Re: Renewable energy alternative
From: Richard Bell (rlbell_at_csclub.uwaterloo.ca)
Date: 06/24/04
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Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 19:05:51 +0000 (UTC)
In article <b0ujd05m29qbo1jrsb8rd2o5hb9bv40itu@4ax.com>,
Tim Keating <NotForJunkEmail@directinternet11.com1> wrote:
>On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 21:28:47 GMT, "daestrom"
><daestrom@NO_SPAM_HEREtwcny.rr.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>"Tim Keating" <NotForJunkEmail@directinternet11.com1> wrote in message
>>news:5iajd0tt93027m7e1cuv0rhd6hs7ip7s52@4ax.com...
>>> On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 10:21:49 -0400, "G. R. L. Cowan" <gcowan@eagle.ca>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> >danny wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> /I read here not so long back--Nuclear reactor that cleans up it 's own
>>> >> waste, the waste that was low grade half life of a year or so,
>>> >
>>> >No, that was fantasy.
>>> >
>>> >> presenting no
>>> >> problems from waste.
>>> >> Is there any reason why N.Reactors could not be built well down the
>>ground,
>>> >> so alleviating a further problem of blast and most contamination,
>>should an
>>> >> accident occur.
>>> >
>>> >If you dig a deep hole, build the reactor, and then
>>> >put a three-to-four-foot thick reinforced concrete lid over it,
>>> >that lid provides considerable security,
>>> >much more than the mere depth.
>>> >So with reactors now in service,
>>> >the practice has been to make the thick lid
>>> >in the form of a inverted cup,
>>> >not just over the reactor's top but all around it.
>>> >This is what is known as the "containment building".
>>
>>Tim, you have so many of your 'facts' wrong, its hard to tell where to
>>begin....
>>
>>
>>>
>>> Sorry.. But the containment building is little more than a placebo..
>>>
>>> 4ft of concrete.. pffft... Oh.. don't forget the doors which won't
>>> survive more than a few PSI. TMI containment vessel started leaking
>>> RM at around ~2 PSI.
>>
>>The 'doors' are actually air-locks that are tested right along with the rest
>>of the containment in a test known as an "Integrated Leak Rate Test". The
>
>Once every ten years. They all leak, it's the amount of leakage
>that's determines whether they pass or fail !!!
>
> B.T.W.. if someone on the inside is determined to cause a melt
>down... guess what... the air locks will be compromised..
>
>Oh... care to guess how much steel and concrete those 767's ripped
>through when they crashed into the WTC's???
>
>>containment (with all the doors, fittings and other penetrations) is
>>deliberately pressurized to the full accident pressure that will occur under
>>the worst conceivable coolant leak (the so-called Design Basis Accident).
>>The leakage while at that pressure is measured and if more than the
>>licensee's limits set by the NRC, they don't get to startup again until it
>>is fixed.
>
>2 PSI.. and Radioactive material was outside..
>
>>The TMI containment did *not* leak. The only radiation released during the
>>event was from water deliberately pumped *out* of the containment to the
>>adjacent 'rad-waste' building. Some of the activity in this water went
>>air-borne and escaped the building. But the *containment* did not fail to
>>perform it's design in any way. If the water line valves were not manually
>>opened, no activity at all would have been released.
>
> One of those weakest links of the containment system kicked in first.
>
>http://stellar-one.com/nuclear/staff_reports/summary_containment.htm
>
>"The study shows that: (1) initial pressure transients probably caused
>leaks to the auxiliary building to develop in the header that normally
>^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> carried gases to the waste-gas decay tanks; and (2) pressures caused
>by escaping gases could have lifted safety relief valves on the
>reactor coolant bleed tanks that discharge directly to the atmosphere
>of the auxiliary building."
>
>Containment failed..
> The initial radioactive release wasn't voluntary.
It was also neither large nor serious.
>
> Note: TMI-2 didn't loose primary reactor vessel containment, and had
>control rods inserted(shutdown) at time of melt down. Change either of
>those two items and things could have been much worse.
They have since designed reactors to do things without, or despite
operator intervention. Proper use of doppler broadening can eliminate
the ultimate need for control rods; although, they are handy for setting
power levels.
Richard Feynmann designed a pulse reactor for military equipment testing.
