucking no, you're wrong. You're probably thinking about Three Mile Island [nrc.gov]. How this shit got modded up, I'll never know. That half-assed link of yours also glossed over Chernobyl, which was actually a quite major event. I'm not saying nuke plants aren't much, much better than Chernobyl was, but we need to be continually cognizant of the dangers inherent in things like nuclear power. That being said, the greater the risk, often the greater the reward. We just need to make sure the risk is managed.

Re:Nuclear waste is scary but...

[FleaPlus]

Nuclear waste is scary, but it is very possible that the CO2 released by burning oil is more dangerous.

It's not just the CO2 from fossil fuels which is dangerous -- coal (the primary source of electrical power) contains a significant quantity of radioactive isotopes [ornl.gov]. The burning of coal is actually responsible for more radioactive waste than nuclear power, and the radioactive waste from coal goes straight into the atmosphere.

Re:WRONG. We can produce hydrogen efficiently!

[dorkygeek]

From the paper:

Application of the two-stage photosynthesis and H2 production protocol to a green alga mass culture could provide a commercially viable method of renewable hydrogen generation. Table I [slashdot.org] provides preliminary estimates of maximum possible yield of H2 by green algae, based on the luminosity of the sun and the green algal photosynthesis characteristics. Calculations were based on the integrated luminosity of the sun during a cloudless spring day. In mid-latitudes at springtime, this would entail delivery of approximately 50mol photons m-2 d-1 (Table I, row 1). It is generally accepted that electron transport by the two photosystems and via the hydrogenase pathway for the production of 1mol H2 requires the absorption and utilization of a minimum of 5mol photons in the photosynthetic apparatus (Table I, row 2). On the basis of these "optimal" assumptions, it can be calculated that green algae could produce a maximum of 10mol (20g) H2 perm2culture area per day. If yields of such magnitude could be approached in mass culture, this would constitute a viable and profitable method of renewable H2 production.

However, this optimistic scenario cannot be realized with present day know-how. Three biologically "gray areas" directly impact this H2 production technology. (a) The yield of H2 production currently achieved in the laboratory corresponds to only 15% to 20% of the measured capacity of the photosynthetic apparatus for electron transport (Melis et al., 2000). (b) The optical properties of light absorption by green algae impose a limitation in terms of solar conversion efficiency in the alga chloroplast. This is because wild-type green algae are equipped with a large light-harvesting chlorophyll antenna size to absorb as much sunlight as they can. Under direct and bright sunlight, they could waste up to 60% of the absorbed irradiance (Neidhardt et al., 1998; Melis et al., 1999). This evolutionary trait may be good for survival of the organism in the wild, where light is often limiting, but it is not good for the photosynthetic productivity of a green algal mass culture. This optical property of the cells could further lower the productivity of a commercial H2 production farm. (c) The current necessity to cycle a culture between the two stages (normal photosynthesis in the presence of S alternating with H2 production upon S deprivation) introduces a "down time" as far as H2 production is concerned. It is inevitable that the "down time" would further erode the yield of the H2 production process. Thus, with current technology, it is estimated that the actual yield of H2 production would be lower than that of the theoretical maximum shown in Table I, achieving perhaps a mere 10%, or lower, than the calculated theoretical maximum. It is clear that these three specific biological challenges (a-c) need to be overcome to effect greater actual yields of green alga H2 production.

I guess deformities just happen there naturally...

[j-stroy]

Either you're a troll or you are ignorant of a great human suffering. Why did thyroid cancers increased dramatically if there was no fallout? [belarusembassy.org]http://www.belarusembassy.org/humanitarian/rtc.htm [belarusembassy.org] http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Features/Chernobyl- 15/cherno-faq.shtml [iaea.org]

Another advantage of nukes

[K8Fan]

When I was working in 3D animation, one of my clients was Commonwealth Edison, the Chicago electric company. ComEd's plants were mostly nukes. I loved working for them, because most of the work I did was to explain concepts. Anyway...

