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From: Gregory Greenman <greenman1@llnl.gov>
Newsgroups: sci.energy
Subject: Re: dispersed Plutonium
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 1997 09:42:50 -0800
Dennis Nelson wrote:
> This doesn't always work out as planned. Doppler broadening based on
> molecular motion of the fuel atoms does not work as well at fast neutron
> energies in breeder reactors.
Dennis,
Even fast reactors have a significant fraction of their neutron
spectrum in the resonance region. The peak of the neutron spectrum
of a fast reactor is a few hundred keV.
When I was at Argonne, we designed the IFR to be passively safe -
that is any excursion had to be terminated by the physics of the
core and not by engineered safeguards like control rods.
The dominant inherent shutdown mechanism for the IFR fast reactor
was Doppler broadening!
> It was thermal and radiation damage to the
> fuel elements of EBR-1 which caused their expansion and bowing, changing
> the reactivity, and causing a partial meltdown of core #2.
Quite correct; the EBR-1 fuel elements were restrained at both
top and bottom. When a power excursion occured and the core heated
up and the elements tried to expand longitudinally - the only way
they could do so was to bow inward, thus increasing reactivity.
EBR-II and IFR have elements that are restrained only at the bottom.
In a temperature excursion, the fuel elements are allowed to
"free-flower", i.e bow outward at the top to decrease reactivity.
One of my projects at Argonne was to write the computer code which
calculated the reactivity feedback due to bowing of fuel elements!
> And remember, in order to be economical the fuel must breed more fuel. This
> requires a fast reactor with a hard neutron spectrum. To achieve this you
> must run the reactor "dry," i.e. the water (moderator) to fuel (U) ratio
> must be low, and this doesn't give a lot of margin to play with. With
> little water to start with the voiding is not especially effective in
> reducing reactivity, especially if the internal components have already
> begun to rearrange themselves. Breeder reactors are inherently more
> dangerous and less controlable than thermal neutron reactors. The safest
> reactor designs are also the least efficient designs.
Fast reactors fueled by plutonium have a smaller effective delayed
neutron fraction, and hence have less of a margin between critical
and prompt critical. Also, fast reactors have a smaller effective
neutron lifetime, so they ramp up in power faster for a given amount
of excess reactivity.
Be that so, it doesn't mean that you can't design an inherently safe
fast reactor. IFR is such a design. In 1986, about 2 weeks before
Chernobyl, Argonne did a test with the IFR prototype. They locked out
the control rods, the emergency cooling system and other emergency
safeguards. They then cutoff the main coolant pumps!
The reactor behaved as calculated. Doppler broadening and other
inherent mechanisms worked to shutdown the reactor. Because of the
large thermal inertia (heat capacity) of IFR's pool-type design (the
reactor is immersed in a large pool of liquid sodium), the temperature
excursion terminated before there was any danger of melting or damaging
the fuel elements! The reactor was inherently safe. (Film footage of
this test is part of Bill Kurtis' "The New Explorers" episode on IFR
which aired on A&E).
> Sorry, I changed my position to placate the first criticism and
> now I've offended the other side. I just can't please everyone;
> in fact I'm not sure I can please anyone.
>
Don't worry about trying to please me or anyone else. Just be
honest and you'll be fine.
Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist
Newsgroups: sci.energy
From: orth@salt.ra.anl.gov (T Orth FP/207/ 8505)
Subject: Re: Integral Fast Reactor ???
Message-ID: <CBK560.Kxs@mcs.anl.gov>
Date: Tue, 10 Aug 1993 19:08:23 GMT
In article <1993Aug10.141439.20293@kth.se>, hemis@LINK.Physchem.KTH.SE writes:
|>
|> Would someone please be able to briefly explain the concept of the IFR
|> (Integral Fast Reactor) I keep hearing about whilst reading this newsgroup.
|>
|> Also, what makes this rector design inherently safe and how does it differ from
|> conventional fast breeder reactors ?
|>
|> Feel free to point me in the direction of an article if you like.
|>
|>
|> Kind Regards
|>
|>
|> James Crawford
The IFR reactor is first a pool type reactor which uses liquid sodium as
coolant. Within the pool is a primary to secondary heat exhanger which is
sodium to sodium. There are actually two on each side of the reactor and they
sit above the level of the core, which is a relatively small part of the
pool. From thise secondary loop, heated sodium is circulated through a
secondary (sodium to water) heat exchanger. The resulting steam is used in
a conventional steam cycle. The sodium is used due to its low neutron
moderation cross-section and extremely high thermal conductivity properties.
Fast reactor cores have a high power density, so efficient operation requires
the ability to carry heat away rapidly. Sodium fills these needs.
The safety advantages of sodium are 1) it can be maintained at atmoshpheric
pressure without boiling at operating temperature, thus eliminating the need
for a pressure vessel of the type in LWR's. 2) The pool type design means that
the primary coolant never leaves the pool, and therefore can't leak out of
a pipe or some other contrivance, and since the heat exchangers are above the
level of the core, it cannot become uncovered even if it did leave the core,
(which it cannot). 3) The sodium pool has so much thermal inertia that in the
event of an accident, the pool can handle all of the heat produced simply by
absorbing it and natural convection (high specific heat+high thermal
conductivity).
The fuel system is metal as opposed to oxide which is the conventional fuel.
There are some historic reasons why oxide was developed over metal originally
for the power industry, but I won't get into those here. Suffice it to say
that IFR fuel has been demonstrated to be meltdown proof in EBR-II, which is
the test reactor for IFR fuel, and similar to what an actual IFR would be like.
The mechanisms here are that metal fuel expands during over power transients
(accidents), + the whole core expands (geometrically larger with the same number
of fissile atoms) thus reducing reactivity. This effect is large enough in a
fast reactor (very sensitive to geometry) that the fission reaction shuts down
at these temperatures. This feature was demonstrated in 1986 in a series of
experiments. The two main ones were loss of heat sink and loss of primary
flow. In all cases, the reactor shut itself down by the afore mentioned
mechanisms, and the high thermal conductivity of metal (10 times greater than
oxide) combined with the thermal properties of sodium kept the reactor within
operating guidelines, and well below the boiling point of the sodium at
standard pressure.
This is what is meant by inherently safe. The reactor controls itself without
human intervention in accident situations. The idea is that, instead of
relying on sohpisticated backup machines and operator analyses/judgement and
then proper action, make the machine "inherently" safe so to speak.
The IFR is now in the stage of testing the fuel recycling phase, and
subsequently testing the recycled fuel in the reactor. Calculations have been
made to determine the effects of high levels of waste in the fuel on
neutronics etcetera, but we need to see some actual experiments. Also, we need
to try the proposed fuel cycle with "hot" fuel, to test the equipment and
procedures for handling it. Also, we are interested in recycling commercial
reactor waste, as well as weapons grade plutonium from the defense industry.
To answer your question about breeders. Fast reactors can usually be operated
in a breeding mode by surrounding the reactor with a U238 "blanket" that absorbs
the neutrons which leak out to produce Pu239. Actually, it first becomes
neptunium 239 and beta decays to Pu239 after a few days. Plutonium production
occurs in all reactors which have U238 in them, but fast reactors, due to
their neutronics, can actually breed more Pu239 than the U235/Pu239 that they
consume. The IFR is different from most breeders because of it's metal fuel
system explained earlier. The French are currently using an oxide system.
Japan is interested in the metal system as well, but is currently using an
oxide system as well. However it is jointly involved with the IFR program
testing mixed-oxide fuels in EBR-II in Idaho.
Tom Orth
Nuclear Engineer
Fuels and Engineering
Experimental Analyses Section
Argonne National Laboratory
Speaking for myself
orth@flicker.fp.anl.gov
Newsgroups: sci.energy
From: John De Armond
Subject: Re: Integral Fast Reactor ???
Message-ID: <!hkyjq#@dixie.com>
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 93 08:24:59 GMT
orth@salt.ra.anl.gov (T Orth FP/207/ 8505) writes:
>The fuel system is metal as opposed to oxide which is the conventional fuel.
>There are some historic reasons why oxide was developed over metal originally
>for the power industry, but I won't get into those here. Suffice it to say
>that IFR fuel has been demonstrated to be meltdown proof in EBR-II, which is
>the test reactor for IFR fuel, and similar to what an actual IFR would be like.
>The mechanisms here are that metal fuel expands during over power transients
>(accidents), +the whole core expands (geometrically larger with the same number
>of fissile atoms) thus reducing reactivity. This effect is large enough in a
>fast reactor (very sensitive to geometry) that the fission reaction shuts down
>at these temperatures. This feature was demonstrated in 1986 in a series of
>experiments. The two main ones were loss of heat sink and loss of primary
>flow. In all cases, the reactor shut itself down by the afore mentioned
>mechanisms, and the high thermal conductivity of metal (10 times greater than
>oxide) combined with the thermal properties of sodium kept the reactor within
>operating guidelines, and well below the boiling point of the sodium at
>standard pressure.
Tom, I have to take great exception to this kind of party line propaganda.
There are a number of us nukes who have been active in this group
for years who don't want to see our credibility destroyed by
propagandizing. Specifically,
* Neither oxide nor metal fuel is "meltdown-proof". "Meltdown" has
become a loaded term and must be used carefully. Either type
of fuel will melt from decay heat given loss of cooling for a
reasonable interval after shutdown.
* Negative temperature coefficient cores are certainly not unique to
metal fueled fast reactors. Thermal and void coefficients
in thermal reactors are at least as effective a self-regulation
mechanism.
* Fast reactors bring their own set of safety concerns that should
not be glossed over when trying to convince the skeptics.
* The IFR's intrinsically safe cooling system's properties are at
best only obliquely related to fuel type. Munging fuel and
coolant properties together as you did above does not serve
the purpose very well.
* Stating that a particular fuel or core is "meltdown-proof" is
false on its face to anyone with rudimentary knowledge of nuclear
reactors. Stating so destroys your credibility.
You need to think long and hard about your credibility in this forum.
You went off half-cocked on the Freon issue and you're propagandizing
on this topic. The IFR may be the best thing since sliced bread but
no one will believe you if you continue using hype and are fast and
loose with the facts.
John
Newsgroups: sci.energy
From: John De Armond
Subject: Re: Integral Fast Reactor ???
Message-ID: <whmyd#a@dixie.com>
Date: Fri, 13 Aug 93 08:56:05 GMT
orth@salt.ra.anl.gov (T Orth FP/207/ 8505) writes:
>|> Tom, I have to take great exception to this kind of party line propaganda.
>|> There are a number of us nukes who have been active in this group
>|> for years who don't want to see our credibility destroyed by
>|> propagandizing. Specifically,
>|>
>|> * Neither oxide nor metal fuel is "meltdown-proof". "Meltdown" has
>|> become a loaded term and must be used carefully. Either type
>|> of fuel will melt from decay heat given loss of cooling for a
>|> reasonable interval after shutdown.
>You're reading way too much into my statements. The fuel was demonstrated
>meltdown proof in the conditions in which I described. They were the loss of
>flow and loss of heat sink without scram tests. Certainly, without adequate
>decay heat removal the fuel will melt. The claim here is that there is adequate
>heat removal in these conditions.
>|>
>|> * Negative temperature coefficient cores are certainly not unique to
>|> metal fueled fast reactors. Thermal and void coefficients
>|> in thermal reactors are at least as effective a self-regulation
>|> mechanism.
>Of course negative temperature coefficient cores aren't unique to metal fueled
>fast reactors. I didn't say that did I? I simply described the dominant effect
>in overpower transients. The void coefficient requires sodium boiling or
>bubbling btw. This didn't occur in the over power tests, therefore the thermal
>expansion and doppler broadening were the dominant effects in those scenarios.
>Finally, the thermal expansion characteristics are part of the overall thermal
>coefficient. Thermal coeficients are the result of the interactions of coolant
>,moderatoer and fuel, not just coolant.
>|> * The IFR's intrinsically safe cooling system's properties are at
>|> best only obliquely related to fuel type. Munging fuel and
>|> coolant properties together as you did above does not serve
>|> the purpose very well.
>I didn't suggest that the cooling systems properties were related to fuel type.
