Atomic Energy Wells 1

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  1. Yes, synfuel produced from H2O and CO2 —> C10H20 This is the best use of existing infrastructure to produce truly carbon neutral fuel. We can all keep driving cars, using trucks and airplanes using the exact same gas stations we already use. That Exon Mobile has not yet done this is a testament to how intensely negative perceptions of Nuclear have dominated the energy discussions. At the same time – the unlimited liability of a 30 million dollar bracket to repair excess vibration due to NRC calling the bracket a design change makes nearly all companies hesitant.

    1. I was enjoying the proposal until you went full nonsense about the bracket. I like the idea of keeping the ICE…. very reliable.

        1. Jack’s been writing a lot of colorful things lately. Not sure how he became such an ‘expert’ in things nuclear having never worked in nuclear energy. To say it’s a $30M pipe brace is hyperbolic.

          1. Michael, Rod traced this down and showed it was not a design issue but an error in the installation. Still expensive but the 30 million was the top estimate of the repair cost with lost days.

  2. Yes, synfuel produced from H2O and CO2 —> C10H20 This is the best use of existing infrastructure to produce truly carbon neutral fuel. We can all keep driving cars, using trucks and airplanes using the exact same gas stations we already use. That Exon Mobile has not yet done this is a testament to how intensely negative perceptions of Nuclear have dominated the energy discussions. At the same time – the unlimited liability of a 30 million dollar bracket to repair excess vibration due to NRC calling the bracket a design change makes nearly all companies hesitant.

    1. I was enjoying the proposal until you went full nonsense about the bracket. I like the idea of keeping the ICE…. very reliable.

        1. Would you elaborate on the specific instance where a bracket cost an operator $30M? I was under the impression this was hyperbolic. If a steam generator tube begins to leak and causes a 30-day unplanned outage, costing the operator $30M in purchased power and more in wages, is that a $40M leak? If safety related equipment is vibrating unacceptably because mounts have deteriorated – you better fix it and document the fix in accordance with the regulator’s expectations. Drive with a headlight out and you’ll get a ticket. Your readership loves to blame the executive branch of government when it is the financial system that makes construction impossible.

          1. Yes, the tube leak is a $40 M repair.

            In restructured markets, that cost is not the cost of purchased power because merchant operators are not required to provide reliable electricity and to purchase whatever power is needed from the open market to supply their customers.

            But every minute that a plant is unexpectedly unavailable is another minute where the plant is not producing and selling its product at the rate expected by the owner and green eyeshades people at the company.

            I agree that vibrating pipes detected during testing must be fixed. After all, the purpose of testing is to discover and fix problems before they impact safety or reliable operations.

            The question is how long should corrective action take to implement? Will the government reviewers involved in the process work at the speed of business or at the leisurely pace of typical bureaucrats? (As a former bureaucrat I have a basis for that description of typical bureaucrat behavior. I not only watched my colleagues, but I slowly developed similar habits.)

            Back in my submarine Engineer days, there weren’t any financial people breathing down my back. But we had operational commitments and a need to fix things properly and promptly. In certain cases, I convinced the chain of command that we needed to do a particular job on a PTF basis. (Paperwork To Follow) There were a few memorable instances when I made the decision and told my chain of command after we had made the repair, met our commitment and filled in the paperwork – in that order.

            I’m trying to find someone who can help me understand how much of the estimated month of delay is caused by the physical aspects of the job – design, installation and inspection/QA – and how much of the delay will be waiting for approval of the license amendment. I’m also trying to find out why a license amendment is needed for what appears to be a fairly routine repair in industrial facilities that have thousands of feet of high pressure pipe that needs to be properly supported.

            1. I do appreciate your perspective as a submariner.
              In the case of the tube leak outage at a big PWR, the unit must be shut down and fixed because the problem could progress into a design basis rupture (worst case). While depressurized and “in there” all the tubes will be inspected to 1) find the leak and 2) find extent of condition – the inspection is required with ~5-year frequency by the regulator for good reason. It takes weeks to do this at a 4-loop PWR. The structure of some ‘markets’ does require purchase of replacement power with penalties.
              I recently read most of Simpson’s “Nuclear Power form Underseas to Outer Space” (skimmed the space stuff), and he describes the first stress test of Mark 1 where a 24 hour run was extended to 96 hours to simulate a trans-Atlantic crossing. A feedwater controller failed and one steam generator went dry; the plant became quasi-stable at 50% power. They restarted the feedpump in manual control, filled the generator, returned to full power and finished the run with a massive condenser leak that presumably would have loaded the secondary system with salt, ruining it, had it been at sea. There were numerous accidents during the early days: fuel melt at Fermi1 and EBR1, excursion at SL1, fire at Windscale, etc. Rickover’s team escaped this with luck – maybe talent was a factor.
              It doesn’t make a lot of sense to draw comparisons between the old days and the current day and conflate with military experience. Regardless of real/perceived danger, cleaning up an accident may cost more than the plant is worth and render land into unusable deer and coyote sanctuaries. People argue that electric cars/semis and renewable power would never be able to compete with ICE and thermal generation without massive subsidy and incentives, BUT the state/federal legislatures are obviously committed to continuing to provide them making the point moot. This is how things work in centrally planned governance. When the elites do mandate away civilian’s ICE, gas stoves, gas heat, we will need more nuke plants. That time is not now – we need more crisis and woe. Maybe the tree of liberty will be refreshed before that time.
              I definitely like this idea of using CH3OH for ICE fuel (maybe use in fuel cells) although it has half the power density of petrol. Seems production of methanol from CO2 work better if we got the atmospheric CO2 concentration up to 1200 ppm first, although I don’t think it would be steady there (Axolla bloom, etc.).