They have a project called "Northwind". It consists of two 5 story tall buildings in downtown Chicago (eventually four) that, during the summer months, make ice all night long. During the day, the ice melts and the 33 degree water travels through pipes to subscribers to air-condition buildings. This allows client buildings to avoid wasting floors on their own chillers and avoid using electricity during the day for air-conditioning. ComEd can even out the demand for power and avoid building additional plants for a while.

Here we go again

[dbIII]

If that article that keeps getting quoted on ORNL was so good it would be cited in scientific literature and there would be more than one article along these lines. Here's how I see this article:

1/ Take the coal with the most heavy elements you can find anywhere, imply this is the normal situation whithout actually saying so.

2/ Forget to mention that of these traces of heavy elements only a small proportion are radioactive (you have to enrich uranium before you can use it as a fuel due to this).

3/ Assume pollution controls are a black box that catches a certain percentage of everything - a big assumption to make when you are talking about airbourne pollution. For those that can't be bothered to find out, pollution controls are designed among other things to remove GASSES like NOx and SOx. Now, consider if you are getting the gas out with water or other methods, what do you think is happening to the heavy metal oxides? Remember that they are heavy.

4/ The divide by zero problem. People are using this paper and the idea that there are zero radioactive emissions from a well run nuclear power plant to make background levels of radiation look bad.

Now here's where some advertising agency for the AEC has won the propaganda war from an earlier poster:

there's actually so much radioactive material in it such as uranium that we'd get more power from refining it for the radioactives and sticking it in a reactor than burning it

We really need better science education today. Here's another:

because he absorbed too much radioactivity from his house. The bricks were made from coal ash.

First - how would this have been measured if the urban myth was true? Would he have been wearing a dosimeter at home - otherwise how could you tell? Second - ash is generally similar to sand in elemental composition which is why there is no problem using it in a lot of situations.

Coal has enough problems without making things up. Paticularly in the USA sulphur oxides are a problem, and NOx are a problem everywhere (which is why we have pollution controls to stop acid rain and lesser problems) - and even after the pollution controls coal has the CO2 problem.

It's time for nuclear to talk about how good it is instead of bashing the opposition or comparing to purely portable or remote area solutions like solar cells that don't scale up. Push the new technology instead of regurgitating propaganda that doesn't stand up to minor scrutiny.

Re:Wind economical now?

[WindBourne]

Here in the states, to push nukes, we recently released the plant operators of nearly all liability. Basically, if they have a radiation release, they will not be held responsible. Likewise, the gov. is going to take on the task and costs of storage. That is subsidized production.

Now, as to all the wind cancellation in Australia, you may wish to google. It appears that projects are moving forward just fine. [pacifichydro.com.au] As to those that were killed, give it time. Most, if not all, of the projects will be back. As more plants get built in the states (and in other places), the costs go down. Right now, wind is one of the lower cost power generation options here in the states.

Re:coal

[Anonymous Coward]

Coal byproducts aren't radioactive.

That's the thing. They are radioactive [ornl.gov]

With the information on that page and a few others, we can do some math, and shed some light on the matter.

"...the average radioactivity per short ton of coal is 17,100 millicuries/4,000,000 tons, or 0.00427 millicuries/ton" (or 4.27 Curies/ton)
Source: [ornl.gov]http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/ colmain.html [ornl.gov]

The United States consumed 1107 million short tons of coal in 2004
Source: [doe.gov]http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/quarterly/html/t 28p01p1.html [doe.gov]

Electrostatic precipitators capture 99.8% of particulates.
Source: [airbornepo...ontrol.com]http://www.airbornepollutioncontrol.com/jul26_2004 .html [airbornepo...ontrol.com]

Thus, all coal-burning facilities in the United States release an estimated 4.27 Curies/ton * 1107 million tons * 0.002 = 9.454 Curies of radioactive material every year.

