|
|
Post by john27rg on Aug 18, 2012 12:36:30 GMT 9.5
|
|
|
|
Post by anonposter on Aug 18, 2012 18:28:33 GMT 9.5
In the US guns have become a rights issue (and there are actually enough gun owners in the US for them to be a significant political force). The fact that the US has so many guns and gun-owners means that those who have something to lose from gun control have the numbers to take control of the debate (in Australia which has gun-owners as a single digit percentage the shooters don't control the debate).
I should note that a lot of people in the gun control movement don't just want to impose sensible restrictions, but to get rid of guns completely (and many of things they consider sensible are completely and utter stupid, e.g. bans on high capacity detachable magazines (one of the few parts of Australia's gun laws which can be definitively called stupid) or banning pistol grips on rifles).
With the nuclear power debate what you'll find is that it's countries with large domestic fossil fuel industries which are the strongholds of the anti-nuclear movement.
Though studying the gun rights movement in the US to see what they did right might be worth doing, looking at the polling data the US has gone through a shift in majority opinion away from gun control.
|
|
|
|
Post by davidm on Aug 18, 2012 21:20:23 GMT 9.5
I'm quite familiar with the matter of certain issues getting delegitimized. Try overpopulation. And the pronuke folks fail to see how their treatment of it as a radioactive deviant helps delegitimize their own efforts. You have to be in close to fantasy mode to believe that nukes will ever be a sufficient energy replacement as it races to catch up with the population fox speeding around the track.
And Anon please try to come up with something better than your
Boeing example. It's apples and oranges.
|
|
|
|
Post by anonposter on Aug 18, 2012 21:51:10 GMT 9.5
I'm quite familiar with the matter of certain issues getting delegitimized. Try overpopulation. Why must you bring that up into almost every thread you post in? And the pronuke folks fail to see how their treatment of it as a radioactive deviant helps delegitimize their own efforts. How so? It's already been shown that nuclear could do what we need if we let it without any need to tie it to your fantasy (and the idea that we can get the human population reduced any time soon in a way the population would accept is fantasy, it makes large scale renewable energy look reasonable by comparison). You have to be in close to fantasy mode to believe that nukes will ever be a sufficient energy replacement as it races to catch up with the population fox speeding around the track. No, you merely have to accept reality, namely that it's already been demonstrated that a country can switch from fossil fuels to nuclear in only a few decades and that there's enough Uranium to last our civilisation for thousands of years at much higher population and per capita energy usage than today. And Anon please try to come up with something better than your Boeing example. It's apples and oranges. So what is your problem with that comparison (other than it indicating something you wish weren't true) and what would be a better comparison? Should we instead compare to fossil fuel power plants, I mean is there any reason we can't build nuclear power plants as fast as coal burners? |
|
|
|
Post by davidm on Aug 18, 2012 22:11:53 GMT 9.5
I'm quite familiar with the matter of certain issues getting delegitimized. Try overpopulation. Why must you bring that up into almost every thread you post in? I don't and I think you know that but in this case it is so obviously appropriate. This is far removed from your fantasy land world of stamping out npps on a daily basis. No I wish it was true which should be obvious from my posts but it's not like Boeing. You don't build nukes in a hanger with all the pieces and tools conveniently in place and each unit a carbon copy of the others. |
|
|
|
Post by anonposter on Aug 18, 2012 22:42:23 GMT 9.5
No I wish it was true which should be obvious from my posts but it's not like Boeing. You don't build nukes in a hanger with all the pieces and tools conveniently in place and each unit a carbon copy of the others. Isn't that what the SMR vendors are proposing we do? |
|
|
|
Post by anonposter on Aug 19, 2012 1:29:01 GMT 9.5
One other thing which should be mentioned is the existence of single issue voters.
|
|
|
|
Post by davidm on Aug 19, 2012 3:24:10 GMT 9.5
No I wish it was true which should be obvious from my posts but it's not like Boeing. You don't build nukes in a hanger with all the pieces and tools conveniently in place and each unit a carbon copy of the others. Transport, installation, modification for special conditions, monitoring, security, radical change in natural conditions(ex. earthquakes, flooding), need for final burial just for starters. And of course aircraft involve nothing comparable to putting radioactive fuel rods at the heart of the system. Let's say the number of variables escalates considerably with even small nukes. And we both know that due to economies of scale and the huge energy challenge the major nuclear effort would be with full sized npps which have even less comparability with Boeing aircraft. |
|
|
|
Post by David B. Benson on Aug 19, 2012 7:31:08 GMT 9.5
Large NPPs are built at about the same speed as large coal burners; both take several years to complete.