The only adequate way to describe it is as an A-bomb that never quite
detonated. Made of plutonium, it was triggered by a slug of plutonium that
fell through a pipe down its middle. It immediately went prompt-critical
and fired off a pulse of fast neutrons. As its time constant was too short
to be controlled by any man made system, it was designed so that, as it
warmed up, doppler broadening changed the neutron cross-section, so that
the fission reaction stopped, before it detonated. Once it had cooled
down, it was ready to fire another neutron pulse.
Control rods are useful for controlling the reactor's power level, but they
can be designed out of the emergency shutdown process.
>
>>
>>>
>>> In comparison, the Hoover dam is 660 feet thick at its base (holds
>>> back 320PSI of water pressure), 45 feet thick at its crest(0 PSI).
>>>
>>> Care to guess what the operational pressure of a PWR is????
>>> Hint ... it's over 1500 PSI !!!!
>>
>>What a poor analysis!!!! Consider that the Hoover dam is how many square
>>feet of area? If it is a mere 500ft across and 700 feet high, that makes a
>>surface area of 5.04e+7 square inches. The average pressure of the water is
>>2/3 of 320 psi or 213 psi. So the total force on the same is on the order
>>of 5.4 million tons.
>
> And what happens it 3/4 of all the water within the system
>instantly flashes to steam? 500x it's normal volume.
It can't. the only reason any of it can flash to steam, at all, is that
a leak lets the coolant out. As all of the water turns to steam, in a
reactor vessel, the pressure goes DOWN.
>
> It will likely rip the guts out the reactor, and dump it out on the
>floor of the containment vessel.
>
>>
>>The operating pressure of a PWR is irrelevent to the containment analysis
>>since the operating pressure is inside the reactor coolant system. During a
>>DBA LOCA, all the coolant is expelled into the much larger containment.
>>During that expansion, the pressure drops to a mere 20 to 25 psi. The
>>surface area of a PWR containment that is a right-circular cylinder with
>>height of 100 ft and diameter of 40 feet is 40*pi*100 + 2*pi*20^2 for total
>>of ~2,171,000 square inches. At even 30 psi, that is a total force of only
>>32572 tons (a factor of 165 times smaller than the Hoover dam). If you make
>>a direct comparison with the base of Hoover dam (by the way, this is not the
>>proper comparison for a containment vessel wall thickness) then your 660
>>feet / 165 => containment wall of ~4ft.
>
>That depends only if the amount of energy in the system remains
>constant..
It also depends on how the energy remains constant. People are worried
about large amounts of steam filling the containment dome, so they store
large blocks of ice in the dome. Thawing all ot that ice and raising the
temperature of the meltwater will condense a lot of steam. Energy is constant,
but the latent heat of fusion takes a bite out of the steam danger.
>
> A major accident is likely to leave parts of the reactor still
>generating significant amounts of heat . Add some extra water and I
>don't care how much containment you have.. It's going to blow..
Read a book on nuclear engineering, I highly recommend the one by
Glasstone and Sesonske, and you will learn about design base accidents, and
how their effects are mitigated.
>
>>> God help you, If there is ever an accident or sabotage which prevents
>>> the control rods from dropping into place.
>>
>>Another error. One US plant already *had* such an accident (a BWR). When
>>the reactor was scrammed, the control rods failed to insert. It took the
>>crew some time to find the problem and correct it. The reason *you* don't
>>know about it is because there was no release. And there have been several
>>incidents where one or two control rods failed to insert fully.
>
>Sorry.. toy reactors don't count. see Idaho Falls, U.S.
>http://www.ieer.org/reports/accident.html
>
> B.T.W.. All of the reactor operators DIED in that accident !!!!
It wasn't an accident. Two of the three men were having sex with the same
woman. When the husband found out, he dicided to kill the adulterer. The
third man was in the wrong place at the wrong time, as the murderer used the
simple expedient of fully removing the single control rod to commit the
crime.
>
>>And BTW, not all reactors 'drop' the control rods, BWR designs push the rods
>>*up* into the reactor using a combination of pressure accumulators and
>>reactor pressure.
>
> A major breach in the pressure vessel, at full power is likely to
>warp/damage the reactor, to the point where pushing or dropping
>anything into the reactor is impossible !!
- Next message: Richard: "Re: Global Warming NOW -- Deep Suffocation and Climate Change"
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