This assumes that all coal-burning facilities in the US are equipped with the efficient particulate-removal devices mentioned above, and that all radioactive material in the coal is solid at flue gas temperatures (neither electrostatic precipitators nor baghouses will capture radioactive gasses).

Chernobyl released 7 million Curies of radioactive material in 1986. Windscale in the UK released 20,000 Curies in 1957, and an early accident at the Hanford plutonium processing plant in the US released 205 Curies. Three Mile Island released 17 Curies.
Source: [antenna.nl]http://www10.antenna.nl/wise/369/3619.html [antenna.nl]

Re:Here we go again

[dbIII]

If you can't do that, do a mass spectromoscopy on a sample of fly ash

I can and have done better than that, so I know that your statements are misinformed. Looking at backscatter radiation in a scanning electron microscope with quite a few fly ash samples gave me nothing heavier than iron above the noise. All fly ash is (obviously to me but not to the authors of the ornl paper or people who don't look furthur) not created equal, so some will have heavy metals somewhere. The funny thing about heavy metals is that they are heavy, and the oxides are mechanically stronger than coal so don't get broken up much in the crushers. They also have a high melting point. Big heavy stuff is unlikely to end up in the light fly ash - it's likely to come out of the bottom of the boiler, especially since fly ash is usually solidified droplets of previously molten material.

Now you've read this, please consider reading something from a credible source on the issue (Chemistry journals, or something from EPRI who are as pro nuclear as they come since they are a power industry body but not are not nuclear propagandists) instead of spreading urban myths.

It isn't that they want to propagandize things. Rather, it's saying that ... cognitive dissonance isn't intended to make coal look dangerous

The Micheal Moore defence - they're bad so we can blow irrelevant insignificant details out of proportion - interesting but I don't see it as a good enough excuse.

I disagree with the paper on ORNL and consider it junk science for the reasons pointed out in an earlier post. If others who are more credible than me considered it valid science they would cite it in scientific publications instead of it only being cited in newpapers and advertising, and there would be furthur papers expanding on it in the decades since it's publication. It stands alone, an example of bespoke research for the purposes of advertising.

Integral Fast Reactor

[MrKaos]

Now I'm not against Nuclear, but the reality is that current generation of nuclear reactors generate plutonium waste that lasts for 25000 years, thats a really bad long term investment in terms of future generation of human beings simply because we don't have the imagination or will power to implement energy systems that are economically and ecologically sustainable.

Mining uranium releases heavy/highly soluble radon gas http://www.epa.gov/radon/pubs/citguide.html [epa.gov] which is highly radioactive and pollutes any nearby water table. Currently it kills more people than drunk driving per annum.

As for breeder reactors, put in 5 kg of plutonium waste to use as fuel and get 15kg of highly nuclear waste from the other 10kg of elements (pollonium and paladium i think). In other words - the tonnage of waste created by these reactors increases exponentially, why do you think they were banned?

The reason is deliberate, CURRENT GENERATION NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS ARE ENGINEERED TO PRODUCE PLUTONIUM FOR WEAPONS AS THIER MAIN PRODUCT and electricity as a by-product. Consequently they are heavily subsidised to make them appear economically viable.

The only realistic future for nuclear is the INTEGRAL FAST REACTOR, liquid metal cooled, uses 99% of the radioactive elements U238/U239 (vs less than 3% for cold war reactors)and current nuclear waste becomes a useable fuel. No need to mine uranium any more as there is enough spent fuel to use for many thousands of years, and no need to worry about those pesky terrorist spoiling your day because of the pyro-process closed loop feul re-processing. These are the types of reactors that we need to invest in around the world because they virtually eliminate waste transuranics, the volume of waste decreases and the remaining fissile radioactive material (the plutonium ash) is reduce to a half life of a mere 500 years.

