And we want wind power why?

[Dr Mordrid]

Hornslet, Denmark and the second such failure in a week. Cause: failure in the mechanism intended to prevent runaway rotation.

Thousands of these 60+ meter SOB's in the midwest where the wind known as "The Hawk" rules and at the north end of Tornado Alley? Uhhhh....I don't think so

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL-cRuYAxg0

[Rakido]

because that is still way better than a second Tchernobyl .. and it looks cool if hightech crashes

[Dr Mordrid]

Properly designed a reactor will not do a Chernobyl. In fact some recent designs cannot.

I suggest you examine the PBR (pebble bed reactor) design in which the fissionable material is placed in hard nuggets. These are also gravity fed, meaning no shutdown for refueling. Even if all its gas coolant (usually helium) leaks out the core stabilizes at a temp far lower than meltdown temps. Better yet if used helium just rises into space in the event of a leak.

No water coolant = no superheated steam = no Chernobyl type steam explosion.

It's been established that they're so safe as to not even require pressure vessels, though they'd probably be used anyhow to provide impact protection from terror attacks via airplanes....which tests show the pressure vessel would survive.

PBR's are also being looked at for spacecraft that would need megawatts of power for the VASIMR and other plasma drive systems.

Each pebbles shell is a 60 mm (2.6") hollow sphere of pyrolytic graphite, which is good to twice the operating temperature of the reactor.

[Brian Ellis]

because that is still way better than a second Tchernobyl .. and it looks cool if hightech crashes

If you'll excuse me saying so, that remark is simply a display of ignorance. The EPR design, such as is in construction in Finland and France (+ 2 about to be started in China), cannot do a "Chernobyl" on the world. You do realise that we are now in Generation III+ design, do you? This includes advanced passive safety features which allows the maintenance of a safe state without the use of any active control components. Other than the EPR (EDF-Areva), other G III+ designs include the CANDU ACR (AECL), the AP1000 (Westinghouse) and the ESBWR (GE). Chernobyl was a poorly-designed Generation I and is simply not comparable.

To date, fewer than 5,000 people have been killed or have died prematurely because of Chernobyl. It is expected that another 9,000 may die prematurely in the next 50 years. These figures have been published in reports co-authored by all interested parties, including NGOs, as well as international and government agencies. Compare this with the WHO figure of 3,000,000 who die from energy-related pollution each and every year. Even this figure is probably far too conservative, because India has reported 5,000,000 deaths/year from pollution related to road traffic alone.

Obviously, all non-natural deaths are tragic for those concerned, but what are 14,000-15,000 deaths in a whole generational lifetime from one unfortunate accident, compared with the millions who die each year because we burn fossil fuels? Where is our sense of proportion?

I am all for renewables, up to the limit of reasonable reliability, but they must be backed up by nuclear if we are to control the amount of shit we spew into the air each year.

[Dr Mordrid]

Exactly.

BTW: Elon Musk (SpaceX, Tesla & PayPal) has coined a term for when tech "performs" in this manner.

He calls it RUD = Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly

[ND66]

Now this is history in the making.....
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Dr M. & Brian agreed on the same thing.


Sorry guys, couldn't help it.....



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[Umfriend]

Noticed the same thing. Must be gettin' old and dependent on their children.

[Jammrock]

There were a lot of those wind turbines in the Danish country when I was there. Never saw anything like that though. Insane. That's their major source of electricity out there too.

[Brian Ellis]

There were a lot of those wind turbines in the Danish country when I was there. Never saw anything like that though. Insane. That's their major source of electricity out there too.

That's why there is a lot of Danish Lurpack butter on the market: the cows grazing under them get shaken up by the vibration from them!!

[Jammrock]

Now this is history in the making.....
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Dr M. & Brian agreed on the same thing.


Sorry guys, couldn't help it.....



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It is rather shocking. My old physics teacher used to show a video about the forefather of the new reactor designs at the Idaho National Labratory in the 90's. They used some sodium based liquid to make a reactor that could self regulate a shut down with no user intervention, and then actually tested it. The engineers cut all control to the reactor off and then they watched as it shut itself down. It was very cool, and very safe, and very shut down by the Clintons afterwards.

I live less than 5 km from a nuclear power plant off Lake Wylie in the Charlotte, NC area. I can see the steam releasing from the plant everyday, and don't feel in danger at all, even though it's not one of the nice new gen III designs.

[Brian Ellis]

That was a fast breeder reactor that used molten sodium as a coolant. Actually, it was Carter, not Clinton, who forced its closure, along with all spent nuclear fuel recycling, which is why the USA has an enormous stockpile of spent fuel rods. It is also why the US had to send all its spare weapons-grade uranium and plutonium to France for recycling into civilian-grade fuel.

Fast breeder reactors, as the name implies, can produce more nuclear fuel than you put into it, so that spent fuel from a non-breeding reactor can produce up to 20-200 times the quantity of new fuel. This is why we are unlikely to ever run out of fuel, but we need more FBRs built to cope with the demand. In the meanwhile, we have to dig uranium ore out of the ground!

Most modern reactors (from GIII) can run on at least 33% recycled fuel (MOX). The GIII+ reactors can run on 100% MOX. Most W.Europe and Japanese reactors run, at least partially, on MOX, which is made from 96% of the spent fuel, so there is very little spent fuel, comparatively speaking.

[KRSESQ]

and it looks cool if hightech crashes

What's so hightech about windmills? My grandparents used windmills to pull water out of the ground. And those blew down sometimes, too.

Kevin

[Lizzard[MPE]]

I'm glad i belong to a forum that with a few reads you can learn more in a day here than a year at uni. lol

[Technoid]

It is also worth to note that the reason for the Chernobyl disaster was not engineering error.

it was human error!

One irradiated SOB who didn't RTFM

[Brian Ellis]

Yup! Human error combined with a non-fail-to-safe design.