Understanding E = mc2
Posted by RBrowntn 9 years, 10 months ago to Technology
I posted this link in another thread, but felt it might be enjoyed by a larger audience. This article has an essay by William Tucker which is the best argument for nuclear energy I've seen. It was posted in 2009, but still very relevant today.
I am confident nuclear power will be part of the solution to the problem (it's not really a controversy) of anthropogenic climate change.
While I don't have firm figures of the dollar cost for either plant, I do know that it can take 4-6 times as much construction time to build a nuc plant. Since the timeframe is measured in years to construct a nuc plant, the carbon footprint if it's construction is much greater.
Also while the cost of the energy produced is low compared to coal, The carbon cost for the operations of the plant, the cost of producing the nuclear fuel rods, which are replaced every year(?), cost a lot and it's all custom, one off machine work.
At the end of the operating cycle, the fuel in some of the assemblies is "spent" and is discharged and replaced with new (fresh) fuel assemblies, although in practice it is the buildup of reaction poisons in nuclear fuel that determines the lifetime of nuclear fuel in a reactor. Long before all possible fission has taken place, the buildup of long-lived neutron absorbing fission byproducts impedes the chain reaction. The fraction of the reactor's fuel core replaced during refueling is typically one-fourth for a boiling-water reactor and one-third for a pressurized-water reactor. The disposition and storage of this spent fuel is one of the most challenging aspects of the operation of a commercial nuclear power plant. This nuclear waste is highly radioactive and its toxicity presents a danger for thousands of years.[22]
Not all reactors need to be shut down for refueling; for example, pebble bed reactors, RBMK reactors, molten salt reactors, Magnox, AGR and CANDU reactors allow fuel to be shifted through the reactor while it is running. In a CANDU reactor, this also allows individual fuel elements to be situated within the reactor core that are best suited to the amount of U-235 in the fuel element.
The amount of energy extracted from nuclear fuel is called its burnup, which is expressed in terms of the heat energy produced per initial unit of fuel weight. Burn up is commonly expressed as megawatt days thermal per metric ton of initial heavy metal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pil...
Don't anybody think I'm anti-nuc, I'm not. In fact I'm very pro nuc. But the issue of dealing with spent fuel materials must be addressed and dealt with. The notion that nucs are more environmentally friendly is just ridiculous. Until they are equal to coal fired in total wastes generated, I'm not saying that it's time to kill coal fired plants. And lastly, anything BO is for, I'm against.
You seem extremely knowledgeable about nuclear science and not in need of making decisions based on politics. It reminds me of those boards in Fountainhead where members had to check with their political enemies and friends before taking a decision. If you are excellent at providing something other people want, i.e.estimating the cost of a power plant, you don't need to oppose/support things based on a political game.
The Nuclear Science part is a side interest along with Astrophysics that's always held a particular fascination for me. My first two degrees were in mechanical and electrical engineering followed later by civil engineering. All of which opened my mind to know what is required to build about anything. Which was what we did, from bathroom stalls in a waste treatment plant to the flight simulator for the F-117 Stealth Fighter in Holloman Airbase when the wing was moved from Groom Lake to building a cabinet under a desk where a general kept his "good stuff". :)
Of course I could have just sat back on my disability check each month and my military retirement pay and just go fishing, but that wouldn't have produced anything except increasing my waistline. Even after selling that business and retiring again, I just could not do it and continued to build a third business that also prospered until a certain government agency told me that I couldn't do what I was doing without cheating - I wasn't and after dealing with them for close to a year and half they decided that I really was the rarest of rare - a honest person that didn't lie or cheat the tax collector - at which point this honest man with tons of skills went on strike. I locked my doors, took my equipment home and sold my building for $1 less than I had invested in it.
Yes I know a lot, but nobody except for myself will benefit from it until the present administration is gone.
Now, I'm retired again.
.
Does this mean you won't do work for money but might still act as an angel investor, funding and coaching people trying to get started? In this case you'd be doing work, not for money but to increase the chance your equity turns into something?
If you wouldn't do that, can you even keep your wealth invested in a portfolio of RE and stocks? Would you help a friend or relative do a repair so he/she has more money to spend on other things?
