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Site Overview Chapter
A Plan For Our Planet
What went wrong?    How bad are things?    How do we get back to normal?
 
 Look at all that electricity.  Out of 65,000 power plants scattered across the world, 30% of ALL Global Warming is made by just 1,200 supersized power plants.

Part  1    WHAT WENT WRONG?: Global Warming made simple.  The single change that made Global Warming happen.
 Part  2    HOW BAD ARE THINGS?: Global Warming.  The Thickness of Planet Earth's Carbon Dioxide Blanket.  How Nature is handling Man's CO2.
 Part  3    HOW DO WE GET BACK TO NORMAL?: How much of all Global Warming can nuclear boilers prevent?    Perhaps 63%
 Part  4    2/3 of all Global Warming is made in boilers.  Boiler awareness.
 Part  5    THE NUCLEAR ENERGY ADVANTAGE  5A: Nuclear and war.  5B: Nuclear radiation.  5C: Reactor types.  5D: Electricity Quality.
Part  6    Going 100% Nuclear is the way to obsolete fossil fuels.  6A: Nuclear waste.  6B: Small Reactor Buyer's Guide.
Part  7    Bringing nuclear energy to you.  There is much more "Small" than "Large" energy.  What will the "Small Nuclear Energy" picture be like?

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Introduction to "A Plan For Our Planet"

The amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air is a major controller of Planet Earth's temperature.  The higher the amount of CO2, the higher the temperature.  Above 200 parts per million (ppm) atmospheric concentrations CO2's infrared behavior is quite linear and the thermal sensitivity of Planet Earth to atmospheric CO2 is well known to be about 3°C (5.4°F) for each doubling of atmospheric CO2.  Before man began burning massive amounts of fossil fuels, atmospheric CO2 concentration was about 250 ppm.  It is now about 390 ppm.  Every time you set fire to so much as a match you are adding to the CO2 in the air which, in turn, pushes Planet Earth's thermostat set-point even higher.

A second major controller of Planet Earth's temperature, methane (CH4), is beginning to kick in.  Unlike CO2, current atmospheric concentrations of methane are extremely low (.0017 ppm) but unfortunately methane's infrared absorption effect at this level is highly non-linear so a 1 ppm increase in atmospheric methane concentration could produce twenty times the planetary heating effect of the same ppm increase in CO2.  Please take another look at the chart that shows both carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) one-above-the-other, this time paying attention to the current level of CO2.

Climate Change, like cancer, is a progressing physical fact that must be recognized, understood, and dealt with promptly with effective measures.  Currently most of us are in the mental state of denial and are ignoring Global Warming, while the non-deniers are generally pursuing ineffective green quackery remedies such as windmills and solar panels. 

The fuss is all about HALTING Global Warming's progress.  No one is even talking about reversing Global Warming.  We have already gone over the 350 ppm cliff that locked us into a progressive warming mode.  To use the cancer analogy, Global Warming's metastasis stage will be the rapid release of massive amounts of the second greenhouse gas, methane (CH4) from thawed arctic tundra and undersea hydrates.  The first book describing in simple terms Global Warming's second stage is The Climate Trap

Climate change is dangerous because nearly everyone on earth is living on modern high-yield genetically modified grains that are quite weather sensitive.  This puts us all at increased risk of famine due to crop failure. 

While Global Warming confirms that man IS capable of altering Planet Earth, it appears that the task of going beyond halting to reversing Global Warming will take us far deeper into the risky uncertainties of geoengineering.  If we fail to halt, and then reverse, Global Warming, adapting to an increasingly hotter world will be our fate.

We know what needs to be done.  End burning of coal, natural gas, and oil.  Not just replace, but obsolete them with the only other controllable source of heat energy man has - nuclear fuels.  If fossil fuels are not made obsolete, man will return to his Global Warming ways in the future because it is far easier to make a lump of coal hot than it is to make a lump of uranium hot.   Take a look at all the carbon there is on Planet Earth.

This web site provides an excellent "Plan for the Planet" for quickly ending 30% of Global Warming's growth (the supersized coal burning power plants) and also provides additional ideas for ending another 30% of Global Warming's growth.

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Part  1:  WHAT WENT WRONG?  

Global Warming made simple.

The single change that made Global Warming happen.  


