nuclear power

21 Articles

Atoms For Peace: The US Nuclear Fleet Build-Out And Modern-Day Revival

December 23, 2024 by 24 Comments

By the end of World War II the world had changed forever, as nuclear weapons were used for the first and – to this date – only time in anger. Although the use of these weapons was barely avoided during the Korean War in the early 1950s, the dawning of the Atomic Age had come in the form of obliterated cities and an increasing number of these weapons being test fired around the world. It was against this background that on December 8, 1953, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower held his ‘Atoms for Peace’ speech, during which he would not only promote the peaceful use of nuclear technologies but also lay the groundwork for what would become the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as announced in the full speech.

Under the Eisenhower administration the US became one of the world’s nuclear power pioneers, as it competed with the UK and later others in establishing world’s firsts in commercial nuclear power. Dresden Generating Station would become the first purely commercial boiling water reactor (BWR) in 1960 and Yankee-Rowe, the first pressurized water reactor (PWR) in 1961. Following these, the number of new reactors planned and constructed kept increasing year over year, setting the trend for the few decades of the US nuclear power industry.

Today the US operates 94 reactors, which generate nearly 20% of the country’s electricity. Exactly how did the US build so many reactors before 1990, and how does this compare to the recent revival with both new builds and retired plants being put back into service?

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Fukushima Daiichi: Cleaning Up After A Nuclear Accident

September 23, 2024 by 48 Comments

On 11 March, 2011, a massive magnitude 9.1 earthquake shook the west coast of Japan, with the epicenter located at a shallow depth of 32 km,  a mere 72 km off the coast of Oshika Peninsula, of the Touhoku region. Following this earthquake, an equally massive tsunami made its way towards Japan’s eastern shores, flooding many kilometers inland. Over 20,000 people were killed by the tsunami and earthquake, thousands of whom were dragged into the ocean when the tsunami retreated. This Touhoku earthquake was the most devastating in Japan’s history, both in human and economic cost, but also in the effect it had on one of Japan’s nuclear power plants: the six-unit Fukushima Daiichi plant.

In the subsequent Investigation Commission report by the Japanese Diet, a lack of safety culture at the plant’s owner (TEPCO) was noted, along with significant corruption and poor emergency preparation, all of which resulted in the preventable meltdown of three of the plant’s reactors and a botched evacuation. Although afterwards TEPCO was nationalized, and a new nuclear regulatory body established, this still left Japan with the daunting task of cleaning up the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

Removal of the damaged fuel rods is the biggest priority, as this will take care of the main radiation hazard. This year TEPCO has begun work on removing the damaged fuel inside the cores, the outcome of which will set the pace for the rest of the clean-up.

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Reviewing Nuclear Accidents: Separating Fact From Fiction

July 22, 2024 by 94 Comments

Few types of accidents speak as much to the imagination as those involving nuclear fission. From the unimaginable horrors of the nuclear bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, to the fever-pitch reporting about the accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, all of these have resulted in many descriptions and visualizations which are merely imaginative flights of fancy, with no connection to physical reality. Due to radiation being invisible with the naked eye and the interpretation of radiation measurements in popular media generally restricted to the harrowing noise from a Geiger counter, the reality of nuclear power accidents in said media has become diluted and often replaced with half-truths and outright lies that feed strongly into fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

Why is it that people are drawn more to nuclear accidents than a disaster like that at Bhopal? What is it that makes the one nuclear bomb on Hiroshima so much more interesting than the firebombing of Tokyo or the flattening of Dresden? Why do we fear nuclear power more than dam failures and the heavy toll of air pollution? If we honestly look at nuclear accidents, it’s clear that invariably the panic afterwards did more damage than the event itself. One might postulate that this is partially due to the sensationalist vibe created around these events, and largely due to a poorly informed public when it comes to topics like nuclear fission and radiation. A situation which is worsened by harmful government policies pertaining to things like disaster response, often inspired by scientifically discredited theories like the Linear No-Threshold (LNT) model which killed so many in the USSR and Japan.

In light of a likely restart of Unit 1 of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in the near future, it might behoove us to wonder what we might learn from the world’s worst commercial nuclear power disasters. All from the difficult perspective of a world where ideology and hidden agendas do not play a role, as we ask ourselves whether we really should fear the atom.

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Hackaday Links: November 5, 2023

November 5, 2023 by 5 Comments

As I write this, Supercon 2023 is in full swing down in Pasadena — 80 degrees and sunny at the moment, as opposed to 50 and pouring rain where I am, not that I’m bitter. Luckily, though, we can all follow along with the proceedings thanks to the livestreams on the Hackaday channel, which of course will all be available once they’re edited in case you miss anything live. There are a ton of interesting talks coming up, so there’ll be a lot to catch up on when the dust settles. And that won’t be far from now; by the time this post publishes, Supercon will be all but over, which makes it the Thanksgiving dinner of cons — all that work and it’s over in just a few minutes.

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Triso Fuel And The Rolls Royce Of Nuclear Reactors

September 7, 2023 by 59 Comments

Bangor University scientists think that the way to go big with nuclear power is to, in fact, go small. Their tiny nuclear fuel pellets called triso fuel are said to be the size of poppy seeds and are meant to power a reactor by Rolls Royce the size of a “small car.” We aren’t sure if that’s a small Rolls Royce or a small normal car.

The Welsh university thinks the reactor has applications for lunar bases, here on Earth, and even on rockets because the reactor is so small. We can’t tell if the fuel from Bangor is unique or if it is just the application and the matching reactor that is making the news. Triso fuel — short for tri-structural isotropic particle fuel — was developed in the 1960s, and there are multiple projects worldwide gearing up to use this sort of fuel.

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The Intricacies Of Creating Fuel For Nuclear Reactors

January 10, 2023 by 51 Comments

All nuclear fission power reactors run on fuel containing uranium and other isotopes, but fueling a nuclear reactor is a lot more complicated than driving up to them with a dump truck filled with uranium ore and filling ‘er up. Although nuclear fission is simple enough that it can occur without human intervention as happened for example at the Oklo natural fission reactors, within a commercial reactor the goal is to create a nuclear chain reaction that targets a high burn-up (fission rate), with an as constant as possible release of energy.

Each different fission reactor design makes a number of assumptions about the fuel rods that are inserted into it. These assumptions can be about the enrichment ratio of the fissile isotopes like U-235, the density of individual fuel pellets, the spacing between the fuel rods containing these pellets, the configuration of said fuel rods along with any control, moderator and other elements. and so on.

Today’s light water reactors, heavy water reactors, fast neutron reactors, high temperature reactors and kin all have their own fuel preferences as a result, with high-assay low-enriched (HALEU) fuel being the new hot thing for new reactor designs. Let’s take a look at what goes into these fuel recipes.

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The Nuclear Powered Car From Ford

July 8, 2021 by 42 Comments

We think of electric cars as a new invention, but even Thomas Edison had one. It isn’t so much that the idea is new, but the practical realization for normal consumer vehicles is pretty recent. Even in 1958, Ford wanted an electric car. But not just a regular electric car. The Ford Nucleon would carry a small nuclear reactor and get 5,000 miles without a fillup.

Of course, the car was never actually built. Making a reactor small and safe enough to power a passenger car is something we can’t do even today. The real problem, according to experts, is not building a reactor small enough but in dealing with all the heat produced.

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