              1. Yes, using methanol is a good option especially as so many cars can burn that today. However, we also need diesel and jet fuel. Yes, a high concentration of CO2 is more efficient but for efficiency just use Coal as the carbon input. If our goal is to reduce CO2 then pulling it from the atmosphere or the ocean is the best way to access carbon. Did you see the project that the Navy did to produce jet fuel directly from sea water using a small device that collected co2 and used electricity to produce the fuel? At at test level it worked. Rod wrote an article about this several years ago. I understand very well the limits to building Nuclear today. Michael you often question why people are frustrated with the NRC’s regulations. You see them as reasonable. I have have two basic problems with the way the NRC regulates. 1. They regulate the design not safety. That is to say like the bracket mentioned above the NRC considers this a DESIGN change. That style of monitoring an industrial facility has nothing to do with safety. It actually obstructs safety. It makes the operator hesitant to do things that would improve the facility because they have to submit a design change before they can make the move. An extra bracket is NOT a design change. 2. You have debated Jack to a degree over the As Low As Reasonable standard for radiation. The basic problem is that Nuclear power plants are already a low radiation environment. Pushing legal limits of exposure to below background levels is a power and money grab. Also, it regulates Nuclear power radiation differently than it regulates the exact same radiation coming from Natural Gas or Coal. This difference is immoral and expensive. If there is no concern about radiation coming out of these other power generation systems why nuclear power? Almost all power used to manufacture solar and wind comes from Coal. The NRC is an obstacle to using Nuclear power to repower the world. Oklo is a clear example of this. Nuscale is another. These contrasting approaches to the NRC illustrate the deep sickness that infests the organizational culture. You keep saying that using small reactors is too expensive. I have lived in countries where the cost of power exceeded 20 cents KWH and was unreliable. I have visited places that used diesel generators for 40 to 50 cents a kwh and was unreliable. These small Nucs are very viable in several contexts. So, regulation to design rather than safety and using a focus on radiation levels that constantly drives them down rather than setting a specific level that can be designed to are the two elements of culture that make the NRC deeply corrupt. By the way, corrupt cultures can have many very nice and highly competent people in them while the overall structure is essentially corrupt.

        1. Jack’s been writing a lot of colorful things lately. Not sure how he became such an ‘expert’ in things nuclear having never worked in nuclear energy. To say it’s a $30M pipe brace is hyperbolic.

          1. Michael, Rod traced this down and showed it was not a design issue but an error in the installation. Still expensive but the 30 million was the top estimate of the repair cost with lost days.

  3. A large fuel refinery inputs about 5 GW of chemical energy, and outputs about 4 GW of products. The other gigawatt is used to create process heat, pressure and lighting at the cost of emissions and feedstock. Such a refinery could start by installing one or two SMRs, then adding more as the bean counting dictates. By the time the refinery processes have adapted to a nuclear powerplant supplying a gigawatt of clean power, other chemical processes would emerge as benefiting, and so other modules would be added. Deficiencies in the thermal quality of feedstock could be made up with more modules, until eventually the feedstock consisted entirely of recycled material, including CO2. The refinery then has its own “Atomic Energy Well” on site.

  4. A large fuel refinery inputs about 5 GW of chemical energy, and outputs about 4 GW of products. The other gigawatt is used to create process heat, pressure and lighting at the cost of emissions and feedstock. Such a refinery could start by installing one or two SMRs, then adding more as the bean counting dictates. By the time the refinery processes have adapted to a nuclear powerplant supplying a gigawatt of clean power, other chemical processes would emerge as benefiting, and so other modules would be added. Deficiencies in the thermal quality of feedstock could be made up with more modules, until eventually the feedstock consisted entirely of recycled material, including CO2. The refinery then has its own “Atomic Energy Well” on site.

  5. I like your concept of pairing a SMR as an energy input for a big refinery complex. In many ways, this would be analogous to how the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have commissioned the al-Barakah Nuclear Power Plant with 4 KEPCO AP-1400 reactors. This action preserves the ability for the UAE to export hydrocarbons for a longer time. I suggest the use the carbon dioxide from combustion in one part of the refinery as an economical input for creating hydrocarbons for use in ICEs (instead of atmospheric CO2 capture.) Similarly, the SMR could be used to power an electrolyzer to make hydrogen, which is an important input for refineries instead of using methane from natural gas in conjunction with steam reforming to make hydrogen.

  6. I like your concept of pairing a SMR as an energy input for a big refinery complex. In many ways, this would be analogous to how the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have commissioned the al-Barakah Nuclear Power Plant with 4 KEPCO AP-1400 reactors. This action preserves the ability for the UAE to export hydrocarbons for a longer time. I suggest the use the carbon dioxide from combustion in one part of the refinery as an economical input for creating hydrocarbons for use in ICEs (instead of atmospheric CO2 capture.) Similarly, the SMR could be used to power an electrolyzer to make hydrogen, which is an important input for refineries instead of using methane from natural gas in conjunction with steam reforming to make hydrogen.

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