A square meter is about the size of a card table.  Since before the time of the last Glaciers - over 12,000 years ago - planet Earth has been receiving average daily energy from the sun as white light of about 235 watts per square meter intensity and then re-radiating that same amount of energy into the cold of space as infrared heat at night.  Man, who has been around for 3 million years in some form and 50,000 years as modern man, never thrived in the environments provided by earlier climates (there are no stone ruins of pre-glacial civilizations) before this equal energy balance climate began after the last ice age.

The change.  This energy balance was lost when man began burning fossil fuels instead of carbon-neutral fuels such as wood.  By about 1750, the people of Europe had cut down most of their forests for firewood.  Once wood became difficult to obtain, they began to burn chunks of coal found lying on the ground and easily obtainable just beneath the surface. 

Mankind is now producing almost 30 billion tons of fossil CO2 per year and Nature can only remove from the air and place in plants about 10 billion tons each year, leaving a surplus of 11 billion tons accumulating in the air each year and 6 billion tons accumulating in the oceans each year.  Over the years this has caused about a trillion tons of extra CO2 from fossil fuel burning to be added to the atmosphere and about half that much to the oceans.

Along with small amounts of other greenhouse gases, the carbon dioxide man has been adding to the air through fossil fuel burning is like a person in bed adding another blanket - it is now trapping an extra 2.4 watts of heat energy - less than a night light - per day, per square meter of earth's surface by blocking in a little more of that infrared energy that should get back out into space to keep planet Earth's temperature where it should be. 

Since the earth has 120 trillion square meters of surface, this imbalance comes to a constant net gain of 288 trillion (1012) watts of heat (or 740 Quads - the U.S. uses about 100 quads of energy each year).  This trapped heat from the sun is causing the temperature of earth to slowly increase, which in turn, is causing earth's climates to change.  It took us 260 years to get to this point.  This is how man finally did something powerful enough to mess up the entire world.

Earth's thermostat has been re-set and Planet Earth is beginning to warm up.  It is nowhere near the new set-point and, since we are constantly adding more fossil CO2 to the air, we are continuing to push the set-point higher and higher - so we can only get hotter.   See also Note 3.

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Part  2:  HOW BAD ARE THINGS? 

The Thickness Dimension of Planet Earth's Carbon Dioxide Blanket.

  Global Warming's Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Dimensions. 
How Nature is handling Man's CO2.
 

Man's and Nature's CO2 SOURCES and HOW NATURE IS DISPOSING (or SINKING) THEM:  At right is the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) drawing that describes, in just a few numbers, all the basic dimensions of Global Warming. 

It shows where Global Warming's carbon dioxide (CO2) is coming from, where it is going, and how much is coming and going.

The numbers are in billions of metric tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. (a tonne is 1,000 kilograms or 2,200 pounds).

The arithmetic goes like this:  On the far right, the oceans are putting 332 billion tonnes (or Giga tonnes or Gt) of carbon dioxide into the air while taking out 338 Gt - making a net withdrawal from the air of 6 Gt every year.  Some of the carbon sinks to the bottom of the oceans, becomes covered with mud and, over millions of years, might be turned into oil.

In the middle, vegetation and mulch on the ground are putting 439 Gt into the air while taking out 450 Gt - making a net withdrawal from the air of 11 Gt every year.  Some of the carbon becomes buried and, over millions of years, might be turned into coal.

On the left, man is digging up coal, pumping oil, and releasing as natural gas some carbon that didn't make it into oil.  Burning it all, man is putting 29 Gt of carbon dioxide into the air and not removing anything.  The arithmetic is simple  29 minus 6, minus 11, leaves 12 left over to accumulate every year in the air like interest on money in a checking account.  This means Man is overwhelming Nature's ability to remove CO2 from the air by 12 billion metric tonnes (or 13 billion U.S. tons) per year. 

Man is also cutting down more trees than nature can cope with.  Not surprisingly, it is called "Land Use and Deforestation".

Massive amounts of carbon are available on Planet Earth.  Over the last 150 years or so, an excess of well over a trillion tons of extra CO2 has accumulated in the air, increasing the concentration of CO2 from 250 parts per million to today's level of about 380 parts per million. 

Acting like a greenhouse's glass, CO2 is a gas that is very transparent to short wavelength energy - such as the white light energy coming directly in from the sun - but is more opaque to long wavelength energy such as the infrared heat energy being radiated back out into the coldness of space by the surface of planet earth.  
How?  What does this tell about both CO2 and methane?  Look again and read carefully.  More than they want you to know about Global Warming?