>I discussed these as a separate issue. However, the peak temperature seen by
>the fuel is much lower than that for oxide fuel due to the thermal conductivity
>of the metal. Furthermore, after a certain degree of burnup, the fission
>gas bubbles interconnect in the fuel and release the gas to the plenum of the
>fuel pin. This interconnectivity allows the bond sodium to fill the voids, thus
>increasing the fuel thermal conductivity at that point. So, when the fuel is
>100% dense, it has high thermal conductivity which slowly decreases until
>interconnectivity of fission gas bubbles, at which time it deceases again to
>roughly the same value as it's as built value.
>|>
>|> * Stating that a particular fuel or core is "meltdown-proof" is
>|> false on its face to anyone with rudimentary knowledge of nuclear
>|> reactors. Stating so destroys your credibility.
>To say that it is "meltdown proof" period is false. But, that's not what I said.
>I said that in the experiments that were done, it was proven to be meltdown
>proof under those conditions. Once again, you have chosen to read into what
>I have said
>|>
>|> You need to think long and hard about your credibility in this forum.
>|> You went off half-cocked on the Freon issue and you're propagandizing
>|> on this topic. The IFR may be the best thing since sliced bread but
>|> no one will believe you if you continue using hype and are fast and
>|> loose with the facts.
>|>
>I never claimed to be an expert on Freon, and I still don't claim to be. I
>was reporting the results of an article that I had read about the law n 95 that
>would ban certain CFC's. This is an entirely different kind of topic..one
>related to laws and economics, not technical CFC issues or nuclear reactors.
>Furthermore, I haven't been fast and loose with the facts regarding the IFR,
>but you have chosen to ignore all of the parts of my article which dealt with
>the issues you have raised here. Further, suggesting that the void coeficient
>is more meaningful in the loss of flow and loss of heat sink scenarios tested
>in 86 shows your general lack of understanding of the experiments.
I'm not sure what meaningful means. With both types of cores, intrinsic
self-regulation is designed -in, both cores will shut themselves down
under LOCA conditions and both will melt from residual heat if cooling
remains absent.
>I don't know what your agenda is here. Especially regarding the freon issue.
>I don't see what that has to do with a technical issue like this one. But
>purposefully ignoring key phrases in my article and then claiming that I
>ignored it is close to maligning my character. I also object to your tone.
>Additionally, anyone who is willing to read the article carefully will see that
>I haven't ignored the things which you have claimed I have. Hopefully this
>response clears that up.
My "agenda" (as much as I might ever have one) is to not see you booger
up your credibility by using what amounts to press release language in
this forum. Remember we're on the same side. The Yackadamns (at least
those with some actual technical capabilities) will be far less
kind.
John
Newsgroups: sci.energy
From: John De Armond
Subject: Re: Integral Fast Reactor???
Message-ID: <rkpyq5l@dixie.com>
Date: Sun, 15 Aug 93 10:16:30 GMT
b41237@flash.ra.anl.gov writes:
>>Are you saying that there are no failure modes which would cause heat to be
>>withdrawn from the sodium? I realize this would be a very unlikely scenario,
>>but I would hope that if it *could* happen that it would be recoverable - hate
>>to lose a rather expensive reactor just because its pipes were frozen....
>I don't think any initiating event to my knowledge has been identified
>as significant. Having read the 2-volume PRA, I have to conclude that it
>is not credible.
Ya, and before 1979, who would have ever suspected a stuck PORV
coincident with loss of condenser vacuum, loss of condensate polishing,
a stuck pressurizer level indicator, an ancient plant computer and
improperly trained operators would result in a destroyed core at TMI?
I suggest that if you want your opinions to be credible, you'd better
tell us WHY something that, to a layman is not only possible but reasonable
(the cooling of the Na pit), can't happen.
>The IHX is connected by a Z-pipe which is also in the pool. The shell side
>of the IHX goes to another HX connected to the plant secondary system.
>I really cant get into the specifics of the plant design, for obvious reasons,
>however I will state that this reactor is 30 years old. I also bellieve I
>had a typo, its 750 deg F.
Why the hell not? Are you claiming there is some great veil of secrecy
on the details of the IFR design or is some more of that "trust us, we're
the experts"? I've just about had enough of this type BS from you two.
I watched the same tactics, employed then because of rank inocence,
destroy the LWR industry. This round I suspect your motives are less
innocent and more involved with groveling for funding.
You'd better get ready to answer the hard questions with specific data
to support your opinions. Trotting your "Dr's" out doesn't cut it -
indeed, it probably reduces your credibility. You'd better be able to
tell people, many of whom have seen explosive sodium/water reactions in
chemistry class, why a sodium-water mix through a HX leak won't result
in an explosion. And you'd better be able to explain how a massive
Na/H2O reaction won't overwhelm the inerting blanket with hydrogen. And
how the coolant will stay non-radioactive as you claim in the face of
inevitable failed fuel. And what the consequences of a Na/H2O explosion
involving Na laden with fission products will be. You'd better be able
to discuss the effects of a simultaneous design-basis earthquake and
flood on the Na pool. Or the effects of having to let the Na pool
solidify for some reason or the other. And when you're ready to explain
these things and answer questions from skeptical but not-yet-anti-nuke
people, you'd better know how to do it without trotting out your
titles and without minimal use of jargon. >I< know what
doppler shift is but to most people not educated in the field it
is bullshit accompanied by arm-waving. If you can't deal with
these questions from the pro- or neutral camps, you don't have a
chance with the anti-nukes, some of whom are as evily motivated
as Yackadamn but with the technical background to make things difficult.
If you continue as you're going right now, and with all due regard to
Mike's request, I'm going to take the time to come up to speed on the details
of IFR and you won't like my questions at all. I'd damn sure rather the
criticism come from our side than to have Dan Rather do a somber lead-in
to video showing Clamshell Alliance members dropping an ingot of sodium
into a little model of TMI containing some water. The fireball will
live forever in the memories of the American public and IFR will be
dead on the blocks.
>In so far as lead as a coolant, this was a paper study. I don't believe any
>reactors that I know of employs this method. Remember, Pb is much dense than
>Na. Also, the Na drives an EM pump. I am not certain how Pb could be pumped.
There have been no other test reactors because of DOE's 20 year infactuation
with Sodium. Lead brings a bunch of good properties to the table including
low vapor pressure, high density which absorbs gammas and converts
them to heat and shields the structures from same, good neutronics,
reasonable melting point, high boiling point and very low chemical
reactivity. I think it deserves more than just a paper study before
summary dismissal.
I see the results of Rickhover cramming LWRs down our throats; I'm not
going to stand bye and do nothing to prevent it from happening again.
IFR may be the the best thing since sliced bread but this time you're
going to have to prove it.
John
Newsgroups: sci.energy
From: ems@michael.apple.com (E. Michael Smith)
Subject: Re: Integral Fast Reactor???
Message-ID: <1993Aug16.185938.3541@michael.apple.com>
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 1993 18:59:38 GMT
In article <7455134991326@flash.ra.anl.gov> b41237@flash.ra.anl.gov writes:
>In article <rkpyq5l@dixie.com> jgd@dixie.com (John De Armond) writes:
>>b41237@flash.ra.anl.gov writes:
>>>>Are you saying that there are no failure modes which would cause heat to be
>>>>withdrawn from the sodium?
>>>I don't think any initiating event to my knowledge has been identified
>>>as significant. Having read the 2-volume PRA, I have to conclude that it
>>>is not credible.
Um, what is to prevent an administrative whacko from simply issuing
an executive order stating 'SHUT IT DOWN FOR TWO YEARS WHILE WE STUDY IT.'
and, by the time you get it through their head that this is 'Not A
Good Thing', it is two years later and you have a solid chunk of Na...
>>Ya, and before 1979, who would have ever suspected a stuck PORV
>>coincident with loss of condenser vacuum, loss of condensate polishing,
>>a stuck pressurizer level indicator, an ancient plant computer and
>>improperly trained operators would result in a destroyed core at TMI?
>>
>This is a reach John. Both you and I know the sequence of events at TMI, but
>you forgot one critical point: THe operators TURNED OFF safety injection when
>faulty pressurizer level indication told them the core was covered.
So? The fact is that something un-anticipated happened and caused a mess.
The essence of what you've said is 'The Na can't solidify because we
thought of everything.' John has said "That's what the other guy
thought too." You have said, but what went wrong involved operator
screwups too. I say, So What! The essence remains. What happens if
the UNLIKELY does happen, and the Na solidifies? You have NOT thought
of everything and something really odd happens, like that executive
order or an operator who panics in an earthquake and turns off the heat
or ... What then?
>BTW, 2/3
>pzr logic was OR and post-TMI backfit of similar plants (B&W)
>corrected it to AND. Note: recall the Davis-Besse incident, then get back
>to me.
So they fixed the others after the screw-up. Again, so what? We are
talking about a problem that DID happen, not what was done after that
to fix the others of like kind. The screw-up, FROM UNANTICIPATED CAUSES,
still happened.
>>I suggest that if you want your opinions to be credible, you'd better
>>tell us WHY something that, to a layman is not only possible but reasonable
>>(the cooling of the Na pit), can't happen.
>>
>For the mere fact that the volume of Na is large enough that the energy can't
>be lost fast enough. Basic heat transfer and thermodynamics. I think with
Ok, how long does it take to cool? One year? 2? I can easily envision
something nasty happening that causes the plant to be shut down for a
couple of years. Say a terrorist drives a truck load of Pu oxide
in and sets off a few pounds of TNT in the middle... Heck, doesn't
even have to get to the 'guts' to make the site dirty enough that
the EPA et. al. would have the plant shut down for a few years of clean-up...
What is your 'fast enough'? Numbers, please.
>30 years operating experience, EBR-II (not IFR BTW) has demonstrated from
>fuel cycle to fuel cycle (I think the number of startups and extended
>shutdowns range in the hundreds) that sufficient safeguards exist to keep
>such a fantastical scenario from happening.
Um, pardon me, but a few fuel cycles of an R&D plant don't mean squat
in the Real World of production... Yeah, you can keep the pot warm
in a nice R&D site without {terrorists, bad operators, earthquakes,...}.
Again, so what? What do you do when the unthinkable DOES happen and
the Na is hard as a brick?
>Be advised, I don't want to tread on my employer wrt
>to information NOT in the public domain. Somethings are better left
>proprietary for obvious reasons (national security).
Excuse me, but 'proprietary' and 'national security' are orthogonal reasons.
If it is an 'national security' issue, then the Gov't owns it and you do
not have any remaining proprietary claims. I smell a dodge...
What is so hard about saying (picking imaginaary examples...) any of:
1) It takes 10 years to cool, which is not a credible event.
2) There are natural gas heaters installed that work post quake.
3) You just bring the core up to critical Real Slow, and the heat
conduction of solid metalic Na is so good that it doesn't matter if
the pipes are 'frozen', the heat still diffuses out to the end of
the lines and melts the Na.
I can't think of a single rational 'proprietary' or 'national security'
issue that would prevent a circumspect statement of how a solid Na
cooling system would be handled. Read 'The Curve of Binding Energy'
for an example. Where Taylor is talking about how to build an H bomb,
and gives broad hints that don't violate national security, but do
give you an idea that he clearly knows his stuff.
>>>The IHX is connected by a Z-pipe which is also in the pool. The shell side
>>>of the IHX goes to another HX connected to the plant secondary system.
>>>I really cant get into the specifics of the plant design, for obvious reasons
>>
>>Why the hell not? Are you claiming there is some great veil of secrecy
>>on the details of the IFR design or is some more of that "trust us, we're
>>the experts"? I've just about had enough of this type BS from you two.
That's what it looks like to me, too.
>>I watched the same tactics, employed then because of rank inocence,
>>destroy the LWR industry. This round I suspect your motives are less
>>innocent and more involved with groveling for funding.
Well, I'm more a believer in 'Never attribute to malice that which is
adequately explained by stupidity.' than John is. My guess is that the
poster is just a worry wart and looking for an easy dodge of some
difficult to phrase posting work.
>NO!!! This is what I mean. You obviously do not appreciate the position as
>a netter you place me in. I don't have the right to compromise security and
>inform you of anything not in the public domain.
