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Nuclear

Nuclear

(OP)
If I was younger and contemplating what career direction to take I would consider nuclear engineering.
After the windmills are built and the solar panels are installed we are going to need to build something to supply us with constant energy.
Since very few people of this generation entered this field there will be a high demand for them in the coming years. It may be 10 years in the future, but it will come.

RE: Nuclear

In the UK it's starting already, but they are being very fussy about who they take on. If you have appropriate skills but in aerospace not nuclear there currently seems to be something of a barrier. On the other hand I think they are having trouble filling certain jobs. It will be interesting to see how it pans out now that most of the old boys have retired.

RE: Nuclear

You could always try the US Navy for a few years??!!

You will get all the experience you want..

RE: Nuclear

I'll second the U.S. Navy program.  It's where I started 20 years ago.  The experience still provides me with an edge.

The most important aspect of any power energy field is a solid foundation in the understanding of energy (= thermodynamics).  Get this down cold, and you will be a tiger in any field you want to enter.

RE: Nuclear

(OP)
I strongly agree with the Navy, but some people (like me) have medical restrictions that are prevented from going that route.

RE: Nuclear

Too bad.  In any case, I stand by my recommendation of getting a strong foundation of the essentials, regardless of the particulars of what field catches your fancy.

Anyone who enters a program saying "Make me into a solar/wind/nuclear engineer" is likely looking through too narrow a lens, and will be less prepared to take on the unforseen.

RE: Nuclear

I finished Navy Nuc School in 1972.  There is a huge percentage of stuff I learned there that I still use.  The thermo was so much more useful that the 6 hours of thermo I took in graduate school.

I got out of the industry in 1977 and never regretted the decision--the last 36 years have seen almost no new plants and the closing of a few plants.  In the '70s I saw the wrong side of too many picket lines as the Greenies saw Nuclear Power as the embodiment of evil.  It is funny to see the enviromental web sites pointing to Nuclear Power as a green alternative to Coal or Oil & Gas.

It is probably a great industry to be getting into, but my guess is that they'll ramp up way too quickly and make a bunch of bonehead design errors.  I guess the next generation will be busy fixing them.

David

RE: Nuclear

In my opinion and prediction I feel nuclear power for the masses will fall to the wayside.  Not until we figure out what to do with the nuclear waste, I don't think it is a viable option.  Also, the Chenobyal melt down and the disaster at 3 Mile Island left a bad taste with the public.  Has the USA even built a new nuclear plant in the past few years?  So Nuclear Engineering may be a good option to maintain the existing plants, but not for future work to create new nuclear plants (well in the USA).

Tobalcane
"If you avoid failure, you also avoid success."  

RE: Nuclear

I laughed when I saw a green commercial using nuclear plants as a source of pollution.  The open seen was with two cooling towers bellowing steam into the atmosphere and a narrator explaining that we should find alternative power sources so we can stop pollutions like this.   

Tobalcane
"If you avoid failure, you also avoid success."  

RE: Nuclear

Twoballcane, you must have missed the arguments about water vapor being a major green house gas.

Terrible stuff that gaseous dihydrogen monoxide.

http://www.dhmo.org/

I've seen a number of articles about nuke picking up again, I'm still a bit sceptical but you never know.

KENAT,

Have you reminded yourself of FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies recently, or taken a look at posting policies: http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

RE: Nuclear

Thanks Kenat, I stand corrected.

Tobalcane
"If you avoid failure, you also avoid success."  

RE: Nuclear

"Three Mile Island Disaster"?????????  No one was hurt.  No radiation was released to the atmosphere.  All of the safety shut downs worked as designed.  Where was the "disaster"?  Oh yeah, the media pandering to an environmental lobby that hated Nuclear Power.

Chernobyl was a different story.  Start with a horrible design, eliminate operator training, then stop paying the operators for months on end--the result really was a disaster.

The spent fuel problem is only still a problem because there hasn't been enough work done to turn it from a liability to an asset.  If the industry starts growing again, I will be shocked if there isn't a re-processing option to take the incredibly rare elements/isotopes that make up that "waste" and put it to profitable uses.

David

RE: Nuclear

We can't even find a place in Ontario, Canada, to dump household garbage. We ship to Michigan. Good luck finding a site for the spent nuclear fuel.

