I've been binge listening to mark's interviews for the past few days. Truly one of my favorite nuclear advocates. Great balance between banter, spicy takes and energy erudition.
Glad you love him! You'll be happy to know we are having him back on the podcast this Thursday! (video will probably come out Friday, though you can usually catch episodes sooner in podcast form on Spotify or wherever)
The premature closure of San Onofre was a national shame to those who collaborated to make it happen, NRC and PG&E in particular, but with lots of support from other interests including the State of California. It was and is an absolute disgrace and a complete failure of ethical leadership in multiple organizations.
Need to press "like button", but not because "i like" the thing... So many reasons that premature closures are wrong, when will the wake up realization come?
A quick comment on NPP immortality for molten salt based fission reactors, many of those take a replacement approach that is extremely effective. Some reactor core designs accumulate significant irradiation damage over time, rather than making colossal investments to avoid the irradiation damage, they incorporate periodic vessel replacement into the design as a cheaper alternative. The physics of MS based NPP's are such that the cores are very small, thin-walled and light-weight relative to light water reactors. The MSR cores are easily replaced at an acceptable cost and you can keep doing that for as long as you chose to.
MSRs are the best design in terms of safety and economics with built-in refurbishments. No pressure only high temperature and just like CANDUs can be designed to produce medical isotopes along with power production.
Interesting. How does the core replacement factor in into the operating cost of the overall MSR? I assume it is far from easy to replace the reactor core. And why can't we replace the reactor pressure vessel in LWR? Is it too expensive to do so?
@@oceanflyer7078 As an example of the least cost approach, I have a pet design that is intended to power a 1000 MWe nuclear power plant. The total mass of the core when empty is 40 tonnes and I estimate that as a production item , nth of a kind is around USD 5M. Lets say that a full core replacement costs $10M and for various reasons we do that every two years (normally seven years). That would cost $0.001/kWh or 0.1c/kWh.
@@oceanflyer7078 For LWR's the vessels are massive in size and in weight. The logistics of making them, shipping them and installing them into an existing plant are all very challenging, mostly due to the size and weight of the vessels. The reactor vessel for the EPR reactor (a new large design) is ~5.4m in dia, 13 m tall and weighs 780 tonnes with walls 250 mm (10") thick. Yes you probably could replace them but it is a much challenging proposition than changing out a MSR core which is smaller and much lighter. As I understand it LWR cores are probably good for 60 - 80 years service, possibly more, so there should be no need to replace, just retire the plant at end of core life whenever that happens, which won't be based on simple years of service as Mark discussed in this video.
@@lindsaydempsey5683 I've always thought that it was technically impossible to swap a large LWR reactor vessel without destroying the containment building -that's why the Russians opted for in situ annealing as Mark mentioned. I imagine that the shear size and weight of the pressure vessel makes it impossible to lift it with, say, the internal polar crane. As a side note, I've also always imagined (although I have never heard it being stressed) that light-water SMRs had the additional advantage of being replaceable exactly for this reason.
I am looking forward to the Amory Lovins subject interview with Mark Nelson. I’ve picked up several of his old publications in used bookstores. I saw him speak years ago at Oberlin College . I believe I still have a copy of his post 2000 book “ Ending the oil Endgame ”
Mark Taylor is so supra-versive! He goes from the fundamentals of energy underpinning politics, then to the satellite-view of things above horizons of nation states and corporatee cartels, to see realities above political biasing. Very useful, compelling and rare.
I wish you would have talked about Swedish ASEA Atom reactors in this episode, they're especially interesting since they're bolted rather than welded, and could likely be actually immortal.
Samples of the actual steel and welds used to construct the reactor vessel for U.S. plants were taken during manufacture and were placed in capsules installed on the inside surface of the reactor vessel at locations where neutron bombardment is most intense. Periodically, some of the samples are removed from the capsule and tested to assess the extent of their embrittlement. So far, the reactor vessels in Western-designed plants are doing fine. One of the reasons for that is we designed in large water gaps between the core and the vessel wall. The water slows down most of the neutrons, reducing the extent of embrittlement. The Soviets did not have the technical capability to build vessels as large as those in the West, so the reactor cores in their older plants are much closer to the walls of their reactor vessels. Those plants have problems with embrittlement. The Soviets and their successors developed a solution to restore the ductility of their reactor-vessel walls. They built large cylindrical heating elements, something like a toaster element, that fit closely inside the reactor vessel. They periodically remove the reactor core and all of the internal structures, install the heating element, and anneal the reactor vessel in place to reverse the embrittlement. In the 1990s there was some concern that U.S. plants might eventually experience enough embrittlement to have a problem, and some work was done with the post-Soviet Russians to understand how they do it and to begin to adapt the technology for use in our plants. The work was eventually stopped when it became apparent that annealing would not be needed for a very long time, if ever.