Oh really? Gee, and I thought John had to live under those exact
same constraints with respect to HIS past employment... Just as I have
to do the same with MY employer. You are not unique, and we fully
understand the situation. That does NOT get you off the hook, though.
'Its all a Great Big Important Secret!' is a sure fire one way ticket
to the scrap heap of history for any technolgy that is touted as being
for the public good in public power production. If you can't tell me
HOW IT IS MADE SAFE, I can't let you build it. I'm a voter. A rather
ordinary typical voter. With friends. Friends of the Earth...
>You see, you are grossly
>defensive for all the wrong reasons, and I feel I have been more than
>accomidating.
Yeah, John is defensive for the wrong reasons, he needs to get the
right one ;-) But the 'defensiveness' is still well placed, IMHO.
>If you can't handle it, then its a wonder you left the industry
>disgruntled and frustrated. You see, I don't care if you believe the
>letter of the law, but this is an OPEN forum, but its a fact of life that
>somethings are not meant for public disclosure by someone not acting in an
>official capacity. You should know better than to interpret any otherway!
Golly Gee, a 30 year old technology that is still so secret that he
can't tell us mere citizens what he would do, THEORETICALLY, if the
damn thing froze solid. Guess I'll add LM reactors to my list of
Highly Suspect Technologies...
>>You'd better get ready to answer the hard questions with specific data
>>to support your opinions. Trotting your "Dr's" out doesn't cut it -
>>indeed, it probably reduces your credibility. You'd better be able to
>
>Sounds like you have a disgruntled axe to grind.
Nope, he is just telling it like it is. Most of the "Dr's" of physics
I've known were really out of touch with reality and had trouble with
things like, oh, 'common sense'. You know the kind, can do partial
integrals on heat transfere in his head, but forgets that freshly made
coffee burns his mouth, frequently. The title is nothing, the facts
are everything.
>Maybe you can side with
>Mr. Yodiaken and get recruited by the UCS. Its about as much as you can
>muster.
OH MY, a PERSONAL attack! Bet John is quivering in his boots now!!
Look, if you can't stand the truth, at least don't slander other folks
for saying it. The fact is, John is right.
The question stands: What do you do if the Na freezes?
All your side has said is: 1) Trust me, it can't happen. 2) We don't
have to worry about it because the plant won't do it. 3) I can't tell
you why because, um, it's a secret.
Bull pucky. Near as I can tell, from what you've said so far, no one
has considered the issue of what to do if the thing freezes or how
to prevent it (other than keeping it running in a normal mode.).
Time to 'put up or shut up'. WHY, specifically, is it IMPOSSIBLE for
the plant to have the Na freeze? Include magnitudes, even if only
order of magnitude magnitudes ;-) such as 'takes decades for decay
heat to leak out'. If somehow it DID freeze up, what would be done?
Mothball it? External reheat? Core heat? Add water and stir ;-)
>>tell people, many of whom have seen explosive sodium/water reactions in
>>chemistry class, why a sodium-water mix through a HX leak won't result
>>in an explosion. And you'd better be able to explain how a massive
>>Na/H2O reaction won't overwhelm the inerting blanket with hydrogen.
I don't think he can. I'd guess that the H2 is safe due to a lack of
oxygen, but the question about the inerting blanket is an interesting
one...
>>And how the coolant will stay non-radioactive as you claim in the face of
>>inevitable failed fuel.
Oh, but John, this is only THEORETICAL fuel, it Never fails in
an unexpected way after slightly out of spec fabrication... or
unanticipated behaviours in changed scale or changed technology
commercialized plant...
>>And what the consequences of a Na/H2O explosion
>>involving Na laden with fission products will be.
Hmmm... Wonder what it would take for a determined squad of terrorists
with, say, Stingers from Afganistan and HK-47s from the middle east,
and a cement truck full of urea-nitrate to get to the HX ... Nah,
not a credible scenario. Terrorists would NEVER attack a major
facility in the US with a stupid truck bomb... not even one with
a 'mud pump' and a long pipe...
>>You'd better be able
>>to discuss the effects of a simultaneous design-basis earthquake and
>>flood on the Na pool.
Gee, like maybe if the New Madrid had let loose during the flood
we just had on the Ol' Miss'? That should only happen once every
few thousand years ... or is it few hundred given all faults and
all flood zones...
>>Or the effects of having to let the Na pool
>>solidify for some reason or the other.
From what I've seen so far, the plan is to hope it doesn't and, if it
does, admire the new public art work/sculpture. Great plan...
>If you spent 1 month working here, you would realize what crap you just
>posted. Why do you constantly stipulate your rendition of the EBR-II plant
>design.
It isn't his 'rendition'of the plant, John is giving you a reasonable
rendition of the quesitons the nutral to anti-nukes are going to ask.
Like he said, if you can't answer them when they are 'friendly fire',
you don't stand a chance of convincing the anti's.
>There will never be a Na-H20 reaction WITHIN the core. THis is a
>complete sodium system save the turbine side!
So? Say the fuel bundles are damaged (poor fabrication? botched
fuel loading? whatever) and the pool is contaminated. Just then
a major quake happens (like, oh, a 9) and it is found that the
pipes from the pool to the HX aren't as strong as thought, and the
H2 explosion from the Na/steam reaction manages to put a tinsy little
leak into the pool... What then? Not credible? WHY not?
>Also, there is no consequence of a Na leak causing explosions in the pool!
>Probably for the simple reason there is an argon cover gas in the pool and
>there is no, I repeat NO oxygen.
And can there NEVER be? No level of flooding can put water (with
oxygen in it) over the core? No Na/steam explosion can possibly
put steam on the core? No terrorist threat can ever put enough
high explosives in the place to break it?
>>If you continue as you're going right now, and with all due regard to
>>Mike's request, I'm going to take the time to come up to speed on the details
>>of IFR and you won't like my questions at all.
Hold off, let us amatures have a crack at it first. Don't take all
our fun away!!
>>I'd damn sure rather the
>>criticism come from our side than to have Dan Rather do a somber lead-in
>>to video showing Clamshell Alliance members dropping an ingot of sodium
>>into a little model of TMI containing some water. The fireball will
>>live forever in the memories of the American public and IFR will be
>>dead on the blocks.
What a neat idea for a demo! You could have the fire and smoke
blasting out a vent hole in the top of the containment dome and
add some materials so that the 'deposits' were permanent stains
and make the smoke red or orange and talk about 25,000 years of
contamination downwind (a nice desk fan would assure rapid
'contamination' of everyone at the demo!). I like it!
>With that bit of crap you just posted, its a wonder your an industry
>throw-away. Hey, you have about as much crediblity on IFR as a dung beetle.
Golly, more personal attacks. Must have hit close to home, John.
If he is resorting to personal attack, then he doesn't have a technical
leg to stand on and you've nailed his butt to the wall. IMHO, of course.
>Your attacks are not credible because
>you simply are not informed. There are other avenues for you to obtain info.
>I have better things to do, especially MY JOB, than to babysit your paranoia.
"I'm smarter than you are and I know better." "Stop wasting my valuable
time." Golly, what great evidence you offer to support your views...
If you can't prove your points, then shut up and sit down. If you
are going to post that something is Truth, be prepared to defend it.
Heck, I've spent 10 to 20 hours at times researching something I KNEW
was true, so that I could prove it. If you can't stand the heat...
>I guarentee that if you are pro-nuclear, you will be posting a million apoligies
>for the simplistic argument you just posted, ONCE you become informed!!
John is about as pro-nuclear as you can get. Hell, he even convinced
me to stop being an 'anti' and move to being a 'neutral or slightly pro'.
I have dropped my Friends of the Earth membership, and stopped donating
to Greenpeace, in part due to his efforts. 'If you are pro'? My god
man, is the Pope Catholic?
John was posting 'simplistic arguements' so they would be easy for you
to refute. You botched it. When the coach lobs an easy ball to you
and you muff it, time to hang up the racket...
>>IFR may be the the best thing since sliced bread but this time you're
>>going to have to prove it.
>
>I think the technology will prove itself. With or without me.
>I think you misunderstand this "Field of Dreams" mentality of "If we build
>it they will come". There are no guarentees espoused. Yes I am a proponent
>of the technology, for obvious reasons. Like I said before, the IFR will
>have to take up the cross of public acceptance, it doesn't have to be nailed
>to it though.
Duck dodge weave. With advocacy like this, LM and IFR are doomed...
and I can kiss the methanol from nuclear process heat idea goodby
as well...
>BTW, if you want to advertise your product on the net, better be prepared
>to pay for the promotion. One of the tenets of this forum is not for
>personal profit!!!
OTOH, it is common practice for public access unix sites to state
that they are so (everyone benefits, especially when someone gets
laid off somewhere and needs net access in a hurry...) and it is
also common for an employers name to be in the signature...
--
E. Michael Smith ems@apple.COM
'Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has
genius, power and magic in it.' - Goethe
I am not responsible nor is anyone else. Everything is disclaimed.
Newsgroups: sci.energy
From: orth@salt.ra.anl.gov (T Orth FP/207/ 8505)
Subject: Re: Integral Fast Reactor???
Message-ID: <CBvI09.7LM@mcs.anl.gov>
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 1993 22:19:19 GMT
|> OK, so you are saying that IFR is just a brand new concept that
|> is starting the testing phase. I can accept that. Give it about 30
|> more years of development, then about 20 in demonstation and prototype
|> plants and we can start worring about commercialization...
Well, not brand new..but EBR-II is not a prototype for an IFR reactor.
|>
|> In that case, I withdraw my complaint about showing why the Na
|> won't ever be frozen, since it is obviouse from your statements
|> that the EBR-II design is not pertinent and any future design of
|> an IFR will be Brand New and need complete scrutiny then.
Many of its aspects are pertinant, but you're right, the over all IFR design
would be totally new.
|>
|> >|> inevitable failed fuel. And what the consequences of a Na/H2O explosion
|> >|> involving Na laden with fission products will be. You'd better be able
|> >
|> >It is important to point out here that the use of an intermediate,
|> >sodium to sodium heat exchanger is for the purpose of keeping the reactor
|> >loop separate from the secondary loop which is used in the sodium to water
|> >HX. These statements are therefore misleading..and again, I don't know why
|> >you would do this.
|>
|> I think that John is positing a contaminated pool AND a breach of
|> the secondary sodium loop into that pool as part of the Na/water
Again, contaminated with what? Fuel failures are done on purpose to study the
fuel/sodium reaction product, and the delayed neutron/fission gas signal
resulting. Fuel it turns out is not soluble in sodium.
|> reaction/explosion. I.e. the secondary loop gets contaminated by
|> the primary due to some unforseen event, like an explosion. This
OK, primary and secondary can mean different things in EBR-II do to the
extra loop. Since fuel is not soluble in sodium, so contamination of the
secondary loop would be a trick.
|> one should be a 'soft ball' for you to field. Show the likely
|> distances between loops and approximate magnitude of explosion
|> required to breach primary and secondary loops and that that
|> magnitude of explosion cannot be attained with a Na/water mix of
There is a paper in the 1990 Fast Reactor Safety meeting, actually several,
dealing with this issue. Some were French, Some Japanese, and others were
from INEL. If I have time, I will look up the details. Most that I have
read dealt with codes for simulating it, and some done with pressure plates.
|>
|> I don't think John was talking about a loss of cooling, rather a
|> breakage of pipes and fuel bundles due to explosive intrusion of
|> steam/H2 due to steam/Na mixing...
With that interface in another building, I don't see how steam could enter
the pool. In the event of a explosion of the type you are describing, the
HX would be blown apart, thus destroying the pathway for water to enter the
secondary loop. The worst case would then be total loss of sodium in the
secondary loop, and hence external heat removal from the pool. This is the
experiment simulated.
Tom Orth
Nuclear Engineer
Argonn National Laboratory
Speaking for myself
orth@flicker.fp.anl.gov
Newsgroups: sci.energy
From: John De Armond
Subject: Re: Integral Fast Reactor???
Message-ID: <yaryd9p@dixie.com>
Date: Tue, 17 Aug 93 05:26:14 GMT
b41237@flash.ra.anl.gov writes:
[me]
>>Ya, and before 1979, who would have ever suspected a stuck PORV
>>coincident with loss of condenser vacuum, loss of condensate polishing,
>>a stuck pressurizer level indicator, an ancient plant computer and
>>improperly trained operators would result in a destroyed core at TMI?
