
A Double First in China for Advanced Nuclear Reactors - ax00x
https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/nuclear/a-double-first-in-china-for-advanced-nuclear-reactors
======
topspin
Here are three videos that describe the passive cooling mechanisms in the
AP1000 during a blackout (total loss of onsite and offsite power); passive
core cooling[1], passive containment cooling[2] and passively cooling spend
fuel[3].

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCorzfw5liQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCorzfw5liQ)
[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghy9aba3kHU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghy9aba3kHU)
[3]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzBe_kwIs28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzBe_kwIs28)

Basically the reactor will cool itself without operator intervention and
without power for 72 hours. After 72 hours the operator must use various on
site equipment and coolant supply to maintain cooling and/or provide coolant
from some off site source.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I wonder what prevents them from capturing the steam from the spent fuel
storage and running it through a condenser that is connected to a ground heat
exchanger (basically tubes run into the earth)

~~~
JKCalhoun
Guess: tremendous amounts of heat needing to dissipate would overwhelm all but
an enormous ground heat exchanger?

~~~
ChuckMcM
True, but space is generally not a problem at nuclear plants because there is
a huge area around them to protect against the accidental release of
radiation. Fourier's law for heat conduction would suggest that if you had
enough surface area in just steel pipes you could dump a megawatt or more of
excess heat into the surrounding atmosphere. In an unconstrained atmosphere
(like your heat exchanger structure is outside) that would induce an air
current that would further enhance the ability to dump heat into the air
passively.

If you had a larger water reserve you could also build the equivalent of a
Watt steam pump that could use the heat in the steam to pump water from the
reserve into the cask pond. Time to run some simulations to see whether that
is doable at all.

~~~
blincoln
I'm not sure how much heat a typical commercial nuclear reactor designed for
power generation produces, but the reactors at Hanford and Savannah River
(used for plutonium production, not power[1]) generated heat measured in
gigawatts[2]. That's why they were built next to large rivers - because of the
massive cooling requirements.

Maybe you were taking that into account, or maybe heat production drops by a
factor of 1000 during an unexpected shutdown, but I read your comment as being
that the design you have in mind is limited to a few megawatts.

[1] Except for the N reactor, which was dual-use. [2]
[https://fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/pu50yc.html](https://fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/pu50yc.html)

~~~
ChuckMcM
I was specifically commenting on the _spent fuel pool_ which generates much
less heat (at most about megawatt as far as I can find in the literature).
However those pools have been a source of issues at Fukishima as there were
some indications that the pool could reach criticality under the loss of
cooling. (which rapidly escalates the heat production!) The referenced video
talks about cooling the spent fuel passively for 72 hrs and then having to
turn on a pump to add more water. (it doesn't say where the steam is going,
presumably its being vented) So that got me thinking about letting the steam
go through pipes forming a heat exchanger (either in the ground or in the air,
and after this discussion the air would be better) so that as it condensed it
could be returned to the spent fuel pond rather than lost.

------
lunchladydoris
Meanwhile, solar appears to be leaping forward in China. From the end of the
article:

"All the while, nuclear is falling further behind renewable solar and wind
power. As Schneider notes, the 3.3 GW of new nuclear capacity connected to the
grid worldwide in 2017 (including three in China and a fourth in Pakistan
built by Chinese firms) pales in comparison to the 53 GW of solar power
installed in China alone. "

------
FooBarWidget
Why is the nuclear industry plagued with cost and schedule overruns? And
shouldn’t they have thought by now, “hey our estimates are always off so let’s
double them”?

~~~
ajnin
As the article states, they lost their competency. Here in France, the reason
is poor planning, focus on cost-cutting and lack of long term vision by top
management and government. EDF, the historical state power company turned into
a private company in 2004, laid off most of the technicians that built the
power plants over the years and subcontracted all the maintenance work to
hundreds of subcontractors that fight for the lowest bid and employ only
underqualified people, who often work in illegal conditions. The latest EPR
reactor in construction in France is riddled with defects, the pressure
vessel, built by Framatome, also absorbed by EDF, has uneven carbon content
which means it could crack. The concrete enclosure has many large holes due to
poor work. The bridge on top of the reactor was made of low-quality steel
bought in Russia and had to be replaced. Basically everything is badly done,
because they constantly try too make it in the cheapest way possible. But it's
not working out for them because fortunately the nuclear safety authority is
there to force them to redo things correctly. In its current state, the
nuclear industry is basically dead in France. As another example, they can't
decomission the plants arriving in end of life, and EDF officially postponed
it until 2100.

