Official Global Warming thread (merged)

#8,702
#8,702
McDad said:
He spoke about some interesting tech to pull CO2 out of the air or to bury it inside concrete. Meh, you want less CO2, plant a bunch of evergreens all over the world.

I liked the nuclear plant design he discussed, though. I hope that one is viable.
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The liquid sodium reactor was interesting... would like to see what @AM64 thinks about Na Tech.
 
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#8,703
#8,703
StarRaider said:
The liquid sodium reactor was interesting... would like to see what @AM64 thinks about Na Tech.
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I'll have to listen to his comments. The Clinch River Breeder Reactor would have been liquid metal cooled - sodium as I recall. I was actually put on an industry advisory committee, but we never met (Carter killed the CRBR), and I have no clue what the role would have been. I know some other UT grad students worked on some aspects of a sodium cooled reactor and response time testing. I really haven't paid attention to new developments because I haven't thought anything new in nuclear power was going to happen. I get the impression there still is little push for new generation; and when there is, it's cheaper and quicker for a consortium to put together some natural gas generation - there just aren't all the permits and regulations that way. It's all like a bunch of band aids - solar and wind don't provide the constant base power fossil and nuclear do, and I seriously question using natural gas, even though it seems in ample supply now, for non-motive power.

The one aspect that always bothered me with sodium cooling in the primary loop is the steam generators that transfer the heat from the sodium loop to the water/steam loop. Water and sodium do not get along well - especially at elevated temperatures; leaks aren't everyday occurrences, but they do happen. The other thing is that plans for both a sodium cooled reactor and fusion reactors have been around for a very long time, and I'm doubting that either will come to fruition in my lifetime. I walked around a Tokamak at Princeton and it seems like at Sandia a lot of years ago, and soon has never happened. I'd probably try to improve on existing nuclear technology, but that's just me.

The one advantage of sodium cooled reactors is that they can be breeders and turn non fissile isotopes of uranium, plutonium, or thorium (perhaps others) into fissile fuels, but Carter killed any plans for fuel reprocessing, so for all practical purposes that's dead in the water, too. It just seems we are very far behind the curve in turning out any new nuclear generation.
 
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#8,708
#8,708
AM64 said:
I'll have to listen to his comments. The Clinch River Breeder Reactor would have been liquid metal cooled - sodium as I recall. I was actually put on an industry advisory committee, but we never met (Carter killed the CRBR), and I have no clue what the role would have been. I know some other UT grad students worked on some aspects of a sodium cooled reactor and response time testing. I really haven't paid attention to new developments because I haven't thought anything new in nuclear power was going to happen. I get the impression there still is little push for new generation; and when there is, it's cheaper and quicker for a consortium to put together some natural gas generation - there just aren't all the permits and regulations that way. It's all like a bunch of band aids - solar and wind don't provide the constant base power fossil and nuclear do, and I seriously question using natural gas, even though it seems in ample supply now, for non-motive power.

The one aspect that always bothered me with sodium cooling in the primary loop is the steam generators that transfer the heat from the sodium loop to the water/steam loop. Water and sodium do not get along well - especially at elevated temperatures; leaks aren't everyday occurrences, but they do happen. The other thing is that plans for both a sodium cooled reactor and fusion reactors have been around for a very long time, and I'm doubting that either will come to fruition in my lifetime. I walked around a Tokamak at Princeton and it seems like at Sandia a lot of years ago, and soon has never happened. I'd probably try to improve on existing nuclear technology, but that's just me.

The one advantage of sodium cooled reactors is that they can be breeders and turn non fissile isotopes of uranium, plutonium, or thorium (perhaps others) into fissile fuels, but Carter killed any plans for fuel reprocessing, so for all practical purposes that's dead in the water, too. It just seems we are very far behind the curve in turning out any new nuclear generation.
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I saw some show within the past few years (maybe Discovery channel, but not sure) that talked about developments that would essentially use old nuclear waste as fuel.

Ever heard of this idea?

I’m not sure if that means using old primary coolant or what, but thought it was an interesting concept.
 
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#8,710
#8,710
ajvol01 said:
I saw some show within the past few years (maybe Discovery channel, but not sure) that talked about developments that would essentially use old nuclear waste as fuel.