>>
>This is a reach John. Both you and I know the sequence of events at TMI, but
>you forgot one critical point: THe operators TURNED OFF safety injection when
>faulty pressurizer level indication told them the core was covered. BTW, 2/3
>pzr logic was OR and post-TMI backfit of similar plants (B&W)
>corrected it to AND. Note: recall the Davis-Besse incident,
>then get back to me.
You missed my point entirely. Prior to TMI, small break LOCAs were
thought to be of no consequence by most nukes (I'm proud to have been one of
the nay-sayer. :-) TMI demonstrated that a whole series
of rather innocuous events when taken individually, collectively
can result in broken equipment. In other words, it taught us that
things considered highly unlikely but still physically possible must not be
dismissed out of hand. IFF such physically possible events have been
analyzed and shown to be vanishingly probable, then say so. Don't just
flippantly say "I've analyzed the data and XXX is impossible."
That's the guaranteed way of getting to watch your credibility dissipation
factor go to infinity.
>>I suggest that if you want your opinions to be credible, you'd better
>>tell us WHY something that, to a layman is not only possible but reasonable
>>(the cooling of the Na pit), can't happen.
>>
>For the mere fact that the volume of Na is large enough that the energy
>can't
>be lost fast enough. Basic heat transfer and thermodynamics. I think with
>30 years operating experience, EBR-II (not IFR BTW) has demonstrated from
>fuel cycle to fuel cycle (I think the number of startups and extended shutdowns
>range in the hundreds) that sufficient safeguards exist to keep such a
>fantastical scenario from happening. I can understand your lack of information
>on plant design, just as I cant comment on how you run your magazine on
>a day-to-day basis. Be advised, I don't want to tread on my employer wrt
>to information NOT in the public domain. Somethings are better left proprietary
>for obvious reasons (national security).
You again are missing my point. >I< maybe can be convinced with
little argument that the cooling pool turning into a great big Na icicle
is very, extremely unlikely but I'm not the one you have to convince.
(I'll be fighting further funding on strictly economic grounds :-)
You have to convince the people who are moderately well educated but
are not nuclear engineers who have watched the government in action
over the past few years and who frankly consider anything that
comes from the government to be a lie unless proven otherwise.
I've been through this crap before. I've made presentations before the
NRC, I've been on panels and I've debated nuclear power in public forums.
There is nothing in this world that will kill your side quicker than
to put on that "trust us, we're the experts" air and flippantly
deflect irritating questions. Oh, one thing even quicker. Saying
"That's classified" in response to questions of details.
>>>The IHX is connected by a Z-pipe which is also in the pool. The shell
>>>side of the IHX goes to another HX connected to the plant secondary
>>>system. I really cant get into the specifics of the plant design, for
>>>obvious reasons, however I will state that this reactor is 30 years
>>>old. I also bellieve I had a typo, its 750 deg F.
>>
>>Why the hell not? Are you claiming there is some great veil of secrecy
>>on the details of the IFR design or is some more of that "trust us, we're
>>the experts"? I've just about had enough of this type BS from you two.
>>I watched the same tactics, employed then because of rank inocence,
>>destroy the LWR industry. This round I suspect your motives are less
>>innocent and more involved with groveling for funding.
>
>NO!!! This is what I mean. You obviously do not appreciate the position as
>a netter you place me in. I don't have the right to compromise security and
>inform you of anything not in the public domain. You see, you are grossly
>defensive for all the wrong reasons, and I feel I have been more than
>accomidating. If you can't handle it, then its a wonder you left the industry
>disgruntled and frustrated. You see, I don't care if you believe the
>letter of the law, but this is an OPEN forum, but its a fact of life that
>somethings are not meant for public disclosure by someone not acting in an
>official capacity. You should know better than to interpret any otherway!
I know exactly the position you're in. I've held a Q clearance for
weapons-related work and the result is I don't talk at all about the things
I worked on, something that annoys me greatly when I read utter BS
regarding The Bomb. I also know what kind of utter bullshit got
classified labels slapped on ONLY for political reasons in order
to keep the public from finding out how their tax money is being
boondogled away.
This is different. You've already stated that a whole litany of
foreign governments are involved with or interested in the IFR. Since
there is no longer the Red Army to hide behind, there can be no
rational reason to classify details of this reactor other than to
keep John Q. Citizen from seeing how his taxes are being spent.
No, I'm not advocating you violate security protocol. What I AM suggesting
is if you want any public support at all for this thing, you (speaking
collectively now) had better realize that slapping the classified
label on things is exactly the wrong thing to do. It's my damn tax
money that is paying for this stuff and since it doesn't involve anything
that kills people or breaks things, I will NOT accept National Security
as an excuse for hiding the details.
>BTW, there is no self-promotion/funding jockeying going on, I just like
>to get facts straight. One of the downfalls of this forum is that people
>assume anything they want even if it is not ground in reality. Its as
>simple as you cant tell me the weather outside my door this instant (its
>raining). You cant comment on things you have absolutely no clue on. You
>may have DOE/LWR experience, but not currently. You cant even tell me the state
>of current affairs, or detailed ops, not even at the places you have
>worked (Vogle?), because I'm sure they have changed since you last was there.
Couple of points. a) I can be up to speed on this stuff enough to be
your worst nightmare faster than a heartbeat if the need arises, and b) it
is not me you have to convince. *I* think the sodium cooled concept is
insane as a concept plus I oppose ANY government funding of scientific
research (Pesky Federalist/libertarian that I am.) And I think the
last thing this country needs is to have Big Science bequeath another
Last Great Solution on us as Rickhover & company did LWRs. But I'm only
one person, allbeit a noisy one.
>If you spent 1 month working here, you would realize what crap you just
>posted. Why do you constantly stipulate your rendition of the EBR-II plant
>design. There will never be a Na-H20 reaction WITHIN the core. THis is a
>complete sodium system save the turbine side!
You still don't get it, do you?
>Also, there is no consequence of a Na leak causing explosions in the pool!
>Probably for the simple reason there is an argon cover gas in the pool and
>there is no, I repeat NO oxygen. Sounds like basic chemistry. There is not
>H20 within the boundaries of containment. The IHX has sodium on BOTH
>sides. But then you would know this if you had detailed knoledge of the
>plant. So before you spout off like an ignoramus, you better know what you
>are talking about.
You ever actually seen a large scale sodium water reaction? Or even
a medium-sized one? Stop by my office sometime and I'll tie a brick
around a 500 gram ingot of sodium and toss it in my pond. You might
be impressed by what happens BEFORE the sodium contacts air.
>With that bit of crap you just posted, its a wonder your an industry
>throw-away. Hey, you have about as much crediblity on IFR as a dung beetle.
>Please take the time to educate yourself. Read the literature. Study the
>technical details as presented in the ANS Transactions/Fistedis book. Look
>at the public documents. Read the popular literature. OMNI magazine did
>a nice piece on IFR in the late 80's. Your attacks are not credible because
>you simply are not informed. There are other avenues for you to obtain info.
>I have better things to do, especially MY JOB, than to babysit your paranoia.
>I guarentee that if you are pro-nuclear, you will be posting a million apoligies
>for the simplistic argument you just posted, ONCE you become informed!!
You STILL don't get it. I am very much aware of the general details of
the design (at least those not classified) such as the dual loop cooling
system. I also know that some of the questions I posed are premised on
false assumptions. I did it to make a point. I very accurately predicted
how to make an example of you. I merely touched your hot-button and
you obligingly went off on a flaming, name calling tangent. How to
win friends and influence funding. Those questions are typical of
what you should expect to hear and be prepared to answer. I suggest
you learn a few basics if you expect to be taken seriously:
* Just because someone challenges you does not make them anti-nuclear.
* Just because someone challenges you does not make them ignorant.
* That someone thinks government funding for your project is
wrong does not make them anti-nuclear.
* All anti-nukes aren't as ignorant as yackadamn; some know as much as
you do and will eat your cake.
>>I see the results of Rickhover cramming LWRs down our throats; I'm not
>>going to stand bye and do nothing to prevent it from happening again.
>Are you going to single handedly stop Westighouse's AP600, GE's ABWR,
>CE's advanced LWR? I think LWR is here to stay, irreguardless of ALMR.
>There's way too much ifrastructure to think otherwise.
Of course it is here now and it works. Indeed I would much rather see
many more LWRs built with the money being thrown down the alkali metal
breeder black hole. Other things will probably work better. I'm a fan
of gas-cooled technology but because few Great Engineering Problems
Addressable Only By Big Science remain, it gets little attention.
Government distortions of the market work that way.
>BTW, if you want to advertise your product on the net, better be prepared
>to pay for the promotion. One of the tenets of this forum is not for
>personal profit!!!
Wrong. *Sigh* New to the net too, I see.
John
Newsgroups: sci.energy
From: John De Armond
Subject: Re: Integral Fast Reactor???
Message-ID: <-cryzyr@dixie.com>
Date: Tue, 17 Aug 93 06:20:55 GMT
ems@michael.apple.com (E. Michael Smith) writes:
>The essence of what you've said is 'The Na can't solidify because we
>thought of everything.' John has said "That's what the other guy
>thought too." You have said, but what went wrong involved operator
>screwups too. I say, So What! The essence remains. What happens if
>the UNLIKELY does happen, and the Na solidifies? You have NOT thought
>of everything and something really odd happens, like that executive
>order or an operator who panics in an earthquake and turns off the heat
>or ... What then?
(He kicks back in his chair, rubs his old gray beard [woops, shaved it off]
goes into story-telling mode.)
Maybe I'm just a crusty old fart but I've seen this old "we've thought
of everything" once too many times not to side with you, Mike. For
example, the Great IceCapades at Sequoyah.
Waaaaay back, just after Edison invented the lightbulb, we were starting
up Sequoyah in Chattanooga and I found myself with the assignment of
starting up the Ice Condenser. This thing was a great annular cavity inside
the containment filled with boron-loaded ice (5 million pounds' worth,
give or take a gram) that was designed to melt and condense all the steam
from a LOCA. Let 'em build a low pressure containment. The ice is
in flake form contained in perforated metal tubes about 8" in diameter
and about a hundred feet long. Above this huge snowcone are banks of
air handlers that use chilled glycol to keep the air in the compartments
at a balmy 12 degrees or thereabouts. My job was to oversee the
initial filling of the baskets and the startup of the air handlers and
supporting equipment (chillers, etc).
In reviewing the system design, I noted that there was no provision
for on-site ice making. Indeed, the initial ice was made in a huge
ice plant mounted on a tractor-trailer. The FSAR (Final Safety
Analysis Report) and the preliminary Tech Specs confidently parroted
Westinghouse's words in proclaiming the ice charge would last the life
of the plant. "But but but but" I said, "Ice in air at 12 degrees
and 50% RH sublimes at (matchbook scratchings) XXX rate which means it
couldn't possibly last the life of the plant." "We're the experts,
We know the answeres" came the reply from On High, Headquarters Design in
Knoxville. (on the right hand of God, of course.)
Soooo.. I started the system up without an ice maker. Come first outage,
one of the jobs was to weigh the ice baskets and measure the loss.
Guess what? I wasn't far off. Guess what? Next outage an ice plant
was backfitted. Moral: The experts don't always have the answers.
Next time: The story of the backward reactor building.
BTW, this was NOT a safety issue, as the ice remaining was well within
the tech specs. Just an expensive little FUP.
John
Newsgroups: sci.energy
From: John De Armond
Subject: Re: Integral Fast Reactor???
Message-ID: <qcry!n@dixie.com>
Date: Tue, 17 Aug 93 06:35:28 GMT
ems@michael.apple.com (E. Michael Smith) writes:
>Hmmm... maybe a Lead/Na Hx ... but you would have to choose the
>reduced reactivity with water OR the advantages in the core...
>What about a lead pool, Na primary loop (where most of the pumping
>is going on, and then a short lead secondary loop?
>It would have great PR value... "The reactor is completely blanketed
>with XXXX Tons of Lead at all times"...