HAZOP at www.curryhydrocarbons.ca

RE: Nuclear

owg:  correction- we now have a landfill for Toronto's garbage near London, Ontario- no thanks to the Ontario government I might add- the Toronto council had to go out and BUY an existing landfill because a previous Ontario government spent $100 million on the Ontario Interim Waste Authority to NOT site a landfill in metro Toronto...  

Your point about the NIMBYism in relation to waste of all kinds, but nuclear waste in particular, is absolutely correct.  So instead of finding a safe underground repository for it, we continue to store it at the plants themselves- right next to major population centres.  What the NIMBYs forget is that the "do nothing" alternative ALWAYS comes with a risk too...

As to a career in nuclear:  guaranteed there will be some new nukers built.  But this is a pidgeon-hole industry like no other- fickle and subject to the whims of politicians.  It's the very LAST thing I'd personally want to specialize in.  When one's out of work, they all are...

RE: Nuclear

Even if you are not eligible to serve in the navy, there may be opportunities to work for them as a civilian.  You would need a degree.

RE: Nuclear

Yes I agree there were no "nuclear disaster", however, the fall out from this accident did hurt the surrounding communities in terms of real estate price dropping and businesses leaving.  Because of this, it left a bad taste in many Americans.  If anybody wants to build a Nuclear Plant, I am sure the phrase "not in my backyard" will take on new meaning.  Also, nothing is bullet proof.  It is not "if", but "when" a nuclear disaster will happen in the USA.  Many of the nuclear plants are many years old; it is all just a matter of frequency to failure.

Tobalcane
"If you avoid failure, you also avoid success."  

RE: Nuclear

If you look at the other side of the coin from power generation there is a growing business in decommissioning. The IMechE did an article about a year (or so) ago about the cost of decommissioning being about £2bn per plant...several hundred plants needing decommissioning - voila good jobs for the next 50-100 years! Skill sets very similar to those for operating plants - safety managment, hazard analysis, health physics, maintenance, construction + demolition etc.

New build in the UK will eventually happen but the going is very slow. I believe that the USA has 17 licence applications for new build so maybe you guys will see it before us. EdF has just bought British Energy (presumably as a precursor to new build since the most obvious location for new build is on existing licenced sites...)

Yours optimistically, HM

 

No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary - William of Occam

RE: Nuclear


With the new US administration announcing surprisingly conservative appointments (at least middle of the road) in key positions, nuclear may get the continued boost it needs. And there may no other viable option if the promise of shutting down the coal industry is kept.

RE: Nuclear

Just listened to a lady engineer from the nuclear industry on the radio today arguing for the need for nuclear power.
Arraigned against her were two greens.

Predictably, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island were mentioned.
Then they claimed that Nuclear was too expensive. They said we shouldn't have to subsidise it. They didn't mention that wind turbines carry a big subsidy and she was too savvy to use that argument, she remarked instead that France has the cheapest electricity in Europe.

She was sharp, knew all the answers, even pandered to the Green lobby by allowing that wind turbines were a good idea but as part of the package.

Then they said building nuclear power stations was to expensive for private companies and why should the government have to pay.

She pointed out that in Finland private nuclear power was going ahead and that EDF wanted to build nuclear power stations in the UK.

Terrorists could crash planes onto them... she pointed out that they were and always had been designed as proof against Jumbo jets being crashed onto them.

There would be a proliferation of material suitable for bomb making that could fall into the hands of terrorists.... different technology, she said.

Toward the end of the program she was still calm and collected and shooting down every bit of nonsense they trotted out and they were reduced to shouting.

She had all the answers lined up and I guess she must have been drawing on all her years of experience dealing with nitwits. But oh how futile it all must have seemed to her since even as she answered their objections you knew they weren't listening. AT any minute I expected them to claim she was in the pay of the evil oil consortia.



 

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
 

RE: Nuclear

Coming back to the original post about whether its a good industry to go into, and my comment:

> On the other hand I think they are having trouble filling certain jobs. It will be interesting to see how it pans out now that most of the old boys have retired.

I was hired by a 'nuclear company' a couple of months ago despite a predominantly aerospace background.

It looks like some nuclear companies are willing to go outside to get engineers. I have to stress that 3/4 of similar companies turned me down, so maybe my recent experience is a fluke.

gwolf
 

RE: Nuclear

zdas04:
2 of your 3 claims re: TMI  are not technically accurate.