Cold War reactors, should all be left to run out thier remaining lifespan and decommisioned in favour of these new generation reactors, in every way Integral Fast Reactors are safer and are engineered to produce electricity as a main product.

Sure it's easy to accept the rhetoric about Cold-War nuclear power but it's all been said before (power to cheap to meter etc), however SAFER NUCLEAR ALTERNATIVES EXIST. This is a no-brainer and I'm suprised how many people get duped into thinking that we stopped being able to come up with any new methods for generating energy since the 1950's. You think patents are only used to stop software being developed? What do you think these industry's lobby groups are doing, influencing politicians to make introducing alternative enery sources easier? Do you think these industries care that they pollute the air, make greenhouse gasses or kill generations that aren't even here yet? Public opinion must FORCE goverments and corporations to invest in better technology or we face a bleak future.

The reality is our economies are heavily dependant on oil and coal and we have reached a point where it is obvious that this economic model is not sustainable. Cold War Nuclear (including pebble bed) power is no better than these because it to produces deadly wastes from the raw material stage to the spent feul stage, and lets not forget the millions of litres of radioactive water that is also produced.

There is no future in somthing that kills our kid's kids kids kids kids.... It's time for you 'Cold War'-nuke jocks AND anti-nuke types to take a pragmatic approach, look at the facts and evolve your thinking. A sustainable nuclear alternative exists and now is the time for people to get thier heads out of the sand and relegate coal, oil and cold-war-nuclear to where they belong - history.

IFR information is available here http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/designs/ifr/ifr1.html [berkeley.edu]

Mod Parent Down! FUD.

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

More of this "coal make nuclear waste" FUD.

Coal on average contains 3ppm (parts per million) of uranium.

By comparision, ordinary soil contains between 1.8 and 5ppm of uranium.

So let's all try and not smear the boards with nuclear industry marketing material shall we?

Nuclear can be safe

[rben]

It depends on the design. The classic designs that have been used in the U.S. have a serious problem. If coolent flow fails, the reactor can melt down.

Pebble bed reactors [wikipedia.org] are designed to fail safely. If the flow of coolent stops, so does the reaction. The fuel is safely encased in tennis ball-sized graphite "pebbles" which are dropped in the top of the reactor and retrieved at the bottom. For there to be a release of the radioactive material, the pebble has to be broken open. Even if that happens, the amount that's released is very tiny.

There is a problem with fire, since the pebbles are graphite, but fire is a lot easier to deal with than a melt-down.

The point is that we need nuclear power in order to ween ourselves off of oil, but we also need to demand that safe reactor designs are used.

Re:Mod Parent Down! FUD.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with this argument is that we are not burning soil and releasing it into the atmosphere, we're burning coal. At the rate of about 11,000 tons per day, a concentration of 3ppm is 66 pounds of radioactive material per day released per plant. With filters, a lot less, but still lets not trivialize this. Nuke plants don't release any nuclear waste into the atmosphere, unless someone is really dumb, then we have other problems.

Mod Parent Down! FUD! (instead of the grandparent)

[ivan256]

Last I checked, I didn't breath in ordinary soil, and I had to have the decay products of that uranium in the soil (radon and radioactive lead) pumped out of the air in my house in order not to get lung cancer.

Not only that, but all the carbon that makes up the majority of the coal gets burnt off in the power plant, so the concentration of uranium is *much* higher in the soot.

Let's not all try and smear the boards with the anti-nuke lobby's propaganda, shall we?

Re:Mod Parent Down! FUD! (instead of the grandpare

[ivan256]

Best you stay away from quarries then; and fields, and roads, and construction sites, and the seaside.. and deserts. Then you should be OK.

There's lots of reasons to stay away from quarries... As for the rest of that stuff, the type of dust that usually gets stirred up isn't usually from the types of soil that contain uranium. The uranium is usually contained in pebbles broken off of granite ledges.