 

FOSSIL FUEL'S CO2 SOURCE DIMENSIONS:  The author obtained the coal, natural gas, and oil CO2 amounts that man is putting into the air from another official IPCC diagram: World Energy Flows.  The sources and sinks for energy.  (Click on it to download a larger, printable pdf image.)  A similar diagram for just the United States.

Please pay special attention to the three gray waste bins in the left-center of the diagram.  That's the CO2 from the fossil fuels man is burning.  The different CO2 amounts man is dumping into the air are written on the waste bins. 

This diagram uses 2004 data, the nature diagram uses 2007 data.  The 2004 data is a bit smaller.

 

CO2 SOURCES and SINKS SIDE-BY-SIDE:  Using the official IPCC numbers from both of the above, the author drew a pair of stacked bar charts (bar lengths proportional to the amounts of CO2 they represent) showing where man is getting his CO2 sources and what nature is doing with the CO2 man is dumping into the air.    As they should, the stacked bars segments add up to the same total length.

(Nature's CO2 sources are not shown, only man's contribution and what Nature does with it.)

1. The 11 Gt going into land plants and the ground (green bar) doesn't seem to be hurting anything so its a "don't care".

2. The 6 Gt going into the oceans (light blue bar) is making the oceans more acidic since the CO2 is turning into carbonic acid that is harming most sea life.

The thickness dimension of Planet Earth's blanket:

3. The 12 Gt going into the air (red bar) is acting like the glass in a greenhouse - letting heat from the sun in as it always has, but not letting quite as much heat back out into the extreme cold of space as it used to.  More CO2 is like glass becoming more intensely tinted and thus trapping more heat as a consequence.  We know this is a threatening situation.  CO2 Truly is a Heavyweight Greenhouse Gas .pdf

So, there it is.  Global Warming in a nutshell.  You now know how much CO2 from each CO2 source Man is making, how that CO2 is being distributed among Nature's air, land plants, and oceans, and why increasing the amount of CO2 in the air will increase Planet Earth's warmth which, in turn, changes Planet Earth's climate. 

 

Carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gasses.  (U.S. quantities.)

 

 

 

2/3 of the people on Planet Earth depend upon agri-tech grains that, in turn, depend upon very predictable growing seasons.  This is why Global Warming is a threat.

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Part  3:  HOW DO WE GET BACK TO NORMAL?  Switch from fossil fuel to nuclear fuel boilers.

How much of all Global Warming CO2 can nuclear boilers prevent?
 About 63%

To arrive at these estimates, the author took the amount of CO2 known to be coming from the applications in question.  Almost always the emissions were from boilers (next section).

What nuclear can do for us.

63% of ALL Global Warming CO2 emitters can be REPOWERED with nuclear.
We don't have to give up the benefits - just the Global Warming CO2.

The left stacked bar on the graphic is all of Man's Global Warming CO2 in Giga tonnes per year (2007 annual Global Warming CO2 was about 29 Giga tonnes.).

Coal is grey, Natural Gas is yellow, Oil is tan, Deforestation is light green.

The right stacked bar (Totem Pole) shows CO2 emitters that could be replaced with nuclear.

Color                      CO2 Emitter                                   The Nuclear Replacement
 Turquoise:    Sea water desalination - either nuclear heat flash distilled or reverse osmosis.
 Blue:            Large Ocean Ships powered by conventional naval reactors.
 Dark Green:  Electricity from oil replaced by modular reactors i.e., mPower  NuScale
Purple:         Residential Electricity, Heating, Cooling.  Conventional nuclear electricity.
Light Blue:    Small gas fired commercial boilers.  Conventional nuclear electricity.
 Blue:            Large gas fired industrial boilers replaced by Hyperion type hot tub reactors.
 Dark Red:     Regular sized power plants replaced by conventional modular reactors.
 Bright Red:   Supersized power plants, repowered by Coal Yard Nuke reactor modules.
 Gray:            Coal used for firing cement, replaced with high temp. pebble bed reactors.
 White:          Coal used mainly for heating and steel.  Conventional nuclear electricity.

The world's 1,200 largest power stations are in the bright red bar.  They are 30% of ALL Global Warming.  Nothing else we can fix will have as much impact on Global Warming.