Also, the planned new nuke plants will likely experience a lot of design+ construction delays. For example the TVO Olkiluoto ( Finland)plant  is 3 yrs behind schedule, in a situation with no backlog on the suppliers. Just imagine 30 new units in the pipeline ; the resulting delays will run into the decades. customers with $10-20 billion dollar loans had better figure on a very late unit startup and the impact on their ability to payback the loan.

RE: Nuclear

OK, which statements were not accurate, and what are you basing your opinion on?

RE: Nuclear

zdas04 - you said no radioactivity was released...

43000 Curies of Krypton was/were released from the plant's auxiliary building to relieve pressure on the primary system and avoid curtailing the flow of coolant to the core

NRC factsheet: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/3mile-isle.html

Regards, HM

No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary - William of Occam

RE: Nuclear

zdas04:

The NRC may have some credibility in this area. The following link is a short summary of the publically available information:

<http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/3mile-isle.html>

The are more fascinating, unofficial summaries based on interviews with plant personnel to be found on the web, and also discussions with engineers associated with the plant and its suppliers that were involved inthe aftermath .

But overall, the excellent record of the industry after the accident owes some credit to the recognition of  the failures of operators, the safety equipment, and the engineering design faults that cause the TMI accident. It does not help prevent future accidents if we forget what actually happened at TMI- as that generation retires and the new generation moves away from reading paper records and moves toward the fictional web displays of what we want to believe, some of those learned lessons are bound to be lost.

RE: Nuclear

There's a book called "Normal Accidents" by Charles Perrow which makes pretty interesting reading. His thesis is that if we design complex systems which are tightly coupled then accidents are inevitable. I don't agree with everything he says but as i said it's an interesting approach from a non-engineer.

Regards, HM

No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary - William of Occam

RE: Nuclear

Don't think that there really was 43,000 Curries of Krypton released.  There was some amount of radiation released to the atmosphere, but Krypton is a pretty rare fission product and to get to that level of radiation from Krypton alone would require the whole eastern seaboard to be glowing over all of the dead bodies.  The NRC report said

Quote:

Detailed studies of the radiological consequences of the accident have been conducted by the NRC, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (now Health and Human Services), the Department of Energy, and the State of Pennsylvania. Several independent studies have also been conducted. Estimates are that the average dose to about 2 million people in the area was only about 1 millirem. To put this into context, exposure from a full set of chest x-rays is about 6 millirem. Compared to the natural radioactive background dose of about 100-125 millirem per year for the area, the collective dose to the community from the accident was very small. The maximum dose to a person at the site boundary would have been less than 100 millirem.

In the months following the accident, although questions were raised about possible adverse effects from radiation on human, animal, and plant life in the TMI area, none could be directly correlated to the accident. Thousands of environmental samples of air, water, milk, vegetation, soil, and foodstuffs were collected by various groups monitoring the area. Very low levels of radionuclides could be attributed to releases from the accident. However, comprehensive investigations and assessments by several well-respected organizations have concluded that in spite of serious damage to the reactor, most of the radiation was contained and that the actual release had negligible effects on the physical health of individuals or the environment.

So I guess I should have said that the "released radiation was less than background" which sounds very much like "none" or "a fraction of what a Denver resident gets every day" to me but then I've been out of the industry for a long time.

David
 

RE: Nuclear

I grew up in Cornwall.  Granite buildings, radon.

- Steve

RE: Nuclear

Wikipedia says "It is estimated that a maximum of 13 million curies (480 petabecquerels) of radioactive noble gases were released by the event"

Argonne National Laboratory Factsheet gives 50000 Curies of Krypton...

Probably somewhere between the two!

Fission yield of Kr85 is 0.3% - 3.1E10 fissions per second to produce 1 Watt, TMI was 800MW so you get 0.003 multiplied by 2.4E18 fissions per second gives 7.2E15 (roughly)atoms of Kr85 per second. 3.15E6 seconds per year gives 1.067kg per year held within the cladding. Specific activity is 400 Ci/g so 4E5 Ci per year produced.

About a third of the fuel melted so the figures of 50000 sounds reasonable.

zdas04 you said "that level of radiation from Krypton alone would require the whole eastern seaboard to be glowing over all of the dead bodies" - don't confuse inventory with the dose. Kr85 is predominantly a beta emitter and they spread the dose calculation over a population of 30000

Regards, HM

  

No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary - William of Occam

RE: Nuclear

Second paragraph in opens with:

Quote:

There's a catch, though: the private capital market isn't investing in new nuclear plants, and
without financing, capitalist utilities aren't buying.
which, for a December 2008 publication date is hardly accurate or is at least misleading.
EDF, the French power Utility is investing and we have previously noted that there are others also privately funded.
An auspicious start for the document.
 