Actually having lead in the core is a benefit because it greatly restricts
the range of gamma radiation. Gamma heating of core internals is a
significant concern plus gammas that escape the coolant represent wasted
heat. Lead's high density also means the inevitable fission product
contamination presents much less of a radiation hazard to workers
than the same contamination in sodium. Lead should pump reasonably
well, particularly after as much money has been spent on it as sodium.
BTW, I got some Email after the previous round pointing out that
whichever one of these national lab fellows that said lead had been
paper-studied was wrong. Seems the Russians have done a lot of work
with lead coolant. One paper this message mentioned is:
Comparative Neutronic Analysis of Pb- versus Na-cooled LMR Cores,
J. R. Liaw, E. K. Fujita, and D. C. Wade, 1992 Topical Meeting on
Advances in Reactor Physics, Charleston, S.C. (1992).
On my next trip to Ga Tech, I'll see if I can dig it up. Sounds
interesting.
John
Newsgroups: sci.energy
From: ems@michael.apple.com (E. Michael Smith)
Subject: Re: Integral Fast Reactor???
Message-ID: <1993Aug18.065904.13390@michael.apple.com>
Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1993 06:59:04 GMT
In article <CBx95F.IMB@mcs.anl.gov> orth@salt.ra.anl.gov (T Orth FP/207/ 8505) writes:
>|> >|> for an example. Where Taylor is talking about how to build an H bomb,
>|> >|> and gives broad hints that don't violate national security, but do
>|> >|> give you an idea that he clearly knows his stuff.
>
>If this guy seriously thinks that you can make an Hbomb from Talor's book,
No, this guy does not. The example does not illustrate how to make
a bomb, it illustrates how to show that someone (Taylor) DOES know
how to make such a bomb WITHOUT actually showing how to do it or
violating any laws. If one could make a bomb from what Taylor was
quoted as saying, then it would have violated the law, and been
useless to me as an example of effective circumspect speach. BTW,
the book was about Taylor, and written by another chap. MacPhee?
>he is truly deluded. Sure, you can get a qualitative understanding of how
>they work...
That is exactly what I asserted it showed.
>but to go into how to REALLY make one, even if you have all
>the right materials, would take volumes.
Yup. Unless one is as gifted as Taylor was at bomb design by
the seat of the pants. But then again, he was truely gifted...
>|> This makes sense. The secondary sodium loop probably emerges through a
>|> rather thick wall, too, I would imagine...
>
>yeah, it's the containment. Ok, the SG has rupture disks that are designed to
>rupture if a steam explosion occurs. It's like engine block plugs that are
>designed to blow out if your engine overheats, rather than cracking the block.
>This directs the force away from the intermediate Na loop, thus, there is
>a mechanism in place for preventing a shock wave being sent up to the HX in
>the reactor pool.
Gee, you seem much less worried about legal beagles than Peter. This
is a beautiful example of a circumspect qualitative description of
a safety system. Very effective. Thanks!
>|> I must commend you, Dr. Orth. Your response was much more civil than Dr.
>|> Angelo's. While I can understand Dr. Angelo's frustration, the way he
>|> expressed it didn't help him to make his case very well...
>|>
>
>He's under more stress than I am
Maybe you could talk to him ...
--
E. Michael Smith ems@apple.COM
'Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has
genius, power and magic in it.' - Goethe
I am not responsible nor is anyone else. Everything is disclaimed.
Newsgroups: sci.energy
From: John De Armond
Subject: Re: Integral Fast Reactor???
Message-ID: <zhsyc=+@dixie.com>
Date: Wed, 18 Aug 93 09:19:41 GMT
b41237@flash.ra.anl.gov writes:
>>As long as that premise stands, then we know that there must be
>>extraordinary measure taken to prevent any armed incursions, any
>>site contamination (accidental or otherwise), and legal barriers
>>errected to prevent politico's from doing something stupid. What,
>>prey tell, are those extensive measures?
>
>Without violating the site safety plan, I can state it is your standard
>garden variety DOE facility. NO one gets in without clearance. Nothing
>enters/leaves without someone knowing. If you spent any time around military
>installations, multiply that by 1000. Comercial utility security doesn't
>even come close. (I know that to be a fact)
Oops, BS alarm at full chat. Let's see. Take, ferinstance, the
plutonium research facility operated by Battelle/Columbus stuck
waay out in the middle of a corn field. Plut lab on one side being
converted into a nerve gas disposal research lab. On the other side
where I worked is the reactor building and hot cells and plut safe.
Around it is your standard, government-issued pair of concentric chain link
fences topped by garden variety barbed wire (not concertina wire)
and the usual motion detectors. And this whole facility was guarded by
(drum roll) TWO guards armed with riot guns. Or consider Y-12 at Oak Ridge
where I worked as a contractor. Single fence. Normal day
condition: guard inside the gatehouse, gate open, no obstruction. After
I'd been there a couple of times and got my vehicle pass, I drove in
and out without so much as a second look. Or how about the Charleston
Naval Shipyard, headquarters to the nuk'lar boomers. I showed up one
day, told the very nicely dressed marine on the gate that I was there
under contract # thus and such and needed to see Gen. Bly. He checked
his roster that the good General was on it, gave me a vehicle pass
and waved me in. *Wow* Shall I continue?
I'll compare that quite nicely with civilian nuclear security.
Sequoyah, for example. Armed guards on the fences, surveillance cameras
equipped with motion detectors guarding the fences, at least two other
kinds of motion detectors near the fences, high speed vehicle impalers
under the pavement at the entrance designed to be able to stop a truck trying
to crash the gate, a fully equipped armory, etc, etc, etc.
Now before anyone gets a mistaken impression, I think the security around
the DOE facilities I'm familiar with is perfectly adequate. As is
the security at nuclear plants. Neither security system will stop a
determined terrorist or group of terrorists. Angelo destroys his
credibility by saying such. Hell, I personally watched a group of
guards masquerading as terrorists run into the control room at
Browns Ferry after floating a dingy up the cooling canal and sneaking
in the plant through an unsecured door. TVA paid a hell of a fine
for that door but the fact remains, the guys got in.
The proper answer to the question, Angelo, is this: "yes a terrorist
could possibly get into the plant. we've considered that possibility
and have taken the following precautions to ensure such a person
could not do anything that would endanger the plant or the public."
When I answered that very question regarding commercial plants, I outlined
the concepts of defence in depth and single failure criteria dictating
that redundant systems be physically widely separate and well protected,
I described the aux control room that would allow operators to take
control of the plant were the control room lost for any reason and I
outlined how operators are trained to run critical systems WITHOUT
a control room - a skill the BFNP fire taught us we needed very badly.
I guess I could have kicked back on my credentials and just said "We're
the experts, boob, we've thought of everything."
John
Newsgroups: sci.energy
From: John De Armond
Subject: Re: Integral Fast Reactor???
Message-ID: <_jsyxt+@dixie.com>
Date: Wed, 18 Aug 93 09:32:43 GMT
b41237@flash.ra.anl.gov writes:
>>>No the essence of what I said is Na solidification is about as remote
>>>as the Cubs and the Redsox in the world series together. Never will happen.
>>>(Ludicrous example)
>>
>>But you have provided no supportive evidence. Just 'I said so'
>>and 'it takes too long to cool' and now "People would stay there to
>>make sure it didn't happen." How, why, and how much are significantly
>>absent...
>>
>>
>This is a reach.Period.If the core solidified, it would pose no safety
>significance. Radiologically or neutronically. I don't know why coolant
>solidification would ever be a concern because in the worst case, the
>core is less neutronically reactive (reactivity = delta k/k) and there is
>a concept called "Shutdown Margin" (refer to John for a definition).
No one has suggested it would be a safety problem, something you'd have
noted had you not been so eager to call us civilians idiots. Let me
summarize it so you can comprehend:
Q: What happens if the pool cools off?
you: can't happen cuz we're Friends of Bill.
Q: But what if it does?
You: can't happen, trust me, I'm the expert. Not a safety problem if it did.
Oh, and you're an idiot for asking.
Why don't you try an answer like this on for size:
"We don't think the pool can ever cool for the following reason. The
pool contains xxxx gallons of sodium with a heat of fusion of yyy
bazillion kilocalories. It is surrounded by a structure with the
capacity to conduct heat of qqq kilocalories per day. At that rate, it
would take three and a half centuries to cool. We feel confident that
we could regain control in that interval. And if the incredable
happened and it did somehow become solid, we'd (I'm speculating) just
fire the sucker up at low power until the sodium remelted. We may have
to apply heat tracing to some of the piping but we consider the whole
scenario so incredable for the reasons given above that we did not
design this heat tracing into the plant. The plant design lends itself
to field installation of the tracing should it ever become necessary"
See? That wasn't so hard. A little secret: It's a hell of a lot more
fun being a teacher than it is a know-it-all.
John
Newsgroups: sci.energy
From: John De Armond
Subject: Re: Nuclear waste disposal
Message-ID: <gxd5k6-@dixie.com>
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 94 07:41:40 GMT
b41237@flash.ra.anl.gov writes:
>>I think we need to check premises. My (and John's, I think) belief is that
>>government funding would ultimately be detrimental to IFR. So you see,
>>it's not that he and I are against IFR at all, rather something that
>>could be bad for it.
Let me clarify my position. While fully supporting the concept of an
actinide burner/fuel breeder, I am opposed to the boondogle called
IFR. IFR is an example of an unconstrained and uncontrolled
government agency trying to develop a solution to a problem that
doesn't exist except in politics. The "problem" is the postulation
that current reactors are not safe enough and could catastrophically
melt down, kill millions, break off a chunk of the planet, etc.
This is a problem only in theory and in the minds of some anti-nukes.
Any anti-nuke who believes the current generation of reactors is
basing that belief on fiction and nothing technical will change that,
IFR or otherwise.
A commercial sized IFR-type sodium cooled reactor would be an operational
nightmare, would never withstand the pedantic, almost irrational
level of "safety analysis" LWRs now must withstand and would be
prohibitively expensive to maintain.
Peter's claim of vast operational experience notwithstanding,
a sodium cooled reactor would be a nightmare. Peter glosses
over the criticisms with a level of denial that would make an alcoholic
proud. Just a few examples:
* How do you guarantee with the same degree of certainty required of
LWR safety analysis that the hot liquid sodium will never, ever
contact water? Let's forget about the big stuff like heat exchanger
failure. Let's consider small, probable operational screwups
like a lab technician accidentally piping a water line to a
sample or vent line that communicates with a sodium line?
Exactly this, the only difference being the interconnection
was between water and instrument air, was the initiating event
at TMI.
* What do you do when something breaks off or gets dropped into the
reactor or primary coolant loop? With current reactors, you
send a diver down and/or underwater TV cameras and/or underwater
robots to find and fix the problem. What do you do when the coolant
is an opaque, thermally hot, highly chemically reactive metal?
Shit'er'go blind, I guess.
* What do you do after (not if, but when) you fail some fuel and
crap up the primary coolant? Water coolant can be easily purified
and dissolves fission products only sparingly; and gas neither
dissolves, suspends or transports anything except the noble gases
and perhaps some iodine. Sodium will dissolve many of the fission
products (remember cesium is also an alkali metal) and will suspend
much more and cannot easily be chemically purified. Maintenance
would be nightmarish and the man-REM of the workforce would go
through the roof. It is important to remember that it does not
take a reactor accident to fail fuel. It only takes bad
core hydraulics or some bad cladding metallurgy, things that
have caused rather massive fuel failure in LWRs.
* After an accident, rare and incredible as it may seem now, how
do you clean all this mess up? Peter will scream that an
accident is impossible; Murphy will scream "Oh yeah?" Before
TMI, the prospect that simultaneously an operator would flood
the instrument air system with water, the condenser would flood
its vacuum pump, a PORV valve would stick open, the operator would
miss the indication, one redundant pressurizer level indicator
would stick while the other one was out of service for calibration
and the emergency feedwater pump discharge valving would be chained
and locked shut would have been outright dismissed by the experts
as the raving of a lunatic paranoid anti-nuke. I suggest the
same mindset is at work with IFR, particularly with respect to
matters that might put funding at risk.
At TMI, the DOE wasted (and I use that term precisely here)
billions playing with various means of removing the damaged fuel.
