The idea that a few breeder reactors could supply a larger fleet of conventional plants isn't the case. With current breeder technology, a breeding ratio of about 1.25 is feasible. That is, a breeder could produce about 1.25 kg of fissile material for every 1 kg of fissile fissioned in an operating cycle. One kg of that 1.25 kg has to be returned to the breeder for the next operating cycle, and 0.25 kg could be made available to a conventional plant. Some advanced, and as-yet unproven, concepts for high-efficiency breeding might get the breeding ratio up to about 1.5, which would make 0.5 kg of fuel available for non-breeder reactors for every 1 kg consumed in the breeder.
Absolutely LOVE the Nick Touran - Dr. Keefer interaction - SO illuminating, and Dr. Keefer read my mind asking the questions I wanted to ask. Well done !!!
About molten salt reactors - Copenhagen Atomics is building whole fleet of 25 MW molten salt reactors for fertilizer plant in Malaisia, 1 GW overall if memory serves me correctly. Sounds like commercial.
By all means have them in to talk but they don’t have a certified reactor and so never split an atom. Their designs are based on modeling and as such their public announcements need to be taken with a pinch of…salt
@@AngelicaAtomicExactly. Vaporware is very common in the space and nuclear industries. When they have their first reactor go critical, the odds start looking a lot better for commercialization. When that moment is more than a two years away it's all just promises, talk and lofty goals. I hope they succeed but the world needs solid results.
@@AngelicaAtomic At present Copenhagen Atomics are running two full scale reactors non-fission - ie kept molten by external electricity. This is an essential exercise that will yield important improvements without the hassle of dealing with high level radiation. It is if you think about it one of the advantages of MSR's in that you can probably eliminate >80% of the bugs in your design in this relatively low-risk manner. The next step is a small fission loop - for which the physics is well understood and closely modelled. The challenge is not to "split an atom" as you sneeringly put it, that part is trivial - it is all the other thermal, transport, chemical, redox control and maintenance questions that need to be completely resolved before it can be mass produced. All this takes time - just as for example it takes Boeing or Airbus at least 7 years to certify a new airframe - you would expect something of this nature to be approached methodically and carefully.
I worked in the French nuclear industry in the 1980s. Superfinix cost about ten times as much as a standard reactor plant, the technical issues were enormous but it was really the cost per kW was prohibitive. This was done at scale - some 1200MW output.
You should have a separate podcast on fast reactors. I know the fuel requirements are higher (because of the smaller fission cross-section), and you could talk about that. Also controlling a fast reactor can be more challenging.
Good Podcast - He mentioned building 4 or 5 pilot plants to try some of these new designs out. Why not? They build pilot plants to smooth out the rough edges of other technologies. This Kairos idea sounds good. It's molten sale combined with TRISO fuel. Perhaps the good doctor will interview reps from that company.
Now that silicon carbide 3D printing is possible what about something like bismuth and using the gas phase of bismuth. I'm sure it's been thought about what are the downsides?
How about high temperature two-fluid breeder reactors? The first fuel circuit contains a eutectic alloy of uranium and chromium, and the second one contains a coolant. Then all this chemistry is easier to install and secure.
55:39 it doesn’t matter if it increases the cost for fuel three times given the social license cost. There are 88,000 tons of spent fuel rods are just sitting waiting to be processed and used as new fuels.
there is 3d model of superphenix available on energyencyclopedia. you can see the mechanism of the rotating plugs and the control/shutdown rod structure attached in the center plug which needs to move out of the way even when just moving the subassemblies from the breeding blanket. supposedly the BN reactors support online refueling. don't know how that works though. (they are listed under online refueling in wiki but it seems to be missing citation. maybe they just disregard safety during the reloading process.)
What about using super-critical CO2 instead of the water loop in the NaCL FAST reactors? What about FLIBE instead of NACL? What issues do these present? We are not going to figure this stuff out if we don't study them seriously. I am with Dr. Weinberg - "burn metal".
These guys are stuck in the past and don't want to hear a word about advancements. Stick with the tried and true regardless of cost and lack of versatility.
@@chapter4travels That's a little bit extreme. At least one of those two critters has learned a lesson or two about what it takes to actually develop a feasible commercial reactor. It takes more than you might conceive. So discussing things that are actually viable is the only credible discussion. Unless you believe what future batteries will do for solar power :)
@@chrisjohns38 The discussion is about the Brayton Cycle generators. Antique pressure water reactors can't produce high enough temperatures for this technology. Nor can it provide high-grade industrial heat which has a demand that is double electricity alone.
@@chapter4travelsoh rats, I thought the discussion was about breeder reactors. Have you any references for functional commercial Brayton cycle power plants? Last time I checked there was a pilot plant at Sandia. While you’re checking on that, take look at the real cost of all of the additional pressure piping and vessel materials to work at the higher temperature and pressure required for Brayton cycles to function and get back to me when you’re not busy inventing a fusion powered rocket ship. Yes, Brayton cycles work. No they are not economically feasible. Yes, fossil fuels are unfortunately the most cost effective way to produce high temperature process heat at the moment.
sCO2 power cycles are coming and will improve economics, but even today, MSRs can use the same steam cycles that coal plants do. Even those are a great improvement over the huge and expensive low-temperature nuclear steam cycles, which are a large fraction of plant cost.
Говоря об экономической рентабельности ядерной энергетики, Вы не обсудили самый ключевой момент - технологии обогащения урана. Именно из-за обладания технологией газового центрифугирования последних поколений, Росатом смог стать лидером рынка по обогащению, а также снизить стоимость уранового топлива. Имхо.
