Marcos era nuclear power station may open in the future

The US quit using graphite moderated reactors like Chrnobyl in the 50's. I think they went to cadmium control rods. Same basic thing except the cadmium will stop the reaction where the graphite just slowed it, or that is my layman's understanding of it anyway.

I read an interesting article about pebble bed reactors which didn't use enough radioactive material to cause a runaway and helium as a working media because helium can't become radioactive if I understand correctly. If that were so all the helium could escape and carry no radiation with it. The downside is I think it would have to be fueled more often, the pebbles reclaimed for recycling.

I would much rather live downwind of a nuke plant (in the US anyway) than a coal plant because of the LOWER radiation. Yes I said lower. There is a lot of radioactive material in anything that comes from deep underground and they are called NORM naturally occurring radioactive material. There is plenty of radioactive material in the tons of coal that are burned. The oil for the fuel that is burned in any vehicle is also likely radioactive although not dangerously so.

 

USA nuclear plants use either silver or Hafnium in control rods. Cadmium use is minimized in radiation fields as it becomes highly radioactive.

 

Nuclear Reactors | Nuclear Power Plant | Nuclear Reactor Technology - World Nuclear Association



Control rods. These are made with neutron-absorbing material such as cadmium, hafnium or boron, and are inserted or withdrawn from the core to control the rate of reaction, or to halt it.* In some PWR reactors, special control rods are used to enable the core to sustain a low level of power efficiently. (Secondary control systems involve other neutron absorbers, usually boron in the coolant – its concentration can be adjusted over time as the fuel burns up.)
* In fission, most of the neutrons are released promptly, but some are delayed. These are crucial in enabling a chain reacting system (or reactor) to be controllable and to be able to be held precisely critical.

I think cadmium is fairly popular elsewhere. If you want to stop a reactor, you need something that will absorb radiation, isn't that the point?

 

If you'd like an education on USA nuclear plants and the physics of how they work, along with material properties, let me know and I'll be glad to buy the burgers and beers at Happy Jacks! My 40 years in nuclear power plants and atomic weapons might just give me enough background to bore you to tears!

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I wonder what a $1 Billion investmentment in a LFTR (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor) would get the world - besides rid of high pressure reactors.

 

I looked at the 30 minute video the problem with thorium. At the end the guy said give him 100 million dollars and in 5 years he would have a working reactor. Evidently there are engineering problems. Scientists get excited and say it will work and any time their pet needs something that nobody makes yet, they say it's an engineering problem. I still wish someone would give the guy 100 million dollars.

The best rare earth mining sites in the US are blocked by environmental concerns and people are right to be concerned. Mining companies have been polluting and sticking the taxpayer with the bill for the last 100 years or more. I have heard of one place where the mining industry has almost 6 billion dollars lined up if they will just be allowed to start a mine in a populated area. They don't want to place the money to clean up afterward in escrow but they promise they will be good and clean up after themselves, like so many times before but they say they really, really mean it this time.

 

There are variations from insurmountable problems to technical problems. The Thorium problems are more technical in moving from experimental to commercial use. There aren't insurmountable problems as evidenced by the test reactor running continuously for 5 years - in the 1960s.

The bigger problems to me are regulatory as big money (current light water reactor nuclear industry and the oil, coal, and gas industries) influences politicians. This has led to Thorium being reclassified as hazardous in the US, which then stopped US rare earth mines, which then led to the US dependence on China for materials needed for national security.

 

I have uranium on my land which I have not leased out to be mined. I would just as soon that they made the effort to make the thoriun reactor a commercial reality and I can also understand why it isn't happening.

I wish the US would stop using corn to make fuel alcohol as it drives up the price of food and fuel, takes so much fuel to produce the corn alcohol that it is almost a wash with the carbon footprint and you can make methanol very easily from methane ( dry natural gas) of which we have such an abundance that we burn off a huge amount already because it's not valuable enough or worth the time to collect from an economic sense. The gas from my land is collected but they consider the methane to be a nuisance, what they want is ethane for plastic, propane, butane, pentane, hexane and so on and their derivatives. You can have the methane for free if you will take it. Corn alcohol can't compete with that, but corn alcohol is government mandated.

 

I agree, while at the same time corn subsidies from the government are out of control. To the tune of $94.3 Billion (with a B) from 1995-2014 EWG's Farm Subsidy Database

 

I went to Happy Jacks yesterday hoping to engage (and perhaps bore) anyone wanting to learn/discuss nuclear power plants or even nuclear weapons. Unfortunately nobody was interested!

Fortunately though my cheeseburger and fries were excellent. My wife's pulled pork sandwich was also excellent!