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210 comments on Mining the Oceans: Can We Extract Minerals from Seawater?
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I've been waiting for a breeder reactor since the 50's----
What seems to be the problem?
Newly mined uranium is too cheap.
That's too simple an excuse. Fast breeders are more capital intensive, more complex, less reliable, larger chance of substantial core damage. Those things do not sound good to investors. Investors rather put their money in proven and safe technologies like lightwater reactors. Also, breeders have suffered from very strong social resistance (due to safety perceptions), as well as a perception of thermonuclear weapons connexions.
Fast breeders were intended to solve minor problems, but as time passed by, it was perceived (so far correctly) that solving these minor problems would exagerbate the major problems. In short, fast breeders have been penny-wise, pound-foolish.
That's not to say breeders shouldn't be researched further. The LFTR is technically interesting so I wouldn't mind a couple billion in a crash development program. It's a bit of a stretch, though, to argue that we can 'start' with a 100 GW of thorium reactors, as the Engineer-Poet puts it. First we have to get a 100 MW or so, then see how it works technically and commercially. Right now there isn't even 100 miliwatts.
It worked beautifully with 7.4 megawatts of LFTR, and 60 megawatts of light-water thorium breeder reactor. The only reason we haven't had tests of 100 megawatts and up is that the technology didn't advance the economic interests of the nuclear industry at the time.
I humbly suggest that the situation may now favor this technology.
7.4 MW thermal yes. No 'tricity, capt'n. No Braytons were available at the time.
I wouldn't assert that Brayton cycles (He or otherwise) are commercially mature enough right now for a 100 GW(e) plan. There is no evidence to support such a claim. Most of the engineering issues appear manageable though; if not, perhaps ultracritical steam cycles have to be considered.
More importantly, the design proposed by Sorensen and others deviates on many fields from the initial 7.4 MW(th) experiment. Lots of nuclear engineering is unsolved and the LFTR still remains a paper design. Of course there will be technical issues with the nuclear part of the system. There always are with new designs.
This new information by Ugo is rather discomforting. On the other hand, the lack of data available means we can't jump to conclusions just yet. For one thing, the rapid advancement of absorbent technology over the last decade still holds promise, especially long-term.
You are right though, a breeder looks desirable. But may I suggest it be thermal (slow) breeders? If fast breeders, then please NOT sodium primary coolant systems. They are not the brightest idea. Something like the fluoride thorium or chloride uranium breeder is what's needed in a couple billion $ crash program. Private investment is absent, they don't want to invest in a promising but risky design which wouldn't generate any revenue before 2020 at least. If all goes well (exponential growth) your 100 GW(e) target might be met before 2030.
There are a lot of other technologies that can't get private/bank funding but are technically interesting. These could be included in a crash RD&D program as well.
Brayton cycle not ready?! Are you kidding? There's about 395 GW of gas-fired electric capacity in the USA, and probably 90% of that is Brayton-cycle or combined-cycle plants. Existing turbines run under far more stressful conditions (1100+°C turbine inlet temp, oxidizing conditions) than a plant running helium in a closed loop at 650°C hot side.
Even adding a breeding blanket would be a substantial deviation.
We've got chemists and laboratories and materials tested under years of neutron bombardment in other reactors. We certainly have enough experience to be able to design a prototype, build it and start working out the bugs. We should do that right away.
If you'd prefer something like the Shippingport reactor thorium test writ large, I'm game. But, being PWR technology, this has the same issues of availability of large forgings preventing rapid construction and relatively low thermal efficiency. We'd be much better off with liquid fluoride, because we could begin by reprocessing and burning all of our used PWR fuel as the starting charge for a thorium cycle.
That is 395 GW of combustion gas turbines. Non-combustion gas turbines are not proven. They're mostly in pilot/research stages. You say that the conditions in non-combustion lower temp operation are more reasonable than in higher temp combustion gas turbines, but the fact that they are not commercially competing with Rankine steam cycles, even in the higher temperature regimes, should caution us not to trivialize the engineering/commercial issues.
I agree with everything else you say.
You ignored the 600MW Russian reactor for the last 20 some years and did not watch the French and other country breeders that were operated for a many years then were stopped.
Watch what the Russians, Chinese, South Koreans and Japanese do with Breeder reactors.