I can see something like the TWR being able to close the fuel cycle. A liquid metal coolant doesn't require a pressure vessel which greatly reduces the pain and delay of builds. You need these projects to be something that can easily be built. If you get these designs right you might be able to spin them up and get them going very quickly. If you have workable TWR's that run off u238 China would not be using coal.
I think using molten sodium as a heat transfer agent is a bad idea. It's a fire waiting to happen and putting it out requires special techniques. This means that you have to have a dedicated fire department to just do that. This is just added cost.
What makes sense is chloride molten salt fast neutron reactors. These can burn nuclear waste directly. Just dissolve the pellets in molten salt and add. Yes these reactors shutdown with heat so passively safe. Hopefully more interest in this type of reactors.
The integral fast reactor in the United States was the best breeder reactor ever built but was shut down because of political decisions. It could reprocess its own fuel in the facility, could shutdown on its own when the reactor gets hot and so had everything you would want from a fast breeder reactor. But what we need is first of all the regulations to built cheap safe nuclear reactors, nuclear plants and nuclear fuel reprocessing plants.
@@TheDanEdwards No, they go together perfectly, you just have to use the right technology. There is no physical reason for a low-pressure/high-temperature nuclear power plant to cost any more than a natural gas or coal plant.
Until regulators reverse the LNT radiation regulations, nuclear will always be much more expensive than it needs to be. The Linear no Threshold theory for radiation has been debunked for decades, yet they cling to it like a bible.
A problem facing all fast reactors is that the fuel is not in its most reactive configuration. So in an accident, one has to worry about the fuel melting, moving around, closing voids, and becoming more reactive. A large fast reactor might have 1000 critical masses of plutonium in it. As Teller observed in 1967, it's very hard to ensure a prompt supercritical configuration would not arise. For this reason I don't see much hope for licensing of most fast reactor designs in the US.
But, what if the reactor that utilizes the waste is cheaper, more reliable, and versatile than the really expensive, inefficient pressure water reactors that are generating the waste. When we run out of waste, they switch to natural U238 or thorium.
Dr. Keefer, That was a great video! Dr. Touran is a national USA treasure. I would love to sit and pick his mind. I want to know what he thinks we should be doing with our energy future. He should write the USA energy plan. Thanks! BuBu
Energy is not just an economic issue it is also strategic. Nuclear is the strategic part of the equation, renewables the economic part. If civilisation is to be sustained, both are needed, in considerable abundance.
@@ABa-os6wm Thanks for mentioning. Enthusiastic fun club with little know-how think they can just shovel in that waste in those breeders (even before bouiding them and set up costly recycling) and forget about it.
The most interesting isotopes (Bi-213 and Ac-225) come from the thorium fuel cycle. (for Targeted Alpha Therapy, see ruclips.net/video/ltiU5ZUXKCE/видео.html) Many other useful and often valuable isotopes may also be extracted online in a molten salt breeder.
I’m going to have many question. 1. I’m a big supporter of nuclear, but with all the reports of countries and states doing whole days on solar/wind and price of batteries coming down, I’m not sure it makes as much sense. 2. Why do we always pretend like nuclear waste has to be stored for 100s of 1000s of years or millions? Like we aren’t going to have any technological progression? The future humans might be super pissed we made it so had to access the useable nuclear “waste”.
Solar/Wind can not be "base" producer, you can't control when and how much energy it produces. Batteries - ok, but there is not enough materials(like lithium) to turn Wind/Solar to stable energy. Plus far as I could find Solar/Wind+batteries + natgaz is way more expensive than nuclear + natgaz.
Batteries storage is three times more expensive than nuclear at nuclear's worst. We know that nuclear can be done for the half the cost it is currently on the US without compromising on safety (we've done it before). Batteries are getting cheaper, but nowhere near fast enough to outcompete nuclear. Then you have to consider how much more land use and mining that wind and solar require and Batteries add even more mining. Batteries storage is never going to dominate the grid. If enhanced geothermal was achieving costs comparable to wind and solar without storage, then there'd be a case that nuclear was fast reaching obsolescence - but that isn't the case.
A breeder reactor is harder to build than a conventional plant and recycling fuel costs much more than mining uranium ore and enriching it. Breeders won't be economic until conventional plants have become widespread and they have used up most of the easily recovered uranium ores.
Less than 1%. Natural U is only 1/140 U-235, and enrichment is far from 100% efficient. Plus, spent fuel is usually not reprocessed to recover residual fissile, and when it is, only Pu and U is recovered, and buildup of U-236, etc. in slow neutron reactors prevents full re-use. So, without breeders, we use 1 part in 285 of U in LWRs with no reprocessing; about 30% better with reprocessing, as in France, and about 1 part in 135 in CANDU reactors. We might use more than 1 part in 285 in LWRs once-through if uranium gets expensive, because then we'll spend more money on enrichment, to leave less U-235 in the tailings.
A lot of folks overlook the UK's contribution to fast reactor design. Here is an overview of the Prototype Fast Reactor at Dounreay, here in Scotland. A reactor that was sadly shut down early whilst it was just coming into it's prime. ruclips.net/video/dYHfdCoFZ_Y/видео.html
Breeder reactors are, as you mentioned, a concept as old as nuclear energy itself. Does it not strike you, that this concept never caught on - and not for a lack of trying? It is not only cost prohibitive, it also is connected to a lot of contaminations, technical problems and scandals. In other words: We tried and it just does not work. And now it does not have to any more, since renewabels produce electric energy much cheaper than nuclear plants. They just become more and more obsolete, while renewables still are just at the beginning of their development cycle and have a lot more potential. It's not that I would be opposed to safe nuclear reactors per se (if someone can show me one) - but the question is: Why? Why do it complicated, expensive and dangerous, when we can do it now dezentralized, cheaper and much more sustainable. Just for the sake of it? Toys for boys? To hang on to what you were trained to do? I think there is just not a valid use case any more for nuclear reactors, much less for breeders - with very few exceptions.
