[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/sci/ - Science & Math

View post   
File: 39 KB, 300x358, 300px-Nagasakibomb.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3853608 No.3853608 [Reply] [Original]

Do /sci/ support cheap and clean energy?
If yes, then go and sign the "educate the public about nuclear energy petition" at whitehouse site, and repost it.
It needs 5000 votes in the following two weeks, I'm sure you can manage that.

goo [dot] gl [forwardslash] gGcS4 (butchered URL because 4chan doesn't allow pasting of full one.)

>> No.3853689
File: 22 KB, 400x400, 1292016922375.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3853689

>butchered URL because 4chan doesn't allow pasting of full one.

>> No.3853707
File: 2.46 MB, 938x4167, 1314940064638.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3853707

All the education anyone will ever need

>> No.3853724

>>3853707
sounds too good to be true
is this legit?

>> No.3853725

>>3853724

Yup. LFTRs don't get funding cause they can't make nukes, though.

Which is something the hippies should LIKE.

>> No.3853726

> sign the petition at whitehouse.gov
> link is not whitehouse.gov

>> No.3853732

>>3853725
Talk to Jesse Ventura. You sound like a conspiracy theorist.

>> No.3853745

>>3853732

... No, that's really why they didn't get funding. They were developed at the height of the Cold War.

>> No.3853765

>>3853745
Uh-huh.

The reason we don't use thorium reactors is because we can't make nuclear weapons out of them. I mean, can you even hear yourself? Say it out loud, and just listen to the crazy.

>> No.3853768

>>3853725
You can't make nukes with LWR spent fuel either. Too much Pu-240.

>> No.3853771

>>3853765
It's not so much that you can't use them to make nukes as that it's so much of a fucking hassle no one would want to bother. There are much cheaper and easier ways of getting bomb fuel.

>> No.3853775

>>3853765
The reason we chose uranium reactors over thorium reactors is that the by products could be used in the nuclear weapons we were building at the time.

The reason we're still not using thorium reactors is a combination of vested interests and a population which is absolutely fucking retarded about anything relating to 'radiation'.

Case in point
>Classmate: The Fukushima fuel rods are burning their way to the core of the planet as we speak

>> No.3853776

>>3853765
>>3853768

You can use conventional nuclear reactors to enrich uranium, jesus fuck. Not the waste material.

Can't do it with LFTR.

>> No.3853780

>>3853725

There is a lot of underlying reasons why the LFTR lost funding. It's probably because the LWR was perfected long before the LFTR was. We also don't know how well the LFTR scales up

>> No.3853786

>>3853776

You can do a lot more with the waste material of an LFTR than you can with a LWR

>> No.3853801

>>3853786
Did those materials have usages back then?

>> No.3853806

>>3853776
>You can use conventional nuclear reactors to enrich uranium
This sentence. This sentence right here shows why you are a dumb buck who does not know what he's talking about. You don't even know what uranium enrichment is and you have the gall to try lecturing others on nuclear technology you don't even understand.

>> No.3853816

>>3853780
This is the most important reason. The LWR was already a proven technology that took advantage of an existing infrasture while the LFTR was still experimental and would require the construction of brand new and expensive facilities.

>> No.3853818

>>3853806
Not that anon but if I recall correctly nuclear material is enriched in at least two stages to get to weapons grade material. The fuel grade material is what's left over from making weapons grade material.

So if you're making weapons you might as well make reactors that use the left overs.

>> No.3853827

>>3853801

Yes the RTG's powering the Voyager spacecraft used Plutonium 238 which comes out of the back end of an LFTR. And NASA is actually running out of it

>> No.3853907

>>3853827
Which basically means America is fucking retarded for not using LFTRs... imagine that.

>> No.3853929

>>3853907

I think that's blatantly obvious

>> No.3853976

Come on guys LFTR thread, where's the enthusiasm

>> No.3854399
File: 192 KB, 504x376, LFTRisAwesome.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3854399

Here's the love, all happening this year!

Long time advocate Kirk Sorensen started a company, Flibe Energy, which is going to develop a small scale LFTR for military bases. (Military first, to do an end run around the NRC, same as when the first LBRs were developed.)

The Weinberg Foundation will be developing LFTR plants in Britain.

They are being looked at not just for alternative power generation, but also for nuclear waste disposal, desalination, and ammonia generation for fertilizer.

Guys, we are finally on the cusp of an energy revolution!

>> No.3854459

>>3854399
>Flibe Energy

How'd that news slip past me?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-uxvSVIGtU

>> No.3854528

>>3853976
It's imaginary right now. Come back to me when there are reactors up and running supplying us with glorious electricity.

>> No.3854536

>E-petitions
>Doing anything

>> No.3854544

>air cooled

How does this work?

>> No.3854547

Another misconception is that LFTR’s can be air-cooled (here and here) rather than being dependant on the water cooling process we utilise in most other power stations. I’m assuming this rumour got going as a result of the fact that the MSRE was air-cooled. While this is true, you could air cool any power station (indeed many small diesel fired units are typically air-cooled), it’s just there are a host of good reasons not to!