The 40-year initial license period for nuclear reactors was not selected based on some deep, careful, or philosophical or technical thinking. In the early days, the AEC had to come up with licensing regulations for nuclear reactors. The federal government did not license power plants, so they didn't have any direct precedents to fall back on. The AEC looked around and realized that the government did license large dams, and those licenses were issued for an initial period of 40 years which could be renewed subject to a satisfactory safety review. The AEC reasoned that nuclear plants were similar to dams in that they were significant undertakings with safety significance, so the dam licensing model was adopted as a starting point and then adapted to their own needs.
The blades of the compressor section of an industrial gas turbine have very long lives because they do not see high temperatures. However, the first two rows of turbine blades downstream of the combustion chanbers are inspected roughly every year and replaced about every three years. The timing depends on how often the turbine operates and how many starts and stops it experiences. Typically the lifetime is 25,000 full-power equivalent hours, and starts and stops use up a certain number of equivalent hours. The high-temperature blades are very sophisticated and very expensive: individual blades are made from metal blanks specially cast as one single crystal of metal, they have an insulating coating applied, and cool air is blown through passages inside them to reduce their temperatures.
One day I would like to hear Mark Taylor and Matthew Ehret comparing world-views and a sense of Civilizatiion energy, economy and environment grand challenges.
21:02 A problem exacerbating risk due to high pressure containment. I believe he is talking about Hydrogen embrittlement? ThorCon's 500MWe (high temperature; near ambient pressure; walk-away safe load-following), avoids this by replacing the small nuclear steel pot every 4 years, (which shuts down one of the 250MW turbines overnight) while the salts are pumped into the new pot which is located alongside the previously active pot. (This maintenance procedure also replaces the 4 year old graphite moderator and pump impeller) - thats it - 8 hour slow down every 4 years.
You may care to investigate Indonesia's MoU & PPA agreement with ThorCon for 8× 500MWe TMSRs; the first of which is to be located on one of the Bungka Islands, known for it's mining and smelting metal like Tin etc. The first unit will be built in a Korean double-hulled bulk-carrier experienced shipbuilding yard in less than 10 months; completely fitted out (without it's fuel salts) and towed barge-like to the Java sea at an expected Capital cost of between $800 to $1000 per kiloWatt at the expense of ThorCon. The only financial cost to Indonesia will be for site preparation and linking to the grid, to provide a pre-profit levelised cost of less than $30 per MegaWatt.hr (
I kinda wonder why not just drop them deep underwater and run them as long as possible? Design them to fail non-catastrophically and make the worse case failure basically a non-issue. Seems like a self-contained, non-serviceable design would be worth huge penalties in thermal efficiency.
@@peredavi idea has been around for a while. Several companies operators or plan to operate with disposable reactor cores. There are designs for fully sealed reactors. I don't see how nuclear can ever win if any failure at all is viewed as an existential threat to the entire industry. Unless we can break that idea it's going to be real hard to be cost-competitive moving forward.
The Vast cost of decommissioning, Large Nuclear needs addressing. At the moment governments have to bear the entire massive cost of decommissioning & remediation. There may come a time in future, when central governments with huge budgets no longer exist, thanks to much reduced population numbers, climate change & living within our means on renewable type energy sources. In that brave New world, we may not have the money or manpower to safely decommission, Large Nuclear. Any plan to massively increase the use of Large Nuclear or Small Modular Reactors, needs to take this into account. Otherwise, we may find we are burdening future generations & smaller populations with a toxic unsustainable legacy, that is impossible to deal with...
I've been binge listening to mark's interviews for the past few days. Truly one of my favorite nuclear advocates. Great balance between banter, spicy takes and energy erudition.
Glad you love him! You'll be happy to know we are having him back on the podcast this Thursday! (video will probably come out Friday, though you can usually catch episodes sooner in podcast form on Spotify or wherever)
French guy here, Mark you are a gem
Damn that prediction about war in Europe was deadly accurate :o
The premature closure of San Onofre was a national shame to those who collaborated to make it happen, NRC and PG&E in particular, but with lots of support from other interests including the State of California. It was and is an absolute disgrace and a complete failure of ethical leadership in multiple organizations.