You reveal your ignorance about nuclear power generation, and it is stunning. I hardly even know where to start. Solar and wind are not interchangeable with base power solutions such as nuclear, gas, hydro. They never will be. Learn why and stop preaching bad info.
Nuclear is an incredibly safe technology. There have only been two incidents with damaging results. In the case of Fukushima, more people died in the evacuation than the actual incident. (One person indirectly) If renewables were that much better, we wouldn't even be having this conversation. It's as if there are real problems with renewables such as storage, the duck curve, and the power grid. When we discuss the price of solar and wind, one thing that is not factored into the cost is the cost of batteries and other infrastructure. Sure, the panels are cheap, but storage technology is lagging behind and can't keep up.
@@malikjackson9337 please google „list of nuclear incidents“ on wikipedia. The rest is the „nuclear god of the gaps“ argument - „renewables never will xy“ (provide more than 5% of electricity, become cheap, reliable, …) - all proven wrong, while nuclear power recedes and renewables grow massively. While nuclear power stagnates and can not keep up with costs, renewables are developed with a dynamic nuclear power never had in over 50 years. Without wishful thinking, nuclear is dead, except of very few niches (mostly related to military applications). There is no real funding for anything more than at best replacing the eol reactors - if that.
Molten lead or some alloy of lead is quite hot and not exactly easy on metals it touches. Molten lead can corrode stainless steel for example. There are better steels and super-alloys but the expenses in construction and spare parts skyrocket.
even as an engineer who knows more than the average person, this guy is hard to follow. it's more like he's just thinking out loud and not explaining very well or speaking clearly, still it's helpful to hear the names of programs etc.
Question. You have heard of spent Uranium bullets. Why wouldn’t we be able to use these same bullets on drilling bits? Or do we already? You talk of the differences in cost to run a plant. What would a power plant’s profit be if it is successful? Thinking about breeders should be essential, if it is a good disposal of conventional nuclear waste. With the advances in metallurgy we should be able to do this easily. May cost more, because it is new. Depleted uranium tubing. I’ll bet it is unbreakable, and will not wear through soon. Start batting around some ideas guys. Not all are feasible, but we have to think outside the safety box to advance. We’ll find ways to make the ideas safe. This discussing brings to mind a video I saw years ago about why Uranium is so “dangerous”. It was about a rebellious plant worker in the 50’ and 60’s who would go down to the heavy water pool everyday at the start of his shift and fill his coffee cup with heavy water and take it back to his office and sip on it all day. No harm done. The reason, stated in the video, that Uranium is so dangerous, is so no one will want to steal it. It’s in every home, or should be. “But, but, but… that’s a different kind!” You don’t think the establishment BSs us? ruclips.net/video/pwXt_eEtYp0/видео.htmlsi=2SmObLCXjwRJtYS0
@@chrisjohns38 The problem is the solid fuel, regardless of uranium or thorium or a mix, the pellets can only go so long before you have to reprocess them all over again. Not so for liquid fuel.
@@chrisjohns38 Agreed, fast neutron MSRs are a ways off but thermal spectrum burner MSRs are very close. Terrestrial Energy is 2/3rds through the Canadian regulatory licensing process. Thorcon Power has the go-ahead to build their prototype in Indonesia and Copenhagen Atomics is in negotiations with El Salvador for their first of a kind.
@@chapter4travels no! that is not true. They don’t design or license reactors, they do confirmatory reviews and calculation. I was involved with design, licensing, repairs/modifications and operating licensed nuclear power plants and shipping/storage containers. Submit a complete application and you shall get a license. I can tell you first hand that when you hear the argument that the NRC is stopping someone from building a nuclear plant or other licensed product, their stuff is BS. If you want, I’ll find a couple of docketed submittals that I can smell from here!
Thermal Breeder Reactors are possible using Thorium. They are less complex than a Fast Breeder, with the process successfully demonstrated at the Shippingport Reactor in Pennsylvania. However, There was only a 1.4% increase in fissile material from that process. I suspect the low reproduction rate is why this method is not being discussed now. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shippingport_Atomic_Power_Station en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shippingport_Atomic_Power_Station
Nuclear Submarines were built as the perfect counter to Nuclear weapons, kind of fighting fire with fire sword of Damocles balance of terror. The balance of power is turned inward against the civil power adaptation to circumstances that is the environmentally destructive Dark Money Economy. Nothing more to say except listen to the Geologists talk about the inevitability of expected catastrophic changes we can only make partial, not even proportional adaptions to. Base load of government regulation responsibilities are drifting way off the happy medium and the logical connection between perceptions of wealth +/-, are divorced from the concept of sustainable metastable proportioning of energy availability before the catastrophic failures of Planetary calendar emulation.
The reality of Fast breeder Reactors is that they can't be kept running. Their "Time On-Line" percentages are horrible. France's SuperPhenix had an Operating Ratio of 14.4%. The Japanese Breeder Reactor's Operating Ratio was close to zero. That's after close to 70 years of trying by every nuclear capable country on the planet. They are just too complex and too hard to maintain without something messing up. Russia is currently operating the only "Commercial" Fast Reactors at above 50%, and they do so by just letting Sodium fires happen. They isolate the fires and just leave the reactor operational. Nobody else on the planet would accept that as a "Standard Operating Procedure."
