Arnold puts 200.000 on minimum wage

[fnord]

Yeah, seriously. Turbines are.. Turbines. The containment dome is.. A big dome made out of concrete to certain specifications. Exacting ones, but it's still just a concrete dome.

It's only when you get into the hot loop that you have to design for all sorts of problematic things, and of course then the reactor core is rather special in particular beyond that.

Not to mention the current backlog at Japan Steel Works, currently the only operation world wide who can produce the pressure vessel required by gigawatt+ LWR as a single forging. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, among others, are pushing to get their facility online, but that, iirc, is a while off.

"Dry" cooling is a possibility, but I think the conventional wisdom is that it's more suited for colder climates - the size of the cooling tower required may be problematic in a hotter clime.

If the output temperature can be raised sufficiently, a single plant (most likely not involving water or liquid-metal coolant) can produce both electricity and fresh water, either thermochemically or via conventional electrolysis. Such capability would trivially allow static thermal output to load follow, switching the distribution of load as needed between the grid and water production.

[Sikon]

I thought California was one of if not the richest area in the entire world? Why cant they pay their bills??

California's state budget spending has been increasing from $59 billion ten years ago to become now 1.9 times that figure, e.g. $112 billion for 2008-2009.* They are collecting much more in taxes but not quite that much, and a large deficit is forming. (Most taxes paid by Americans go to the federal IRS; state taxes are a minority of the total).

* Without adjustment for inflation, that's approximately doubling of spending per decade. With adjustment for about a 1.34 factor for inflation, that is a rate like doubling spending per two decades.

One will see what happens. The nature of that level of exponential growth is that it's rather questionable how much longer they can keep doing that, however much they raise taxes.

[MKSheppard]

Different type of plant, different type of training.

Oh sure, each reactor type would require specialized training to become used to the idiosyncracies of that design -- e.g. you can't jump from overseeing a Naval PWR to being a reactor operator at Calvert Cliffs right away.

You'd need imported skilled labour to run the thing and teach new guys.

Nope. We have plenty of skilled labor that's produced each year by the Naval Reactor Program. Same for engineers for said Naval Reactors.

Producing a reactor that doesn't need a large external body of water for cooling would be a special design problem, but we have plenty of engineers at General Electric, et al who can work on it; and once a design is picked, we can mass produce it on a standardized basis.

[Kodiak]

Proposition 13 didn't help, but then again I can see why so many people once agitated for it.

Prop-13 was a bill in the California legislature years and years ago... I think in the 1970's or something, that essentially froze property taxes in place for all existing homes at the time. A sweet deal if you already owned property, but it meant that the tax burden was carried by anyone who arrived after that. So there was a huge deficit of tax income, and California has some of the most generous welfare programs in the country.

Prop-13 was recently undone by sunset clause, but for years it hampered income as state budgets grew well beyond the 1970's-era tax base it was founded on.

The state is, I think, still recovering from that.

Agreed. Now property taxes here can only be re-evaluated when someone sells their home and then they get frozen again. The only way the state has been able to keep up with the exponential increase in expenditures since the 1970's is by passing bond measure after bond measure, whereby the state essentially borrows money that it then has to pay back.

Also, back in the 70's the voters made it so that any measure to increase taxes or the budget must pass by a 2/3rd majority vote (which never happens here), so we're stuck at the mercy of environmentalists who scream and rage anytime anything gets built and rich corporate types who don't want to pay for anything eco-friendly.

There's a reason they call this place "The land of fruits, nuts, and flakes".

[Sea Skimmer]

You don’t really need much of a a special design to alleviate the need for a large source of water; you just need dry cooling towers instead of wet ones, which requires certain changes to the secondary coolant loop but makes no difference for the primary. Thing is that then means the cooling towers must be way bigger (like twice as big), which greatly drives up the cost of the plant. Especially the towers need to be taller to increase the speed of natural draught. I know the West Germans and Russians built a few plants with dry towers, but overall using sea water with the associated corrosion problems that brings is still likely to be cheaper, especially with materials costs going through the roof. In the event a nuclear plant is also used to power urban heating or water production then dry towers become essential, but they can be a normal sized since an alternative use for the heat is provided.

[Ender]

Oh sure, each reactor type would require specialized training to become used to the idiosyncracies of that design -- e.g. you can't jump from overseeing a Naval PWR to being a reactor operator at Calvert Cliffs right away.