Firstly, fire safety, air is an oxidising substance. Fires start all the time at power stations (fossil fuel fired and nuclear ones), especially in the turbine halls and the last thing we want in an emergency is a load of big cooling fans blasting in air and literally fanning the flames! In this scenario we’d face the dilemma between stopping the fans and cutting of the source of cooling (forcing us to SCRAM the reactor to prevent a LOCA scenario) or risk the fire spreading out of control, possibly to the point where it compromises the reactor’s safety. This was of course very similar to the dilemma faced during the Windscale fire, which was air cooled (although in this case directly, rather than indirectly as we currently discussing). And on the subject of Windscale, you will recall what I said earlier about fires and that Graphite core, so we’d be opening a very serious potential safety loophole.

>> No.3854550

Cooling fans also aren’t terribly reliable, which is why the MSRE was down for several months due to a cooling fan failure. Air based cooling is also very weather dependant, indeed I note that the fans at the MSRE seems to have failed in the late spring, when they would have likely been struggling to cope with higher daytime temperatures.

Thirdly, it’s the matter of thermal efficiency. Air based cooling is not very efficient, largely because air has such a low heat capacity compared to water (1.15 against 4.2 J/kg K). A typical COP (Co-efficient of Performance) for fans would be of the order of 2 – 3.7, while you can get 5 – 7.5 with water based cooling. Assuming a COP of 3 (it would be more like 2.5 at the temperatures in question, but bear with me!) and assuming a 1,000 MWth LFTR with a thermal efficiency of 50% (to keep my numbers easy!) = 500 MWe. Our cooling fans, in order to dispose of that 500 MW’s of excess heat, would be consuming 166.67 MW of electricity, dropping our effective plant efficiency down to 33%, barely Rankine cycle levels! This is why we use water in most power stations for cooling.

>> No.3854551

Also this air based cooling argument strikes me as a bit of a red herring, LFTR fans essentially inventing reasons why their “precious” is better than anything else. With the exception of a few geothermal power stations in arid areas (or hydroelectric plants!), I’m unaware of any major power project that was derailed for lack of cooling water. Either you can use cooling towers (forced draught or natural convection types) and minimise water losses to an acceptable level or simply move the plant next to a ready water source and transmit the power to where it is needed. Many desert countries operate large thermal power stations from around the coasts and several such as Iran, UAE and Libya are even planning to build nuclear stations too. So I fail to see how “air based” cooling offers any real benefits.

One option for MSR’s is so called “dry cooling” using condensers (see here). This relies on the high thermal mass of a liquid working fluid to take away heat as its passed through the condenser matrix (important note, it does not rely on the evaporative cooling effect as the two previously mentioned cooling methods do). However, obviously it requires water on site (which has various design implications for our thermal plant) although the water usage levels are low. Such arrays can be bulky (compared to forced draft or cooling fans, though smaller than Hyperbolic cooling towers) , less energy efficient (though better than direct air cooling, i.e. fans) and thus will consume some part (maybe as much as 5-8%) of the power stations electrical load. But again, whether you utlise such a system or not really depends on the circumstances where it is built.

>> No.3854557

Nuclear desalination uses the excess heat from a nuclear power plant to evaporate sea water and to condense the pure water. Writing in the appropriately named International Journal of Nuclear Desalination, a team from India and Italy argue that despite public concerns, the low energy costs and convenience of this latter process make it the preferred option.

>> No.3854559

Energy input accounts for 35 to 45% of the total cost of producing desalinated water using reverse osmosis in which sea water is forced under pressure through a semi-permeable membrane, a filter, so that the ions that make it "salty" are left behind and purified water is formed on the other side of the membrane. However, energy costs are rising while environmental pressure on reducing greenhouse emissions requires alternative and sustainable energy sources for industrial processes.

Conventionally, evaporative desalination is considered to be even less efficient, purportedly requiring twice the energy. However, Rognoni and colleagues have recalculated the energies involved and suggest that not only is this a serious over-estimate. Calculations were previously based, not on the efficiency of the water purification process but as a loss of energy from steam turbines. They also point out that given the essentially free heat energy available as a by-product of electricity generation using nuclear power, evaporative desalination should be the best approach to generating fresh water.

>> No.3854563

“Desalination of brackish and sea water by reverse osmosis is expensive and inefficient. Marco Rognoni of Saline Water Specialists, in Gallarate, Italy working with colleagues M.P. Ramaswamy and J. Justin Robert Paden in Tiruchirappalli, India, have calculated the cost balance and demonstrated that the benefits of nuclear evaporative desalination outweigh conventional reverse osmosis.

“The selection of the appropriate desalination technology between evaporation and reverse osmosis is grounded on several factors, including investment cost, maintenance cost, degree of availability, heaviness of the duty, and the required purity of the desalinated water,” the team explains. “The main factor, however, is often the running cost of the plant, and specifically the cost of the consumed energy.”

>> No.3854571

>>3853608
chain letters are also spam.
reported
/sage

>> No.3854576

>>3854571

Read the thread faggot

>> No.3854600

Why isn't LFTR a stickied topic on /sci/?

Everyone seems to love it.

>> No.3854619

>nuclear
>clean

sounds like astroturfing to me

do they pay well?

>> No.3854621

>>3854619

What is astroturd?

>> No.3854623

>>3854571
Butthurt envirofascist detected.

>> No.3854661

>>3854576
Read it, doesn't change that op is spam.
If you want to talk about LFTR make a proper thread on it cockmongler

>> No.3854671

>>3854661

Why don't you?