This was done in an environment where one could see through
the coolant and could work above the water pool without undue
radiation exposure. Imagine doing that with an opaque,
reactive, thermally and radiologically hot liquid metal coolant.
Peter will no doubt wave his arms and scream and shout but I'll
bet a dollar to a donut that he'll not even attempt to address
these issues because they cannot be addressed.
>What would be bad for IFR is NO funding. Period. First lets adopt
>your premise that it should stand on its commercial merits. There
>are some fatal flaws with this logic. Inorder to commercially de-
>velop the IFR, like commercial software ventures, you need a)
>seed capital, b) facility organization and infrastructure of labor-
>atories and facilities. There is currently NO private comppany or
>consideration which even remotely has facilities to do IFR research.
Ah yes, the last refuge of the statist, justifying the govenrment
stealing the wealth of the people to spend on boondogle projects
by saying that the boondogle is necessary because private industry
won't do it. A clue, Peter. If private industry won't do it,
it doesn't need doing. You know, if the government wasn't stealing
half the citizens' wealth and borrowing half again as much, perhaps
entrepreneurs would be a bit more willing to take high risks.
>If all you want are computer studies, any of the vendors can
>oblige you. THe only operating fast reactor in the US is EBR-II.
>The only feasable metal fuel recycle facility is right next door,
>in fact, they are a joined, closed structure. Now if you want
>your venture to suceed you would either a) make use of existing
>facilities or b) build new ones. Choice B is out of the question
>since by the time the NIMBYs and regulators get a hold of the
>works, you have lost any investment you put in.
Sunk costs aren't investments and they are lost regardless.
Oh, I forget. What the government calls "investment", we
call "tax and spend." And you think NIMBY and the regulators are
bad with LWRs, just wait until they unite with those of us who
are pro-nuclear but who want this scientific welfare dinasaur killed.
>We are not talking about starting up a small magazine. Even
>the Internet is government subsidized..I read where the US is
>ready to pour 250$B (thats Billion) into the Information Highway.
>You could build 25-50 new reactors with that kind of money..
You've been reading fiction. There are a whole bunch of us already
mobilized to keep the government from doing the same fine job on
computer networks as they did to nuclear power. BTW, did anyone
else note Peter's self-contradiction? A few paragraphs ago he
stated that IFR is sooooo expensive and sooooo risky that no one
but big 'ole Uncle Sugar can do it and then in this paragraph he
claims that we could build reactors for a paltry $10 billion each.
Now, what was that little ditty I saw on the financial page of
the paper today? Yeah, that one, where Bill Gates and McGaw plan
on spending $5-10 billion over the next few years to erect a worldwide
data and voice satelite network. Oh, and did you notice that they
think they will have to work with either the russians or the chinese
for launch services because the US space program so so f*cked up?
The *government* space program, I might add. Did anyone also notice
that Gates was quoted as citing the GOVERNMENT as the single largest
roadblock to the success of this project? Hey, you think DOS is
bad, just contemplate what it would be like if DOE developed it.
I imagine the private sector could bring in a new generation of
nuclear reactor for well under this amount. The private sector
would do it for a fraction of the cost and time because they
have to. They probably would NOT build a physical empire of shiny
extravagant labs and buildings like the government does (at least
if Detroit stays out of it) but they WOULD get the job done.
>I think if the government supports bench research and development of
>other technologies (Internet, Mag-Lev trains, cancer drug product-
>ion, etc..) which lead to commercial technology transfer and spinoff,
>then why should nuclear be any different?
Because one wrong doesn't justify another.
>Billions have been spent
>on the Internet by the government, and ATT/MCI and the like are now
>poised to take advantage of the government-subsidized Information
>Highway.
You might want to mosey over and see whose title resides on the wires
that transport your internet connection, Peter. You might also want
to differentiate between what the guv spent on actual internet development
and what it spent to play and for applications.
>Would it have been reasonable to think a private corporation
>could have linked all these universites and sites on its own
>resources?
IBM seemed to do a pretty decent job with BITNET. DEC seems to have
done a pretty good job with DECnet too. Hey Peter! There IS a real
world out there on the other side of that government paycheck.
>When TMI happened, the NRC mandated that B&W fix their reactor
>designs. The respnsibility fell on B&W. (ALso the rest of the
>industry). I submit the govt MUST take ownership of the waste
>problem.
And I submit that the goverment must simply get the hell out of the way
and let the industry solve the problem its way.
>the next generation of reactors?? They ressurected NASA and
>Chrysler, are they not any different? Where was the gov't served
>by Lee Iacocca?
You could have done your cause a world of good by not citing the
purveyors of the occasional Space Bus and space probes that explode
and the K-car. If you're proud of those accomplishments, you're one
sick puppy. Or desparate for pride.
>We have allready spent about 1.5$B over 10 years (1984-94). To
>abandon something promising as this, when its 95% complete, is
>truly wasteful.
Nope. It says that it is time to cut bait and take the loss.
>If private enterprise could go to the moon, instead of Neil Armstrong,
>do you think we would be there? Or do you think the Russians would
>have beat us?
Whattya think, Peter? Maybe that your peepee would have rotted off if
the Ruskies had left footprints on the moon first? It was neat, it was
fun, it employed a lot of people but the Moon race meant little to most
people and NOTHING to the security of the US. Of course, the government
had no business being in the entertainment business. Who knows? If it
were not for the goverment, Perhaps Ted Turner would have gone to the
moon in order to scoop Fox or the Big Three and paid for it with
advertising dollars.
>>In other words, complaining about the post office's public nature
>>does not make him "against" postal service in general.
>No but he failed to cite an alternative which is acceptable on
>a mass scale. He failed to recognize that although inefficient
>at times, the US mail system is still preferred over private
>carriers for door-to-door daily mail.
'Sat so? Well then, how do you explain the postal service's current
terrorist campaign against companies who dare to send non-urgent
mail via alternative carriers? In case you don't know, I refer
to the postal service's audits being aimed against large corps
in which the service claims that some fraction of the corp's
mail was non-urgent and then uses an obscure part of the postal code
to assess them the postage they would have paid. In other words,
the postal service is using the force of law to make people pay
for something they neither wanted nor used.
If the postal service is such a jolly good deal, then why does the
service continue to hide behind congressional protection? If
everyone really wants what the postal service provides, then congress
could cut it loose and it would thrive in the private sector.
>Suppose you wanted to write
>a letter to someone. Not only would you need to know your company's
>services for your mail, you would not be assured that they could
>delliver your mail to its recipient. Extrapolate this from the
>phone service you get. If your favorite long distance carrier doesnt
>go to where you want to go, good ol' ATT steps in.
Gee, you'd think Peter would have heard of Equal Access by now,
wouldn't you? And you'd think he'd know that all the phone companies
go everywhere in the US with the possible exception of a few rural
private exchanges. Hell, my tiny little exchange which serves my
cabin in the mountains got equal access years ago.
>You anarchists still don't get it. There are things the government
>does better than private enterprise.
Yeah, they did seem to do a pretty good job of killing women
and children at Waco. And they've done a pretty good job of
creating and promoting the Drug War against the Constitution.
And the IRS does a superlative job of confiscating peoples'
wealth. The Surveillance State is moving right along with the advent
of the Clipper Chip and the FBI's Digital Telephony snooping initiative.
But the things that it is chartered by the Constitution
(remember that old concept of enumerated powers?) to do - regulating
the money supply, interstate commerce, providing for the national
defence and so on, it does a very poor and/or expensive job.
Perhaps if the government got back to doing ONLY what it is chartered
to do, the cost - despite the built-in excess and waste - would be
something the country could afford.
John
Newsgroups: sci.energy
From: John De Armond
Subject: Re: Integral Fast Reactor
Message-ID: <r+r8bgg@dixie.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Jul 94 02:14:09 GMT
nci@access2.digex.net (Paul Leventhal) writes:
> The argument that the plutonium never leaves the IFR facility betrays a
>dangerous overreliance on containment and surveillance (C/S) safeguards.
>Even if it's correct, it neglects foreign environments that an IFR might
>someday operate in once exported. I'm sure the Russians, for instance,
>never thought their plutonium would leave the facility either. Now it's
>on sale in Western Europe.
You know, Peter, this kind of oral excrement makes me ashamed to also be
opposed to IFR. Anyone who would relate the nonexistant risk of
proliferation of non-weapons-suitable Pu produced in power reactors
with the actual weapons Pu now thought to be on the black market from
Russia has about the same integrity and truthfulness as Klinton.
I challenge you to cite even a single example of reactor fuel being
diverted to weapons use. You can't do it. This is a strawman and
a lie.
What is really sad is that an adequate case against IFR can be made
without lying or exaggerating. In case you haven't thought of legitimate
reasons, here are a few:
* IFR is not needed and no utility is interested enough to spend
real money on the project. I confirm this from time to time by
chats with my friends at INPO.
* Liquid alkali metal cooling is a technology whose time will never come.
It is a safety and maintenance nightmare, there is no need for it
and there is no problem that would uniquely be solved with it.
* The government has no business squandering money it doesn't have on
what ammounts to a scientific welfare program. It is no more
right to take money from one citizen under threat of force and
give it to a scientist than it is to give it to a ghetto breeder.
* The goal of integral fuel reprocessing - if there ever proves
to be a commercial desire for it - can be done with less exotic
technology that doesn't involve thousands of pounds of hot,
reactive liquid metal. Gas cooled and pebble bed reactor designes
are just a couple that come to mind.
> Comparing IFR to PUREX reprocessing is a straw man. Very few nations
>reprocess spent fuel now. And I haven't heard IFR advocates claim that
>future access to IFR technology should be limited to nations already
>using PUREX. All reprocessing should be opposed, because it separates
>plutonium, putting it either into weapon-usable or near-weapon-usable form.
What makes you think that whatever the US does with IFR matters at
all internationally? I imagine the world recognizes IFR for what
it is - scientific welfare. If the supply of uranium ever becomes
short enough to make integral fuel cycle breeding attractive,
it is a certainty that something other than IFR will fill the
international bill. More likely, over the next few decades,
weapons grade Pu from the soviets will be denatured and turned into
reactor fuel. The US may not do it but the rest of the world likely will.
John
Newsgroups: sci.energy
From: John De Armond
Subject: Re: Integral Fast Reactor
Message-ID: <w=v8q8m@dixie.com>
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 94 03:46:42 GMT
rsingle@smokey.ra.anl.gov (R Singleterry IFRO/713 7879) writes:
>>* IFR is not needed and no utility is interested enough to spend
>> real money on the project. I confirm this from time to time by
>> chats with my friends at INPO.
>>
>EXCUSS ME!!! SCE and PG&E are VERY interested in this project to the tune
>of 2 million $. For a profit based organization, that is a lot of money.
That's chump change to the utility, a token payment to be let in the
door to see what's going on. kinda like the 25 cent movie houses we have
around here. The movies might not be too hot but you go anyway just
to see cuz the risk is low.
If you want to demonstrate that there is utility interest, there is one
sure fire way to prove it. Shinny back away from the public trough and
let the utilities fund the development. We're only talking about one
little reactor, after all. Either EPRI or INPO could host the fund. A
few million from each utility each year - more chump change - would fund
you guys to play. Hell, Georgia Power has squandered more than that
playing with electric vans. But as long as you keep sucking at the
public tit, your claims that the utilities want this pink elephant have
a ring of incredulity to them.
>As for being not needed, what is needed??? More coal and LWR plants??
>Cant have more coal, the "new" LWRs are just rehashes of old technology
>and large tanks of borated water incase all else fails - real technology
>there!!!
I know it might be a surprise to the ivory tower types but the objective
is NOT to make technology, it is to generate inexpensive and safe power.
Current generation nuclear plants are doing that just fine. The next
generation will do it better. Had I been the grand poobah in the late
40s, I'd certainly not have selected water cooled reactors for power
deployment but neither would I today toss it all out just so some
government employees (and contractors, just to keep peter happy)
can continue to play.
>With a
>once through system - current and next LWRs - MASSIVE quantities of uranium
>are wasted, to be buried in the ground - plutonium in tact - to be dug up,
>purified, and detonated (maybe?) with 1940's technology at a later date??
>Sounds VERY resonable to me as long as I am on space station Freedom when
>it occurs!!!!!