IIRC the "off crew" training time at civie plants is a year. But that is because they will take anyone with a BS who can pass the BMEST. Navy Nukes do it much faster depending on how hard they go.

You'd need imported skilled labour to run the thing and teach new guys.

Nope. We have plenty of skilled labor that's produced each year by the Naval Reactor Program. Same for engineers for said Naval Reactors.

By the time it is all said and done you get maybe 1200 of us a year Shep. That is not NEARLY enough. Demand this year is gonna be something like 5 times that. The pipeline is a specifically designed winnowing program - they WANT students to fail. And that is without counting those that stay in the navy, or those that are barred by their actions in the navy (e.g. those who pop on drug tests). Further, it assumes that all of them coming out of the Navy want to go work at a plant. Had STP or the original job I had lined up been hiring I would have. But NIMBY means that I'd have to go out to bumfuck Iowa for many of them, which is why I'm going back to school instead. Now I'm gonna try and go to management of a plant instead. Same pay, better hours.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

By the time it is all said and done you get maybe 1200 of us a year Shep. That is not NEARLY enough. Demand this year is gonna be something like 5 times that. The pipeline is a specifically designed winnowing program - they WANT students to fail. And that is without counting those that stay in the navy, or those that are barred by their actions in the navy (e.g. those who pop on drug tests). Further, it assumes that all of them coming out of the Navy want to go work at a plant. Had STP or the original job I had lined up been hiring I would have. But NIMBY means that I'd have to go out to bumfuck Iowa for many of them, which is why I'm going back to school instead. Now I'm gonna try and go to management of a plant instead. Same pay, better hours.

There's a reason why people with a bachelor's and nuclear engineering training can get 60k straight out of college with a 100% placement rate, after all. And that's with no experience whatsoever--if you have internships, it goes up and up. I seriously expect to be able to choose between 70 - 80k job offers in three and a half years based on which one gives me a month of vacation time after a year's employment, if I manage three summer internships at the nuclear facilities/corps in the Tri-Cities (Hanford, PNNL, Areva, and a nuclear power generating station are the options). Maybe a little optimistic, but not by all that much.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Yeah, seriously. Turbines are.. Turbines. The containment dome is.. A big dome made out of concrete to certain specifications. Exacting ones, but it's still just a concrete dome.

It's only when you get into the hot loop that you have to design for all sorts of problematic things, and of course then the reactor core is rather special in particular beyond that.

Not to mention the current backlog at Japan Steel Works, currently the only operation world wide who can produce the pressure vessel required by gigawatt+ LWR as a single forging. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, among others, are pushing to get their facility online, but that, iirc, is a while off.

"Dry" cooling is a possibility, but I think the conventional wisdom is that it's more suited for colder climates - the size of the cooling tower required may be problematic in a hotter clime.

If the output temperature can be raised sufficiently, a single plant (most likely not involving water or liquid-metal coolant) can produce both electricity and fresh water, either thermochemically or via conventional electrolysis. Such capability would trivially allow static thermal output to load follow, switching the distribution of load as needed between the grid and water production.

Well, I'm a molten salt whore for the most part, I'd really like to see us do MSR with thorium cycle. It's a thousand times more plausible than fusion within the next decade or two, and largely solves our problems with the existing fission plants. Failing that, a short term alternative would be licensing CANDU reactors for American operation (we NEED reprocessing, damnit), though that doesn't address the issue at hand I grant.

[fnord]

Well, I'm a molten salt whore for the most part, I'd really like to see us do MSR with thorium cycle. It's a thousand times more plausible than fusion within the next decade or two, and largely solves our problems with the existing fission plants. Failing that, a short term alternative would be licensing CANDU reactors for American operation (we NEED reprocessing, damnit), though that doesn't address the issue at hand I grant.

I keep seeing concerns that separated Pa forms a serious proliferation hazard as it seems like it can be easily processed to pure Pa-233, and thus to U-233 (iirc, the IAEA-determined LEU boundary for U-233 is 12% as opposed to 20% for U-235). Can you maintain the breeding ratio attainable with Pa separation while not actually separating it?

How usable would a GW(e) sized liquid flouride reactor be in burning up spent nuclear fuel during the course of its operations (even if you just remove the transuranics from the SNF, chuck them in, while sending the now-clean U back for re-enrichment)? Could you start one up on SNF (that way, you're not only cleaning up SNF but breaking chicken-and-egg problem of where the hell do you get the fissile to start the critter up while not paying exorbitant amounts)?