Need to press "like button", but not because "i like" the thing... So many reasons that premature closures are wrong, when will the wake up realization come?
these interviews are so insanely valuable for someone just getting into nuclear engineering
A quick comment on NPP immortality for molten salt based fission reactors, many of those take a replacement approach that is extremely effective. Some reactor core designs accumulate significant irradiation damage over time, rather than making colossal investments to avoid the irradiation damage, they incorporate periodic vessel replacement into the design as a cheaper alternative. The physics of MS based NPP's are such that the cores are very small, thin-walled and light-weight relative to light water reactors. The MSR cores are easily replaced at an acceptable cost and you can keep doing that for as long as you chose to.
MSRs are the best design in terms of safety and economics with built-in refurbishments. No pressure only high temperature and just like CANDUs can be designed to produce medical isotopes along with power production.
Interesting. How does the core replacement factor in into the operating cost of the overall MSR? I assume it is far from easy to replace the reactor core. And why can't we replace the reactor pressure vessel in LWR? Is it too expensive to do so?
@@oceanflyer7078 As an example of the least cost approach, I have a pet design that is intended to power a 1000 MWe nuclear power plant. The total mass of the core when empty is 40 tonnes and I estimate that as a production item , nth of a kind is around USD 5M. Lets say that a full core replacement costs $10M and for various reasons we do that every two years (normally seven years). That would cost $0.001/kWh or 0.1c/kWh.
@@oceanflyer7078 For LWR's the vessels are massive in size and in weight. The logistics of making them, shipping them and installing them into an existing plant are all very challenging, mostly due to the size and weight of the vessels. The reactor vessel for the EPR reactor (a new large design) is ~5.4m in dia, 13 m tall and weighs 780 tonnes with walls 250 mm (10") thick. Yes you probably could replace them but it is a much challenging proposition than changing out a MSR core which is smaller and much lighter. As I understand it LWR cores are probably good for 60 - 80 years service, possibly more, so there should be no need to replace, just retire the plant at end of core life whenever that happens, which won't be based on simple years of service as Mark discussed in this video.
@@lindsaydempsey5683 I've always thought that it was technically impossible to swap a large LWR reactor vessel without destroying the containment building -that's why the Russians opted for in situ annealing as Mark mentioned. I imagine that the shear size and weight of the pressure vessel makes it impossible to lift it with, say, the internal polar crane.
As a side note, I've also always imagined (although I have never heard it being stressed) that light-water SMRs had the additional advantage of being replaceable exactly for this reason.
I am looking forward to the Amory Lovins subject interview with Mark Nelson. I’ve picked up several of his old publications in used bookstores. I saw him speak years ago at Oberlin College . I believe I still have a copy of his post 2000 book “ Ending the oil Endgame ”
Mark Taylor is so supra-versive!
He goes from the fundamentals of energy underpinning politics, then to the satellite-view of things above horizons of nation states and corporatee cartels, to see realities above political biasing.
Very useful, compelling and rare.
Amazing podcast to come by! Looking forward to more episodes.
I wish you would have talked about Swedish ASEA Atom reactors in this episode, they're especially interesting since they're bolted rather than welded, and could likely be actually immortal.
Who would have thought North American "Can-do" could be so Canadian Candu!"
Fracing amazing!
Samples of the actual steel and welds used to construct the reactor vessel for U.S. plants were taken during manufacture and were placed in capsules installed on the inside surface of the reactor vessel at locations where neutron bombardment is most intense. Periodically, some of the samples are removed from the capsule and tested to assess the extent of their embrittlement. So far, the reactor vessels in Western-designed plants are doing fine. One of the reasons for that is we designed in large water gaps between the core and the vessel wall. The water slows down most of the neutrons, reducing the extent of embrittlement.
The Soviets did not have the technical capability to build vessels as large as those in the West, so the reactor cores in their older plants are much closer to the walls of their reactor vessels. Those plants have problems with embrittlement. The Soviets and their successors developed a solution to restore the ductility of their reactor-vessel walls. They built large cylindrical heating elements, something like a toaster element, that fit closely inside the reactor vessel. They periodically remove the reactor core and all of the internal structures, install the heating element, and anneal the reactor vessel in place to reverse the embrittlement.
