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The Forum > Article Comments > Strange timing to suggest a LEGO nuclear future for Australia > Comments

Strange timing to suggest a LEGO nuclear future for Australia : Comments

By Noel Wauchope, published 23/4/2014

By 2022, could Australia have many 'Lego-like' small nuclear reactors in operation, dotted about the nation?

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There are just no actual surprises here!
Nor is the fact that these waterless reactors can be mass produced and trucked on site, and generating power, within days or hours?
Encasing the fuel, (marbles) in balls of really tough graphite, means, none of the fuel can collect or puddle, the cause of historical melt downs!

And given helium is the cooling medium, they can be located on waterless plains, or virtually anywhere, even inside the bellies of bulk transport shipping.
Thorium is very plentiful, we have enough, we're told, to power the world for 700 years, by which time, we could have solved fusion reaction.

Thorium is almost exactly opposite to Uranium, in that it consumes around 95% of the fissile material, leaving only around 5% as waste, which is vastly less toxic than conventional nuclear waste, and can even find a second use, as very long life space batteries.

It is these factors that make carbon free thorium power nearly the cheapest in the world, certainly cheaper than coal!

Thorium reaction is very old 1950's technology, abandoned during the height of the cold war, because there was no weapons spin off. [The Chinese are reportedly producing one a week?]

And yes it does need to be kick started with conventional nuclear fuel, and has very high heat operating temperatures. [All true and known for over half a century!]
Ditto most efficient, high heat coal fired stations, which may spew out more that just carbon from their smoke stacks, including uranium, carcinogenic cadmium, arsenic and lead, just to mention some!

It is carbon threatening our world with mass extinction, not a few tons of nuclear waste, or even the occasional meltdown, as serious as that may well be!

Sure we have lots of coal, which may serve us best, for now, left mostly in the ground, as a source of CSG, which we can convert to very cheap power, via ceramic fuel cells, producing mostly water vapor as the exhaust!

The industry and the consumer needs more competition, rather than a new flotilla of debt laden foreign carpet baggers!
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Wednesday, 23 April 2014 10:18:04 AM
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Footnote: Pebble oxide reactors are very different to thorium reactors, and ought not be confused, with one another?

Its Pebble reactors that can be mass produced and trucked as a conventional piloted wide load, on site, to begin producing power virtually as is?
[I believe Korea invented the pebble reactor process, and has produced the best so far, working prototypes? Thanks to very generous government R+D monies!
SA copycats? Not so lucky or well financed?]

[Edison's first incandescent light bulb, wasn't a roaring success, but perhaps an explosive one; yet now, ultra reliably lights up billions of rooms and work desks around the world!]

Bigger, higher heat, thorium reactors, are still comparatively small, and may even be trucked where needed, but only as an extremely wide load, that needs a wide road, all to itself?
And then may need large pits and lots of high tensile concrete wrapping?

More heat, more metal and more weight, okay?
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Wednesday, 23 April 2014 10:43:03 AM
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‘morning Noel,

Strange timing indeed. It seems a strange time to re-open any debate about nuclear powered energy when the industrialized and developing nations are going hard on fossil fuels?

The collapse of the Green energy initiatives in the EU, energy security priorities changing due to Russian gas dominance, the USA exporting cheap coal, gas and oil, Fracking opportunities becoming viable and Germany building nine new coal fired power plants, three of which will burn Lignite, the game has changed.

Other than spooling up existing nuclear plants and even delaying the closure of operational plants, there seems little prospect in the short term for new nuclear build programs.

It will happen of course and the technology of choice is yet to be determined. In the meantime Australia has a box seat with potential Uranium sales to those nations who continue with current scheduled nuclear builds. But as “Old King Coal” and Gas increase in demand we can also profit from using and exporting these.

I don’t think you need to worry about nuclear, much as you would like your readers to follow suit. It will remain in the energy mix for the future but is not currently competitive in new build terms against cheap fossil fuels but when it is, it will expand in line with its commercial viability because that is the way the undistorted market works.

As to what type of nuclear we might end up with? Who cares at this stage?
Posted by spindoc, Wednesday, 23 April 2014 11:23:36 AM
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What ever sort of generation you have it is more than likely it will become redundant. With the uptake of home solar plants and cheap batteries people will begin pulling the plug on the national grid.
Posted by 579, Wednesday, 23 April 2014 5:20:59 PM
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I've never ever seen a solar powered steel smelter, nor any assembly plant, particularly, during a night shift.
If we would rebuild our manufacturing base, we need base load power,and cheaper than coal 24/7 thorium would fill that option.
Steel smelting, utilizing the new arc furnaces, direct reduction and new source of cheap carbon free power, will allow us to finally undercut the price of Chinese steel.
Remember, the older Chinese process, is not the lower carbon creating direct reduction method, and requires double handling! Then transport two ways!
Eliminating that, will reduce total costs and allow domestic steel making to be reborn.
Particularly, via employee owned co-ops, which trim out all the drones and obscene salaries, etc/etc, which impact on the retail price.
Direct sales, would halve the price yet again; say of something like custom orb, or other building materials.
Ditto aluminum, arguably just congealed electricity?
Then there's energy intensive high tech, which would relocate massively here, if we but had two things, very cheap carbon free energy, and an extremely low, very simple, if entirely unavoidable tax system!
The govt could give us both! [All that prevents that outcome is ideologues, welded with a religious zealotry, to a set of fundamentally flawed economic beliefs!]
Instead of allowing debt laden tax avoid foreigners, to come in, rip us off, and expect us to pay a premium for the privilege, the govt needs to get back into business!
Very cheap thorium power, and some decent public private competition, would force local gas suppliers, to reduce their obscene profit demands.
Repealing a few export licences, might achieve a similar outcome, or a change in ownership, which would achieve that outcome!
The mad rush to sell our modest energy reserves, at even more modest returns to us, would be no longer necessary, if we but became a place that still made and sold things.
And that means, once again providing cheap energy for the manufacturing sector!
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Wednesday, 23 April 2014 6:31:25 PM
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Thanks Noel Wauchope

Another excellent article. You provide much needed reality countering the push by engineers to create a highly government subsidised reactor industry - selling a product the Australian public don't want.

SMR and Thorium reactor advocates presume that their "safe, small" reactor ideas can be fast-tracked - WRONG

Even small reactors will need to get through the 15+ years of Planning, Environmental Impact, Safety, Security, Public Opposition, and funding processes BEFORE construction begins.

Nuclear reactor suggestions quickly get on the public nose when engineers actually mention towns, cities and mainly coastal areas that might host nuclear reactors.

In terms of Security the following US Report is an indicator of what the three levels of Australian (Federal, State and Local) governments would need to consider:

Official US Congressional Research Service (CRS) Report for Congress “Nuclear Power Plant Security and Vulnerabilities” January 3, 2014, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/RL34331.pdf :
[page 1]

Overview of Reactor Security

Physical security at nuclear power plants involves the threat of radiological sabotage—a deliberate act against a plant that could directly or indirectly endanger public health and safety through exposure to radiation. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) establishes security requirements at U.S. commercial nuclear power plants based on its assessment of plant vulnerabilities to, and the consequences of, potential attacks. The stringency of NRC’s security requirements and its enforcement program have been a significant congressional issue, especially since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.

See the rest of the Report at http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/RL34331.pdf

There's a long list of terrorist, criminal, insider sabotage and vandal security concerns for ANY reactor, no matter how small or Thorium dependent.

Pete
Posted by plantagenet, Wednesday, 23 April 2014 9:42:29 PM
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