[Adrian Laguna]

The United States already has thousands of atomic devices, I don't see how extra fissile material can be considered a "serious proliferation hazard" under those circumstances.

[The Yosemite Bear]

and now DMV is closed too.

[Broomstick]

Ya, well, you mandate certain programs, then cut taxes for years to appease selfish, greedy, rich people sooner or later you run out of money. Is this really a difficult concept to understand?

I've heard that Schwazen- oh, bother, I can't spell that name. I've heard Arnold has never actually taken the governor's salary, he's serving his term(s) basically for free. Is that true?

[Havok]

Ya, well, you mandate certain programs, then cut taxes for years to appease selfish, greedy, rich people sooner or later you run out of money. Is this really a difficult concept to understand?

I've heard that Schwazen- oh, bother, I can't spell that name. I've heard Arnold has never actually taken the governor's salary, he's serving his term(s) basically for free. Is that true?

I believe it is.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I keep seeing concerns that separated Pa forms a serious proliferation hazard as it seems like it can be easily processed to pure Pa-233, and thus to U-233 (iirc, the IAEA-determined LEU boundary for U-233 is 12% as opposed to 20% for U-235). Can you maintain the breeding ratio attainable with Pa separation while not actually separating it?

I would just hire more guards. "proliferation hazard" is an anti-nuclear buzzword which ignores the fact that any new nation into the nuclear pile will be using uranium-based devices because they're much simpler (the Pakis tried to make a plutonium gun-type device and it FIZZLED, they made a gun-type device fizzle, an event previously thought impossible--part of the reason, as I understand it, was using plutonium instead of uranium).

As for the more serious issue of Protactinium, it has a half-life of 27 days before it decays into U-233, and then it can be reinjected back into the reactor cycle. That means that it can be stored on site (for a full cycle reactor installation, as is proposed for Thorium Cycle MSR) while it decays and then simply fed back in, which is exactly what is proposed. Now, apparently there are dumbfucks out there who think that terrorists are going to assault a heavily guarded nuclear powerplant, steal Protactinium, let it decay into U-233, and then use it to make a bomb. Because you can make a nuclear bomb with U-233 in a farmhouse while the largest federal manhunt in recorded history is looking for you. Yeah, sure.

The issue of proliferation--someone is going to steal nuclear material and smuggle it out of the United States? Again, we have had nuclear bombs for more than sixty years now, and no foreign country has ever stolen one and walked away with it. I again submit that rather than trying to design a workaround for the production of Protactinium, we just adopt 1960s-vintage SAC nuclear security protocols for the waste and, if we're that worried about it, outright detail a platoon of soldiers to guard the plants--of significant value when it allows us to have a 99.6% efficient reprocessing cycle which can be colocated with the powerplant.

How usable would a GW(e) sized liquid flouride reactor be in burning up spent nuclear fuel during the course of its operations (even if you just remove the transuranics from the SNF, chuck them in, while sending the now-clean U back for re-enrichment)? Could you start one up on SNF (that way, you're not only cleaning up SNF but breaking chicken-and-egg problem of where the hell do you get the fissile to start the critter up while not paying exorbitant amounts)?

That, I'm afraid, exceeds the limits of my technical knowledge at the moment--I'm only a student!, so I'll cede the question hopefully to someone else on the board who may know.

[fnord]

I would just hire more guards. "proliferation hazard" is an anti-nuclear buzzword which ignores the fact that any new nation into the nuclear pile will be using uranium-based devices because they're much simpler (the Pakis tried to make a plutonium gun-type device and it FIZZLED, they made a gun-type device fizzle, an event previously thought impossible--part of the reason, as I understand it, was using plutonium instead of uranium).

As for the more serious issue of Protactinium, it has a half-life of 27 days before it decays into U-233, and then it can be reinjected back into the reactor cycle. That means that it can be stored on site (for a full cycle reactor installation, as is proposed for Thorium Cycle MSR) while it decays and then simply fed back in, which is exactly what is proposed. Now, apparently there are dumbfucks out there who think that terrorists are going to assault a heavily guarded nuclear powerplant, steal Protactinium, let it decay into U-233, and then use it to make a bomb. Because you can make a nuclear bomb with U-233 in a farmhouse while the largest federal manhunt in recorded history is looking for you. Yeah, sure.