I know it means different things for different people, but I'm interested in the notion of people going "on strike". I find it hard to believe producers really go on strike. I imagine they're more like Dagny when she retreated to her cabin and her mind started wandering to ways she could create value in the small town near the cabin; then she told herself, "Oh stop it!" It's hard to imagine productive people being so mad about politics that they actually stop creating any and all value.
With a coal fired plant there are multiple boilers that are independently controlled and one can be shut down while others are still firing.
In a nuc plant there is one pile and it is either hot or it's down. Whenever it's being serviced, it is totally shut down.
If they have more than one reactor they can always shut one down for service/refueling and leave the others up.
There are a number of multi-reactor plants around. Makes better economic sense to do more than one reactor in my opinion considering the crap you have to go through to actually get the thing built
Again I'm not sure of the exact regs and the exact outcome, but it seems that one issue TMI had was shared cooling systems, which is common in a coal fired plant, but it was a source of the problem at TMI.
I'd hope we would have a more knowledgeable member jump in. As I said, I was a general contractor who sub-contracted a couple small jobs on one plant, I'm no expert, except on the small part I did (we hung the bathroom dividers, doors and did some carpentry work) which was not related to the reactor at all.
I don't know what the regs are, I don't work in that industry. If they did forbid multiple reactors in use even with independent cooling, that would be irrational....so likely true /rolleyes.
To be honest I'm not even sure they have approved a new plant since TMI. It is so difficult to get a permit for a plant of any type, its no wonder shortages occur.
My wild guess for the energy of the future would be nuclear plants that inefficiently store their output in chemical bonds of some material that can be easily transported and released quickly when needed but not accidentally. The same nuclear energy could drive reactions to capture carbon from emissions we've made since the industrial revolution. Fossil fuels will be just a stepping stone in human history. I can't imagine a future without nuclear energy.
Thanks for posting it.
Check out
http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Ene...
and
http://youtu.be/GQ9Ll5EX1jc
and
http://youtu.be/uK367T7h6ZY - in 5 minutes
and there are MANY more video's on YouTube (just search for Thorium). The US Gov turned off their only Throium reactor in 1971 (if I remember the year right). They would regularly turn in on Monday morning and run it till Friday night, when they turned it off (totally safely). There is no reason our reactors couldn't use this principle. ... safe, abundant, little to no residual radioactive waste, can even consume plutonium (if we ever really want to get rid of that stuff we spent so much to refine for weapons).
Jan
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/curren...
There is enough potential energy from Uranium in a cubic meter of granite to:
1) Mine the granite out of a solid quarry face.
2) Transport the block 1000 miles to a factory where...
3) the stone is crushed to talcum-powder fine dust.
4) The powder is treated with chemicals to dissolve the Uranuim.
5) Filter the uranium salts, and boil all the water dry,
6) remelt the dust less the uranium atoms into a new block of granite-glass
7) transport that glass block 1000 miles back to the mine
8) process the uranuim salts into high-grade nuclear fuel.
9) transport the new fuel rods 1000 miles to a nuclear reactor
10) reprocess/purify each and every atom of spent nuclear fuel,
11) Transport the spent fuel 1000 miles back to the mine and
12) melt a small hole in that block of granite glass and entomb the waste back in the rock or came out of.
13) Put the block of glass back into the quarry.
And the good news is even with all that extra effort, there is still the equivalent of several megawatt hours of energy produced by the nuclear reactor to sell to the public!
Excellent info! I like the relativity :) all in one place.
O.A.
the formula E=(0.5)(m)(v squared), but our author
wanted to maximize the visual similarity and fudged it.
second, we can chemically separate the "waste"
products from "standard" reactors, though it isn't
easy. if we keep on with this anti-fossil-fuel bent,
it will become profitable at some point. we had
a posting here in the gulch about re-use of spent rods.
third, we have this article "prettied up" in word
if anyone wants it -- principle subbed for principal, etc.
and the speed of light is 2.998 times 10 to the eighth,
and when squared is 8.99 times 10 to the 16th,
or 89.9 quadrillion, just for effect. BIG. if we
homo saps had any sense, we'd watch the red
chinese do molten salt, and make 'em like doritos!!! -- j
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2...