PeterDonis said:This assumes that (a) such "right" people exist at all, and (b) the government will act appropriately on their advice. But the experience you describe suggests that (a) is rare, and (b) virtually impossible.
Technical experts can take guidance from nontechnical masters, yet still retain the decision making power.PeterDonis said:But if the thing to be decided is "how should country A generate energy?", that is not a technical question (although answers to a bunch of technical questions can certainly be relevant to it). It's a social question. Technical experts are not any better qualified to decide social questions just because they're technical experts.
This might work ok if the issue is technical, but those kinds of issues are the easy ones. The hard issues are social issues, not technical issues, and, as I said, technical experts don't have any special expertise on such issues. Indeed, I'm not sure anyone has special expertise on such issues, certainly not when it comes to imposing rules on society as a whole. Your Enron gaming example illustrate what happens when that is tried. I don't think "leaving it to the experts" would have helped because there aren't any experts in the social issue that was in play.anorlunda said:Technical experts can take guidance from nontechnical masters, yet still retain the decision making power.
But the major brouhaha is not because those are the only times the FDA makes bad decisions; it's just because that particular kind of bad decision is much more newsworthy given the incentives of the media. When the FDA delays authorization of beta blockers for ten years in the US as compared to Europe, thereby causing, according to their own numbers on beta blocker effectiveness, well over 100,000 fatal heart attacks that could have been prevented, nobody hears about it; but bad decisions like that are arguably even more costly overall than the ones that get the media hype.anorlunda said:On the Federal level, Congress delegated drug decision power to technical experts at FDA. Every time a bureaucrat, or a President, overrides decisions of the experts, a major brouhaha results.
I could argue that it actually is a technical question. If we take the constitutions of most stable democracies at face value then politicians should merely be the "managers" of the will of their electorate, so the electorate decides that say 50% of it wants to "stay as is" and 50% wants only renewables.PeterDonis said:But if the thing to be decided is "how should country A generate energy?", that is not a technical question (although answers to a bunch of technical questions can certainly be relevant to it). It's a social question. Technical experts are not any better qualified to decide social questions just because they're technical experts.
But if we take those constitutions at face value, the electorate does not vote on individual issues (except in the rare case of a direct referendum). The electorate only votes for representatives. There might be opinion polls taken by private entities on various issues, but those aren't part of the constitution and elected representatives have no constitutional duty to pay any attention to them.artis said:If we take the constitutions of most stable democracies at face value then politicians should merely be the "managers" of the will of their electorate
While I don't disagree with this as a description of the typical outcome, I don't think the reason is quite what you say. I think the reason is simpler: since people only vote for representatives, not on individual issues, and since any individual's vote has only a very, very small chance of being the actual deciding vote in any given election, and since obtaining accurate information on what candidates will do in office on every issue is very costly, voters rationally choose not to bother, and base their votes on very simple and easily findable characteristics like political party affiliation or declared positions on a single "hot button" issue. Since those things correlate only very weakly, if at all, with actual effectiveness, we get governments that are very ineffective and wasteful.artis said:The typical outcome is that the politician/s does neither of what society wants nor what the experts say.
US scientists reach long-awaited nuclear fusion breakthrough, source says
Well CNN couldn't waitImager said:I read the actual announcement is tomorrow. (Tuesday, 12/13)
https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-backed-high-tech-nuclear-150539075.htmlNot quite true - Fusion Is Nuclear Power Without the Meltdowns and Radioactive WasteWASHINGTON (Reuters) -A high-tech nuclear energy project in Wyoming, backed by the U.S. Department of Energy and Bill Gates, is delayed by at least two years and a U.S. senator said it showed that the United States needs to reduce reliance on Russia for a special fuel for such reactors.
TerraPower, a venture founded by billionaire Gates said last year its $4 billion Natrium plant would be built in Kemmerer, a remote Wyoming town where a coal plant is set to shut in 2025. The 345-megawatt plant will likely be delayed for at least two years until 2030, the Casper Star Tribune said late on Tuesday, citing a TerraPower spokesperson.
The original EGS4 implementation in FLUKA was progressively modified, substituded with new algorithms and increasingly integrated with the hadronic and the muon components of FLUKA, giving rise to a very different code, called EMF (Electro-Magnetic-Fluka). In 2005, the last remaining EGS routine has been eliminated, although some of the structures still remind of the original EGS4 implementation.
What research was using protons?dlgoff said:Astronuc
One of the coolest things I did while at the University of Kansas was working with the 4 MEV proton van de graaff accelerator.
Astronuc said:What research was using protons?
Kapton was invented by the DuPont Corporation in the 1960s.