In the 1990s there was some concern that U.S. plants might eventually experience enough embrittlement to have a problem, and some work was done with the post-Soviet Russians to understand how they do it and to begin to adapt the technology for use in our plants. The work was eventually stopped when it became apparent that annealing would not be needed for a very long time, if ever.
The 40-year initial license period for nuclear reactors was not selected based on some deep, careful, or philosophical or technical thinking. In the early days, the AEC had to come up with licensing regulations for nuclear reactors. The federal government did not license power plants, so they didn't have any direct precedents to fall back on. The AEC looked around and realized that the government did license large dams, and those licenses were issued for an initial period of 40 years which could be renewed subject to a satisfactory safety review. The AEC reasoned that nuclear plants were similar to dams in that they were significant undertakings with safety significance, so the dam licensing model was adopted as a starting point and then adapted to their own needs.
The blades of the compressor section of an industrial gas turbine have very long lives because they do not see high temperatures. However, the first two rows of turbine blades downstream of the combustion chanbers are inspected roughly every year and replaced about every three years. The timing depends on how often the turbine operates and how many starts and stops it experiences. Typically the lifetime is 25,000 full-power equivalent hours, and starts and stops use up a certain number of equivalent hours. The high-temperature blades are very sophisticated and very expensive: individual blades are made from metal blanks specially cast as one single crystal of metal, they have an insulating coating applied, and cool air is blown through passages inside them to reduce their temperatures.
One day I would like to hear Mark Taylor and Matthew Ehret comparing world-views and a sense of Civilizatiion energy, economy and environment grand challenges.
21:02 A problem exacerbating risk due to high pressure containment. I believe he is talking about Hydrogen embrittlement?
ThorCon's 500MWe (high temperature; near ambient pressure; walk-away safe load-following), avoids this by replacing the small nuclear steel pot every 4 years, (which shuts down one of the 250MW turbines overnight) while the salts are pumped into the new pot which is located alongside the previously active pot.
(This maintenance procedure also replaces the 4 year old graphite moderator and pump impeller) - thats it - 8 hour slow down every 4 years.
You may care to investigate Indonesia's MoU & PPA agreement with ThorCon for 8× 500MWe TMSRs; the first of which is to be located on one of the Bungka Islands, known for it's mining and smelting metal like Tin etc.
The first unit will be built in a Korean double-hulled bulk-carrier experienced shipbuilding yard in less than 10 months; completely fitted out (without it's fuel salts) and towed barge-like to the Java sea at an expected Capital cost of between $800 to $1000 per kiloWatt at the expense of ThorCon.
The only financial cost to Indonesia will be for site preparation and linking to the grid, to provide a pre-profit levelised cost of less than $30 per MegaWatt.hr (
1:03:50 it wasn't just re-bars; they cut post tensioning high tensile confining tendons. What doctor would cut an Archillies tendon?
I love this podcast so much
Wonderful session. [Onassis was the Greek guy . . .???] Where is everyone ???!!!!
Theseus was the greek guy :)
Some parts of conventional nuclear reactors are unremovable and hence define a circa 40-year lifespan of the conventional nuclear reactors.
I kinda wonder why not just drop them deep underwater and run them as long as possible? Design them to fail non-catastrophically and make the worse case failure basically a non-issue. Seems like a self-contained, non-serviceable design would be worth huge penalties in thermal efficiency.
?…..
@@peredavi idea has been around for a while. Several companies operators or plan to operate with disposable reactor cores. There are designs for fully sealed reactors.
I don't see how nuclear can ever win if any failure at all is viewed as an existential threat to the entire industry. Unless we can break that idea it's going to be real hard to be cost-competitive moving forward.
Didn't know that nuclear fusion affect s metal and most reactors are under very extremely high pressure when running
The Vast cost of decommissioning, Large Nuclear needs addressing. At the moment governments have to bear the entire massive cost of decommissioning & remediation. There may come a time in future, when central governments with huge budgets no longer exist, thanks to much reduced population numbers, climate change & living within our means on renewable type energy sources. In that brave New world, we may not have the money or manpower to safely decommission, Large Nuclear. Any plan to massively increase the use of Large Nuclear or Small Modular Reactors, needs to take this into account. Otherwise, we may find we are burdening future generations & smaller populations with a toxic unsustainable legacy, that is impossible to deal with...
9:57
Were the mustaches planned this way?
"I shit you not" Mark Taylor.
I wonder what the equivalent in France is?
Je ne te chie pas.
Je ne te trompe pas
je ne t'excède pas