/sci/ - Science & Math

Carter banned breeder reactors because ONE type of breeder reactor posed a proliferation risk. It's possible LFTRs may be outright illegal as of now, and congress is too stupid to amend the law.

>>4297538
China is on it, and isn't reputed to give a shit about irrelevant thing like licenses.

>>4297538
And anti-nuclear hysteria.
And oil and gas companies financing the solar and wind movements because they're destined to fail, so they won't hurt their profits, and distracts people from getting off of oil and gas.

obviously oil companies are making sure to keep other energy sources from becoming a viable options.

>>4297575
>breeder reactors banned
Bwuh?
http://en.allexperts.com/q/Nuclear-Power-2462/Breeder-Reactors.htm
>Actually, Jimmy Carter banned reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, which is part of the breeder reactor life cycle.
Well, time to find out if the law is still in action.
But how?
>>4297578
I hope China gets there soon. Still, I feel they would benefit from our own guys going over there to help them out.
>>4297580
Flibe energy is there, and has got enough capital to get going already. The rest is details, unless they use legislation to screw them.
>>4297582
Same as above.

>>4297592
>Ronald Reagan reversed Carter's ban on reprocessing
Yay!

>Nuclear power plant
>Externally-heated engine
>Non-combined Brayton cycle
What is it with all these alt-energy advocates and their irrational fear of cooling towers?

>>4297680
I think it has to do with all that energy being lost as steam into the air.

>>4297684
Combined-cycle engines are MORE efficient, buddy. Ever heard of Carnot's theorem?

>given Waterpo

>>4297688
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot's_theorem_(thermodynamics)
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_cycle
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-cycle_gas_turbine
I'm sorry, I don't have the engineering background to understand how one is more efficient than the other.

>>4297699
An explanation:
If you've ever touched a car's tailpipe after it has been running for a while, you know that the exhaust gases are hot. But basically this heat, which is energy, is wasted.

In a more general sense, if you use some of the "waste" heat from a big thermodynamic cycle as the "input" into a smaller cycle, that "waste" heat is now being put to use. Thus, in total, you are losing less energy, i.e. you are more efficient.

>>4297729
Oh.
But that hasn't been implemented yet, as mentioned here:
>Next generation nuclear power plants are also on the drawing board which will take advantage of the higher temperature range made available by the Brayton top cycle, as well as the increase in thermal efficiency offered by a Rankine bottoming cycle.

>>4297739
Correct, neither combined-cycle turbines nor the uncombined Brayton cycle have been used on nuclear power plants as of yet (partially because the latter would be just plain silly). But the majority of gas turbine power plants are now combined cycle.

>>4297763
So other places like coal and gas powerplants used these efficient combos?

And, pretty much to sum up my point, cooling towers offer a substantially LOWER heat-rejection temperature than more compact alternatives, and thereby offer a higher potential Carnot efficiency to take advantage of. If anything, alternative-energy advocates ought to be PROMOTING solutions that include cooling towers, but I guess they have such a personal stigma against them that they're willing to sacrifice real performance just to avoid using them.

>>4297771
That's the whole problem with solar and wind. Pursuing full deployment of them now is retarded. Pursue full deployment of nuclear, and research into LFTR, IFR, waste digestors, and so on, if you're serious about a clean, renewable, safe, energy production.

>>4297767
Gas power plants do, but coal and oil power plants are typically all-Rankine cycle, using ONLY steam turbines and no gas turbines. Because of this, they generally have a lower maximum temperature, and thus lower overall efficiency. Recent efforts have been made to improve on this without needing to resort to the technically-challenging external-combustion gas turbine, so such steam-turbine power plants have been employing higher and higher working pressures in order to elevate their Carnot efficiency. In fact, some supercritical steam power plants have reached the point where it is the creep limit of the stainless steel steam turbine itself, and not the pressure rating of the boiler, that is the limiting factor. Perhaps it's time the ol' Rankine cycle got a makeover and started using inconel like gas-turbines do...