Overcoming more than 100% of Global Warming means overcoming oil.  We can't survive without oil.  The best we can do is to move from pumped fossil oil to carbon-neutral biogenic oil.  No one seems to be aware of the massive contribution nuclear heat could make in the production of biogenic diesel, gasoline, or ethanol.     To Overcoming Oil.         To gas2gasoline    

 

Data: "CO2 Source Fuels" from IPCC,  "CO2 Emitters" from EIA fuel usage tables.  "Repowerable" is author's opinion of what can be replaced with the various new nuclear reactors.  Gas usage is U.S., all others, World.

Check my power plant work:
 [ CARMA Groups Minimum Master .xls   (54,000 power plants, 8.3 meg Excel xls file.) ]

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Part  4:  

Most Global Warming CO2 Happens In Boilers

Where are we burning most of our fossil fuels?  We are burning 2/3 of our fossil fuels in boilers.

What fossil fuels are we burning in our boilers?  Almost all Coal and Natural Gas.
Source:  http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=environment_where_ghg_come_from 

 

15.9 Giga tonnes of CO2 per year is coming from only coal and natural gas - which is burned almost exclusively in the world's 1 billion boilers  

 

All U.S. boilers combined make almost
TWICE the CO2 as all U.S. vehicles combined.

Transportation =  2,014.
 
Electricity Generation, industrial, commercial boilers, hot water heaters, furnaces combined:
=  3,977
 

 

Coal and natural gas boilers can be repowered with nuclear

The boilers that are making 2/3 of Global Warming's CO2 are STATIONARY coal and natural gas burning boilers.

STATIONARY coal and natural gas burning boilers can be replaced with STATIONARY nuclear boilers.

(Right) North American stationary sources of CO2.

Notice all the different kinds of stationary CO2 sources. 

Most of these stationary CO2 sources can be repowered with the new small nuclear boilers.  Hyperion, Toshiba, and NuScale's products come to mind.

 

This is the turf where the struggle for ending fossil fuels forever will occur.

 

EPA GHG Thresholds .pdf

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fossil Fuel Boiler Awareness
Most coal and natural gas is burned in boilers so most Global Warming could be considered to be happening in boilers.

Hidden away, largely forgotten, all over the world, perhaps a billion huge-to-tiny boilers, hot water heaters and furnaces are silently making most of the Global Warming CO2 that's overwhelming Nature.  All day, every day. 

 

Click on pictures for larger images.
 

230 feet high, open-air for cooling, a pair of Babcock & Wilcox supersized coal burning power plant boilers. - Photo: B&W Brochure

 

Boiler awareness:   Boilers Produce over half of all Global Warming

      5,000 Supersized Coal Burning Boilers in 1,200 supersize power plants are making about 30% of Global Warming's CO2 
  150,000 Conventional Sized Coal Burning Power Plant Boilers make about 7% of Global Warming's CO2
       50,000 Natural Gas Burning Electricity Turbines make about 4% of Global Warming's CO2 
 1 Million Large Industrial and Commercial Natural Gas Boilers make about 4% of Global Warming's CO2
 1 Billion Small Commercial Gas Boilers, residential hot water heaters, furnaces make about 4% of Global Warming's CO2
Ocean-going ships, which could be nuclear powered, make about 5% of Global Warming CO2.   Concrete production, which could be nuclear fired, about 4%.

EPA: The United States has 200,000 industrial boilers, heaters and incinerators. (US has about 20% of the world's industrial infrastructure.)

Notes:
1. Boiler population numbers are 2005 world-wide counts or estimates.
2. The advanced nuclear boiler that can replace supersized coal boilers - the BN-800 - is available now.  It is a Russian product.  There is nothing like it in the United States because we are far behind in the BN-800's fast-neutron technology.
 


(Right) Classic American natural gas burning 800 horsepower industrial boiler.  Click on image to see a cutaway of this boiler - which is the same concept as a classic steam locomotive fire-tube boiler.  - - Hurst Boiler & Welding     Hurst boiler brochure .pdf 

 

 (Above) a typical hospital complex boiler house.  Click on image for larger view.     Explore a nuclear power plant.  

 

Beyond Fossil Fuels:
 Nuclear Boiler Awareness

Nuclear isn't just for electricity anymore
 Fridge Sized Nuclear Reactors to Tap 135 Billion Dollar Energy Market .pdf

Many companies will soon be offering small "hot tub" modular nuclear "heat batteries" to replace coal and natural gas burning boilers.  Depending on the model, every 5 to 30 years you swap it out for a fresh one.

Reasonably priced, automatic and intended for large groups of buildings.

Colleges, hospitals, factories, airports, any place you have a large group of large buildings that is currently being heated by a central BOILER HOUSE.