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
 

RE: Nuclear

capitalist utilities ?????

Bad utility, Bad utility. Shame on you.

RE: Nuclear

"Capitalist" Oh I missed that tell-tale as to the motivation of this document. Shame on me!
My Bad.  

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
 

RE: Nuclear

This is a great read.
I liked:

Quote:

And the long-pronuclear British government, abruptly reversing its well-reasoned 2002 policy, has decided to replace its old nuclear plants with new ones, although, it claims, without public subsidy3
which is the first I'd heard that Labour were pro-nuclear, having amongst its membership some of the most well known anti-nuclear politicians of the age. What they really mean is that Phony Tony made this choice all by himself. But he has also committed the UK to a huge CO2 reduction and a huge Wind Power Program.... which will cost a small fortune and which is heavily subsidised.Incidentally, it is nice how they gloss over the problems of wind farms saying:

Quote:

The investments needed to manage central-thermal-plant intermittence (nuclear
or fossil-fueled) have already been made and paid for. It is therefore hard to understand
why the occasional and predictable becalming of wind farms or clouding of solar cells over a
much smaller time and space, offset by higher output from statistically complementary renewable
resources of other kinds or in other locations, is a problem.
and:

Quote:

Yet there is no technical difference between variations in demand and in supply; they
are entirely fungible, and indeed onsite generation can be usefully considered a negative load.
Calm winds or cloudy skies last up to a few days in decent sites, but can be offset by complementary
renewables at the same sites or by any renewables at more distant sites. (The distance
needed for very uncorrelated output depends on regional geography and weather patterns, but is
typically many hundreds of km.) Yet whether a given solar roof, wind turbine, or wind farm is
working at a given moment is about as irrelevant to the system operator as whether a particular
big office building's chillers are on or off.
Hmm, I await clarification from the experts.
In the preprinted doc "Capitalist" is much used.
 

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
 

RE: Nuclear

While I am by no means an expert, spending our efforts improving end-use efficiency appears to be the way to go.  Too bad there's no lobby for it...



 

RE: Nuclear

IceNine, there is, at least kind of.  I see commercials on TV etc. about reducing use all the time & encouraging energy efficient appliances, maybe it's a California thing.  Many environmental groups lobby for improved standards etc., just look at all the fuss over CAFF.

Now if they'd be better spending more of their money on that and less on promoting 'renewable' energy is another matter.

KENAT,

Have you reminded yourself of FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies recently, or taken a look at posting policies: http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

RE: Nuclear

There's plenty of talk and precious little money spent on actually reducing consumption- because that would involve changing people's behaviours, attitudes and sense of entitlement to all the cheap energy they can squander.  Building neat new machines for billions of dollars is much sexier to a politician, much less to a utility!  Yeah, they both put in a nice PR effort, but their hearts aren't in it whatsoever.

I seem to remember Energy Probe or the like, years ago, calculating that it'd be cheaper by a fair bit to buy back every beer fridge and replace every residential refrigerator in Ontario with a brand new high efficiency unit than it would be to build a new nuker unit.  The supply/demand reductions were of similar magnitude.  

Yeah, you'd have to do the same again 20 years later, but the nukers are only given a 40 year life.  There'd be no "decomissioning" cost to worry about, and no nuclear waste either.

Still way better than burning coal, though.  People forget just how much radioactive carbon 13, potassium, radon etc. is released when you burn coal, along with all the mercury, microparticulates and CO2- even if the acid gases are dealt with properly.

RE: Nuclear

Well they are trying something simular here, except not with beer fridges. They are giving away swurly light bulbs, that when broken spread mercury, and other unknown chemicals everywhere (And cost 10 times as much to buy).

So if you don't like nukers, or coal, and solar and wind are unreliable, I guess that leaves us gas, oil, and hydroelectric. But hydroelectric hurts the fish. And oil and natural gas produce CO2.
How about we go back to wood to heat our boilers?

RE: Nuclear

I had a pellet stove for heat, my wife hated it. All the messy pellets, and having to feed it so much.
They say it is low ash, but they don't say that the ash sticks all over the burn chamber. Have to shut it down weekly to clean it.