@@Rawdiswar Germany spent $4 Billion on constructing a Fast Breeder that they never operated. It was turned into an amusement park. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNR-300
@@Rawdiswar There is one interesting video on youtube called "Webinar 024: BN-600 and BN-800 Operating Experience" from "The Generation IV International Forum" channel. According to it Michael is talking nonsense.
Not everyone needs it. India, where there is no uranium but a lot of thorium, naturally tends to use thorium as a fuel. In Russia, thorium is less than uranium, so they are developing technology for more complete use of uranium, i.e. fast reactors. The fact that a bunch of startups talk about thorium being the future that solves all problems is just advertising. I'm tired of this.
A real dark horse for breeding is using fusion. Breeding using DT reactors has been talked about for years, but is of doubtful practicality. But recently, what is (IMO) the front runner in the fusion startups has emerged: Helion. Helion's scheme uses DD fusion, not DT, and as a result produces copious excess neutrons, which don't have to be used to regenerate tritium. Their scheme uses DD + D3He together and is projected to produce ample excess power, but if operated in purely DD mode their reactor could about power itself. A 50 MW DD reactor would produce enough excess neutrons to breed half a ton of fissionable material per year. And if operated in a fission suppressed mode (where the neutron spectrum is tailored to be at energies where radiative capture on the fertile nuclei is maximized relative to fission) the fissionable materials comes out much cooler, with much less fission product contamination. Ideally, such a scheme would enable fuel to be produced for use directly in conventional thermal burner reactors, and it would never been necessary to reprocess spent fission reactor fuel.
You can save two coolant circuits by having He or CO2 as the primary coolant. But then re-adding another circuit for a combined cycle would make it more efficient. You can make loading easier by having the control rods come in from the bottom which in SFR for some reason you can't.
Net billing. Net metering. Distance metering. 😊 5cents feedin, 50cents supply. 5cents kWh electricity value. 45cents kWh grid rental costs. This is unfair to the people closest to the power plants. The wealthy in distant city penthouses should carry more of the long grid costs. 😮😮😮 😊 kw x hours x distance = true costs. 😊😊😊😊😊😊😊
or you take the waste and/or millings and utilize them in a molten chloride fast breeder and they make energy until nothing remains. Time for you guys to get past the antiquated and soon to be obsolete PWR world.
It’s not soup yet. INEL is just getting close to seeing if the chloride salts can handle radiation and pretty much nothing has been done regarding corrosion.
@@chrisjohns38 Not yet but it is on its way at the usual snail's pace of nuclear. Every MSR start-up, burner, or breeder has a strategy for corrosion. They all learned from the original MSRE. Anti-anything non-PWR folks love to spew out corrosion like it's an impossible barrier that will force us to stick with old-school outrageously expensive PWRs that will never replace fossil fuels.
Centralized generation will never compete with renewable and storage. Nuclear is already the most expensive form of generation to build in the world. And in the time it takes to bring a single reactor online? You can install 20x as much renewable and storage, for half the cost. By the end of the decade China will be putting enough renewable and storage into the global market? To be equal to plunking down 15 nuclear power stations, a year.
Nuclear is just rubbish. I walked round nuclear reactors in the UK in 1978, it was dirty , old fashioned even then. Just look at the ongoing costs of Hinkley point C , that will be the most expensive building ever, latest cost estimates £45bn for 2.8 GW. And that not even factoring the decommissioning costs! I know people who make a very lucrative living out of decommissioning nuclear plants, a job for life.
Nuclear power plants outside Western countries are significantly cheaper. As an example, the Belarusian nuclear power plant cost $ 6 billion for 2.4 GW and seven years of construction.
The idea that a few breeder reactors could supply a larger fleet of conventional plants isn't the case. With current breeder technology, a breeding ratio of about 1.25 is feasible. That is, a breeder could produce about 1.25 kg of fissile material for every 1 kg of fissile fissioned in an operating cycle. One kg of that 1.25 kg has to be returned to the breeder for the next operating cycle, and 0.25 kg could be made available to a conventional plant. Some advanced, and as-yet unproven, concepts for high-efficiency breeding might get the breeding ratio up to about 1.5, which would make 0.5 kg of fuel available for non-breeder reactors for every 1 kg consumed in the breeder.
Absolutely LOVE the Nick Touran - Dr. Keefer interaction - SO illuminating, and Dr. Keefer read my mind asking the questions I wanted to ask. Well done !!!
This is something I’ve wanted to learn more about for a while. Thanks for doing this episode
Me too
@@isaacgevj3262 Mr Google has the answer, don't be shy.
@@isaacgevj3262 google Simi Valley reactor accident
About molten salt reactors - Copenhagen Atomics is building whole fleet of 25 MW molten salt reactors for fertilizer plant in Malaisia, 1 GW overall if memory serves me correctly. Sounds like commercial.
By all means have them in to talk but they don’t have a certified reactor and so never split an atom. Their designs are based on modeling and as such their public announcements need to be taken with a pinch of…salt
@@AngelicaAtomicExactly. Vaporware is very common in the space and nuclear industries. When they have their first reactor go critical, the odds start looking a lot better for commercialization. When that moment is more than a two years away it's all just promises, talk and lofty goals. I hope they succeed but the world needs solid results.
@@AngelicaAtomic At present Copenhagen Atomics are running two full scale reactors non-fission - ie kept molten by external electricity. This is an essential exercise that will yield important improvements without the hassle of dealing with high level radiation. It is if you think about it one of the advantages of MSR's in that you can probably eliminate >80% of the bugs in your design in this relatively low-risk manner.