Or, you could hook an electricity generator to it and have a small power plant to power a small town.
 

< Hyperion reactor    Gas boiler >

 

Something SMALL is happening

Do you remember when millions of microprocessors replaced dozens of mainframe computers? 
Well, it's dιjΰ vu time all over again! 
Check out all the different SMALL nuclear boilers that have recently matured:

Hyperion       Toshiba        NuScale       ARC *       mPower       GA *       PRISM       IRIS       PBMR       TERRAPOWER       BN-800

These are not your father's reactors.  Many are currently on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's docket
  ( http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/advanced.html ) for certification for manufacture, sale, and operation in the United States.  Also: 
The power of price will enable thousands of small electricity companies, colleges, industrial and commercial users to move up to clean nuclear energy.
Platts Small Modular Reactor Meeting .pdf     Pro-nuclear Organization Formed by Legislators .pdf

It will take not hundreds, but tens of thousands, of nuclear reactors to end Global Warming.

Now everyone needs to learn about being around radioactivity just as we needed to learn about being around fire.
 Small Reactor Certification for US Consumers .pdf 

Practical Radioactivity:  Living around nuclear power.

As the author understands it, fresh, never used, reactor fuel rods from the factory can be safely handled with gloves.

Once in a running reactor however, fuel rods become dangerously radioactive.  Running reactors MUST have radiation shielding to block the high levels of radioactivity needed to make heat.  For example, a properly shielded reactor can be safely located "close quarters" in the middle of a submarine or aircraft carrier.  Steel is a very poor nuclear barrier.  Burying a small reactor in a thick concrete vault is a good way to improve security and add additional shielding.  (Concrete and steel rebars are cheap - we make roads out of them, moist dirt is excellent shielding.)

The Hyperion reactor is a factory sealed unit and does not have user-replaceable fuel rods.  The first Hyperion will be a 25 MWe unit with a 5 year fuel load.  When the fuel is used up, a fresh reactor is connected and the old reactor is left to allow the strong "running radioactivity" to die out (decay) for a couple of years before the reactor is safe enough to be loaded onto a truck for refueling at the factory.

This is shown clearly on the Hyperion sales brochure drawing below.  In-ground reactor silos are provided on either side of the steam generating heat exchanger vault (bottom of drawing) to hold both an active and a cooling Hyperion Power Module (HPM).  Notice the silos are outside the electricity generator building to enable a transport truck to drive over either silo opening to deliver or remove a 20-ton reactor by lowering or lifting it through an opening in the bed of its shielded semi trailer.

This is a small nuclear power plant - only 25 MegaWatts electrical (MWe) - compared to the 1,800 MWe, $6 billion nuclear power plants we are used to.  It would power a town of 20,000 people and it's industries quite nicely.  If some town decided to buy a Hyperion reactor to reduce their electricity costs (nuclear electricity is cheaper than coal) they should also have access to some pumped water energy storage.  Nuclear likes a slowly changing load (a 50% load change can take more than an hour), pumped water energy storage can cover quickly changing loads very nicely and also provide the reactor with some work to do in the middle of the night.

Adding in a few wind turbines creates the best of all worlds: Nuclear for the baseload, Pumped Water Energy Storage for the quick load changes, and Wind Turbines to help keep the pumped water energy storage pond full.  Best of all, This combination NEVER makes any Global Warming CO2.

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Part  5: 

3 million times more powerful than fossil fuels and having easily detected and controlled emissions, nuclear fuels have an overwhelming advantage.

The Nuclear Energy Advantage

Nuclear energy needs no introduction.  Almost 3 million times more powerful than oil, nuclear is a major player in medicine, electricity, and weaponry. The nuclear industry has now gathered 13,000 years of reactor operating experience

Nuclear's Advantages:
1. We will never run out of nuclear energy.
2. Nuclear electricity is the least expensive to produce.
3. Nuclear electricity is, by far, the cleanest form of scaleable, invoke-able, controllable energy.
 

How clean is nuclear? 
Nuclear electricity produces less than 1% of fossil fuel's carbon dioxide.

