Don’t worry, just a little bump - $70 is just around the corner. Short traders just keep making those margin calls, mortgage the house if you have to. Fortunes await you! PO is for pansies and doomers. At $70 short some more ..... it is going back to $22 .... the world is awash with oil ........ reality has nothing to do with it, its all in those charts!!!!!!!!!!
Interesting...I tend to think that there is something at play beyond this. If you saw that article on pebble-bed reactors, and the history behind it, and how China has developed a working pebble-bed reactor to be very, very, safe, clean, modular, etc. They are set to deploy many units starting very soon, and how the US and the rest of the world got behind the eight ball on this. I see this as a chance to compete with China on that development to sell (make money, control energy) these to other nations.
Does anyone have that article they can link? I can't find it offhand.
Joined: Jul 07, 2004 Posts: 434 Location: Berkeley CA
Posted: Sat Sep 04, 2004 6:12 pm Post subject:
I swent to popular science but couldn't find that page. However I still have one of the popular science magazines that I kept with me, it dates to August 2001. This describes pebble reactor as "meltdown proof"
The difference is the pebbles are round balls the size of a baseball, it contains a graphite shell. The inside consist of 10,000 uranium oxide partices the size of a pencil point. Even though it heat up to 1000*F, radation is trapped inside of it.
The reactor will run on as many as 400,000 balls , the difference is it will heat helium gas to 1,700*F which drives a turbine to generate electricity.
The spent partices decay in 250,000 year, the graphite holds for 1 million years.
In summary, pebble bed reactors are just nuclear power plants, that are meltdown proof. Power production is 110 megawatt per reactor. Each reactor produces 1/10th the energy of a conventional light water reactor.
Joined: Jul 18, 2004 Posts: 198 Location: S. Yorkshire, UK
Posted: Sun Sep 05, 2004 2:06 am Post subject:
The key difference between the STAR reactor and the pebble bed reactor is that the STAR reactor is supposed to be completely self-contained and autonomous.
The PBMR needs refuelling regularly and the spent fuel needs disposal. Relatively high grade enriched uranium is also required (which means construction of high-performance enrichment plants). The spent fuel from a PBMR is dilute and bulky (a 100 MW reactor uses 10 tonnes of pebbles each year, a 1000 MW PWR uses about 20 tonnes of fuel).
The STAR reactor is a fast breeder. Once started it will burn through it's stock of natural or depleted uranium, breeding exactly as much fuel as it requires. There is no need to refuel for the reactor, and no spent fuel to deal with. When the fuel runs out the reactor is sent back to the manufacturer for refurbishing or disposal.
The STAR is therefore an option for countries who require energy, but would not be able to manage the infrastructure required for nuclear fuel production, management and disposal. Unlike the PBMR a STAR could be deployed in a very remote area to provide local power as regular deliveries of fuel and servicing are not required.
Joined: May 24, 2004 Posts: 3428 Location: California, USA
Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2004 8:34 pm Post subject:
Phil, that's not correct. First, a nuclear power reactor can't have a nuclear explosion, the worst it can do is suffer a core melt, as in Chernobyl. Second, the new generation of reactors are melt-proof, which means there is no way for a significant radiation release to occur. Third, the burning of coal puts far more radioactive material into the atmosphere than occurs with a nuclear reactor. I used to be opposed to nuclear reactor construction on the grounds that the waste disposal issue had not been solved. I changed my opinion on that when it became clear that global climate change was going to cause far more damage far faster than nuclear power ever could. And with the new generation of reactors (all of them, PBMR, STAR, et. al.), the waste disposal issue has been solved well enough that anyone with ecological concerns who gives the issue some thought, should be in favor.
MarkR, very interesting!, I didn't know STAR was a fast-breeder. All the better, self-contained recycling of fuel until it's inert. With that we could easily buy another 250 years of time (at present demand levels; much less if we keep reproducing like cockroaches, but better than running off the cliff with no parachute).
Do we have a window on when deployed proof of concept facilities could be operational? _________________ "When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F Roberts.
Phil, that's not correct. First, a nuclear power reactor can't have a nuclear explosion, the worst it can do is suffer a core melt, as in Chernobyl. Second, the new generation of reactors are melt-proof, which means there is no way for a significant radiation release to occur. Third, the burning of coal puts far more radioactive material into the atmosphere than occurs with a nuclear reactor. I used to be opposed to nuclear reactor construction on the grounds that the waste disposal issue had not been solved. I changed my opinion on that when it became clear that global climate change was going to cause far more damage far faster than nuclear power ever could. And with the new generation of reactors (all of them, PBMR, STAR, et. al.), the waste disposal issue has been solved well enough that anyone with ecological concerns who gives the issue some thought, should be in favor.
Um..... I'm not sure what you're responding to here. I'm a huge nuclear proponent. "!=" means "NOT EQUALS" in programming talk.
2015 prototype + 2 to 5 years for ramp up in production.
Just in time for...2020?
Too bad we'll probably be up that proverbial creek without a paddle at that point. _________________ UNplanning the future...
http://unplanning.blogspot.com
Joined: May 24, 2004 Posts: 3428 Location: California, USA
Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 10:21 pm Post subject:
Phil, sorry, my mistake; I've heard enough people say that nuclear reactors could "explode like nuclear bombs" that I mistook your "!" for a typo of "nuclear power!" with the space in the wrong place.
Patrick, 2020 is a ways up the creek but not over the waterfall yet. Aside from which, urgency has a way of speeding up timetables.
I tend to think there will still be a NIMBY issue to deal with, but it's possible that a state of emergency could deal with that also. Something along the lines of "We need X in megawatts or negawatts in your area and the nearest decent wind site is only a Class 3, so either you get a reactor for a neighbor, or you figure out how to scale back consumption by X, or we take you off the grid." I would not cry to see NIMBYs freezing in the proverbial dark.
at first glance it appears frightening but its not a bad idea...
it is however incompatible with notions of human rights and transparency... you can not parachute these things into societies/regimes that do not have a basic standard of behavior..
or so the thinking goes... power politics intervenes in the case of N korea and iran for instance and monitoring frameworks need bolstering..
it is indicative that most of the energy problem is largley political in nature as solutions require transformations of economies and political regimes.
the lead time for new reactor planning in the USA is 7 yrs
this time frame will collapse as urgency demands (as someone has already stated) this is not without problems NIMBY 9again as has been noted0 but also safety and scale..
expansion in nuclear production =dilution of current skill base..
the lead time to create more technicians may be problematic when compared with the scale of any program.
finally we still haven't got any real answer about waste.. this is a real problem and the movement of waste introduces security issues that impact on personnel liberty..
the nuclear state=the security state... it has no choice even more so in a climate of WoT etc(don't get me started).
finally we still haven't got any real answer about waste.. this is a real problem and the movement of waste introduces security issues that impact on personnel liberty.
OK this is just rdiculous. There is such an outcry about moving the waste past NIMBYs who don't want a train with nuclear waste on it. Has anyone stopped to think for a minute - how does the fuel get to the nuclear power plants??????
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