Westinghouse Electric Company announced on March 14 that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved the use of the company’s Advanced Doped Pellet Technology (ADOPT) fuel pellets in U.S. pressurized water reactors. That approval brings the company closer to loading lead test assemblies containing ADOPT accident tolerant fuel pellets in Unit 2 of Southern Nuclear’s Vogtle plant.
Lead test plans: Southern Nuclear announced in January 2022 that it had signed an agreement to load four lead test assemblies into Vogtle-2 in “the first planned installation of enrichments of uranium-235 greater than 5 weight percent in a domestic commercial reactor.” According to Westinghouse, the agreement calls for “licensing and manufacturing in 2023.”
High-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) includes uranium enriched to between 5 and 19.75 percent U-235, above the traditional 5 percent threshold for commercial reactors. The fuel pellets that are to be installed at Vogtle-2 contain uranium enriched to 6 percent—1 percent higher than the current license limit. According to Westinghouse, “Through its increased uranium density, ADOPT fuel . . . enables U.S. customers to improve fuel cycle economics and extend their operating cycles.”
What is the reason for the enrichment limit? How much of any efficiency improvement is offset by the higher enrichment process?Astronuc said:Westinghouse’s ADOPT 6-percent enriched U fuel nears U.S. deployment
From Fri, Mar 17, 2023The current maximum enrichment limit for commercial LWRs is 5.00%, and folks typically use a maximum of 4.90 or 4.95%, just to be sure the 5.00% limit is not exceeded.
Facilities that make enriched fuel and facilities that use enriched fuel must perform criticality analysis on their processes to ensure under normal and off-normal operation, the system will not experience a criticality accident, which could expose workers to neutron and gamma radiation. By imposing an enrichment limit, the analysis is bounding, up to that enrichment. As the enrichment increases, it takes less material (uranium) to reach criticality under the various special circumstances, and usually that has to do with aqueous solutions of uranium compounds. Most of the time, the systems are processing enriched uranium oxides, and there are strict limits on much material can be stored in close proximity to other material, and various hypothetical situations like a severe rain storm that floods the storage area, or manufacturing area, or if there is a fire, what would happen if water was sprayed on the fire.NTL2009 said:What is the reason for the enrichment limit? How much of any efficiency improvement is offset by the higher enrichment process?
I've worked with some utilities who have been using up to 4.95% enriched fuel since more than 20 years ago. Their plants did a full uprate from the original ~3450 MWt to 3685 MWt. The fresh fuel batch sizes were about 84,85, or maybe 88,89 depending, and cycle lengths were up around 530 EFPD give or take (for 18 month cycles). Lower power density PWR plants (14x14, 15x15, and 16x16 fuel) have opted to run 24-month cycles out to 660 to 700+ EFPD, and most BWRs have opted for 24 month cycles. BWR fuel uses variable and zoned enrichment in the fuel assembly lattice, and I have seen 4.90 enriched fuel used in the highly enriched fuel rods.gmax137 said:Also, over the years the fuel cladding designs have improved such that the fuel can be run longer (higher burnup) without cladding corrosion or other problems cropping up. So back in the day, there was no reason to use 5% enrichment since the fuel would be removed before the higher enrichment would provide any benefit. Modern cladding materials allow the core design to take advantage of higher enrichment.
Test production has been completed at the Olkiluoto 3 (OL3) EPR in Finland and the plant has now started regular electricity production, operator Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO) has announced. TVO said the reactor will soon be declared to be in commercial operation.
OL3 attained first criticality on 21 December 2021 and was connected to the grid on 12 March 2022. The EPR, a 1600 MWe pressurised water reactor, then entered a phase of test production during which some 3300 tests were conducted and more than 9000 test reports collated.
The completion of test production was initially delayed after material that had detached from the steam guide plates was found in the turbine's steam reheater in May, which required inspection and repair work. Later, in October, damage was discovered in the internals of the feedwater pumps located in the plant's turbine island during maintenance and inspection work.
The plant was operated at full capacity for the first time in late-September last year [2022].
TVO announced on 16 April that test production at the plant had been completed and regular electricity production has now started.
It's probably as real as any other fusion program. They apparently have some partnerships with ORNL, PPPL, UKAEA and others. One would have to review the CV of the principals to see if they have any affiliation Culham or other fusion program.bhobba said:Do you know if this is real?
https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/TVO-accepts-Olkiluoto-EPR-ahead-of-commercial-operFinnish utility Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO) has issued an acceptance certificate to the Areva-Siemens consortium for the Olkiluoto 3 (OL3) EPR, which began regular electricity production on 16 April. It said the 1600 MWe reactor is scheduled to enter commercial operation on 1 May.