Vattenfall, the Swedish energy company, produces electricity from Nuclear, Hydro, Coal, Gas, Solar Cell, Peat, and Wind energy and has produced accredited Environment Product Declarations for all these processes.  Vattenfall finds that, averaged over the entire lifecycle of their Nuclear Plant including Uranium mining, milling, enrichment, plant construction, operating, decommissioning and waste disposal, the total amount of CO2 emitted per KW-Hr of electricity produced is 3.3 grams per KW-Hr of produced power.  Vattenfall measures its CO2 output from Natural Gas to be 400 grams per KW-Hr and from Coal to be 700 grams per KW-Hr.  Thus nuclear power generated by Vattenfall emits less than one hundredth the CO2 of Fossil-Fuel based generation. In fact, Vattenfall finds its Nuclear Plants to emit less CO2 over their lifecycle than even green energy production mechanisms such as Hydro, Wind, Solar, and Biomass.  
GHG Emissions from Electric Supply Technologies DanielWeisser.pdf

Nuclear fission is natural and is heating the core of planet earth at this moment.  Uranium and thorium isotopes that can only come from fission are found in volcano emissions.  Chemical fire, on the other hand, appears to be unique to the particular combination of chemicals found on planet earth at this particular geologic time, i.e., there happens to be enough oxygen in the air (over 15%) to support fire.

The author, an electrical/electronics engineer, has adopted this comprehensive paper as his position on nuclear energy.

Nuclear today:

  • Energy demand globally will double by 2050 and it can’t be met by fossil sources. Nuclear is seen as being able to close the gap.
  • The U.S. nuclear renaissance has started moving with plans to break ground at multiple sites within the next few years.
  • Asia is the leader in building new nuclear reactors especially in China.
  • Safety remains a public concern despite polls showing increased support for nuclear energy.

How large is the nuclear energy industry today?

The latest World Nuclear Association list of commercial nuclear power plants shows 436 operating reactors, 53 more under construction (first concrete already poured), 142 more ordered (funded), and another 327 proposed (specific programs) worldwide.  That's a total of 958 nuclear power plants, existing and new.  This alone promises a much improved Global Warming future. 

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency  (IAEA), 12 new countries are actively preparing for nuclear power and a further 38 countries have indicated an interest in the possible introduction of a nuclear power plant. Of these 51 countries, 17 are from the Middle East to the Pacific, 13 are from Africa, 11 are European and nine are in Latin America.  Of 38 potential nuclear newcomer countries listed by the World Nuclear Association, 15 do not have nuclear experience at the research-reactor level.

Also, there are about 100 nuclear powered ships and perhaps 80 teaching reactors at universities around the world.

Nuclear-related articles.
 Why You Can't Build a Bomb From Spent Fuel-2 .pdf
Would 10,000 Nuclear Power Plants Cook the Planet?. pdf
Sub-seabed Nuclear Waste Disposal .pdf 
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf33.html  A frequently updated high quality source of World-Wide information about small nuclear reactors.

 

5A: Nuclear and war. 

It is important the reader understands the basic difference between nuclear weapons technology and nuclear heat technology. 
Nuclear weapons are "prompt neutron" devices requiring extremely pure nuclear fuels.  Plutonium provides the "promptest" neutrons and so makes the best weapons.  Less than extremely prompt causes a "fizzle" rather than a clean explosion. 
Nuclear heat technology is only possible because of "delayed neutrons" using very diluted nuclear fuels - almost any slightly radioactive material - usually several percent - can be made to work - CANDU reactors will even run on unenriched uranium ore pellets straight from the mine.  The worst slow neutron fuel can do is to melt itself into a puddle of radioactive energy metal.

Despite the wishes of the antinuclear environmentalists, knowledge of how to obtain nuclear energy and nuclear establishments to do it will never go away.

Nuclear weapons.  The only time nuclear weapons were ever used was when the user was absolutely certain there would be no nuclear retaliation. 
The age of steam and oil-powered explosives made the horrors of modern wars possible.  Consider what a World War would have been like without oil.
The curve below implies that nuclear weapons may have brought a halt to the "fossil fuel wars" phenomenon that began with the U.S. Civil war.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_disasters_by_death_toll

Why do we remain afraid of the strongest workhorse in the barn?

All horses are potentially dangerous.  For their own safety, small children were sometimes told scary stories about a particular horse known to be easily spooked by common things.  That's why blinders were invented.  The author's 48 year old daughter was recently thrown from a horse while riding in the woods.  That horse was spooked by a deer.  [Aside: During the time of the "Wild West," the average age at death of a cowboy in the Western Territories was 21.  The most common cause of death was being thrown from a horse.}

In the case of nuclear, malicious antinuclear environmentalists such as Greenpeace and Sierra Club made up and repeatedly told unfair scary bedtime stories - picked up and repeated by a press keen to spread scary stories, no matter how unfair - demonizing the workhorse named "Nuclear" to us children and, being child-like in our knowledge of Nuclear, we believed them.  Mature knowledge always chases demons away.

