Jimrpa
Well-Known Member
- First Name
- Jim
- Joined
- Sep 10, 2020
- Threads
- 230
- Messages
- 7,011
- Reaction score
- 9,299
- Location
- Wayne, PA
- Vehicles
- 2021 Infinite Blue Premium Mustang Mach E ER AWD
- Occupation
- Retied (formerly tried to herd highly technical, independent cats)
I
i as part of a balanced renewable, environmentally sound energy production portfolio ?
I believe the USN reactors are LWR?Those are great for submarines. They’re actually a suboptimal solution for commercial power generation. A long time ago, the US had a prototype molten salt reactor running, which has a lot of technical and practical advantages. Sadly, “big nuclear” at the time (GE/Westinghouse) wanted to build LWR because they were already building them for other applications (for those who don’t know, molten salt reactors have an interesting “fail safe” mode. It’s totally passive. If the salt loop “overheats”, a salt plug melts and the salt loop dumps into a cooling pit where it basically freezes pretty much instantly. A “Chernobyl or Fukushima is impossible because of the way the reactor works).The United States has been operating small, safe, modular nuclear power plants for over 50 years. All of them owned by the United States Navy. I know, I am a retired nuclear engineer that served on submarines. If the civilian nuclear industry was run the way the Navy runs it's nuclear plants there would be no issues. Instead, waste, fraud, and excessive red tape has kneecapped the civilian industry. Yes, nuclear waste is produced and must be disposed of/stored until it can decay. That was what Yucca Mountain was for....instead, regulators screwed that up also. The amount of nuclear waste is miniscule compared to the sludge, ash, and carbon waste of conventional oil and coal power plants. Burning coal releases much more nuclear isotopes into the air than a nuclear power plant does. Three mile island was a freak accident. Chernobyl was a design and manmade accident waiting to happen from the start. It is too bad that these two incidents ruined nuclear power.
i as part of a balanced renewable, environmentally sound energy production portfolio ?
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