All NPP vendors now build in a factory. For large NPPs the temporary factory is first constructed on the site of the 2--4 builds.
AFAIK the only variations from unit to unit are in the civil works and probably the steam condenser.
|
|
|
|
Post by davidm on Aug 19, 2012 16:46:52 GMT 9.5
Large NPPs are built at about the same speed as large coal burners; both take several years to complete. That makes sense, but it was the comparison with the once a day stamped out Boeing aircraft that I had a problem with. |
|
|
|
Post by Janne M. Korhonen on Aug 19, 2012 20:26:22 GMT 9.5
Transport, installation, modification for special conditions, monitoring, security, radical change in natural conditions(ex. earthquakes, flooding), need for final burial just for starters. And of course aircraft involve nothing comparable to putting radioactive fuel rods at the heart of the system. Let's say the number of variables escalates considerably with even small nukes. And we both know that due to economies of scale and the huge energy challenge the major nuclear effort would be with full sized npps which have even less comparability with Boeing aircraft. If you're not happy with the Boeing example, think of Liberty ships. Or modern shipyards for that matter.   Better yet, look at marine engines: www.wartsila.com/en/engines/low-speed-engines/RT-flex96CThere's a 80 MW power plant that's most definitely factory built. And looking at SMR reactor drawings, I'll offer my engineer's opinion that reactor vessels are ridiculously simple compared to a 80 MW marine diesels... You may believe that the requirement of "putting radioactive fuel rods" somehow makes the fabrication and testing immensely more difficult. Perhaps, if your point of comparison is to, say, refrigerators. But if you compare and contrast to other regulated safety-critical systems, like aircraft, you'll see that the issues are a) solvable and b) have been solved decades ago. Again, that marine diesel engine offers a good example. Although it's not as regulated as aircraft are, finding a serious flaw in the engine after it's installed in the ship would be a Very Bad Thing (tm). Therefore, the engine and its components are under pretty rigorous quality control. And it seems to produce results, if the lack of maintenance issues is anything to go by. As for transport issues, the proposed SMR components are all as easy or easier to transport than many commonly transported components for industrial machinery are. From energy sector, large wind turbine generator units have about the same dimensions as the reactor vessel, and turbine blades and towers are considerably larger. In short, I fail to be persuaded by the argument that SMRs are somehow inherently impossible to mass produce. At least the evidence so far does not support the argument. |
|
|
|
Post by davidm on Aug 19, 2012 21:39:55 GMT 9.5
In short, I fail to be persuaded by the argument that SMRs are somehow inherently impossible to mass produce. At least the evidence so far does not support the argument. I didn't say that. I said there appeared to be more variables to consider than a Boeing aircraft. But as you are more the expert could you give me an estimate of how rapidly could a company of Boeing's size make, transport and install SMRs and once you got them standardized how long would it take to build and activate a full sized nuclear power plant. And unlike the aircraft or the Liberty Ships built and deployed in a standardized confined environment some of these would be set up and often built in very diverse environments. I think the standard Anon and I were using was building one full sized nuclear plant a day or its equivalent multiple SMRs would be necessary to achieve an eventual full replacement of fossil fuel power plants. Have you got a better figure? Anyway thanks for all the info and pictures. I'm primarily here to get an education although I do push some concerns in addition. |
|
|
|
Post by QuarkingMad on Aug 20, 2012 9:51:47 GMT 9.5
My only hesitation is when it is a FOAK build. Look at Boeing's issues with the all composite 787 Dreamliner, or for that matter Airbus's A380 build. They almost went bust with that project.
While you could theoretically mass produce SMRs that would only come after the FOAK hurdle is cleared and there is sufficient market. The thing the 787 and A380 have going for them are guaranteed market and drive for more economical large passenger jets, and the Liberty ships had a booming US post-war economy.
SMRs still need to clear the FOAK hurdle (quite possibly a political one too) and capture a sustainable share of the market. It can be done as the above examples have shown, but caution must be heeded too.
