Grayson nuclear power. A LFTR?

Jonathan_S wrote:

Theemile wrote:The US has had a number of pebble bed reactors for military applications over the years. In the 90's "project Timberwind" using a pebble bed reactor to heat rocket exhaust was pushed by DARPA as an alternative to the Atlas V/Delta IV Rockets then in development. In the 50s and 60s, the Air Force actually built pre-production pebble bed reactors for "project Pluto" (Nuclear ramjet missile) and "project Weatherman" (Atomic manned bomber) and tested them fully before public/congressional backlash (and the development of ICBMs)shut down the programs. Projects ROVER and NERVA also toyed with the pebble bed design.

Several working full scale prototypes of the ramjet pebble bed reactor, starting with the Tory-IIA reactor(made by COORS!), actually "flew" in a special wind tunnel at Jackass Flats (near area 51) in the early 1960s before the Pluto project was canceled in 1964.

Huh, I'd never heard that Project NERVA ever looked at pebble-bed technology. Certainly the prototype nuclear thermal engines they actually built and tested at Jackass Flats weren't -- those had the nuclear fuel in solid core fuel rod elements.

Different rod technology. It was a variation on a pebble bed technology with 50,000 ceramic separator rods in the bed.

if you have about 30 minutes this is a great video of the Oak Ridge National lab in Tenn. and their molten salt reactor experiment. it went critical in 1965 and ran for 20,000 hours!
Theemile you are so right! they were told to design a reactor for a Aircraft Reactor Experiment first. It operated for a 1000-hour cycle in 1954!!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7baTdyHv8g

Theemile wrote:Thorium reactors have been known since the 50's and India is currently throwing a lot of money at them. The primary reason they were not built is that they don't make weapons grade materials, or support the uranium extraction industry necessary for weapons grade materials.

...and the U-232 produced during operation makes reprocessing a bit of a PITA. Also if you don't get it out, the new bred fuel is a bit (radiologically) hot to handle conveniently because U-232 has some nasty gamma emitters in its decay chain.

A co-worker of mine from the Navy went to work for Starcorp in Canada where he's part of the pebble bed reactor work they have. He has good things to say about it, both safety wise and efficiency wise.

The French are one of the few countries which actively export electricity, despite their societal pressures. They've got a few standard reactor design which they implement in many places. You can work at any reactor and transfer to another of the same design with minimal training. It's a good example of nuclear power done right. They've got about 18 plants, I think, currently running. They had a plan for far more but public pressures put the kibosh on it.

It always amazes me how people are against nuclear power, especially after something like the mess in Japan. yet they continue to tolerate oil and coal, despite problems like the Valdez oil spill, the gulf BP pipeline accident and any number of other environmentally destructive behaviors by those industries.

Almost all methods of energy generation are risky, generate some sort of waste and have danger to people and the environment.

Fireflair wrote:A co-worker of mine from the Navy went to work for Starcorp in Canada where he's part of the pebble bed reactor work they have. He has good things to say about it, both safety wise and efficiency wise.

The French are one of the few countries which actively export electricity, despite their societal pressures. They've got a few standard reactor design which they implement in many places. You can work at any reactor and transfer to another of the same design with minimal training. It's a good example of nuclear power done right. They've got about 18 plants, I think, currently running. They had a plan for far more but public pressures put the kibosh on it.

It always amazes me how people are against nuclear power, especially after something like the mess in Japan. yet they continue to tolerate oil and coal, despite problems like the Valdez oil spill, the gulf BP pipeline accident and any number of other environmentally destructive behaviors by those industries.

Almost all methods of energy generation are risky, generate some sort of waste and have danger to people and the environment.

The part that truly boggles my mind is that, at least in the US, the primary thing nuclear protesters have managed lately is to keep us stuck in the status quo - runing 40+ year old, non-standardized, designs past their originally designed operating lives.

I disagree with, but can see the logic of, advocating hard for complete shutdown of nuclear plants. And similarly I see why people wouldn't to have reactors built were there aren't any.

But I can't really understand the logical of refusing to let plant operators replace their old less safe designs with moderns safer designs at the same facility. (Providing both betters meltdown resistance should all emergency power be lost, and moving to standardized controls across all new reactors). "We hate nuclear so keep running your obsolete less safe designs rather than replacing them with safer ones!"

Jonathan_S wrote:

Fireflair wrote:A co-worker of mine from the Navy went to work for Starcorp in Canada where he's part of the pebble bed reactor work they have. He has good things to say about it, both safety wise and efficiency wise.

The French are one of the few countries which actively export electricity, despite their societal pressures. They've got a few standard reactor design which they implement in many places. You can work at any reactor and transfer to another of the same design with minimal training. It's a good example of nuclear power done right. They've got about 18 plants, I think, currently running. They had a plan for far more but public pressures put the kibosh on it.

It always amazes me how people are against nuclear power, especially after something like the mess in Japan. yet they continue to tolerate oil and coal, despite problems like the Valdez oil spill, the gulf BP pipeline accident and any number of other environmentally destructive behaviors by those industries.

Almost all methods of energy generation are risky, generate some sort of waste and have danger to people and the environment.