The next step is a small fission loop - for which the physics is well understood and closely modelled. The challenge is not to "split an atom" as you sneeringly put it, that part is trivial - it is all the other thermal, transport, chemical, redox control and maintenance questions that need to be completely resolved before it can be mass produced.
All this takes time - just as for example it takes Boeing or Airbus at least 7 years to certify a new airframe - you would expect something of this nature to be approached methodically and carefully.
I worked in the French nuclear industry in the 1980s. Superfinix cost about ten times as much as a standard reactor plant, the technical issues were enormous but it was really the cost per kW was prohibitive. This was done at scale - some 1200MW output.
... and it was a failed experience, google Superphénix for info. The Ohma breeder in Japan is under construction.
Russia promises same cost of their current VVERs for their next fast sodium BN-1200 (that price point is a specific requirement for the reactor).
You should have a separate podcast on fast reactors. I know the fuel requirements are higher (because of the smaller fission cross-section), and you could talk about that. Also controlling a fast reactor can be more challenging.
Good Podcast - He mentioned building 4 or 5 pilot plants to try some of these new designs out. Why not? They build pilot plants to smooth out the rough edges of other technologies. This Kairos idea sounds good. It's molten sale combined with TRISO fuel. Perhaps the good doctor will interview reps from that company.
51:44 *_Levi_* Strauss made jeans. You're thinking of *_Lewis L._* Strauss, chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in 1954.
Now that silicon carbide 3D printing is possible what about something like bismuth and using the gas phase of bismuth. I'm sure it's been thought about what are the downsides?
How about high temperature two-fluid breeder reactors? The first fuel circuit contains a eutectic alloy of uranium and chromium, and the second one contains a coolant. Then all this chemistry is easier to install and secure.
55:39 it doesn’t matter if it increases the cost for fuel three times given the social license cost. There are 88,000 tons of spent fuel rods are just sitting waiting to be processed and used as new fuels.
there is 3d model of superphenix available on energyencyclopedia. you can see the mechanism of the rotating plugs and the control/shutdown rod structure attached in the center plug which needs to move out of the way even when just moving the subassemblies from the breeding blanket. supposedly the BN reactors support online refueling. don't know how that works though. (they are listed under online refueling in wiki but it seems to be missing citation. maybe they just disregard safety during the reloading process.)
24:25 Na what could go wrong. How many operations do we use Na
Finally some exotic reactors to talk about
If you want to know more about thorium breeder reactor talk to Thomas Jam Pedersen at Copenhagen Atomics.
They already build the second prototype.
They’ve never split an atom tho. Don’t get me wrong I love their moxie but we just don’t know until they get a reactor certified
What about using super-critical CO2 instead of the water loop in the NaCL FAST reactors? What about FLIBE instead of NACL? What issues do these present? We are not going to figure this stuff out if we don't study them seriously. I am with Dr. Weinberg - "burn metal".
These guys are stuck in the past and don't want to hear a word about advancements. Stick with the tried and true regardless of cost and lack of versatility.
@@chapter4travels That's a little bit extreme. At least one of those two critters has learned a lesson or two about what it takes to actually develop a feasible commercial reactor. It takes more than you might conceive. So discussing things that are actually viable is the only credible discussion. Unless you believe what future batteries will do for solar power :)
@@chrisjohns38 The discussion is about the Brayton Cycle generators. Antique pressure water reactors can't produce high enough temperatures for this technology. Nor can it provide high-grade industrial heat which has a demand that is double electricity alone.
@@chapter4travelsoh rats, I thought the discussion was about breeder reactors. Have you any references for functional commercial Brayton cycle power plants? Last time I checked there was a pilot plant at Sandia. While you’re checking on that, take look at the real cost of all of the additional pressure piping and vessel materials to work at the higher temperature and pressure required for Brayton cycles to function and get back to me when you’re not busy inventing a fusion powered rocket ship. Yes, Brayton cycles work. No they are not economically feasible. Yes, fossil fuels are unfortunately the most cost effective way to produce high temperature process heat at the moment.
sCO2 power cycles are coming and will improve economics, but even today, MSRs can use the same steam cycles that coal plants do. Even those are a great improvement over the huge and expensive low-temperature nuclear steam cycles, which are a large fraction of plant cost.
Говоря об экономической рентабельности ядерной энергетики, Вы не обсудили самый ключевой момент - технологии обогащения урана. Именно из-за обладания технологией газового центрифугирования последних поколений, Росатом смог стать лидером рынка по обогащению, а также снизить стоимость уранового топлива. Имхо.
У них был об этом ролик
I can see something like the TWR being able to close the fuel cycle. A liquid metal coolant doesn't require a pressure vessel which greatly reduces the pain and delay of builds. You need these projects to be something that can easily be built. If you get these designs right you might be able to spin them up and get them going very quickly. If you have workable TWR's that run off u238 China would not be using coal.
I'm missing comments on Terrapower sodium cold reactor project i Wyoming.
I think using molten sodium as a heat transfer agent is a bad idea. It's a fire waiting to happen and putting it out requires special techniques. This means that you have to have a dedicated fire department to just do that. This is just added cost.
been looking forward for one of these for a long time.
The Canadian designed CANDU can be refueled while operation.
What makes sense is chloride molten salt fast neutron reactors. These can burn nuclear waste directly. Just dissolve the pellets in molten salt and add. Yes these reactors shutdown with heat so passively safe. Hopefully more interest in this type of reactors.