Back to the OPs topic, to start the debate in full in Australia? Convince a politician/politicians to amend/repeal section 10 of the ARPANS Act and consequentially section 140A in the EPBC Act. That will stoke the fires sufficiently.
|
|
|
|
Post by David B. Benson on Aug 20, 2012 10:31:10 GMT 9.5
Boeing commercial aircraft take quite a while to fabricate and put together. The big factory in Everett has many in various stages of construction at any one time.
There are many more parts in an airplane than in a nuclear power reactor; just count the rivets, for example.
Then there are the various interiors, different for every airline. In contrast new NPPs are essentially identical from unit to unit.
I find it quite, quite unlikely that the 4 LWR SMR designs from US vendors will have FOAK issues as these units are intentionally scaled down variations of well established LWR designs from decades ago.
The smallest is the Nuscale unit, at 45 MWe. This just fits on a trailer which is two lanes wide to be trucked to the site. Two of the larger units are transportable by rail; the largest probably only by barge (but I'm unsure of that).
That Westinghouse has now entered the SMR market is a strong indication that many will, in fact, be ordered.
Finally, I see no difficulty whatsoever of rapidly ramping up production. The major limitation is likely to be that there are not so many forges [required for the fabrication of the reactor pressure (PWR) or containment (BWR) vessel]. As the forges required for SMRs are not that large, more could be built, taking maybe 3 years each to complete.
|
|
|
|
Post by davidm on Aug 21, 2012 13:01:13 GMT 9.5
I'm certainly willing to tentatively accept the premise that SMR mass production and installation given the market demand could be ramped up to something similar to aircraft production.
However as I understand it the bulk of the effort to replace fossil fuel with nuclear is supposed to be carried by full sized NPPs. At that point it seems to me the analogy with aircraft production mostly breaks down.
So a question for me is, given the most favorable factors and all the FOAK considerations dealt with and a standardized approach in place, what would be roughly the least time and cost to build a full sized NPP? And does this offer a serious possibility of overtaking fossil fuel in an expanding world?
|
|
|
|
Post by anonposter on Aug 21, 2012 13:14:29 GMT 9.5
Full sized NPPs have been built in about three years.
If you want to go all out at building them quickly some of the reactors at the Hanford site were built in about a year or so (the FOAK B reactor took barely more than a year) and those reactors in terms of thermal power ended up at much the same level as is common with large power reactors today.
|
|
|
|
Post by davidm on Aug 21, 2012 13:35:55 GMT 9.5
Full sized NPPs have been built in about three years.
If you want to go all out at building them quickly some of the reactors at the Hanford site were built in about a year or so (the FOAK B reactor took barely more than a year) and those reactors in terms of thermal power ended up at much the same level as is common with large power reactors today. So figuring the optimal version you have offered, if we had 365 full sized NPPs continuously being developed on staggered days we could reach the one nuclear plant a day production output necessary to replace fossil fuel. Well, at least we know the challenge.  |
|
|
|
Post by David B. Benson on Aug 21, 2012 14:05:20 GMT 9.5
Areva now considers a mere 1 GWe NPP to be medium sized. From the standpoint of the site, figure a minimum of 2+ years for ppp (planning, permitting and site preparation) and likely 52+ weeks to construct and test the NPP.
Obviously with more overtime or swing shift workforce it could go somewhat faster.
As for building many, the larger the forge required to fewer to be found world-wide. Constructing more big forges would take some additional start up time.
That, of course, is another advantage of the IFR; as I understand it no large forging is required.