~~~
cc439
>As the article states, they lost their competency.

I think people undereatimate how bleak the short term future (50-100 years) is
looking right now. We've forgotten how to properly build many of the things we
once touted as the pinnacles of modern civilization and the current societal
status quo is too fractured and stressed to ever pursue the kind of learning
process needed to reaquire that knowledge. This is but one example among many.

~~~
greglindahl
We have plenty of competence in wind and solar energy. What we need to pay
attention to is that many of the nuclear plants built in the past are flawed,
and so we always had less competence at building them than we thought.

~~~
candiodari
Not at all. We had plenty of competence. We just chose to save a buck instead
of using it.

And the risk ? "You cannot blame me for that !"

(especially since this is taxpayer funds, ie. everyone, decided by democratic
vote, at least in France and the US. The democratic contract ought to mean
that since we collectively decided to do this, we are also collectively
responsible for the results, and yes, even if you voted for the other guy)

~~~
greglindahl
You appear to be certain that you know a lot about whom to blame, but the
reality is that it's unclear that we ever had the ability to build a large
number of reliable nuclear power plants.

~~~
opo
>…it's unclear that we ever had the ability to build a large number of
reliable nuclear power plants.

Nuclear power plants have been safer and more reliable than other forms of
power.

In terms of reliability, nuclear has had the highest capacity factor of any
source of power:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor)

In terms of accidents, nuclear has had a much better safety record than any
other form of power up this point:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents)

(They don’t cover ground based solar which I would think would actually be the
safest. Why do people keep wanting to subsidize roof top solar?)

Some other links on deaths due to energy production:
[https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-
ener...](https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-
source.html) [https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-
worldw...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-
energy-source/) [https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-
energy](https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy)
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-
deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#25416d10709b)

Unfortunately anything at all related to nuclear is covered by the media
orders of magnitude more than other power sources so people have an
understandable perception that it is much more dangerous than other sources of
power. What if the Alison Canyon was a nuclear storage site (instead of a
natural gas storage site) and 11,000 people had to be evacuated - how much
would the media have covered that? Another recent example would be the
evacuation at the Oroville dam - almost 200,000 (YES 200 thousand!) people
were forcibly evacuated since the worst case failure scenario would have have
been a tidal wave of water 30 feet high rushing down stream. This made the
news for maybe a day. I can't blame some for being afraid of nuclear power,
but there are many who should know better.

~~~
Reason077
_”Why do people keep wanting to subsidize roof top solar?”_

Ground-based solar has a cost in terms of the land being unavailable for other
purposes, such as agriculture or housing or even just maintaining ecosystems
in their natural state.

But roof-top solar is making use of a resource that is otherwise unproductive
space anyway. There are also benefits to having energy production right at the
point of use, since you avoid grid losses and are offsetting the retail cost
of energy rather than selling into the grid at wholesale prices.

~~~
opo
>...Ground-based solar has a cost in terms of the land being unavailable for
other purposes, such as agriculture or housing or even just maintaining
ecosystems in their natural state.

True, but I was mostly comparing the safety record. The death rate for rooftop
solar is probably at least an order of magnitude worse than ground based
solar. Even with subsidies it is also much more expensive.

>...There are also benefits to having energy production right at the point of
use, since you avoid grid losses and are offsetting the retail cost of energy
rather than selling into the grid at wholesale prices.

Very little of rooftop solar is used on site - it is just added to the grid.

