Nuclear Power Needs To Go

[Pio1980]

What about the CANDU reactor?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor?wprov=sfla1

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[sheltiedave]

Having personally gone through the Navy nuclear training program that Rickover created, and having trained personnel at a commercial plant, they are two entirely different animals. The TMI incident was a very interesting anomaly that commercial plants had never trained for. The same thing happened a couple years before TMI at Davis Besse, but a senior reactor control room supervisor could capably think outside the box, correctly diagnosed the situation, and implemented the correct corrective action course in a timely fashion.

In Rickover's Navy program, operators spent six months learning about the reactors in a classroom situation, and then spent another six months playing with a real one in a land based prototype sandbox, where we were taught all about the box, how to keep things in play inside the box, and how to react when things headed outside the box.

Even with a catastrophic core breach at TMI, about 53% of the core turned into an elephant's foot, and operators refusing to believe and then incapable of understanding or controlling an ongoing core breach, there was no solid core material that breached the primary vessel containment, and only minor venting of fission product gases to atmosphere.

The French plant with the reactor vessel QA problem, and the San Onofre plant in CA that was most recently retired because of incredibly faulty QA on their replacement steam generators, are examples of outside vendors that criminally manufactured defective plant systems and then criminally sought to hide their fraud at acceptance inspection and operational testing.

[JJIII]

Originally Posted by Pio1980

What about the CANDU reactor?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor?wprov=sfla1

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I asked basically the same question in post #2 and got crickets.

Rob seemed to know something about them. I wish he would chime in.

[Pio1980]

Originally Posted by JJIII

I asked basically the same question in post #2 and got crickets.

Rob seemed to know something about them. I wish he would chime in.

Likewise.
I thought I'd posted the followup reminder on CANDU earlier, but apparently, it didn't 'stick'.

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[finnbow]

I kinda answered in my response citing small modular reactors. That's the direction the industry seems to be going.

[JJIII]

Originally Posted by finnbow

I kinda answered in my response citing small modular reactors. That's the direction the industry seems to be going.

That was interesting. I had no idea such things existed.

[sheltiedave]

The CANDU reactors' major advantage is use of the slightly enriched natural uranium at 1.2% to 1.5%.

Refueling is also much easier, as they can be refueling individually on the fly, and once every five to eight years for a bank 30% refueling outage. CANDUs are a modified breeder heavy water reactor.

The Wikapedia blurb is pretty spot on for the generic description.

[merrylander]

Actually the CANDU could probably burn a lot of the 'spent' fuel from high pressure reactors. Last I heard India was planning on converting their CANDU to use Thorium as a fuel.

The other factor is it's safety record., the control rods are held up by electro-magnets. Had the Fukushima reactors been CANDUs when the power failed all the control rods would have dropped and shut down the reactor.

[JJIII]

Good to see you back. Rob.

[flacaltenn]

Originally Posted by Boreas

A distinction without a difference, IMO. In any event, some of the waste stored at Hanford is waste from commercial reactors that was destined for Yucca Mtn.

Hanford, Savannah River, Oak Ridge and others are a complete consequence of the Weapons Programs. They are the most serious overlooked enviro disaster in this country for the past 40 years. They continue to BURY bulldozers in place because after a few months of service -- they are too radioactive to operate.

And if you actually READ that link to the NewYork nuclear plant -- their "major problems" were birds shitting on the powerlines and transformers busting OUTSIDE the reactors. The tritium leak was a one time incident and tritium has a very short half-life. Much shorter than the INFINTITE half-life of the pollutants that came spilling out of those busted transformers.

There is no other reliable 24/7/365 power source that is CO2 free, and can power your home for a year with only 0.7 ounces of waste. That's an amount that we ought to be able to handle. About equiv to a AA battery. Especially if you are a fan of putting 400 lbs of limited life batteries on wheels without a real plan for end of life recycling.

Nuclear is the RIGHT NOW solution for those suffering from GWarming hysteria. Even top Ecologists now are speaking out to use more of it. And for gosh sakes to rebuild the 40 or so seriously aged plants that are still percolating out there supplying over 20% of our electricity..