The issue of proliferation--someone is going to steal nuclear material and smuggle it out of the United States? Again, we have had nuclear bombs for more than sixty years now, and no foreign country has ever stolen one and walked away with it. I again submit that rather than trying to design a workaround for the production of Protactinium, we just adopt 1960s-vintage SAC nuclear security protocols for the waste and, if we're that worried about it, outright detail a platoon of soldiers to guard the plants--of significant value when it allows us to have a 99.6% efficient reprocessing cycle which can be colocated with the powerplant.

I was thinking more about reactor sites in countries like Timor Leste, Papua New Guinea, et al, to get nuclear power into AU via the back door over submarine interconnectors, rather than waiting for thumb removal on AU's part. Helping those two countries to jump-start development while making a buck or two (after supporting platoon of private troops per site) wouldn't go astray either.

Back to more mundane design issues, one fluid loop or two?

[Darth Wong]

Why are security concerns about nuclear fuel in third-world nations relevant to a discussion of California's budgetary woes?

[Broomstick]

Because Americans will do almost anything to avoid confronting the idea that in order to pay for the government you want you may need to raise taxes, especially on the rich.

[Master of Ossus]

Because Americans will do almost anything to avoid confronting the idea that in order to pay for the government you want you may need to raise taxes, especially on the rich.

Indeed. A $10 billion budget deficit is crippling for a state like California. Oh, wait....

California's budget could easily be balanced and taxes reduced if we did away with the rampant waste that's been perpetrated by the state's social policies. We're wasting literally billions of dollars on the California Solar Initiative and on retarded programs like the Low-Income Energy Efficiency Program (which is basically hand-outs to the poor, rather than our actual energy efficiency program which has resulted in actual energy efficiency improvements).

[Broomstick]

^ - see what I mean. LET'S CUT PROGRAMS!

That's not what I said. What I said was if you want those programs you have to raise sufficient tax revenue to pay for them. There's not wrong with "hand outs" to the poor - arguably they need it the most anyway - but you have to pay for them!

So, if California wants a fantastic social safety net, great - but they'll have to have higher taxes to pay for it

Oh, no! Can't have that! Let's cut the programs that help the disadvantaged rather than asking the advantaged to contribute more to the society that supports them!

[Master of Ossus]

^ - see what I mean. LET'S CUT PROGRAMS!

That's not what I said. What I said was if you want those programs you have to raise sufficient tax revenue to pay for them. There's not wrong with "hand outs" to the poor - arguably they need it the most anyway - but you have to pay for them!

So, if California wants a fantastic social safety net, great - but they'll have to have higher taxes to pay for it

Oh, no! Can't have that! Let's cut the programs that help the disadvantaged rather than asking the advantaged to contribute more to the society that supports them!

Please. It would be much more efficient to just give the poor money than go through with the idiotic California method of helping them out. That's why LIEE's most efficient measures return perhaps 50% of their cost to low-income groups. So fuck them. I'd rather just let the wealthy hold onto their money rather than buy appliances for the poor with it that will never even come close to paying their costs with the minimally improved efficiency they offer.

[starslayer]

The big problem with California's energy concerns here, is, as Nitram said, the vast majority of California is a fucking desert or scrubland. Add to that that we just the driest spring on record, and we're scrabbling to find enough water for drinking, much less adding more power plants that need water cooling. Granted, we have an enormous coastline, but a lot of it is protected waters (at least on the central coast where I live) and what isn't is very subject to NIMBYism. With the current state of affairs, Southern California would literally have to die for there to be enough water for both drinking and nuclear. Either that, or the state's agriculture would have to go (I'm looking at you, Imperial Valley). As Uraniun said, we should be building lots of desalinization plants, which would immediately solve the water issue, but that requires power and lots of political capital. Which puts the state more in debt as we buy power from elsewhere until we can build more power plants, and round and round it goes.

[The Yosemite Bear]

funny thing is So-Cal, We had 200% of normal Snowfall in the Sierras this year, and then nothing but hot and dry, to the point that our fire season is really kicking us where it hurts...

[fnord]

Why are security concerns about nuclear fuel in third-world nations relevant to a discussion of California's budgetary woes?

Whoops, got carried away. Sorry about that.