The integral fast reactor in the United States was the best breeder reactor ever built but was shut down because of political decisions. It could reprocess its own fuel in the facility, could shutdown on its own when the reactor gets hot and so had everything you would want from a fast breeder reactor. But what we need is first of all the regulations to built cheap safe nuclear reactors, nuclear plants and nuclear fuel reprocessing plants.
"cheap safe nuclear reactors"
@@TheDanEdwards No, they go together perfectly, you just have to use the right technology. There is no physical reason for a low-pressure/high-temperature nuclear power plant to cost any more than a natural gas or coal plant.
Until regulators reverse the LNT radiation regulations, nuclear will always be much more expensive than it needs to be. The Linear no Threshold theory for radiation has been debunked for decades, yet they cling to it like a bible.
A problem facing all fast reactors is that the fuel is not in its most reactive configuration. So in an accident, one has to worry about the fuel melting, moving around, closing voids, and becoming more reactive. A large fast reactor might have 1000 critical masses of plutonium in it. As Teller observed in 1967, it's very hard to ensure a prompt supercritical configuration would not arise. For this reason I don't see much hope for licensing of most fast reactor designs in the US.
as of today I understand the economics of uranium being cheap; but the point is: don't make the "waste" unusable, because we'll use it later.
But, what if the reactor that utilizes the waste is cheaper, more reliable, and versatile than the really expensive, inefficient pressure water reactors that are generating the waste. When we run out of waste, they switch to natural U238 or thorium.
@@chapter4travels as I wrote, "as of today"...
@@nwrked as I wrote "what if"...
@@chapter4travels as of today, there's no what if.
@@nwrked Sure there is, several companies have been working on this.
What a wealth of knowledge!!
56:01 the discussion focused too much on Na reactors.
Question; isnt thorium fuel cycle a breeder cycle ?
Dr. Keefer, That was a great video! Dr. Touran is a national USA treasure. I would love to sit and pick his mind. I want to know what he thinks we should be doing with our energy future. He should write the USA energy plan. Thanks! BuBu
Great episode!
Energy is not just an economic issue it is also strategic.
Nuclear is the strategic part of the equation, renewables the economic part. If civilisation is to be sustained, both are needed, in considerable abundance.
We dobt need nuke bombs.
@@ABa-os6wm Agree, but that cat's out of the bag and will remain so for quite some time to become.
Renewables require 100% backup and if that backup is nuclear, what's the point of the renewables in the first place?
@@ABa-os6wm Thanks for mentioning. Enthusiastic fun club with little know-how think they can just shovel in that waste in those breeders (even before bouiding them and set up costly recycling) and forget about it.
@@chapter4travels Some investors only have money tu build a $300 000 000 gas plant or less to erect a wind farm .
It all comes down to nothing unless you make the fuel a liquid; IE molten salt reactors. It helps tremendously to have a fast neutron reactor.
Imagine the production of useful elements from this process.
The most interesting isotopes (Bi-213 and Ac-225) come from the thorium fuel cycle. (for Targeted Alpha Therapy, see ruclips.net/video/ltiU5ZUXKCE/видео.html) Many other useful and often valuable isotopes may also be extracted online in a molten salt breeder.
I’m going to have many question. 1. I’m a big supporter of nuclear, but with all the reports of countries and states doing whole days on solar/wind and price of batteries coming down, I’m not sure it makes as much sense. 2. Why do we always pretend like nuclear waste has to be stored for 100s of 1000s of years or millions? Like we aren’t going to have any technological progression? The future humans might be super pissed we made it so had to access the useable nuclear “waste”.
Solar/Wind can not be "base" producer, you can't control when and how much energy it produces. Batteries - ok, but there is not enough materials(like lithium) to turn Wind/Solar to stable energy. Plus far as I could find Solar/Wind+batteries + natgaz is way more expensive than nuclear + natgaz.
Batteries storage is three times more expensive than nuclear at nuclear's worst. We know that nuclear can be done for the half the cost it is currently on the US without compromising on safety (we've done it before). Batteries are getting cheaper, but nowhere near fast enough to outcompete nuclear. Then you have to consider how much more land use and mining that wind and solar require and Batteries add even more mining. Batteries storage is never going to dominate the grid.
If enhanced geothermal was achieving costs comparable to wind and solar without storage, then there'd be a case that nuclear was fast reaching obsolescence - but that isn't the case.
A breeder reactor is harder to build than a conventional plant and recycling fuel costs much more than mining uranium ore and enriching it. Breeders won't be economic until conventional plants have become widespread and they have used up most of the easily recovered uranium ores.
Less than 1%. Natural U is only 1/140 U-235, and enrichment is far from 100% efficient. Plus, spent fuel is usually not reprocessed to recover residual fissile, and when it is, only Pu and U is recovered, and buildup of U-236, etc. in slow neutron reactors prevents full re-use. So, without breeders, we use 1 part in 285 of U in LWRs with no reprocessing; about 30% better with reprocessing, as in France, and about 1 part in 135 in CANDU reactors. We might use more than 1 part in 285 in LWRs once-through if uranium gets expensive, because then we'll spend more money on enrichment, to leave less U-235 in the tailings.
MSR , FLIBE ??