------
Animats
What's left of Westinghouse is now owned by some private equity firm.

~~~
theoh
It's sad that, as evidenced by the AP1000 Youtube videos, the nuclear industry
(at least in Westinghouse's case) appears to have become sclerotic and unable
to even hire a dynamic visual communication team. You can't disrupt a reactor,
which leads to understandable caution, but surely they could have understood
that, given nuclear power's ominous reputation, you need to have the best PR
and visualizations money can buy.

------
M_Bakhtiari
I'm all for safer reactors coupled with expansion of nuclear power, but how is
China buying yet another a packaged product from the west a "double first"?

~~~
igravious
Because they are the first exemplars of these packaged _products_ (note:
plural, one each from Framatome|Areva/EDF/Siemens in Europe† and Westinghouse
in the US‡) to be built anywhere in the world ahead of other construction
projects. Thus: "double first".

†
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_\(nuclear_reactor\))

‡ [http://www.westinghousenuclear.com/New-
Plants/AP1000-PWR](http://www.westinghousenuclear.com/New-Plants/AP1000-PWR)

ps: it's a _little_ bit worrying I can't find any single commercial page
detailing the EPR

------
bawana
why are they using this unsafe tech (Pu-U) when molten salt reactors are
safer?
[https://whatisnuclear.com/msr.html](https://whatisnuclear.com/msr.html)

------
ggm
Wish we had news on the Pebble Bed stuff.

~~~
Animats
Well, Mammoet, the heavy-lift company, was able to move the jammed German
pebble bed reactor to a new location where it can cool down for 60 years or so
until somebody figures out how to dismantle it.[1]

[1]
[https://www.mammoet.com/cases/avrjulich/](https://www.mammoet.com/cases/avrjulich/)

~~~
Ygg2
The link indicates Mammonet moved a reactor built in 1950. Are you sure it is
related to pebble bed design at all?

~~~
kalleboo
I don't know why that article says it was built in the 50's, it was built in
the 60's
[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVR_(Jülich)](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVR_\(Jülich\))

------
melling
“The White House cited this nuclear nexus in a May memo instructing Rick
Perry, the Secretary of Energy, to force utilities to buy power from
unprofitable nuclear and coal plants.”

I hope people noticed the part about subsidizing coal. Natural gas is so cheap
that coal is no longer competitive, which is a good thing.

The administration is extending the life of coal plants that aren’t
profitable.

~~~
3rdAccount
No, this is not what this is all about. It's about national security and grid
resiliency. When all you have is 2 pipelines with first dibbs on residential
heating purposes, it can lead to blackouts. We almost had a major one in 2014
when there wasn't enough gas supply to New England. 80% of the coal that's
supposed to retire in 5 years had to be brought online else several states in
New England would have had rolling blackouts with millions in damage.

Some would argue coal has to go at all costs, and I understand it is awful for
the environment and kills people due to pollution (absolutely horrible).
However, getting rid of nuclear and coal completely is premature according to
much of the literature put out by independent and neutral parties. It's ok for
places like Germany to get rid of Nuclear power when they can get it from
France down the road.

~~~
craftyguy
> national security

That's a bullshit ticket to do anything they want. Next.

> grid resiliency

As others have mentioned, batteries. Next.

> unprofitable nuclear (from GP)

> However, getting rid of nuclear

Do you recognize the difference between antiquated, unprofitable nuclear power
plants and modern ones like those in the article? Your comment seems to lump
them all togther, which suggests you don't. The US has many of the former and
none of the latter. The latter would be beneficial.

~~~
3rdAccount
No my friend. It isn't a joke. This is being taken seriously throughout the
entire industry. Batteries are nowhere near where they need to be. If we lose
a pipeline in New England, batteries will not last long enough to serve load
along with solar and wind. That might be viable in 10-15 years, but not now.
Look at all the latest reports from ISO-NE. They are the neutral party running
the grid in that area. I understand very well that the majority of nuclear
plants slated to retire in the US are doing so because of economics. I'm not
interested in something that isn't slated to be built over here anytime soon.

------
m3kw9
Advanced + nuclear sounds scary to me.

~~~
lainga
I would think 'primitive + nuclear' the scarier prospect.

~~~
ben_w
May I intrigue/terrify you with naturally occurring fission reactors:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reacto...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor)

~~~
Dylan16807
Of the kind that can't stay hot without water moderating, which is a different
category in my book.

