Category: Engineering/Science

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Where do you live vis-a-vis a US nuclear reactor (especially the BWRs)?

FUN FACT: decommissioned does not mean SAFE TO IGNORE … sorry if no one told you this.

SAFE REACTOR OPERATIONS NECESSARILY REQUIRE:

  1. reliable supply chains
  2. access to external power
  3. diesel fuel for backup power generation
  4. engineers showing up for work, ideally sober
  5. ambient heat exchange, access to cool water that is predictable in its flow (for BWR type reactors and other types). Some kind of heat exchange is required for moderating the reactor in most cases, the advanced compressed CO2 cooling methods are years away from being ready for prime time.

Locations: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/04/map-of-nuclear-power-in-the-us-see-where-reactors-are-located.html

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What’s the silent part SOVIETOLOGISTS?

If we’re entering a new climate regime, “Hot House Earth”? – then traditional heat exchange methods for nuclear reactors will fail. Try keeping a boiling water reactor under control when the EXTERNAL SOURCE water temperature >100F or there are changes in sea level and water flow (for river sources).

*** WHAT IS HEAT EXCHANGE?

Link: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3333982/nuclear-tech-milestone-chinas-supercritical-steam-free-generator-connects-grid

SMR’S will not save us: https://blog.ucs.org/edwin-lyman/five-things-the-nuclear-bros-dont-want-you-to-know-about-small-modular-reactors/

“To date, 1.5 percent of all nuclear power plants ever built have melted down to some degree. Meltdowns have been either catastrophic (Chernobyl, Ukraine in 1986; three reactors at Fukushima Dai-ichi, Japan in 2011) or damaging (Three-Mile Island in 1979; Saint-Laurent France in 1980).”

“So far, most production cuts are due to warming waters—not just in the Rhône and Garonne, but in places like the Tennessee River in the US, and in the coastal seas where many more plants are sited. In recent years, nuclear plants across Northern Europe have been forced to shut down or reduce output because seawater became too warm to safely cool the reactor cores. Over the past decade, the Millstone power plant in Connecticut saw a series of shutdowns on hot summer days until regulators raised the temperature limit of its cooling waters by 5 degrees Fahrenheit.”