Enacting the Nuclear Solution

[TithonusSyndrome]

Anyone who's been on this board for any length of time is probably familiar with the arguments for a nuclear-reliant power grid by now. In practice, it's obviously done well by France. But for those of us who lag behind the Fifth Republic, what will it actually require for us to catch up to them in terms of constructing new facilities, training new personnel and soforth? Most notably, I'd like it if someone explained to me in better detail what kind of geographical factors are taken into consideration when prospecting for locations for new reactors - water supply, distance from fuel refineries, proximity to population centers (even if just for PR purposes) and anything else that might affect the decision to lay down the foundation.

[Patrick Degan]

There appear to be at least two designs for closed-module portable nuclear reactors —small enough to be delivered on rail flatcars and which can be plugged-in to any existing powerplant facility, in as many units as are required, or which can serve as standalone units for small, rural communities. I think there was another thread on one of these designs not too long ago here in SLM. They are proliferation-proof, in that the reactor vessels are sealed and can only be opened at the manufacturers, and are designed to provide steady, self-regulating operation for the duration of the unit's designed service-life.

[Patrick Degan]

Aha, found it! I knew that thread had to be around here somewhere. This one about the Hyperion.

[[R_H]]

Aha, found it! I knew that thread had to be around here somewhere. This one about the Hyperion.

There's also the Toshiba 4S.

[Count Chocula]

The pebble-bed nuclear reactor looks to be the next big thing in nuclear power generation. With this technique, there is no need for a ready water supply as the reactor is helium-cooled, allowing for location virtually anywhere. They are also much smaller and less resource-intensive to build. South Africa is actively developing PBRs; Westinghouse is a part owner of the South African firm working on the technology, and other contries (China and Russia) are developing variants of PBMs. While a PBM is touted as foolproof, my guess is that in practice operational plants will be sited in lightly populated areas with buffer zones, just in case there's a breach and radioactive helium and carbon get airborne.

From what I understand, the chief obstacles to the PBR are: it uses more plutonium than conventional fission-bed technology, getting 100% uniform uranium/carbon pellets made remains a challenge, and of course radioactive waste containment and disposal, given the poor track record and resistance worldwide, will have to be addressed. Still, if the technology matures, it would be a far superior technique for providing energy than the old concrete domes. I imagine these reactors would be equally useful in submarines and surface vessels.

[ray245]

I was wondering, is nuclear energy feasible in a small city state like singapore? Where you don't have a isolated area to build a nuclear power plant?

[Count Chocula]

I don't see why not. Singapore is rather mountainous, and it would seem like a good idea to bury something like a PBR in a mountain. Safer, too. Conventional nuclear is probably a non-starter unless it's put on an artificial island offshore, where prevailing winds would blow fallout away from Singapore. Of course, you'd have to paint a huge "Kick Me" sign on the dome, given your neighbors...

[Darth Wong]

Who the hell needs an "isolated area" to build a nuclear plant? Toronto has two nuclear plants nearby, both in suburbs.

[ray245]

Who the hell needs an "isolated area" to build a nuclear plant? Toronto has two nuclear plants nearby, both in suburbs.

Well, alot of people is assuming a worse case scenario, where the nuclear reactor do blow up and starts to pollute the enviroment nearby. As singapore is a single city state, the whole country would have collaspe with a single nuclear diaster.

[Guardsman Bass]

Who the hell needs an "isolated area" to build a nuclear plant? Toronto has two nuclear plants nearby, both in suburbs.

Well, alot of people is assuming a worse case scenario, where the nuclear reactor do blow up and starts to pollute the enviroment nearby. As singapore is a single city state, the whole country would have collaspe with a single nuclear diaster.

What's the weather like in Singapore for most of year? Maybe, if they went through with this and got that worried about it, they could put it out just off-shore on a (heavily guarded) platform.

[Darth Wong]

Who the hell needs an "isolated area" to build a nuclear plant? Toronto has two nuclear plants nearby, both in suburbs.

Well, alot of people is assuming a worse case scenario, where the nuclear reactor do blow up and starts to pollute the enviroment nearby. As singapore is a single city state, the whole country would have collaspe with a single nuclear diaster.

Ah yes, the exploding nuclear plant scenario. You forgot about the big red digital countdown to destruction, the bespectacled villain stroking his white cat, and his menacing henchman who uses highly unconventional but surprisingly lethal means of dispatching British spies.