|
|
|
|
Post by LancedDendrite on Aug 21, 2012 17:04:24 GMT 9.5
Areva now considers a mere 1 GWe NPP to be medium sized. To be fair, Areva is calling their Atmea I design 'medium' sized to differentiate it from the 1600MWe EPR, an absolute behemoth of a reactor. Larger reactors seem to be more appropriate for countries with existing nuclear reactors - but that might also be because they have larger interconnected power grids too. That, of course, is another advantage of the IFR; as I understand it no large forging is required. Yep - you only have to forge the steam generators, which can be made a lot smaller than a LWR reactor pressure vessel. You can get away with a lot if you don't have to deal with high-pressure steam  Also regarding heavy forgings - would anyone be able to clarify if a CANDU-type reactor design could be scaled up more economically than a LWR? It seems that the 'calandria' lends itself to serial production of smaller forgings instead, so you don't have to scale up the actual forge press and other equipment as much. I understand that the CANDU design was partly pursued because it was easier to produce the parts for it domestically than other designs, but it seems that little work (other than the stillborn ACR-1000 design) has gone into scaling it up. |
|
|
|
Post by trag on Aug 22, 2012 1:40:38 GMT 9.5
So figuring the optimal version you have offered, if we had 365 full sized NPPs continuously being developed on staggered days we could reach the one nuclear plant a day production output necessary to replace fossil fuel. Well, at least we know the challenge. I have often wondered if it would be more efficient to build nuclear reactors the way Levitt innovated to build houses. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_LevittHave a site preparation team come through, and clear the land, dig the holes, bore through/remove/excavate any rock that needs moving. When they're done they go to the next site. Next the infrastructure team comes through and puts in any plumbing and such that needs to be laid before the foundation is poured. Then they follow the site preparation team. Then the foundation pouring team does their job and moves on. And so on... I don't know enough to know the best way to partition the teams, but it would be similar to an assembly line, only the workers move, instead of the work moving. Also, there'd need to be some mechanism for communication between sequential teams to allow passing of site specific knowledge. Perhaps each team should also have a "scout" group which works with the previous team for a while to learn what's happening at the site, then stays when their team arrives and gets them up to date, but leaves early to scout the next site. If we assume that there'd be roughly eight groups and six months per group, then one would have eight reactors in the pipeline at any given time. After four years, one reactor would complete every six months. And if the learning curve works out the way one would expect, the time to build should shorten considerably after a few iterations. After the teams have one or two reactors under their belts, split them, seed them with new folks, and have two pipelines of reactors building simultaneously. And so on to whatever degree of expansion seems reasonable. It's a very rough idea, but it seems like a sensible way to get the reactors built quickly, making the most use of the learning curve and building expertise in the work force. One issue I see is that one would need a work force which is willing to relocate every six months or multiple of six months if more than one reactor is built per site. Still, it would be a pretty mobile lifestyle and finding housing near the site for the ~2000 worker's families might be an issue. |
|
|
|
Post by proteos on Aug 22, 2012 6:55:06 GMT 9.5
Areva now considers a mere 1 GWe NPP to be medium sized. To be fair, Areva is calling their Atmea I design 'medium' sized to differentiate it from the 1600MWe EPR, an absolute behemoth of a reactor. Larger reactors seem to be more appropriate for countries with existing nuclear reactors - but that might also be because they have larger interconnected power grids too. It is also related to the population density. The comparison between Western Europe and Australia is useful. Australia is a continent but has only 23M inhabitants. I do not know the absolute peakload, but it is certainly lower than 30GW. On the other hand, the first 6 members of the european union total ~230M inhabitants. Record peak load for France alone is above 100GW, it's about 80-85GW in Germany, etc. Areva is not only keen on selling its 1.6GW reactor, but also recommands to build it in pairs, to mutualize some costs. It's most appealing in place where land is scarce and load is high. If Australia were to decarbonize baseload, it would probably need 10 EPRs or so, 5 stations if built in pairs! You would have to have a good continental grid to cope with that. In western Europe, 10 EPRs just make a smallish dent in the problem of greenhouse gases. It's lower than the german nuclear capacity at the start of 2011 that will be retired... And 1GW is pretty much the accounting unit for baseload (the brand new Neurath BoA 2&3 which burns lignite is 2x1.1GW). Units of less than 300MW units are rarely commissioned in Europe now, unless it's renewables (biomass) or peak plants. The scale of the demand is just not the same as in Australia. In Australia, as well as in some parts of the US you have to cope with a low density of population. In western Europe and East Asia, you have to cope with land scarcity. |
|
|
|
Post by David B. Benson on Aug 22, 2012 8:26:21 GMT 9.5
trag --- What you describe is rather similar to the Chinese way.