 

http://www.conelrad.com/index.php  Remember "Duck and Cover" and   Δ640 CONELRAD Δ1240 ?

1951's Control of Electronic Radiation radio frequencies - Initiated by President Truman.  Remember those little civil defense triangles on your radio dial?     

 

YOU WERE TOLD TO BE AFRAID AND YOU BELIEVED WHOEVER TOLD YOU.

 

 

 

 

5B: Nuclear Radiation.  The radiation we are getting

http://www.hiroshimasyndrome.com/  The "Hiroshima Syndrome" addresses beautifully what the author cannot - the soul of nuclear fear.

"One of the worst stumbling blocks in gaining widespread public acceptance of nuclear power is that the great majority of people do not understand and quantify the risks we face. Most of us think and act as though life is largely free of risk. We view taking risks as foolhardy, irrational, and assiduously to be avoided. Training children to avoid risk is an all-important duty of parenthood. Risks imposed on us by others are generally considered to be entirely unacceptable." - - Dr. Bernard Cohen

Risks  in the different energy chains .bmp          Risk of death to workers in different energy chains .bmp

Both fossil heat and nuclear radiation can harm you.  Like a burn degree chart for heat burns, the chart below presents generally accepted degrees of radiation harm levels.  The radiation unit used in the chart is "milli-Sieverts" or 100 millirems (average annual US dose = 360 millirems or a little over "3" on the dose scale below).   1 Sv = 100 rem  (The sievert (Sv) is the System International or SI unit for dose equivalent (H).  The rem is the same, but is an older conventional unit still used at an operational level here in the United States.

 

 

(Below)  Average American radiation exposure, 2006.

(Below) Radiation types and their relative penetrating power.
 (1 meter of concrete is about 3 feet of concrete.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Radiation Hormesis

Man evolved 3 million years ago, when Planet Earth was a bit more radioactive than it is today.  Our bodies may need a bit more background radiation than they are receiving today to stay as healthy as possible.  In the author's opinion (an electrical engineer, not a doctor), this does not include radioactive particles (not rays) that may come in contact with mucus membranes - such as radon and, of all things, tobacco.  http://www.epa.gov/radtown/tobacco.html   -- JH

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis
 http://radiationhormesis.com/  (This is a person offering to sell radioactive "Healing Stones." - - Hmm - And no, I haven't bought or use any.)

 “Low-dose radiation has been shown to enhance biological responses for immune systems, enzymatic repair, physiological functions, and the removal of cellular damage, including prevention and removal of cancers and other diseases.”   - 21 Century Science and Technology Magazine

 

Notice radiation dose curve "D"      

From:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis      

 

 

 

 

5C:  Reactor Types

Reactor Types
 Slow-neutron and fast-neutron reactors

A parallel with coal and natural gas could be made between slow and fast reactors.  Fast reactors get 15 times better uranium mileage and make only 5% the waste.  So, in that sense, they, like natural gas, "burn" cleaner.

Almost everyone in the United States is out of touch with the progress nuclear technology has been making.

Fast Reactors
 About these new high temperature fast-neutron nuclear reactors
 Fast Neutron Reactor Overview - World Nuclear Association - April 2010.pdf

You will be hearing a lot in the next few years about "New Generation Nuclear power."  These are power reactors designed to take advantage of lessons learned from both the world's over 400 older commercial slow-neutron (or "Thermal") reactors and about one hundred new developmental fast-neutron reactors built and run worldwide at test sites over the last 50 years.  Significant strides have been made in both the areas of "natural" (or passive) safety and "uranium mileage" (15 times better) with its great reduction in the amount (95% reduction) and persistence time of what nuclear waste there is - from millions of years to about 200 years. 

Radiation produced by running reactors has not, and probably will never be, reduced - although significant containment and shielding progress has been made - as close-quarters reactors on submarines in many of the world's navies attests to.  Also, slow reactor "throttle" response due to uranium's fission production of iodine→xenon135 remains.  This means we will have to build more pumped water energy storage ponds to provide unanticipated quick electricity if we want to move away from the CO2-dirty (but jet airplane engine quick) natural gas turbines that are currently teamed up with nuclear power plants in parts of the country that have no pumped energy storage.  Nearby (within 100 miles) pumped water energy storage ponds also "Make Wind Electricity All It Can Be."