Ever heard of this idea?

I’m not sure if that means using old primary coolant or what, but thought it was an interesting concept.
Click to expand...

I think you probably saw something about using fusion reactors to transmute radioactive isotopes with extremely long half lives to other safer isotopes with much shorter half lives. We are storing a lot of spent fuel because Carter prohibited the US from reprocessing. As I recall fuel sold by the US to a foreign country cannot be reprocessed even though the technology for reprocessing exists elsewhere. Our commercial nuclear fuel is only slightly enriched (containing fissile isotopes like U-235), so there's a lot of non-fissile material irradiated in reactors, but it's contaminated and stored as very bulky spent fuel. Navy nuclear fuel is highly enriched, so it has a much longer effective life and by comparison far less bulk as spent fuel. Think octane rating in gas, and the difference between gas that's barely useable in a car vs racing fuel - not really the same but the effect is similar.

Apparently there has been a lot of research on newer nuclear generation that's gone nowhere because utilities just can't justify the cost of construction and regulation for permits. Again I haven't really followed much of this since I retired, and that's been a while. Westinghouse, GE, B&W, and Combustion once built commercial reactors and steam generators in the US; I'm not sure any of that capacity still exists. I'd assume we still build naval nuclear components in the US, but not sure where and who builds them. A big thing going on when I retired was PLEX (plant life extension) - evaluating and permitting for nuclear facilities that had reached or were nearing the 30 year operating license. Again a band aid approach because we find things too difficult to face because of political, regulatory, and commercial costs. Who knows perhaps the same environmentalists who caused so many problems will finally make the issue so onerous that something has to give. Solar and wind power simply cannot provide base load, and if you can't burn fossil fuels ...
 
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#8,711
#8,711
AM64 said:
I think you probably saw something about using fusion reactors to transmute radioactive isotopes with extremely long half lives to other safer isotopes with much shorter half lives. We are storing a lot of spent fuel because Carter prohibited the US from reprocessing. As I recall fuel sold by the US to a foreign country cannot be reprocessed even though the technology for reprocessing exists elsewhere. Our commercial nuclear fuel is only slightly enriched (containing fissile isotopes like U-235), so there's a lot of non-fissile material irradiated in reactors, but it's contaminated and stored as very bulky spent fuel. Navy nuclear fuel is highly enriched, so it has a much longer effective life and by comparison far less bulk as spent fuel. Think octane rating in gas, and the difference between gas that's barely useable in a car vs racing fuel - not really the same but the effect is similar.

Apparently there has been a lot of research on newer nuclear generation that's gone nowhere because utilities just can't justify the cost of construction and regulation for permits. Again I haven't really followed much of this since I retired, and that's been a while. Westinghouse, GE, B&W, and Combustion once built commercial reactors and steam generators in the US; I'm not sure any of that capacity still exists. I'd assume we still build naval nuclear components in the US, but not sure where and who builds them. A big thing going on when I retired was PLEX (plant life extension) - evaluating and permitting for nuclear facilities that had reached or were nearing the 30 year operating license. Again a band aid approach because we find things too difficult to face because of political, regulatory, and commercial costs. Who knows perhaps the same environmentalists who caused so many problems will finally make the issue so onerous that something has to give. Solar and wind power simply cannot provide base load, and if you can't burn fossil fuels ...
Click to expand...

I think he's referring to mixed oxide fuel, where they reprocess uranium oxide and plutonium oxide from spent fuel into new pellets. They do this in France and there was one planned at the Savannah River Site but I think it was canceled. Not sure why.
 
#8,714
#8,714
GSD82 said:
How’s that green energy looking?
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Green supporters are saying it's not winds fault because it's producing more than expected. It was only expected to produce like 5% of capacity. It's producing like 7%. Meanwhile the blame is thermal generators who aren't performing as expected. One nuclear unit went down and came back. The other three are fine. Thats liberal logic at it's finest. Wind gets a participation trophy.
 