Probably one wants to remain at the same site for a year. If for no other reason, for the school children.
|
|
|
|
Post by LancedDendrite on Aug 22, 2012 10:37:00 GMT 9.5
It is also related to the population density. The comparison between Western Europe and Australia is useful. Australia is a continent but has only 23M inhabitants. I do not know the absolute peakload, but it is certainly lower than 30GW. On the other hand, the first 6 members of the european union total ~230M inhabitants. Record peak load for France alone is above 100GW, it's about 80-85GW in Germany, etc. Actually, Australia has a weird population density distribution - it's no way near as even as Europe or even the USA, because of what air traffic controllers like to call the 'GAFA' (Great Australian F*** All). Most of the population (and hence electricity demand) is on the eastern seaboard. On the eastern seaboard we have the longest interconnected electricity network in the world, the National Electricity Market (NEM). Its actual peak load is around 37GW IIRC. The total amount of generation is about 46GW. See here: www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/1301.0~2012~Main%20Features~Geographic%20distribution%20of%20the%20population~49Areva is not only keen on selling its 1.6GW reactor, but also recommands to build it in pairs, to mutualize some costs. It's most appealing in place where land is scarce and load is high. If Australia were to decarbonize baseload, it would probably need 10 EPRs or so, 5 stations if built in pairs! In Australia, we have plenty of coastal land but little inland water (except when it floods up in Queensland  ). As for load, in terms of coal power on the NEM we have 27.8GW of both brown coal (lignite) and black coal power stations. If you want to decarbonise the coal baseload alone with EPRs, you're actually looking at 16-18 reactors built across 4 states! Personally I'm sceptical about the viability of a very-large generator like the EPR on the NEM. Each turbo-generator is 1600MWe net - that's a huge single point of failure during an outage or load tripping event. The largest single turbo-generator in Australia is the single 750MWe genset at the Kogan Creek black coal-fired power station in Queensland. The larger stations are usually 4-6 individual turbo-generators of 500-660MWe each. All of those gensets are paired to boilers and all share a common switchyard. I would therefore posit that the largest possible individual reactor that the NEM could deal with is probably a 1150MWe AP1000. Ideally you would want to build smaller than that though. I like the size of the Enhanced CANDU 6 reactor - 690MWe is quite manageable and land-use is less of an issue when you have so much coastline. Of course, SMRs would also be an excellent fit. |
|
|
|
Post by singletonengineer on Sept 9, 2012 18:11:49 GMT 9.5
Lanced Dendrite is absolutely correct. Australian loads and systems are suited to 500 - 750 MW units. However, a unit double that size would not present major hurdles.
Each relatively modern black coal power station in NSW, Liddell, Eraring, Bayswater and Mount Piper, was designed for 4-packs of 500 or 660MW. The transmission system has demonstrated several times during recent years to be able to handle simultaneous failure of several units.
Single units equal to two of the above are thus perhaps not ideal from a fault management perspective, but are not out of the question, either.
My own opinion is that the ideal mix of NPP's in the East Australian Grid is several (not too many) variants, probably along the following lines:
1. One or two designs in the range 50 to 100 MW for local loads, eg as support to mines and to enable feed from remote-ish locations to reduce the transmission losses. EG: Broken Hill? Tamworth?
2. 700MW and 1000MW units, which offer lower whole-of-life unit costs and will fit quite well onto or near existing sites. Example: In NSW, the four power stations mentioned above, plus Vales Point, Munmorah and Wallerawang.
That's 7 potential sites for NSW alone, each with excellent grid connection, existing local workforces experienced in construction, maintenance and operation of power plant and with access to cooling water.
Note, however, the water requirement can be reduced by at least 90% by use of dry cooling condensers. These require substantial footprint and, due to their large fans, are noisy, so it's probable that only for the four western (freshwater cooled) stations would this attractive.
Let's not get too hung up about unit size - there's more than enough range available right now, from a bunch of suppliers and with more coming.
In closing, it should be remembered that a 30MW unit was considered to be large about 60 years ago. By 30 years ago, 660MW units were at the small end of standard sizes for baseload applications. Doubling or even tripling the unit size to 2GW is a technical, cost-benefit issue and is in no way related to the topic of this thread. Let's have the debate!
|
|
|
|
Post by LancedDendrite on Sept 10, 2012 0:24:05 GMT 9.5
|
|
). As for load, in terms of coal power on the NEM we have 27.8GW of both brown coal (lignite) and black coal power stations. If you want to decarbonise the coal baseload alone with EPRs, you're actually looking at 16-18 reactors built across 4 states!