Naval Reactors Should Be Empowered to Show the Way Again

[Marlin]

The reporting and inspection requirement are the same for a smaller plant as a larger plant.  A SMR will be subject to the same inspections as a 1200 megawatt unit.

Much of the work would be done off site changing the initial licensing and shortening the process thus lowering the cost. A lot of cost comes from the initial front end for nukes. New designs would incorporate easier to operate and maintain plants lowering regulatory interface even if they are the same.

[Marlin]

   Do any of you remember EBR II it had passive safety systems and had onsite reprocessing. Chernobyl and non proliferation killed it. They turned off the coolant pumps and it shut itself down with no other safety systems or operator action to prove it worked. Noone has said anything to convince me that entrenched industry thought does not have to be bypassed to progress nuclear power as most of the responses are entrenched industry thought reinforcing my agreement with the author of the article that started this thread.

[HydroDave63]

The choir is convinced. It is the rest of the country that we need to evangelize.

[Marlin]

The choir is convinced. It is the rest of the country that we need to evangelize.

 

[GLW]

.... entrenched industry thought....

how about regulatory compliant experience?!?!?!

you can pine for a simpler, kinder paradigm for the next twenty posts on this thread but it's not like the posters and users here just love all the layers of paper and regulation they deal with everyday,...

it's just what it is, some high thinking design team is not going to be able to roll back 10,000 pages of regulation because if those pages are not rolled back their latest gen nuclear baby reactor will be stillborn,...

the resistance is not with the industry professionals,...

we're just cautioning you with reality,...

the fight is in the bureaucracy of the regulators and the anterooms of the special interests, the no nukes is gud nukes crowd,...

I've been waiting for the nuclear renaissance since I EAOS'd in 1988,...

that's 25 years, just about the same time frame between the Nautilus and TMI Unit 2,....

know how many commercial nukes we had on the grid in '55?!?!?!

none,...

'79?!?!?!

67, and that was after an additional 14 had come up on the grid , done their thing and then been shuttered down back off the grid, that would be 81 commercial nukes brought onto the grid in those 25 years,...

how 'bout since '88?

5 or so brought on, 15 or so taken off,...

ain't happening, been a whole lot more taken off line than brought on line since '88,... a whole lot more,....

you thinking that's because of "entrenched industry thought"?!?!?

please, how about more like "unfriendly for business expansion regulatory paradigm",...

but, believe it as you will, it's our own monolithic, stuck in the box attitudes preventing the renaissance which will keep us employed,...

next thing you'll be telling me is that laser focused fusion will be here next year,...  

OBTW - there are lots of ex-NR persons in our business,.... they populate INPO in force,....

oh yeah,..almost forgot,...(sic) for beercourt

[Marlin]

how about regulatory compliant experience?!?!?!

you can pine for a simpler, kinder paradigm for the next twenty posts on this thread but it's not like the posters and users here just love all the layers of paper and regulation they deal with everyday,...

   I think you missed my point, simplified construction, operation, and maintenance make the regulatory interface smaller even with the existing rules. I don't see a way around reprocessing without new rules but the traveling wave reactor would not be reprocessing  as much as a nuclear incineration. New designs create new paradigms that do not fit old ideas. Simple test reactors and small university reactors also come under the same rules and regulations but clearly they do not suffer the same scrutiny as the commercial behemoths as there is not as much to scrutinize. Fewer systems lower consequences of each small reactor make a difference when compared to the overly complex 1000MW juggernauts that have handled the evolution of regulation by adding systems and complexity to old designs.

   "That's just my opinion, feel free to make it yours"  Phil Williams  

 

[GLW]

We will have to agree to disagree though in your long somewhat eloquent dissertation you have reinforced my point on CW and lack of movement. There are plenty of forward looking people not stuck in the past....

unfortunately those people do not include Westinghouse or Ameren Missouri,...

Westinghouse backs off small nuclear plants

http://www.post-gazette.com/business/2014/02/02/Westinghouse-backs-off-small-nuclear-plants/stories/201402020074

[Marlin]

unfortunately those people do not include Westinghouse or Ameren Missouri,...

Westinghouse backs off small nuclear plants

http://www.post-gazette.com/business/2014/02/02/Westinghouse-backs-off-small-nuclear-plants/stories/201402020074

From farther down in the article:

   "Westinghouse still is interested in the development of SMRs, he said, and the company will eventually file an application with the NRC as the market dictates. But for now it is spending its energy in parts of the company with greater economic potential."



    Apparently we will still have to agree to disagree.   

[GLW]

From farther down in the article:

   "Westinghouse still is interested in the development of SMRs, he said, and the company will eventually file an application with the NRC as the market dictates. But for now it is spending its energy in parts of the company with greater economic potential."



    Apparently we will still have to agree to disagree.   

Yeah, but my hand is already showing deuce aces,...

from 1989:

...Some say it will take 10 to 20 years to get from an electrode in a beaker to a commercial power plant. ''It's not just a matter of putting wires into test tubes and putting them into boxes,'' said R. D. Haun Jr., chief scientist at the Westinghouse Research and Development Center in Pittsburgh, who said he was nevertheless ''skeptically optimistic.'' He noted that while the first atomic pile was built in 1941 to demonstrate nuclear fission, a different atomic process, it was not until 1957 that the first nuclear power plant was built....

...And American companies have shown a reluctance to work on long-term developments with uncertain payoffs, such as in solar energy and superconductors....

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/04/28/business/beating-a-path-to-fusion-s-door.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

[Marlin]

Yeah, but my hand is already showing deuce aces,...

from 1989:

...Some say it will take 10 to 20 years to get from an electrode in a beaker to a commercial power plant. ''It's not just a matter of putting wires into test tubes and putting them into boxes,'' said R. D. Haun Jr., chief scientist at the Westinghouse Research and Development Center in Pittsburgh, who said he was nevertheless ''skeptically optimistic.'' He noted that while the first atomic pile was built in 1941 to demonstrate nuclear fission, a different atomic process, it was not until 1957 that the first nuclear power plant was built....

...And American companies have shown a reluctance to work on long-term developments with uncertain payoffs, such as in solar energy and superconductors....

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/04/28/business/beating-a-path-to-fusion-s-door.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

   Doesn't this simply reinforce my original contentions that government intervention is necessary to move nuclear forward in non traditional designs?

 

[Fermi2]

Yeah, but my hand is already showing deuce aces,...

from 1989:

...Some say it will take 10 to 20 years to get from an electrode in a beaker to a commercial power plant. ''It's not just a matter of putting wires into test tubes and putting them into boxes,'' said R. D. Haun Jr., chief scientist at the Westinghouse Research and Development Center in Pittsburgh, who said he was nevertheless ''skeptically optimistic.'' He noted that while the first atomic pile was built in 1941 to demonstrate nuclear fission, a different atomic process, it was not until 1957 that the first nuclear power plant was built....

...And American companies have shown a reluctance to work on long-term developments with uncertain payoffs, such as in solar energy and superconductors....

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/04/28/business/beating-a-path-to-fusion-s-door.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

It appears they could have used a history lesson. The Atomic Energy Act was not amended until late 1954 to allow civilian reactors then it took nearly 2 years to have the legislation and design Criteria in place. Given it wasn't legally feasible until 1956 I think the civilians did pretty good.