[Count Chocula]

There were two disasters that come immediately to mind: Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. At Three Mile Island, while the area around it is pretty built up the closest major towns are Plymouth Meeting and King of Prussia, about 10 miles away from TMI. Philadelphia, with a population of ~ 1.5 million souls, was the closest major city at about 25 miles. The Crystal River nuke plant in Florida is located near a town of only 3,500, in sparsely-populated Citrus County. The nearest large cities are Ocala @ 25 miles, population 46,000; Gainesville @ 50 miles or so, population 115,000; and Tampa @ roughly 60 miles, population 300,000 with about a million people in the Bay area. The closest cities to Chernobyl, Homyel (pop. ~480,000), Mozyr (pop. ~110,000), Brovary (pop. ~210,000), and Kiev (pop. ~ 2.7 million), are all 100 miles or more from Chernobyl.

Pennsylvania was lucky TMI wasn't placed by Philadelphia, and the former USSR was lucky Chernobyl wasn't sited near Kiev. It seems prudent to have some kind of separation from major population sites if the worst-case scenario occurs. In Singapore, that would indicate subterranean or offshore siting.

[Darth Wong]

TMI released very little radioactivity: no one got more than a chest X-ray's worth. And Chernobyl was a very Soviet kind of disaster; it could not happen the way we build our plants.

[Shaka Nyorai]

TMI released very little radioactivity: no one got more than a chest X-ray's worth. And Chernobyl was a very Soviet kind of disaster; it could not happen the way we build our plants.

When it comes to all things radioactive there cannot be a "just cross your fingers and hope everything will be alright" mindset. Even in very low level radioactive environments you have problems. Polonium 210 is found in tobacco, yet in such low quanties it's not harmful in food. In tobacco and cigarettes it's bad because it is inhaled. If radioactive dust were to get into the air it could be more harmful than just a chest X-ray. Lung cancer is a possibility and given time it will show up in populations exposed to it for a number of years. In water the radioactivity (no matter how low) will cause environmental effects and affect plant and animal life. It could be bad, but not Cherenobyl bad.

[Darth Wong]

TMI released very little radioactivity: no one got more than a chest X-ray's worth. And Chernobyl was a very Soviet kind of disaster; it could not happen the way we build our plants.

When it comes to all things radioactive there cannot be a "just cross your fingers and hope everything will be alright" mindset.

It's not a matter of "just crossing your fingers", moron. We know about the health risks of radiation; they've been studied with greater precision than environmental chemicals, which we all accept in relatively huge doses. You are at far greater health risk from automobile exhaust than you are from radiation.

Even in very low level radioactive environments you have problems. Polonium 210 is found in tobacco, yet in such low quanties it's not harmful in food. In tobacco and cigarettes it's bad because it is inhaled.

You don't even realize what's funny about that statement, do you?

If radioactive dust were to get into the air it could be more harmful than just a chest X-ray. Lung cancer is a possibility and given time it will show up in populations exposed to it for a number of years. In water the radioactivity (no matter how low) will cause environmental effects and affect plant and animal life. It could be bad, but not Cherenobyl bad.

Oh, so now we're just pointing out that it's impossible for a nuke plant gas release accident to produce zero harmful emissions? Here's a hint, genius: all human industrial activity has environmental consequences, and usually it doesn't require an accident. Showing that nuclear accidents have non-zero consequences does absolutely nothing to shore up the idiotic anti-nuke belief that nuke plants pose some special threat to society. One of the most destructive industries on Earth is farming, for fuck's sake.

[Count Chocula]

Like most every civil engineering project, a large part of the project is risk management and safety. I admit I was thinking along the lines of worst-case scenario; that's been drilled into me as part of my pilot training. From the worst-case scenario, of course, you then analyze the probability of disaster and plan accordingly. In the case of nuclear power plants, the overall risk to a large population is very low; you could probably make a good argument that coal-fired power plants, pre-soot scrubber, were more harmful to the area's population even than Chernobyl.

[ray245]

Who the hell needs an "isolated area" to build a nuclear plant? Toronto has two nuclear plants nearby, both in suburbs.

Well, alot of people is assuming a worse case scenario, where the nuclear reactor do blow up and starts to pollute the enviroment nearby. As singapore is a single city state, the whole country would have collaspe with a single nuclear diaster.

What's the weather like in Singapore for most of year? Maybe, if they went through with this and got that worried about it, they could put it out just off-shore on a (heavily guarded) platform.

Hot and wet, unpredictable rainfall, humid.

Perhaps wikipedia can provide some help?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_ ... _Singapore

Personally, It seems to me that there is very little talk about using nuclear power as an option from any political party here. The ruling party did admit that we need to find alternative energy, but never brought up a concrete plan, then the opposition is sitting there doing nothing because they are scared of the fact that the ruling party can steal their ideas. So in essence no one is talking about nuclear energy AT ALL.


