I have changed my opinion about the prospects for non-light water reactor development since I wrote that naïve engineering assessment of FRC hybrid fusion technology. There are insurmountable regulatory obstacles that block the path of any “non-standard” nuclear reactor development. From a scientific and engineering standpoint, many of these maverick reactor designs are superior to the standard reactor doctrinaire but they have no chance to see the light of day.
First, any small sized outlying nuclear based electric generation project is doomed to failure because of the sure and certain resistance that will be presented by the light water reactor industry. Several international companies are making billions from current solid nuclear fuel supply contracts. Those contracts are directly threatened by any new nuclear technology. The NRC is the gate keeper for and sponsors of the light water reactor (LWR) industry and will reject anything that is unlike that (LWR) technology. Electrical utilities in the western world have made huge investments in LWR technology that they will protect fiercely. A case in point is the pebble bed reactors rejected by the Chicago's Exelon Corp., This new reactor type violated their economies of scale requirement. Furthermore IMHO, it's the current reactor plant suppliers and fuel manufacturers that will certainly be the active and vigorous opponents. Second, the NRC is pay as you go. No pay means no go. If there is no money forthcoming, nobody at the NRC will not even give you the time of day let alone write anything down. Specifically, new nuclear license applicants are reluctant to get too specific too early with the NRC - as soon as discussions move past general questions, the NRC requires the project to be docketed. That starts the billing clock and puts the applicant on the hook for paying the government $259 for every regulator hour<http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/news/2010/10-105.html>- with no ability to control the number of hours expended. Yes. You must give the NRC a blank check. Expect to pay a minimum of $10 billion with no guaranties. Unlike a commercial interaction, willingness and ability to pay for the government service does not necessarily result in any additional resources for a given project - the money that the NRC receives from its licensees and docketed applicants gets deposited into the US Treasury. The agency can only spend the money that has been appropriated through the normal fiscal budgeting process. If the NRC got deluged with new applicants and started billing those applicants today, the commission would not get an increase in its appropriated budget until at least a few years hence if at all. Few new government employees or contractors could be added to improve services until the newly budgeted money actually arrived. This system is a gift of the Reagan Administration, which implemented it for the NRC during an era when there was little expectation of a large influx of new reactor applications and when David Stockman was tasked with devising creative user fees to replace the need for new taxes. The system has another weakness - the general lack of accounting standards and practices within the US Government. Investors and businessmen have a natural reluctance to pay for services that they are not sure they are getting. To circumvent this bottleneck, nuclear system developers will go to the US military or the Chinese. Bill Gates has entered into discussions to develop his reactor in China. But the risk is that China will take your intellectual property. The thorium reactor is in development in China, and so is the pebble bed reactor. New types of nuclear energy have no prospects in the US. Let us hope that the LENR technology can bypass this sad state of affairs. Dr. John Slough, the developer under discussion from the University of Washington has just receive $500K to develop a NIAC PhaseII award to develop a fusion driven rocket motor. See www.nasa.gov/pdf/636883main_FDR_talk_NIAC_2012_final.pdf For an overview and links see http://www.msnwllc.com/index_tech.html Cheers: Axil On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 6:21 AM, Puppy Dog <d...@inbox.lv> wrote: > Axil, > > What ever happened in the field of FRC? You predicted the fruit of efforts > would ripen in 2013 and be ready for harvesting. > > Cheers, > > Puppy Dog (AKA DD or Detective Dog) > > <<<<August 2009 in Technology Review Published by MIT > Axil wrote: > > The answer to the energy revolution is an old idea whose time has come. It > is best to configure a “system” of reactors in which one type produces > fuel, a clean fuel, a pure fuel, and another that consumes this fuel. This > is analogous to a bakery that bakes bread for a populace that hungrily > consumes its loaves as they are baked. > > Hans Bethe played an important role in the development of the larger > hydrogen bomb, though he had originally joined the project with the hope of > proving it could not be made. His scientific research never ceased even > into the later years of his life. He is one of the few scientists who can > claim a major paper in his field every decade of his career, which spanned > nearly sixty years. Freeman Dyson called Bethe the "supreme problem solver > of the 20th century." One of the most innovative ideas that he was noted > for was his advocacy of the fission/fusion hybrid. See this old article by > Bethe as follows: > > http://www.marcobresci.it/docs/fusione_ibrida.pdf > > As a bridge technology to pure fusion, the fusion/fission hybrid is at the > root of a large network of fission reactors that feed off the U233 fuel > produced by the fusion reactor. Bethe thought that such fusion capability > was just around the corner. But fusion took some wrong turns that slowed it > down. However, certain types of fusion reactors are currently at hand. > Their fusion approach has been demonstrated. As is common in fusion > technology, they must show a scaling up of the neutron production rate that > will make a thorium fusion hybrid effective and productive. > > My intent is to examine and describe in simple terms where the thorium > fusion/fission hybrid stands and to evaluate the probability of its success > in the near term. > > The basic physics of the field reverse configuration (FRC) fusion process > has been demonstrated in a small test device referred to as the Inductive > Plasmoid Accelerator (IPA). > > The IPC forms two packets of Tritium-deuterium plasma at each end of a > beryllium tube and accelerates them at each other to collide at a central > point in a fusion burn chamber. These two packets combine both their > energies together to form a stable ball of high energy ions that are both > well mixed and well formed. > > A surrounding large magnet compresses the ball of plasma together to > reduce its size and hold it in the burn chamber for a period longer then > what was expected from past experiments. That is good. When fusion > experiments are scaled up (made bigger) something almost always goes wrong > and the experiment does worst than expected. Much work must be done to find > out what the problem is and how to fix it. > > The ball of plasma was much stronger than expected. This is great since > fusion in plasmas that don’t stay together just won’t work. The fusion guys > don’t really understand the way this type of FRC fusion works much better > than their theoretical models predict. They think it might somehow be due > to the ash produced by fusion. They just don’t understand it yet, but they > surely are happy about it. Sometimes it is better to be lucky than smart. > > The equipment to do all this is simple and ordinary. It is cheap and will > hold up well when operated in rapidly repeating pulses over a long > timeframe. > > After fusion in the ball of plasma is completed, the fusion ash and the > left over tritium and deuterium find its way into a diverter that removes > it from the burn chamber. The high energy neutrons produced by fusion fly > out in all directions. It will be these neutrons that will make U233 in the > thorium blanket that will eventually surround the burn chamber. > > Past FRC experiments have shown that the number of high energy neutrons > produced by fusion scales as a simple function of the energy in which they > collide and the strength of the magnetic field that compresses the plasma. > Both these values can be increased to a level that will eventually produce > enough neutrons to make the fusion/fission thorium hybrid concept possible. > > The big challenge is to keep the damage to the beryllium first wall down. > That is why the fusion guys must set up a component test facility to check > out how much ware they can get out of the first wall. They know the thorium > fission reactor technology exists having been developed and demonstrated in > the 60’s and 70’s but they don’t know the details. They need to integrate > this thorium stuff into their configuration. But it looks like it can > integrate together really well. > > How long is this development process going to take? > > If the fusion guys get development money, just a pittance compared to > ITER, they will get to a neutron production rate that can breed U233 by > 2013. So the pure thorium fuel cycle could be at hand. > > Sometimes there is a dark horse in the race that could be a black swan. > Let’s hope this technology gets the funding it needs to save the day.>>>> > > > > >
