A friend of mine sent me an interesting article by John Lassiter retired from the Harvard Business School. In his article, he summarizes his views about so-called "new nuclear" power and the development and construction of the plants that would generate the power. I am not even going to link the article because he raises some political issues and I would like to keep the discussion on the technology if possible. I'm sure if you did a Google search you would find the article.

In any event, one of the "new nuclear" concepts that he highlights is ThorCon Power which seems to be both a company and the name of the reactor they propose to build. Here is a link to the description on their web site:

http://thorconpower.com/

This form of generation seems much safer than the old style reactors, but I know nothing about the science. Some of you may and I invite you to share your knowledge and opinions of the process described here.

Another approach is nuclear power modules put forth by a company called NuScale. Here is a link to their tech page.

http://www.nuscalepower.com/our-tech...ology-overview

I'm not sure I understand why this is safer, other than being smaller, but perhaps some of you engineering types know something about this.

Finally, Mr. Lassiter also touts a company called TerraPower that is developing something called a traveling wave reactor. I'm totally lost on this one, but it uses depleted uranium for its fuel source. Depleted uranium is essentially the waste from the enrichment process, or so I read. The company is supported by Bill Gates, so take that for what it's worth. Here's a link to their web site as well:

http://terrapower.com/pages/the-physics

I'd love to know more about how this reactor works.


Again, please DO NOT start a political discussion about energy. Safety is fair game, I think, but let's not start a "safety discussion" that is nothing more than a political discussion with radiation poisoning thrown in for good measure. I am interested in the science and I know many of you are engineers and may be able to explain and discuss this with the rest of us who are curious.

Thanks.

Bill

 

It is interesting that Thorconpower uses the term "walk away" instead of "run like hell". It also would worry me that it is buried so deep that it may affect the ground water.

I agree that we need to do something new to generate our power but I am not sure that any of these are the right way to go.

 

The +1 knows a lot about this stuff, having been captain of a nuclear-powered submarine. I'll see if he has anything to pass along.

 

Perhaps you might to look at ITER which is a fusion project in France. It uses a Tokamak reactor. Princeton has a very small Tokamak which has been operating for a few years. The are out around 2027 for deployment, I believe.
Nuclear power without all that annoying leftover stuff and powered by seawater.

 

+1 is a nuclear engineer. I'm passing these on to him for comment. I do seem to recall he really liked the salt reactors in the past as well as the small reactors mentioned here. We attended several seminars featuring the small reactor and loved the concept. Cannot speak to the technology, but perhaps he can.

 

PS: I also recall that +1 was extemely into the breeder reactors years ago.

 

I sent a link and Bill's post along to my brother, Steve, for his feedback.

Besides being a lot smarter than me, Steve was a nuclear electrician in the Navy, aboard a nuclear fast-attack sub. Since discharge he earned a nuclear related degree in engineering and now works as an engineer for Electric Boat (I think).

 

As promised...a reply from Steve...

"So, you want my 2¢? I don’t know too much about any particular technology. But, I am aware of the movement towards small modular reactors and newer/safer technologies. Pretty interesting stuff. It’s ironic that political discussions are banned in the forum because it’s politics that will likely prevent their fruition.

For all the good that Rickover brought to the advancement of nuclear power, he is unfortunately greatly responsible for locking the commercial industry into the standard pressurized water reactor. Then of course TMI and Chernobyl completely stifled development of new technology. Check out Pandora’s Promise on Netflix if you haven’t seen it.

The one thing I’m certain of on this topic is, naval nuclear power will stay with the PWR. As for commercial technology?, I’d prefer full bore development and deployment of solar and wind, and large scale energy storage and a smart grid and a Tesla in every garage."


Hmmm. Actually, I wouldn't mind finding a Tesla Model S in the garage.

 

Thanks Mike. Does your brother think solar can outright replace fossil fuel electricity generation, or is he a member of the supplementation school of thought?

 

I'd love to read his thoughts.