A lot of folks overlook the UK's contribution to fast reactor design. Here is an overview of the Prototype Fast Reactor at Dounreay, here in Scotland. A reactor that was sadly shut down early whilst it was just coming into it's prime.
ruclips.net/video/dYHfdCoFZ_Y/видео.html
Breeder reactors are, as you mentioned, a concept as old as nuclear energy itself. Does it not strike you, that this concept never caught on - and not for a lack of trying? It is not only cost prohibitive, it also is connected to a lot of contaminations, technical problems and scandals. In other words: We tried and it just does not work. And now it does not have to any more, since renewabels produce electric energy much cheaper than nuclear plants. They just become more and more obsolete, while renewables still are just at the beginning of their development cycle and have a lot more potential. It's not that I would be opposed to safe nuclear reactors per se (if someone can show me one) - but the question is: Why? Why do it complicated, expensive and dangerous, when we can do it now dezentralized, cheaper and much more sustainable. Just for the sake of it? Toys for boys? To hang on to what you were trained to do? I think there is just not a valid use case any more for nuclear reactors, much less for breeders - with very few exceptions.
You reveal your ignorance about nuclear power generation, and it is stunning. I hardly even know where to start. Solar and wind are not interchangeable with base power solutions such as nuclear, gas, hydro. They never will be. Learn why and stop preaching bad info.
Nuclear is an incredibly safe technology. There have only been two incidents with damaging results. In the case of Fukushima, more people died in the evacuation than the actual incident. (One person indirectly) If renewables were that much better, we wouldn't even be having this conversation. It's as if there are real problems with renewables such as storage, the duck curve, and the power grid. When we discuss the price of solar and wind, one thing that is not factored into the cost is the cost of batteries and other infrastructure. Sure, the panels are cheap, but storage technology is lagging behind and can't keep up.
@@malikjackson9337 please google „list of nuclear incidents“ on wikipedia. The rest is the „nuclear god of the gaps“ argument - „renewables never will xy“ (provide more than 5% of electricity, become cheap, reliable, …) - all proven wrong, while nuclear power recedes and renewables grow massively. While nuclear power stagnates and can not keep up with costs, renewables are developed with a dynamic nuclear power never had in over 50 years. Without wishful thinking, nuclear is dead, except of very few niches (mostly related to military applications). There is no real funding for anything more than at best replacing the eol reactors - if that.
Molten Pb fast reactor.
Molten lead or some alloy of lead is quite hot and not exactly easy on metals it touches. Molten lead can corrode stainless steel for example. There are better steels and super-alloys but the expenses in construction and spare parts skyrocket.
10:42 bury them, no. After storing them extract out useful elements that are no longer radioactive.
Seems like molten salt reactors are the way to go.
Inevitably so.🤔
Fast or slow?
@@waywardgeologist2520 Both. I would think that breeders would be more expensive than burners so a mix would seem like a good idea.
Unprototyed reactors are not for an extremely conservative industry with capital issues.
@@BioHazardCL4 Except MSRs are proven with prototypes. The MSRE in Oakridge National Lab did just that.
even as an engineer who knows more than the average person, this guy is hard to follow. it's more like he's just thinking out loud and not explaining very well or speaking clearly, still it's helpful to hear the names of programs etc.
Great discussion .. I've been waiting for this one
Question. You have heard of spent Uranium bullets. Why wouldn’t we be able to use these same bullets on drilling bits? Or do we already?
You talk of the differences in cost to run a plant. What would a power plant’s profit be if it is successful?
Thinking about breeders should be essential, if it is a good disposal of conventional nuclear waste.
With the advances in metallurgy we should be able to do this easily. May cost more, because it is new. Depleted uranium tubing. I’ll bet it is unbreakable, and will not wear through soon.
Start batting around some ideas guys. Not all are feasible, but we have to think outside the safety box to advance. We’ll find ways to make the ideas safe.
This discussing brings to mind a video I saw years ago about why Uranium is so “dangerous”. It was about a rebellious plant worker in the 50’ and 60’s who would go down to the heavy water pool everyday at the start of his shift and fill his coffee cup with heavy water and take it back to his office and sip on it all day. No harm done. The reason, stated in the video, that Uranium is so dangerous, is so no one will want to steal it.
It’s in every home, or should be. “But, but, but… that’s a different kind!”
You don’t think the establishment BSs us?
ruclips.net/video/pwXt_eEtYp0/видео.htmlsi=2SmObLCXjwRJtYS0
hardness and density aren't the same thing.
I still want a series on India's thorium breeder reactors. They sound badass, they say they have started, but I can't find any details
I believe they are trying to do solid-fuel thorium breeders and that is the problem.
@@chrisjohns38 The problem is the solid fuel, regardless of uranium or thorium or a mix, the pellets can only go so long before you have to reprocess them all over again. Not so for liquid fuel.
@@chrisjohns38 Agreed, fast neutron MSRs are a ways off but thermal spectrum burner MSRs are very close. Terrestrial Energy is 2/3rds through the Canadian regulatory licensing process. Thorcon Power has the go-ahead to build their prototype in Indonesia and Copenhagen Atomics is in negotiations with El Salvador for their first of a kind.
@@chrisjohns38 Unfortunately the NRC is pushing new technology or adaptations of older MSR technology overseas.
@@chapter4travels no! that is not true. They don’t design or license reactors, they do confirmatory reviews and calculation. I was involved with design, licensing, repairs/modifications and operating licensed nuclear power plants and shipping/storage containers. Submit a complete application and you shall get a license. I can tell you first hand that when you hear the argument that the NRC is stopping someone from building a nuclear plant or other licensed product, their stuff is BS. If you want, I’ll find a couple of docketed submittals that I can smell from here!
Thanks for the interesting info! Looking forward to listening
Wacky reactors are always fun.
Imagine if nuclear needed to be really efficient with fissile material for some reason.
Like that reactor at Los Alamos that used molten plutonium in tantalum tubes. Crazy!