Can't argue with that but I CAN argue with trying to solve political
problems with technology. The current problems are purely political
and the IFR will NOT solve them. I should also remind everyone that
what we have now was NOT designed to be a once-through system.
It has been forced on the industry by the same government that is
now trying to force us to pay for IFR.
>>* Liquid alkali metal cooling is a technology whose time will never come.
>> It is a safety and maintenance nightmare, there is no need for it
>> and there is no problem that would uniquely be solved with it.
>Gee, in 25+ years of operation at various sites around the world, more
>people were killed by soap than by liquid Na. Maybe we should ban soap!!
>Unfortunately, your argument as stated here is emotional, no content to
>argue exists. I can say you are wrong, but that is just an emotional
>argument to answer an emotional argument. Give me a technical reason
>as to why liquid Na is the worst thing plutonium and maybe I can
>understand where you are coming from!!
Gee, you're as bad as peter at exploding off in all directions, using
emotional language. I come from a perspective of having spent much of
my career in commercial nuclear power plants. I KNOW what is involved
in plant maintenance and I blanch at the thought of dealing with
thousands of gallons of explosively reactive, optically opaque hot
metal. The last time this debate went around Peter talked in glowing
terms of all the robotic maintenance planned. We got to suffer through
all those DOE robot experiments at TMI-II. None of them worked and the
stuff that DID work was, for the most part, hinked together by our guys
on-site. And I saw at Oak Ridge and Battelle what happens when this
reobotic and remote stuff breaks. You clean up the mess as much as you
can and then you send the zoomies in to fix things and soak up RADs.
Don't make me laugh trying to sell me on the concept of doing this in a
sodium environment. I might laugh until I choke.
>>* The government has no business squandering money it doesn't have on
>> what ammounts to a scientific welfare program. It is no more
>> right to take money from one citizen under threat of force and
>> give it to a scientist than it is to give it to a ghetto breeder.
>Get a job and try to think clearly, I dont understand this argument and
>I dont think I want to, but I am willing to give it a try!!!
I have a job and I pay your salary. I have half my income taken by
taxes under the threat of force (Yes, sports fans, the IRS DOES
use guns) so the government cna redistribute it to all sorts of
people. I see no material difference between giving money to a
welfare breeder queen and giving money to a welfare scientist to play.
A lot of your play got hidden behind the shield of the Cold war but
that's gone now. Time to, uh as you said, get a job.
>>* The goal of integral fuel reprocessing - if there ever proves
>> to be a commercial desire for it - can be done with less exotic
>> technology that doesn't involve thousands of pounds of hot,
>> reactive liquid metal. Gas cooled and pebble bed reactor designes
>> are just a couple that come to mind.
>Well, gas cooled and pebble bed reactor still use a ceramic coating to
>encapsilate their ceramic fuel. THIS IS THE PROBLEM!!!!!! This ceramic
>is why HF and HNOx dissolution in mass quanities is needed for chemical
>seperation and reprocssing. If the fuel is metal, then electrorefining
>makes sense. The PUREX system works, but at what cost?? LWR/pebble bed
>fuel can only be reporcessed at with PUREX or something like it.
Then your media kit lies. I regret that I have my library packed for an
impending move, for I'd love to quote the exact text, but I can
summarize. One of supposedly huge selling points is that the IFR can
receive, process and burn spent commercial fuel. Commercial CERAMIC
fuel I might add. Either you can or you can't. Where's the lie? If
you can, then it is a small additional step to take the electrorefined
(I believe your press kit calls it pyrorefined) metal fuel and convert
it back to an oxide.
>>What makes you think that whatever the US does with IFR matters at
>>all internationally? I imagine the world recognizes IFR for what
>>it is - scientific welfare.
>Sorry Mr. De Armond. This is where you are just wrong. Japan and Russia
>are VERY ready and WILLING to take IFR technology and make it work if
>the US does not!!
Well then, let's see this project paid for in rubles and yen.
Russia's not going to do anything right now and I have a very hard
time believing that japan is going to switch course in mid stream
to accomodate this technology. Show me some evidence to the
contrary. Assertions don't count. Point me to the proof.
Cite necessary references. Oh I have little doubt that Japan and
even perhaps Russia (using US aid funds?) are paying the same
chump-change just to see what the US is up to but that's a damn
far distance from committment. If this stuff is so good, then the
President (if we had one) should be able to turn it into a nuclear
Desert Storm where the international community pays the tab for
us to do the job.
>We can reap the benefits of this technology and
>make it as nonproliferent as any technology can be or we can let it go
>today and being buying it back in 20 to 30 years as a power source
>or as nuclear grade bomb material.
I'm still waiting for someone to give me even ONE example of commercial
reactor fuel being proliferated to a weapons program outside the
producing country. What pisses me off so about using the proliferation
strawman to justify this boondoggle is that it plays right into the
hands of the anti-nukes who would use it to shut down ALL nuclear
plants. Sheer stupidity.
John
Newsgroups: sci.energy
From: John De Armond
Subject: Re: Integral Fast Reactor
Message-ID: <rav84hn@dixie.com>
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 94 04:20:23 GMT
b41237@flash.ra.anl.gov writes:
>>* The government has no business squandering money it doesn't have on
>> what ammounts to a scientific welfare program. It is no more
>> right to take money from one citizen under threat of force and
>> give it to a scientist than it is to give it to a ghetto breeder.
>>
>Once again, no one laid claim to "breeder" technology here. In fact
>you convienently have dodged the issue that CR < 1.0 reactors are
>really what we are after.
Nah, Peter, it's that I don't buy into this sham to try and rename
the Experimental Breeder Reactor to the IFR/expermental burner
reactor prototype for political expediency. Not only is this
deception of a high order, it is stupid. It is stupid NOT to breed
if we're going to have a fast reactor.
>In so far as scientific welfare, we elect Representatives and Senators
>to oversee our interests. If I do recall, Sen. Nunn voted yes on this
>technology. Go take it up with him if you disagree.
We're doing everything we can to get his ass out of congress.
Much of georgia is mightily ashamed of him. Unfortunately
many georgians have voted for Nunn's ability to keep
military bases (military welfare?) in Georgia. We need a naval
air station here in the middle of Marietta like we need a hole in our
heads. Or like those people needed an A-6 in their bedrooms
a couple of years ago. (For those who don't know what I'm talking
about, imagine a naval air station right in the middle of Manhattan.
That's what we have here.)
>>* The goal of integral fuel reprocessing - if there ever proves
>> to be a commercial desire for it - can be done with less exotic
>> technology that doesn't involve thousands of pounds of hot,
>> reactive liquid metal. Gas cooled and pebble bed reactor designes
>o are just a couple that come to mind.
>Why would you want to use an unproven technology (Ft.St.Vrain-what
>a nightmare)
What nightmare is that, Peter?
>or little used technology versus something which is
>a natural fit for safety (metal on metal) and has the years of
>experience to back it.
It might be instructive to point out at this point that this EBR-II, ne
IFR that peter is so proud of is, according to their press kit, a
16 MWt, 2 MWe plant. A nuclear pilot light. About like trying to
evaluate the behavior of the fire in a blast furnace by examining
a match. EBR was very successful for what it was intended.
It is NOT a power reactor.
>You can't throw away that experience, even if
>you come from a health-physics background. (BTW no dressout req'd
>to make a containment power entry)
At least until you fail some fuel. But what do you do when
you fail a reactor internal? We send divers down to fix broken
LWR reactor internals, to retrieve dropped parts and such. Can't
do that in sodium. At least not more than once.
>You still don't get it. How many times have I read your diatribe
>blasting anti-nukes for waste and safety issues. John, open your
>eyes, it still isn't too late for salvation.
I opened my eyes a long time ago. And I do it again everytime I see what
I pay in taxes, usually accompanied with a WOW! hey, an experimental
reactor here, a space program there, a billion dollar bomber over
yonder and all of a sudden, the government gets more of my money than
I do. And I'm STILL looking for the Constitutional grant of authority
for the federal government to be doing ANY civilian nuclear research.
John
Newsgroups: sci.energy
From: John De Armond
Subject: Re: Integral Fast Reactor
Message-ID: <5d18ps_@dixie.com>
Date: Wed, 03 Aug 94 06:46:13 GMT
b41237@flash.ra.anl.gov writes:
>I wonder what color your eyes are, because you are full of it.
>First and formost, the only reason to use a 30-year old realiable
>fast reactor to irradiate IFR type fuel is that it is an adequate
>TEST BED i.e. source of flux for the fuel type. Noteworthy, from
>the 1986 tests, the metal-fuel, metal coolant temperature responses
>were indicative of the inherrent safety from LHS and LOFT transients.
Yes, it was a grand test bed. So now that its purpose is satisfied,
let's make a museum out of it, toss up a plaque, let you guys go
out and get real jobs and save the taxpayers some money.
>Next, EBR-II is a 62.5 MWth plant which provides 19MWe to the INEL
>grid. Ask Russ, he will confirm. Not this "2MW" rinky dink reactor
>as you espouse. Shame on you, since you have this info in hand.
>Is this credibility or what?
No, it comes from working from memory because your whole library is
packed in boxes getting ready to move. Until I can unpack, I'll
concede you the point. Doesn't change the fact, however, that
EBR-II is a pilot plant.
>I may be one of those "PhD types", but I also am not embittered by
>some grudge against the government. I also have the benefit of
>working my way up, and at one time, my SRO would have been enough
>to be your boss.
*Shrug*. I'd be an SRO too, by now, had I chosen to continue. I'm out
for the same reason I imagine you are - I decided that the legal
liabilities of that license neither worth the pay nor the enjoyment.
The prospect of being sent to jail for a simple procedural mistake was
not comforting.
To the point, why do you aver that anyone who thinks the government
ought to at least nominally obey the constitution, that it should not
be robbing this country of its wealth and that it should not
be spending money it doesn't have means the person is carrying an embittered
grudge? About the only thing I would ever get bitter about is the
fact that utterly stupid government nuclear policy destroyed my
profession. I don't have time to dwell on that even.
The problem is, Peter, that you guys make a good case for your playground
and the guys over at NASA make a good case for their playground and a
bunch of guys in thousands of other government programs make good cases
for their playgrounds and the overall effect is that government takes
half or better of most working peoples' income. This is just flat wrong.
I want you off your nuclear playground equally as much as I want
the ghetto breeders off that dole.
>Wrong. This is your mindthink: Abolish the government and let
>private enterprise work out the details. On the otherhand, as a
>small businessman, you are the first to cry foul when you cant
>get enough start-up capital curtesy of your Uncle Sam. Who do you
>think insures the bank against risky ventures of yourself.
Peter, you really ought to get out of that ivory tower and check out the
real world. With the exception of the random SBA loan (check out THEIR
failure rates sometime), usually reserved for one minority or the other,
venture capital does NOT come from the govenrment. It comes out of
private individuals' pockets. And that's the way it ought to be. I
funded my startups the old fashioned way - from savings and from
ordinary loans from friends and the occasional bank secured the old
fashioned way - with everything I owned. The only government money I've
ever had has come either from contracted-for work, salary or a single
SBA grant. The latter was one of the worst business mistakes I ever
made, done at the behest of my token PhD-type who wanted something to do
while I used his resume for marketing purposes. I lost money on that
one.
I think your comments about where you believe venture capital
comes from gives great insight into what is wrong with
government these days - you don't have a clue as to how business works.
>>LWR reactor internals, to retrieve dropped parts and such. Can't
>>do that in sodium. At least not more than once.
>You dont even know what we can and cant do, so once again, no
>credibility is offered on your part with sodium reactor experience,
>unless you slithered under the rug at FFTF, or somehow managed to
>work here.
Ad hominims make you feel good, Peter, but they do nothing for your
credibility. Don't duck the question. And don't tell me accidents
are impossible; we both know they are. Tell me how, after an accident
does happen, how you're going to retrieve debris or broken parts
from a sodium-cooled core. Save the arm waving, just tell us in
plain english how you do it. I'm all ears.
>>Performance Engineering Magazine. Email to me published at my sole discretion
>>Respect the VietNam Vet, for he has survived every attempt by this country
>>to kill him.
>Shame on you. My father won the bronze star in Korea. He'd kick your
>butt all the way back to the 50's for that bit of conspiratorial
>embellishment.