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#8,715
#8,715
GSD82 said:
Yes. I just heard Galveston is having to bring in freezer trucks for all the bodies. And where is that worthless dementia idiot? What’s he doing to save the people in these states who are freezing to death?
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I think he's still at Mar-a-Lago
 
#8,716
#8,716
GSD82 said:
Yes. I just heard Galveston is having to bring in freezer trucks for all the bodies. And where is that worthless dementia idiot? What’s he doing to save the people in these states who are freezing to death?
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Thought that might be sarcasm directed at the Cuomo's of the world, but true. Awful
 
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#8,718
#8,718
jaybird_1981 said:
I think Crenshaw explains pretty well what happened.


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I am still convinced that natural gas is too valuable a resource to waste on electric power generation. Better to use it at the endpoint than to waste it on conversion and then electric power transmission losses. Doesn't make sense at all to use natural gas to produce electric power to charge cars and trucks rather than simply burning NG in the cars and trucks - and that seems to be where we are headed.
 
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#8,719
#8,719
jaybird_1981 said:
I think Crenshaw explains pretty well what happened.


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They have wind turbines in states further north of Texas that experienced even worse weather without the problems Texas had. Kansas relies on wind power for ~40% of its demand. They have wind turbines in Greenland, ffs. The issue is that the utility operators weren't prepared for this possibility, hence what happened to the nuclear plant. There were also reports of frozen gas wells which reduced the supply of gas to NG plants.

Also, Texas has their own grid and can't get power from other states where the utilities were prepared for the weather. They really have only themselves to blame.
 
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#8,720
#8,720
AM64 said:
I think you probably saw something about using fusion reactors to transmute radioactive isotopes with extremely long half lives to other safer isotopes with much shorter half lives. We are storing a lot of spent fuel because Carter prohibited the US from reprocessing. As I recall fuel sold by the US to a foreign country cannot be reprocessed even though the technology for reprocessing exists elsewhere. Our commercial nuclear fuel is only slightly enriched (containing fissile isotopes like U-235), so there's a lot of non-fissile material irradiated in reactors, but it's contaminated and stored as very bulky spent fuel. Navy nuclear fuel is highly enriched, so it has a much longer effective life and by comparison far less bulk as spent fuel. Think octane rating in gas, and the difference between gas that's barely useable in a car vs racing fuel - not really the same but the effect is similar.

Apparently there has been a lot of research on newer nuclear generation that's gone nowhere because utilities just can't justify the cost of construction and regulation for permits. Again I haven't really followed much of this since I retired, and that's been a while. Westinghouse, GE, B&W, and Combustion once built commercial reactors and steam generators in the US; I'm not sure any of that capacity still exists. I'd assume we still build naval nuclear components in the US, but not sure where and who builds them. A big thing going on when I retired was PLEX (plant life extension) - evaluating and permitting for nuclear facilities that had reached or were nearing the 30 year operating license. Again a band aid approach because we find things too difficult to face because of political, regulatory, and commercial costs. Who knows perhaps the same environmentalists who caused so many problems will finally make the issue so onerous that something has to give. Solar and wind power simply cannot provide base load, and if you can't burn fossil fuels ...
Click to expand...
The guys at ORNL that I knew were pissed at Obama because he redirected pretty much all of the research money to only PV. They had projects they spent decades on, some with commercial partners, get completely shutoff back around 2010.
 
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#8,721
#8,721
LouderVol said:
The guys at ORNL that I knew were pissed at Obama because he redirected pretty much all of the research money to only PV. They had projects they spent decades on, some with commercial partners, get completely shutoff back around 2010.
Click to expand...

It's really hard to develop any technology that has a long lead time, and it's very expensive because of the investment. So much of it gets backed by governments and then it becomes a political pawn. It seems that real US commercial technical innovation died years ago. I wonder if not for historical research organizations like Bell Labs where we'd be today. Maybe I'm paranoid, but our relationship with China and globalism just appears way too unhealthy - whether electronics with backdoors for spying, materials/products (like rare earth materials) that can be cut off making us dependent, or artificially low prices vs our over inflated cost to manufacture that priced us out. We just seem to have lost our way as innovators and developers.

We see a lot of rehashed stuff in cars, cell phones, computer technology, etc; but most of little real essence. For example, the world is literally at your fingertips with the internet, and people waste it on social networking and un-newsworthy "news" instead of devouring all the accumulated knowledge just there for the taking. Maybe it's too much like free or deferred cost education; if it costs nothing at the time, it doesn't seem to mean much.
 
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