Thermal Breeder Reactors are possible using Thorium. They are less complex than a Fast Breeder, with the process successfully demonstrated at the Shippingport Reactor in Pennsylvania. However, There was only a 1.4% increase in fissile material from that process. I suspect the low reproduction rate is why this method is not being discussed now. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shippingport_Atomic_Power_Station en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shippingport_Atomic_Power_Station
Nuclear Submarines were built as the perfect counter to Nuclear weapons, kind of fighting fire with fire sword of Damocles balance of terror.
The balance of power is turned inward against the civil power adaptation to circumstances that is the environmentally destructive Dark Money Economy. Nothing more to say except listen to the Geologists talk about the inevitability of expected catastrophic changes we can only make partial, not even proportional adaptions to.
Base load of government regulation responsibilities are drifting way off the happy medium and the logical connection between perceptions of wealth +/-, are divorced from the concept of sustainable metastable proportioning of energy availability before the catastrophic failures of Planetary calendar emulation.
The reality of Fast breeder Reactors is that they can't be kept running. Their "Time On-Line" percentages are horrible. France's SuperPhenix had an Operating Ratio of 14.4%. The Japanese Breeder Reactor's Operating Ratio was close to zero. That's after close to 70 years of trying by every nuclear capable country on the planet. They are just too complex and too hard to maintain without something messing up. Russia is currently operating the only "Commercial" Fast Reactors at above 50%, and they do so by just letting Sodium fires happen. They isolate the fires and just leave the reactor operational. Nobody else on the planet would accept that as a "Standard Operating Procedure."
Reference material?
@@Rawdiswar Germany spent $4 Billion on constructing a Fast Breeder that they never operated. It was turned into an amusement park. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNR-300
@@michaelhromanik9753 sodium has issue but it isn’t the only material.
@@Rawdiswar There is one interesting video on youtube called "Webinar 024: BN-600 and BN-800 Operating Experience" from "The Generation IV International Forum" channel. According to it Michael is talking nonsense.
@@Cougar4ik Wow thanks
No one is doing Thorium? Literally China and India.
Not everyone needs it. India, where there is no uranium but a lot of thorium, naturally tends to use thorium as a fuel. In Russia, thorium is less than uranium, so they are developing technology for more complete use of uranium, i.e. fast reactors. The fact that a bunch of startups talk about thorium being the future that solves all problems is just advertising. I'm tired of this.
A real dark horse for breeding is using fusion. Breeding using DT reactors has been talked about for years, but is of doubtful practicality. But recently, what is (IMO) the front runner in the fusion startups has emerged: Helion. Helion's scheme uses DD fusion, not DT, and as a result produces copious excess neutrons, which don't have to be used to regenerate tritium. Their scheme uses DD + D3He together and is projected to produce ample excess power, but if operated in purely DD mode their reactor could about power itself. A 50 MW DD reactor would produce enough excess neutrons to breed half a ton of fissionable material per year. And if operated in a fission suppressed mode (where the neutron spectrum is tailored to be at energies where radiative capture on the fertile nuclei is maximized relative to fission) the fissionable materials comes out much cooler, with much less fission product contamination.
Ideally, such a scheme would enable fuel to be produced for use directly in conventional thermal burner reactors, and it would never been necessary to reprocess spent fission reactor fuel.
Seems like the way to deal with Sodium and water/steam reactions would be to switch to CO2 turbines.
You can save two coolant circuits by having He or CO2 as the primary coolant. But then re-adding another circuit for a combined cycle would make it more efficient. You can make loading easier by having the control rods come in from the bottom which in SFR for some reason you can't.
Lftr is the future
Tthey other day I came across a new song called Damaged by October ends , they is gonna blow up soon. React to it ASAP 🔥
Net billing.
Net metering.
Distance metering. 😊
5cents feedin, 50cents supply.
5cents kWh electricity value.
45cents kWh grid rental costs.
This is unfair to the people closest to the power plants.
The wealthy in distant city penthouses should carry more of the long grid costs. 😮😮😮 😊
kw x hours x distance = true costs.
😊😊😊😊😊😊😊
or you take the waste and/or millings and utilize them in a molten chloride fast breeder and they make energy until nothing remains. Time for you guys to get past the antiquated and soon to be obsolete PWR world.
It’s not soup yet. INEL is just getting close to seeing if the chloride salts can handle radiation and pretty much nothing has been done regarding corrosion.
@@chrisjohns38 Not yet but it is on its way at the usual snail's pace of nuclear.
Every MSR start-up, burner, or breeder has a strategy for corrosion. They all learned from the original MSRE. Anti-anything non-PWR folks love to spew out corrosion like it's an impossible barrier that will force us to stick with old-school outrageously expensive PWRs that will never replace fossil fuels.
Why does this guy on the left not move his mouth.
Centralized generation will never compete with renewable and storage. Nuclear is already the most expensive form of generation to build in the world. And in the time it takes to bring a single reactor online? You can install 20x as much renewable and storage, for half the cost. By the end of the decade China will be putting enough renewable and storage into the global market? To be equal to plunking down 15 nuclear power stations, a year.
Nuclear is just rubbish. I walked round nuclear reactors in the UK in 1978, it was dirty , old fashioned even then. Just look at the ongoing costs of Hinkley point C , that will be the most expensive building ever, latest cost estimates £45bn for 2.8 GW. And that not even factoring the decommissioning costs! I know people who make a very lucrative living out of decommissioning nuclear plants, a job for life.
Nuclear power plants outside Western countries are significantly cheaper. As an example, the Belarusian nuclear power plant cost $ 6 billion for 2.4 GW and seven years of construction.