Well dad has a silver star and a purple heart from WWII and he'd
kick your ass so there. Pfffttttt!
Embellishment? Well let's see. The government engages itself in a
war without purpose, sends soldiers to fight and die without an
intent to win, ties their hands with rules of engagement that would be
funny in another context, soaks them with any old chemical
someone wants to try against the jungle, brings 'em back home and
then subjects them to the worst crime of all - the VA. yeah, I'd
call that every attempt to kill 'em. Even you'd agree with me if
you'd ever been inside a VA hospital.
John
Newsgroups: sci.energy
From: John De Armond
Subject: Re: Integral Fast Reactor
Message-ID: <#g18pw+@dixie.com>
Date: Wed, 03 Aug 94 07:31:01 GMT
rsingle@smokey.ra.anl.gov (R Singleterry IFRO/713 7879) writes:
>Being an EX-plant E.I. Hatch employee (Georgia Power), I understand that
>spending money on, shall we say, usless things is the mind set there.
Are you referring to things the government makes them do or other
things? I'm an ex-Hatch guy too, having spent a summer down there while
the company I owned installed, calibrated and started up their
RegGuide 1.97 equipment. I thought Hatch was one of the better
operated plants, attributed by most people to the distance between
Baxter and Atlanta.
>GPC is a regulated monopoly, ie, run like a government institution. They have
>lots-o-money to spend on useless things and not too much money to spend on
>speculation. IFR to them would be speculation. They lean on EPRI to do the
>research and EPRI is having problems doing the things on their plate much
>less trying to fund the IFR.
IFR would no more be speculation than any of the other demonstration projects
undertaken by EPRI and funded by the utilities. You know as well as I
that the utilities have a degree of freedom in R&D spending. Hell,
GA Pwr has wasted millions buying 50 of Chrysler's electric vans
at $100,000 each. When they brought one of these turkeys to our
SAE section meeting to show off, I asked the program manager where the
money came from. He could not give me a breakdown but he listed in
order, ratepayer money, stockholder money, federal money. If they can
toss $5 million plus down the drain to play with electric vans, they
can damn sure toss money at promising power generation technology.
>From what I remembver about the history of
>the INEL (previous, National Reactor Test Site-or something along those lines),
>most of the "new" reactors were paid for by the navy or the AEC/DOE - the
>government. IFR does not change this "tradition". Is that good or bad?? Well,
>would a private industry spend 25+ years to develop and keep a testbed
>for various non-related industries???
Of course not. They'd have done their R&D in a few years, developed
the product and then shut it down or gone on to the next project.
>Please, they are out to make money. A testbed is
>expensive and a burden unless the payoff occurs within 5 to 7 years at most.
Oh? Perhaps you can explain IBM's Watson Research Center, AT&T's Bell
labs or the baby bells' Bellcore?
>still MANY magnitudes safer than the new LWR's. The new LWR's still must
>have engineered safety systems - anything a human touches usually will go
>wrong??? For the IFR, physics is used as the ultimate safety system
>for nuclear excursions.
Gravity and physics tend to be how LWRs protect themselves against
nuclear excursions too. The RPS is for AFTER scram. Know what?
I bet that after the IFR gets run through the same gauntlet as
LWRs have, you'll have some engineered safeguards too. All you have
to do is look at that article about spent fuel pit cooling that
wafted across this forum a few days ago. If someone can fantasize
about spent fuel pit pool failures, they can fantasize about
IFR failures. And in this business fantasies tend to spawn metal
and concrete.
>Unfortunately, this leaves me with the only question left:
>why are you against government funded research programs??
Because the government has no constitutional authority to take people's
money and spend it on research and because government research
is always financially bloated and rarely produces anything worthwhile.
I'll grudgingly tolerate the bloat and the waste when it is for the
purposes of national defence but building an IFR is NOT. Everytime the
government gets its claws out of an industry, we all benefit.
Trucking, air travel, telecommunications - no one can rationally
suggest that things were better before.
>We are not trying to solve political problems with technology. We will let
>the politicos solve their problem by developing a technical alternative.
Sure you are. You're trying to address the purely political fantasy
of proliferation and the purely political problem of the government
prohibition on LWR fuel reprocessing and the purely political problem of
the government's fucked up policy regarding wastes and the purely
political problem of permitting obstructionists to stall new plant
construction and the purely political problem of excessive "safety"
systems in LWRs with the IFR. Fix the political problems and IFR has
no reason for existing. Fail to fix the political problems and IFR
hasn't a chance of a fart in a whirlwind of surviving the gauntlet.
>Non-emotional argument (the reason I use them is to point out that the
>argument I am trying to address is emotiona and not technical) The
>technical argument is: Just because YOU cant deal with Na does not
>mean that nobody can (gezz, three negatives -> but you get what I mean). Most
>of the maintainence you talk about is caused by the water and piping
>associated with LWRs. These problems go away when Na is used in a pool.
Some do, some don't. I worry about those that don't.
>Well, we've done lots of research in the past year and are studing a
>laser method to visuallize the components in the Na tank. But, in reality,
>Na does not corrode like water so the ability to "see" through the water
>is not needed until deassembly of the fuel is performed (in an argon filled
>cell by the way).
Or until something breaks off cuz someone blew the hydro calculations
and vibration got to it or someone drops something in the pool or
whatever. I'm not really concerned with how a f*ck-up happens, I'm
concerned with what I do after the FUP happens. The reactor vendors
told us, for example, that if we'd just get our water purity high
enough that our corrosion problems would go away. We did it and on
a large scale and guess what? The hyper-pure water caused metal loss
by dissolving some of the alloying metals. Guess what? cracking.
No one knew that until the plan was deployed on a large scale.
You tell me that Na is non-corrosive and I have no reason not to believe
you. But based on my experience I will NOT believe you that this
necessarily holds after the plant is scaled up by a factor of 10 or more
and has operated for awhile. I must assume that shit will happen
and therefore I must ask how to perform the necessary maintenance.
Obviously someone there is concerned or else you would not be looking
at laser visualization. You see more research opportunity; I see
maintenance nightmares.
>Gezz, half huh?? Get another accountant. I paid less than 30% last year.
You probably did pay that much in federal taxes. Then you paid another
8% in SSI (for the priviledge of being self-employed, I get to pay
twice that) and another 1.5% or thereabouts for medicade. Then
if you lived in Georgia you'd pay 8 more percent in state income tax.
let's see, I'm up to 46%. Then you pay property tax (or have it built
into your rent), personal property tax, ad valorem tax and sales tax.
Since sales tax comes out of the net, our local 5% tax is equivalent
to what, oh, maybe 8-10% of your gross. Hmm, I think my 50% estimate might
be low.
>>I'm still waiting for someone to give me even ONE example of commercial
>>reactor fuel being proliferated to a weapons program outside the
>>producing country. What pisses me off so about using the proliferation
>>strawman to justify this boondoggle is that it plays right into the
>>hands of the anti-nukes who would use it to shut down ALL nuclear
>>plants. Sheer stupidity.
>It may be stupid to you john, but to steven and others, it isnt. Their views
>must be addressed. IFR has addressed them. Their problem is that they have
>another agenda: to see the total stopage (if I can use this as a word) of
>nuclear power. So the IFR is actually a treat instead of a boondoggle!
Of course it is. The way to "address their concerns" is to tell 'em to
crawl back under the rocks they came from. This is one of the major
problems with government being involved in research. The government
must be at least somewhat responsive to everyone. Since it must,
the way to minimize the negative impact of the govenrment on the people
is to allow it to do only the very minimum necessary for national
security. Addressing nutcases by spending millions to build an IFR
is NOT the way to do it.
I'm still waiting for someone to show me even ONE instance of
civilian nuclear fuel being diverted to bomb use.
John
Newsgroups: sci.energy
From: John De Armond
Subject: Re: Integral Fast Reactor
Message-ID: <6g18=k-@dixie.com>
Date: Wed, 03 Aug 94 08:03:57 GMT
rsingle@smokey.ra.anl.gov (R Singleterry IFRO/713 7879) writes:
>Having been to Marietta, it isnt anything like Manhattan. Also, have lived
>and grownup in Tucson, Davis-Monthan is a money maker for the city etc....
>Yes, even we killed two girls on a street corner with a A-7 crash, but, even
>though that was incredibly tragic, should it close the entire industry for
>that city? That is preety harsh punishment.
A Naval Air base is an industry? Interesting. What does it make?
Let's step back a moment and analyze this. The Naval base gets (partially)
borrowed US government money and pays some of it to local employees
who get to take some home after sending a good chunk back to the
government. Some more of this borrowed money is paid to local vendors
for this'n'that. Pretty poor method of taking money from some
citizens and giving it to others, don't you think? Maybe I'm
just old fashioned but I always thought that the military should be
about defending the country and not about the redistribution of
wealth. All Dobbins does is let Nunn buy some votes.
>>>Why would you want to use an unproven technology (Ft.St.Vrain-what
>>>a nightmare)
>>
>>What nightmare is that, Peter?
>Well, since peter didnt answer, Fort St. Vrain is a gas cooled reactor
>(commerical) that never ran well and was a money pit for its life.
>The EBR series of reactors have never had this problem.
Ft St Vrain was a commercial sized demonstration project. It was NOT
intended to be a production plant. It was designed to shake out
problems that arise with a full scale plant. I've yet to hear anyone
without a competative ax to grind call this plant anything but
successful. It was amazingly reliable to be what amounts to a prototype.
>>At least until you fail some fuel.
>Well, no, even if we fail fuel, you can still walk into the reactor
>building with out anti-c's. Nice design feature huh!
Yeah, we have the same feature in LWRs.
>Well, how would we fail a reactor internal? The vessel isnt pressureized.
>The Na is VERY NON-CORROSIVE, there are few MOVING parts in the design
>and those can be retrieved very easily since they are the pump blades.
So after something, say a pump blade, breaks off and gets lodged in
the core, how do you retrieve it? I'll not try to predict HOW
something might fail anymore than one could do that in a LWR.
I care about what you do AFTER something does happen.
>Also, I would like you to replace the grid plate in a BWR with
>divers!!!!!
Not being a nuclear diver, I can't really comment on that particular
part but I can note that during the Browns Ferry fire recovery,
they had divers down in Units 1 and 2 for weeks doing something or
another. They partially defueled, of course. I know because I had
to stumble over their hoses on the refueling deck.
>I dont approve of this flaming, but john, please get the facts about the IFR,
>nay, come and visit us (really, I'll give you a tour that will answer all your
>questions) and see for yourself. Then, loaded with facts (not propaganda),
>then think and make your choice.
I'd love to tour the place and see what I've been buying but it won't
change my opinion one iota about government funded R&D. And I doubt
it will answer my maintenance questions. At BFNP, I didn't get called
upon to figure out how the clear and totally invisible camera lens
ended up in the #2 core; I was called upon to figure out how to get
it out. (I figured out that we could do a open-top boiloff and nuke
the plastic back to its elements) That's the perspective I come from.
John
Newsgroups: sci.energy
From: John De Armond
Subject: Re: Integral Fast Reactor
Message-ID: <!348h+h@dixie.com>
Date: Sat, 06 Aug 94 19:44:10 GMT
ems@cygnus.com (E. Michael Smith) writes:
>In article <7759337285877@flash.ra.anl.gov> b41237@flash.ra.anl.gov writes:
>>Never did I think that I would be put in jail since I never thought
>>of screwing up.
>Very few things could send shivers up my spine more than this.
>Above all else, believe that you too can fail.
>THIS is exactly what makes me most worried about nuclear plants.
>The old "I am perfect so don't you worry" attitude...
MIke,
Let me preface this with restating the obvious, that I take shots at
nuclear where I think shots are deserved.
That said, I'll go on the record as saying that in my entire career,
both on the civilian and military sides of the fence, I have never seen
Peter's attitude in a nuclear worker, least of all Reactor Operators.
To be sure, people with such attitudes have shown up in RO apprenticeship
programs but the RO program tends to either wash them out or humble them
very early. The guys who run the training simulators just LOVE to get
a cocky one on the board. :-) I can certainly now understand why Peter
is no longer behind the board of a civilian reactor.
John
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