RE: Nuclear

Hello,

Nuclear energy is the ONLY serious alternative that we have to oil. However, its not enough to keep us from becoming a third world everywhere.......

The  readily extractable oil, coal and gas  ('hydro-carbons' or 'fossil fuels') on our planet are nearly completely exhausted.

When oil has gone,  our wealth will go with it.

Deep lying hydrocarbon deposits remain. However, the extraction of this hydrocarbon is futile, since the energy expended in its extraction would simply be  greater than the energy given up by the hydrocarbon, in doing useful work. (eg powering electric generators and/or combustion engines etc etc)

Since solar and wind are  intermittent, they cannot alone  fulfill our energy needs.
It is also worth noting that solar and wind only supply electrical energy, they cannot be used  to power internal combustion engines (unlike oil).

To take benefit of solar and wind, the electricity must be put into an electricity grid network, or stored in batteries.

Nuclear energy is the ONLY alternative that we have to oil.

However,  when fossil fuels are gone, Nuclear  Power won't be able to power our society. It is simply too inflexible. The fact is that there are so many essential processes that require oil.

-Oil has the great advantage that it is easily transport-able and can be used to power internal combustion engines, and can produce electricity anywhere, (eg in off-grid locations) since it can be used to power remote , mobile electricity generators. Oil also gives us a large amount of energy for a relatively small volume of oil.

Think of a construction site where large buildings/structures/bridges/mine-shafts/tunnels are being  constructed...........
...Such sites require large earth moving machines, diggers, mobile cranes & hoists, pile drivers, earth drills....not to mention that the building materials need to be transported to the construction site
.....how will these things be powered by nuclear power?...............they won't....its simply not possible on a scale big enough for the requirements of our vastly populated earth.

We might try to use battery powered diggers and cranes etc............but there simply isn't enough of the chemicals which are needed to make batteries to be found on earth to allow us to produce enough batteries for our needs.

Not only that, -but how are we going to mine these rare battery chemicals when there is no oil to power the digging machinery in the mines?
Remember,  the chemicals we need to make batteries  aren't conveniently located in parts of the earth where the electricity grid exists to power digging machines.............even if it did......are we really saying that our digging apparatus would be practical with a huge electricity cable connected up to it?

Also, the energy that's needed to manufacture a battery and keep charging it back up as it discharges is enormous....something like 300 times the energy that the battery ever gives to us in its lifetime doing useful work.

Then there's  transportation (cars, lorries, boats and aeroplanes)
......Will we be able to power all these by battery?

The answer is no........ As stated above , there simply isn't enough battery chemical in the earth to make enough batteries for our needs..........even if there was, we would need oil to help us to mine it (dig it out).

Hydrogen has been put forward as an alternative to gasoline in cars. But a fuel supply lorry transporting hydrogen  from west side of  the USA to  the east would  have to use all its stored hydrogen in doing the journey....none being left to supply there-after.

Take a country like UK just for example. The UK hasn't got enough arable land to be able to provide food for its population. We rely on  vast transportation to bring foodstuffs in from abroad. –This will no longer be possible when oil has run out.

In the agricultural world, its known that agriculture is the act of using land to turn fossil-fuel into food, -such is its all-round, complete dependency on fossil fuel.
When oil runs out, we won't be able to get enough food to eat.

Think of a huge wind farm. Unfortunately those huge turbines impose a significant mechanical stress on the bearings and the wind-turbine eventually needs replacement of large parts. –How will this maintenance be done when we have no oil?...........with extreme difficulty..........cranes would be needed to hoist the  heavy equipment up to the top of the tower, and its already been stated that powering all the  cranes that we need with batteries is impracticable.

Another point is how will wars be fought when we have no oil?

Tanks, Jets, Battleships, Troop transporters need oil to power them.......Batteries just won't be practical in a war for powering tanks and the like......what sort of battery would be needed to run a tank?...........it would be enormous, would  be far too heavy, and when it ran out , we likely wouldn't be able to get the tank back to a re-charging place.

Life anything like  we know it without oil is simply not possible. There will be a severe drop in wealth all round. That's why the world's navys have been towing  mile long sonar arrays around the world's oceans for the last twenty years...-to see if there are  any oil-likely sites in sub-sea locations...........however, there have not been reports of significant findings.
 

RE: Nuclear

treez - you sure we're about to run out of coal?  Most estimates I see claim places like the US & UK have something like 200 years of coal left.