The Areva-Siemens consortium constructed the OL3 plant under a fixed-price turnkey contract. They have joint liability for the contractual obligations until the end of the guarantee period of the unit. Construction of Olkiluoto 3 began in 2005, with completion of the reactor originally scheduled for 2009, but the project has had various delays and setbacks.
OL3 attained first criticality on 21 December 2021 and was connected to the grid on 12 March 2022. The EPR, a 1600 MWe pressurised water reactor, then entered a phase of test production during which some 3300 tests were conducted and more than 9000 test reports collated.
"The last phases of trial operation have been analysed and the project has been completed," TVO declared.
"The plant unit ordered with a turnkey contract has been accepted as received today," TVO said. "The final acceptance of the plant unit takes place after the end of the two-year warranty period. Even after that, the plant supplier's warranty responsibilities continue in certain parts for a maximum of eight years."
TVO said OL3 will enter commercial operation on 1 May, "which means, among other things, that the capitalisation of project costs will be stopped and the recording of depreciation will begin".
Lofty promises. Obtaining deuterium fuel is expensive, and tritium even more so. The capital cost of a power plant will also be significant, and disposal of activated structural materials will be a substantial cost.Fusion power could change the world. If it worked, it would grant humanity eye-watering quantities of electricity without producing any greenhouse gas emissions. The warming of the planet would slow, environmental pollution would drop, and energy would be cheaper than ever.
"We can generate electricity, theoretically, at much lower costs than we currently generate it now," he says. "And do it without fossil fuels."
The investments, it said, have also enabled power uprates of the units from their original capacities of 660 MWe (net) to the current 890 MWe.
In addition to the operating licence extension, TVO said it has also looked at opportunities to further uprate the power of the units. An uprating of 80 MWe is being investigated for both units, increasing power levels from 890 MWe to about 970 MWe. This would mean an annual production increase of 1.2 TWh, TVO noted.
This is the highest production volume ever in the history of Olkiluoto. It was naturally due to the fact that instead of two plant units, there are now three units operating in regular electricity production.
After the start of regular production at Olkiluoto 3, the unit was only out of production for under four days.
The most recent of the plant units, Olkiluoto 3, already produced 1.9 TWh of electricity in 2022 when it was still undergoing the test production phase. Actual regular electricity production was started at OL3 in the early hours of the morning on 16 April 2023.
Despite the year 2023 not being anywhere close to a full production year for 2023, the newest plant unit still produced by far the most electricity of all three units in Olkiluoto. OL3 produced 10.37 TWh of electricity to the national grid last year. That is 42% of the whole production volume in Olkiluoto.
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BWRX-300. (insufficient technical information)On December 1, 2021 Ontario Power Generation (OPG) selected the BWRX-300 SMR for use at the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station. In October 2022, OPG applied for a construction license for the reactor. The company expects to make a construction decision by the end of 2024 and has set a preliminary target date of 2028 for plant operations.
On July 7, 2023 Ontario Power Generation chose three additional BWRX-300 SMR for construction at the Darlington New Nuclear Project in Ontario, Canada, joining the first already planned.
That is a low level of funding.WASHINGTON, Oct 21 (Reuters) - The Biden administration on Friday said it is funding projects to recycle nuclear waste from power plants including through reprocessing, a technology that has not been practiced in the United States for decades because of concerns about costs and proliferation.
The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E, aims to develop a dozen projects to recycle the waste, also known as spent nuclear fuel, with $38 million in funding. A Department of Energy agency, ARPA-E supports research into high-risk but potentially transformational projects.
The larger project was awarded $4.9 million. It focuses on increasing the efficiency and, therefore, the economics of nuclear fuel recycling processes. Argonne, Oklo Inc. and Deep Isolation are working to improve a process that converts UNF oxide fuel to a metal that can then be processed to provide usable materials for advanced reactor fuel. The project will combine improvements in stable, next-generation anode materials and sensors used to control the process to maximize the amount of material that can ultimately be recovered.
Krista Hawthorne, the pyroprocess engineering section manager in Argonne’s Chemical and Fuel Cycle Technologies division, leads the effort.
“Improving the efficiency of fuel recycling processes will help recover and recycle valuable resource materials remaining in used nuclear fuel,” said Hawthorne. “Our partnerships with ARPA-E and industry are incredibly important to closing remaining technology gaps.”
The second project was awarded $1.52 million. With this project, Argonne researchers will develop, produce and test more efficient industrial chemical processing equipment to reprocess UNF. The project lead is Argonne radiochemist Anna Servis.