Other than Fingor_Noldor talking and asking about such an issue, I seems to be the only other person that is even interested in nuclear power for singapore.

It seems to me the misconception of nuclear power ( alot of people here cannot tell the difference between a nuclear power plant and a nuclear enrichment facility) is very prominent here. Nuclear research don't seems to be very popular here, and there is not much experts in regards to nuclear energy living or working in singapore.

[Coalition]

Like most every civil engineering project, a large part of the project is risk management and safety. I admit I was thinking along the lines of worst-case scenario; that's been drilled into me as part of my pilot training. From the worst-case scenario, of course, you then analyze the probability of disaster and plan accordingly. In the case of nuclear power plants, the overall risk to a large population is very low; you could probably make a good argument that coal-fired power plants, pre-soot scrubber, were more harmful to the area's population even than Chernobyl.

Worst case scenario - the chlorine tanks used for water purification rupture releasing a cloud of gas downwind into a town. Should we ban water purification plants?

Nasty scenario - terrorist buys one pound of nails from a hardware store, coats them in sugar water, and wraps them in a bag around some dynamite. He then takes a crap on them for the E coli bacteria. After the bacteria has spread over the nails, he takes the bag down to a city park, and sets it off, creating a biohazard situation for anyone even scratched by a nail. Should we ban hardware stores and supermarkets? Or a bunch of small explosives on roach bombs placed in a theater. Nothing like a cloud of nerve agent in the middle of a dark room with only a few exits to make a disaster. Should we ban bug sprays?

Potential scenario - Coal plants require a multi-dozen train car load every couple of days. Blow up the tracks leading to the planet, and in a few days, the coal plant is out of power. People in nearby towns are suffering because they have no air conditioning, no computers, no phones, etc.

A nuclear plant is performing a core replacement. The new core is arriving by rail. The bridge gets blown up, delaying the core by a couple months. As a result, the nuclear reactor has to be reduced in power. People in nearby towns are suffering because they have to set their air conditioning at 78 F instead of 76 F.


Everything has risk. You need to analyze it properly, not just react.

[born in shadow]

TMI released very little radioactivity: no one got more than a chest X-ray's worth. And Chernobyl was a very Soviet kind of disaster; it could not happen the way we build our plants.

It's also a matter of running the nuclear plants. The Chernobyl disaster was pretty much a check list of things not to do while running a nuclear plant, as well as how not to build them. Unless I'm mistaken, part of the reason for the Chernobyl disaster was the crews were being rotated out during a test of the turbines and the replacement crews didn't have proper instructions of what to do. (If I'm off on this, someone please correct me) Given that plants are run under much stricter conditions, as far as I can tell, than ones like Chernobyl means it'd take some colossal amount of issues to have something comparable happen again.

I think Coalition said it best though, if you go with the Worst Case Scenario, then everything should be done away with. Oh noes, my house could catch on fire from matches, I'd better get rid of both of those!

-Aaron

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Some other causes of Chernobyl:

1. The lead engineer building the plant had no experience or training in building nuclear reactors, and had previously only built dams.

2. There was no containment dome over the reactor.

3. They were running an experiment on the operating reactor which involved disabling more than 60 separate safety protocols while keeping it in service.

[Sea Skimmer]

There were two disasters that come immediately to mind: Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. At Three Mile Island, while the area around it is pretty built up the closest major towns are Plymouth Meeting and King of Prussia, about 10 miles away from TMI. Philadelphia, with a population of ~ 1.5 million souls, was the closest major city at about 25 miles.

Congratulations, you need to work on your map reading skills. You have successfully confused the distinctly not located on an island Limerick Nuclear Power plant on the Skullkill river with the Three Mile Island plant which happens to be over 75 miles from Philadelphia on the Susquehanna river. It is also just 11 miles from Harrisburg, a city of half a million.

Limerick was not even completed until 1990, eleven years after the TMI accident, and uses a different type of reactor completely, boiling water as opposed to pressurized water which makes it less sensitive to loss of coolant accidents. Pottstown is located within 3 miles of Limerick and has more people then King of Prussia or Plymouth Meeting, but Norristown is north and west of those two towns anyway and has more people and much denser development, particularly when you count all the small densely developed towns that directly abut its boundaries.

TMI released very little radioactivity: no one got more than a chest X-ray's worth. And Chernobyl was a very Soviet kind of disaster; it could not happen the way we build our plants.