The part that truly boggles my mind is that, at least in the US, the primary thing nuclear protesters have managed lately is to keep us stuck in the status quo - runing 40+ year old, non-standardized, designs past their originally designed operating lives.

I disagree with, but can see the logic of, advocating hard for complete shutdown of nuclear plants. And similarly I see why people wouldn't to have reactors built were there aren't any.

But I can't really understand the logical of refusing to let plant operators replace their old less safe designs with moderns safer designs at the same facility. (Providing both betters meltdown resistance should all emergency power be lost, and moving to standardized controls across all new reactors). "We hate nuclear so keep running your obsolete less safe designs rather than replacing them with safer ones!"

Definitely reminds me of "By the Book" by Charles E. Gannon in RFC "Beginnings" Baby and bath water anyone?

Jonathan_S wrote:

Fireflair wrote:A co-worker of mine from the Navy went to work for Starcorp in Canada where he's part of the pebble bed reactor work they have. He has good things to say about it, both safety wise and efficiency wise.

The French are one of the few countries which actively export electricity, despite their societal pressures. They've got a few standard reactor design which they implement in many places. You can work at any reactor and transfer to another of the same design with minimal training. It's a good example of nuclear power done right. They've got about 18 plants, I think, currently running. They had a plan for far more but public pressures put the kibosh on it.

It always amazes me how people are against nuclear power, especially after something like the mess in Japan. yet they continue to tolerate oil and coal, despite problems like the Valdez oil spill, the gulf BP pipeline accident and any number of other environmentally destructive behaviors by those industries.

Almost all methods of energy generation are risky, generate some sort of waste and have danger to people and the environment.

The part that truly boggles my mind is that, at least in the US, the primary thing nuclear protesters have managed lately is to keep us stuck in the status quo - runing 40+ year old, non-standardized, designs past their originally designed operating lives.

I disagree with, but can see the logic of, advocating hard for complete shutdown of nuclear plants. And similarly I see why people wouldn't to have reactors built were there aren't any.

But I can't really understand the logical of refusing to let plant operators replace their old less safe designs with moderns safer designs at the same facility. (Providing both betters meltdown resistance should all emergency power be lost, and moving to standardized controls across all new reactors). "We hate nuclear so keep running your obsolete less safe designs rather than replacing them with safer ones!"

Nuclear power is a hard sell for sure. Just look at the UK's Hinkley Point C project - years behind schedule, over budget and with a government guaranteed wholesale price of £92 per MWh for first 35 years of operation(currently the market is around £42/Mwh).

Nuclear power suffers, massively, from red tape. Reactors, relatively safe ones, can be built and operated for far more cheaply than they currently are. The building process gets hung up in expensive studies, surveys and on and on and on...

There are only a few places in the US currently building or working toward it. Mostly places which already had permits or all the ground work laid to build a new plant. TVA's place in Chattanooga TN, is one such. The Watt's Bar reactors finally got up and running in 2016 after 40 years in the offing. That sort of time delay is going to massively increase the cost of materials and set up.

Most power companies, as noted previously, gave up on nuclear power. Not because it was impractically from a technical, environmental or safety stand point, but because the red tape was horrendous and drove the prices through the roof.

Jonathan_S wrote:But I can't really understand the logical of refusing to let plant operators replace their old less safe designs with moderns safer designs at the same facility. (Providing both betters meltdown resistance should all emergency power be lost, and moving to standardized controls across all new reactors). "We hate nuclear so keep running your obsolete less safe designs rather than replacing them with safer ones!"

The NIMBYs won another round when it was announced yesterday that in South Carolina 2 new but unfinished state of the art reactors were being abandoned. Thanks to the delays heaped on the utilities the reactors were several years late and hundreds of millions over budget.

There's another pair under construction in Georgia. The crosshairs are firmly on them as well but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Here in Virginia Dominion Power has given up on any idea of replacing the Surry plant with another nuke. Ah well ...

dlewis0160 wrote:I was thinking about the power challenges and requirements the graysons had to overcome. Their planet was constantly trying to kill them with high concentrations of heavy metals and water that was too acidic. The planetary population suffered stunted physical growth and shortened life spans.
someone designed a Thorium based molten salt reactor called the lftr 49. It in theory can burn up nuclear waste. As a extra kick the lifter 49 can produce particles for life saving Targeted Alpha Therapy that the Graysons would need before Manticore arrived with their modern medical technology. I think the Graysons developed something like this.......Maybe?

https://articles.thmsr.nl/the-flibe-ene ... 9bffcd71dd

The problem with your idea is one of when in the timeline this would have taken place. I cannot comment on the research currently taking place into just such a reactor as you have described. However there are two fundamental problems:
1) The Grayson's journey to their new home left Earth after the fall of the Earth Union & the Green/Neo Luddite Coalition that had misruled Earth. Although they had been overthrown during the period they were in power they would have effectively destroyed all new & probably a lot of the existing research into nuclear power, particularly fission.
2) The Graysons themselves were an anti-technology group who intended to do away with technology altogether & who had deliberately not taken the teachers & text books to support research into the physical sciences.

As such the Graysons did not have the bedrock of research & existing technology that they could fall back on.
Given the situation they faced it was a miracle that they survived & were able to accomplish so much but it is inevitable that there would be shortcomings in their research.