Of course some of that may be deep pit coal (you know, the industry that is all but extinct in the UK thanks to the last few wonderfull governments) but it's there, and the technology to extract it is proven.

Most of the 'alternative' energies are probably best suited to making electricity, even coal for that matter.

Oil & Gas, in their various processed forms, are indeed useful commodities for which there aren't obvious realistic replacements at present.

KENAT,

Have you reminded yourself of FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies recently, or taken a look at posting policies: http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?

RE: Nuclear

With enough electricity, we can synthesize all the fuel we want.  To me, that is what makes nuclear so attractive.

As more of the world goes nuclear, we will discover how precious and limited useable and accessible nuclear fuel really is.

Fusion is still a pipe dream.  Fission evolved quickly from experiment to weapon to power source to industry.  Fusion is stalled.  Still, it's a great dream, one worth pursuing.

That's one reason why projects like CERN are so important.  These bleeding edge experiments could yield new knowledge that could get us closer to abundant clean energy.

RE: Nuclear

Nuclear has a small bad problem, it is not very easy to ramp or follow loads with a nucular unit. That is one of the reasons they are used as base load units.

Coal has somewhat of a simular problem in that it dosen't ramp up and down very well. So they are used just above the base load of the nuclear units.

Gas, oil, hydro units usually are much better at ramping up and down to follow the load, and are used as such. But there is a limited amounted of hydro, and you are saying we are running out of gas and oil.

How about we make bio-gas and continue with the technologys we have until a more workable solution comes along.
Hydrogen can be part of that, but is much harder to store, than methane.

Interesting enough, partial burning of wood or coal will produce a gas that can be used in a gas turban, which has a fast enough ramp speed for load following.

Another option is time of use rates to encurage better load smoothing which would make nuclear a better option than it is now.

RE: Nuclear

One of my favorite quotes:

"The most striking thing about modern industry is that it requires so much and accomplishes so little. Modern industry seems to be inefficient to a degree that surpasses one's ordinary powers of imagination. Its inefficiency therefore remains unnoticed."

Can anyone guess who?

RE: Nuclear

IceNine, I can't identify, but I will name a few likely candidates:

Jeremy Rifkin
Amory Lovins
Algore
?

RE: Nuclear

I'll google for it but it is far too literate to be a modern politician or meeja junkie (tautology there).

I'm guessing Edison.

Well, that was a bad guess. The actual writer hasn't really had much influence on things.


 

Cheers

Greg Locock

SIG:Please see FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

RE: Nuclear

Just a couple of points, as I am no energy expert:
1.  Nuclear power is a lot more "flexible" if combined with hydro in pumped storage projects.
2.  Really big "digging machines" (draglines) are already powered by huge power cables.  Not very mobile, but they dig out a lot of stuff before having to be moved.

RE: Nuclear

The problem with using pumped hydro to make Nuclear more flexable, is the wind power people are wanting to do the same thing. There just isen't enough pumped hydro available.
And no one has made a commitment to building very much more.

I suspect pumped hydro of larger sizes would be almost the same size undertaking as the Nuclear plants themselves. Not in technology, but in aquiring the usable land to do this. And the time it takes to build it.

RE: Nuclear

re pumped hydro - Let's guess that the pumping system is 75% efficient (say 80% impeller, 95% motor/generator and electronics). That means the pumped energy is only 56% of what you started with. In the LEV game we call this friction, it is why a Prius only posts respectable mpg, compared with a conventional car of the same performance and capacity. It is also why the optimal cruising speed of a solar car is a band rather than a fixed figure - if the sun shines a little brighter it is worth increasing your speed rather than taking the losses involved in putting the energy into the battery and back out again.


 

Cheers

Greg Locock

SIG:Please see FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

RE: Nuclear

As stated in other threads, there are other methods to store electrical energy. All have a 50% to 75% range which must be figured into $ costs.

I still feel time of use rates, and education will acheve some usage shifting, which is probally better than the storage thing. But it won't completly erase the need for storage of peaking generation.

 

RE: Nuclear

Are nuclear power plants really that bad at following the load, or were they just built that way because it was the cheapest and all the other guys could handle the load swings anyway. What do they do in France which I believe has 80% or more nuclear power? Maybe Germany, Switzerland, and Spain handle the swings for them?