It's been pointed out in these comments already, but 99.5% of the radioactive material burned from coal is caught by modern, manadtory, filters.

Leaving .5% of it in the air? Wonderful. Go read the air quality reports from the day of the east coast blackout a few years back. It could be like that *every day* if we used nukes instead.

The argument that burning coal produces more radioactivity than nuclear plants is pure FUD.

Good thing nobody makes that argument then. The argument is that it releases more radioactivity into the air, and it's pure fact.

Coal pollutes because its kinematic and chemical properties, which are very significant, far more so than any trace amounts of naturally occuring radioactivity.

I completely agree with that statement.

It's radioative properties are absolutely minimal, a mere punctuation mark on the long, long list of its other ill effects. ...but I think you're underplaying this. The effects of trace radioactive particulate in the air are well understood, and it's quite likely that the recent increase of lung cancer in non-smokers is due in part to coal. It doesn't take much airborne material to put the incidence at around 2% over 70 years. Admittedly, the uranium will settle out of the air much sooner than the rest of the particulate will, and only those within a few miles of a plant are probably affected, but *nobody* would be breathing in uranium if we weren't burning so much coal.

Re:Nuclear can be safe

[Rei]

Do you know what PBMR stands for? Pebble Bed Modular Reactor. PBMRs are smaller than traditional PWRs. They're designed so that you can put one out in the middle of nowhere for some small town's power without being wasteful.

Lets correct some points. PBMRs *do* use graphite. PBMR proponents glorify the fact that as they heat, the rate of reaction goes down. So? Such is the case for all modern nuclear reactors. PWRs boil off the water, their moderator, if they get too hot. That doesn't buy you anything. What it does buy you is the use of graphite.

Now, there's a lot of controversy over graphite. The Russians insist that it was a graphite fire at Chernobyl that spread the radiation. The US nuclear industry is insistant that nuclear grade graphite doesn't burn, that it just erodes (a few percent in a couple minutes of high temperature exposure). A logical explanation would be the concept that tests on nuclear grade graphite have been using graphite that wasn't in reactors; high neutron fluxes can seriously change the properties of materials. Also, a few percent erosion of graphite containing short halflife particles is a serious problem.

The helium loop of PBMRs is designed to prevent this. However, the proposed safety mechanism of PBMRs is that if the helium loop ruptures (which, when you're constantly moving pebbles around, which have the potential to jam or deform, as we saw in Germany), the reactor can be air cooled. So, you have an overheated reactor full of hot graphite in contact with air.

However, there is a worse failure scenario: water. The primary coolant loop is helium, not water. However, most PBMR designs that I've seen have water near the loop or core for various purposes - secondary coolant, hydrogen production, etc. Water + hot graphite = hot hydrogen. Big problem. If water enters the helium loop, it's far worse than air entering the loop.

Now, I wouldn't be significantly concerned about these theoreticals if it wasn't for one thing: unlike almost all reactors build in the past 40 years, PBMRs have no containment structure. Containment structures have repeatedly saved our arses in PWR accidents over and over these years. Why don't they have containment structures? Because they're little reactors, and the structure would make their construction uneconomical. So they toss them off.

I support an alternative route instead: lead or lead/bismuth breeders like BREST. They're large reactors, and often hot enough for hydrogen production through thermolysis if desired. They're breeders, unlike PBMRs, so your fuel source is almost unlimited instead of being a 100-200 year supply. They can cool through natural liquid metal convection. They're subsurface, so the ground absorbs most of the neutron flux that would otherwise leave the plant. In the event of an accident, the reactor is already encased in a giant pool of metal which will harden over time, automatically entombing the core for you. As a breeder, the reaction slows as fuel ages instead of increasing. Also, there's very, very little waste in a good breeder.

I don't support current liquid sodium breeders, however. Come on, using hundreds of tonnes of molten sodium, when your containment structure tends to explode in contact with sodium? That's just asking for problems. MONJU came close.