Some plant workers got up to 100 millirems. That’s about 16 chest X-rays worth, but still a damn low level considering the Ld/50 dosage is over 500 rems assuming rapid exposure. The average dose for affected people outside the plant boundaries is less then 1/3rd a chest X-ray. Also a key thing to remember is, all radioactivity was that was released by Three Mile Island outside the reactor building was deliberately vented, in ordered to relieve what was thought to be dangerous levels of gas pressure inside. Nothing actually leaked out. The plant operators didn’t have a choice in the venting, but still it shows a very robust design even in the face of a partial meltdown.

[Sea Skimmer]

It's also a matter of running the nuclear plants. The Chernobyl disaster was pretty much a check list of things not to do while running a nuclear plant, as well as how not to build them. Unless I'm mistaken, part of the reason for the Chernobyl disaster was the crews were being rotated out during a test of the turbines and the replacement crews didn't have proper instructions of what to do. (If I'm off on this, someone please correct me)

You’re right. The test was supposed to be run by the day shift, but a high demand for power meant they had to keep the reactor running at full power longer then expected, so the test got pushed back until it had to be done by the night shift which was much less experienced. This however may actually have saved lives, because had the accident occurred earlier (not certain the day shift would have done better, though its pretty damn likely they would have) a couple thousand construction workers would have been on the job building two new reactors RIGHT next to reactor number 4. Many would have been killed by falling debris, let alone the massive release of radioactivity.

The entire test being performed though (which was critical to reactor safety in the event of a loss of power) should have occurred before the reactor was ever connected to the grid, but construction work was ahead of schedule and Soviet planners decided to put it into service as quickly as possible. This ensured everyone involved in the work got bonuses and awards, while the test checklist was simply falsified as complete. It then took 2 freaking years to find an opportunity to conduct the test for real. Chernobyl is just a perfect textbook case of how most disasters are the result of multiple failures occurring in conjunction, none of which on its own would have been serious.

[born in shadow]

Some other causes of Chernobyl:

1. The lead engineer building the plant had no experience or training in building nuclear reactors, and had previously only built dams.

2. There was no containment dome over the reactor.

3. They were running an experiment on the operating reactor which involved disabling more than 60 separate safety protocols while keeping it in service.

That...just...what? I mean, that level of ineptitude is just painful to even look at. I had an idea about that last one, and the second slipped my mind, but that first one is just...what were they THINKING!? Sheesh.

The entire test being performed though (which was critical to reactor safety in the event of a loss of power) should have occurred before the reactor was ever connected to the grid, but construction work was ahead of schedule and Soviet planners decided to put it into service as quickly as possible. This ensured everyone involved in the work got bonuses and awards, while the test checklist was simply falsified as complete. It then took 2 freaking years to find an opportunity to conduct the test for real. Chernobyl is just a perfect textbook case of how most disasters are the result of multiple failures occurring in conjunction, none of which on its own would have been serious.

Ah interesting, I didn't know about the background of the disaster, though I don't find it particularly surprising given the Soviet policy of handing out medals for everything under the sun In any case, that's what I've been telling people for ages, Chernobyl wasn't just one thing going wrong, it was this body of mistakes making way for the radiation train. Though I have to say I was rather saddened to find that my Environmental Science professor believed all nuclear plants were ticking time bombs and showed an "example" of this by pointing to Chernobyl.

Getting back to the OP somewhat, I think you can overcome a lot of the PR problems of building nuclear power plants by simply increasing education and awareness of their operation and safety measures. As far as I can tell, there's an uncomfortably high amount of people who think that the only difference between a nuclear plant built today and 20 years ago would be what you'd call it. Of course, getting those people educated is a battle in itself.

-Aaron

[ray245]

When university professor holds such a thought, the fight will be hard. Although there is one argument that can be made in the case of singapore I suppose.

Why are you letting the US aircraft carrier, which is powered by a nuclear reactor park in singapore, yet at the same time, you don't allow a nuclear reactor to be build here. The chances of a Aircraft carrier being blown up in singapore is the same as a nuclear power plant being blown up.

Although our neighbour Malaysia will be damn pissed and harp of the idea that once singapore's nuclear power plant was blown up, it'll affect Malaysia as well.

[Force Lord]

I´ve always wondered why nuclear energy is so controversial among many people, yet somehow tolerate industrial pollution, waste, and the effects of modern farming methods on soil. Not that going nuclear is a one-size-fits-all solution, but it definitely needs some love. People simply need to be educated, although it will be hard. Anti-nukies are very rabid and almost fundie-like in their beliefs.