HAZOP at www.curryhydrocarbons.ca

RE: Nuclear

Steam plants in general are not that great at following load swings. They can do it, but they suffer added problems and costs (parts changing size with tempeture shifts, etc.). And sutting one down daily is even worse.
Gas turbans suffer the same issues, but the fuel costs to keep them running tend to outweigh the re-start up costs.

From what I've seen hydro units seem to suffer the least from re-starts, but typical of some hydro units is the 8 hour shuit down time for them to come to rest.

IC engines probally are not to bad on re-start costs, but they suffer from a size issue to date.

RE: Nuclear

larger load generation variations are to be expected with the increase in wind and solar renewable resources. For example, in the ERCOT region (Texas)in Feb 07 there was an uncontrolled  loss of 1500 MWe in 2 hrs due to a large wind farm  overspeed event- once the wind speed exceeds 50 mph, the wind turbine shuts off, and all units in the same geographical area shut down at the same time as the wind exceeded 50 mph. This forced the isolated ERCOT grid to rapidly bring online whatever capacity is available to offset this loss.

The the double whammy occurred- as the wind speed dropped to an allowable 50- mph, the turbines re-loaded , which caused too much capacity to be available- and this event may be the poster child for distribution system instability when using renewable resources. ( A similar event occurred in Europe a year earlier).

Europe has a lot of VP coal-fired once thru subcritical boilers which can change load very quickly- about 5% / minute,and they may be able to address the system disturbance better than the installed systems in the US. Also, their  method of heating homes ( radiant heating installed in concrete or ceramic tiled floors)has a long time constant, suitable for allowing "smart meters" to trip those consumers temporarily to offset loss of power generation- not so in the US.  The US mostly uses constant pressure drum type boilers, limited to about a 1.5% /minute rate of change of load, and most home consumers use forced air heating, much less suitable for reduction of system consumption due to a loss of generation .  

RE: Nuclear

I am not an expert on transportaion, nor would I say I'm very knowledgable in the energy/power fields...

However, one thing that struck me about what treez said was all the equipment that couldn't run on nuclear power. What about nuclear submarines? Couldn't a tank, airplane, etc be built on the same principles? Or does the sub use seawater for cooling which would not be as readily available for land/air use?

-- MechEng2005

RE: Nuclear

Quote:

Or does the sub use seawater for cooling which would not be as readily available for land/air use?

Ding!  Give the man 100 points.

RE: Nuclear

Also size, mass/weight & what happens in the event of a crash (or similar) are major factors.  Good reasons why nuclear powered aircraft aren't generally considered a good idea, despite significant research including a flying test bed.

KENAT,

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RE: Nuclear

I really don't think the sea water cooling is a requirment for nuclear power. I think a bigger issue is the masses required for shielding, and cooling equipment. An open fluid flow like sea water helps.

The almost 8 ft of concreate around most nuclear power reactors is probally the bigest limit to nuclear airplaines. Of course if you had no concerns for people, you woulden't need all that mass. Also steam plants don't do very well at moving air, unless you have large props.

Transportation fuel is a tough issue, but it looks like the best way to use nucular for this is nucular ships, and electric trains.

RE: Nuclear

There needs to be a heat sink of some sort.  Air-cooling could do it, but it's not nearly as efficient.

Ships are ideal for nuclear power becuase they can be built large enough to accomodate massive power plants.  I suppose a nuclear train isn't too far-fetched.

RE: Nuclear

The quote (Icenine some days ago) - its E. F. Schumacher - a German economist. Google is amazing - just feed the whole quote (incl the "") and bang1 smile

Best regards

Morten

RE: Nuclear

Any further discussion on nuclear plants' ability to follow load? The comment on the long time constant for European house heating was very interesting. However I am still trying to figure out how those "gas turbans" work that Cranky108 mentioned.

HAZOP at www.curryhydrocarbons.ca

RE: Nuclear

owg, you should be fimular with jet engine, which is basically the same thing. We tie it down add extra blades on the power end, and use the rotating shaft to turn a generator. (By we I mean we purchase to whole assimbly that way. We don't build them).
The problem is they don't work with solid fuels.

RE: Nuclear

So I can't spell.

RE: Nuclear

I hear the Russians may be developing a ushanka scram jet.  Will this arms race never end?

RE: Nuclear

The arms race dosen't appear to be ending, just the players increasing in numbers. So we have to be prepaired for the next threat.

What ever happened to atomic batteries, and what radioactive elements can they be made from?

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