 
Fast neutron and slow neutron (or thermal) reactors compared
 (Very optional reading)

Slow Reactors.  Most fission reactors are thermal reactors that use a neutron moderator to slow down, or thermalize the neutrons produced by nuclear fission. Moderation substantially increases the fission cross section for fissile nuclei such as uranium-235 or plutonium-239. In addition, Uranium-238 also has a much lower capture cross section for thermal neutrons, allowing more neutrons to cause fission of fissile nuclei and continue the chain reaction, rather than be captured by 238U. The combination of these effects allows light water reactors to use low-enriched uranium. Heavy water reactors and graphite-moderated reactors can even use natural uranium as these moderators have much lower neutron capture cross sections than light water.

An increase in fuel temperature also raises U-238's thermal neutron absorption by Doppler broadening, providing negative feedback to help control the reactor. Also, when the moderator is also a circulating coolant (light water or heavy water), boiling of the coolant will reduce the moderator density and provide negative feedback (a negative void coefficient).

Intermediate-energy neutrons have poorer fission/capture ratios than either fast or thermal neutrons for most fuels. An exception is the uranium-233 of the thorium cycle which has a good fission/capture ratio at all neutron energies.

Fast reactors use unmoderated fast neutrons to sustain the reaction and require the fuel to contain a higher concentration of fissile material relative to fertile material U-238. However, fast neutrons have a better fission/capture ratio for many nuclides, and each fast fission releases a larger number of neutrons, so a fast breeder reactor can potentially "breed" more fissile fuel than it consumes.

Fast reactor control cannot depend on Doppler broadening or negative void coefficient from a moderator. However, thermal expansion of the fuel itself can provide quick negative feedback. Perennially expected to be the wave of the future, fast reactor development has been nearly dormant with only a handful of reactors built in the decades since the Chernobyl accident (and because of low prices in the uranium market)-- although there is now a revival with several Asian countries planning to complete larger prototype fast reactors in the next few years. - -  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_temperature 

 

5D:  Electricity Quality

 

 

 

Electricity is what its all about

(Right) Looking at total electricity added up but not looking at the quality of the electricity produced.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Left, One month of wind electricity in Germany.   Center, One day of scattered cloud solar electricity in Southwest U.S.   Right, One month of nuclear electricity in the U.S.  (Click on images for details.)

You can see for yourself how Bonneville Power's wind power is doing in the Pacific Northwest at this moment.       Living with wind electricity .pdf
(The blue line on the Pacific Northwest linked plot is wind electricity.)
 This advertisement is dangerously misleading.  (1.2 meg wmv)      The reality.  (3.2 meg wmv)

Electricity Quality.  As you can see, no electricity source is 100% available 100% of the time, that's why electricity grids are always powered by multiple electricity generating units.  In the United States, electricity voltage has to be within 10% of where it should be all of the time for the grid and most large electrical devices in the home to function properly without burning out before they are worn out. 

In addition, the grid in the United States is "tuned" to run at a frequency pitch of 60 cycles (or Hertz, Hz) (that hum you hear around big electrical equipment) and electricity generating sources must be within 1/2 cycle of that pitch or they cannot contribute electricity to the grid.

Just as your car gets poor gas mileage, wears out faster, and makes excessive amounts of emissions in stop-and-go traffic, your power company experiences the same degradations if it has to add stop-and-go electricity from herky-jerky wind and solar sources into the electricity it is supplying to the grid feeding your house.  This is why wind electricity, which has been around since 1900, has not been used as a source of electricity. 

In the author's opinion, if we want to add wind and solar electricity to the grid mix, these sources should be used to pump water up into nearby pumped water energy storage facilities.  Hydro is jet-engine quick.  Wind + hydro makes one of the most perfect renewable electricity generating systems ever devised.

(Above, right) Pumped water energy storage facility.  Green is taking energy in, red is sending energy out.  Notice it is well suited to track changes in wind and solar generation to smoothly meet electricity user needs.

 

Electricity Cost.  As you can see, nuclear electricity has the lowest production cost of any source.  (Click for details.)

Unfortunately, spending years in court fighting the antinuclear environmentalists causes nuclear to have the highest build costs of any electricity generating technology.

 

 

 

http://atomwatch.blogspot.com/   This blog is devoted to major events going on in the world of nuclear technology and run by a journalist and researcher from Belarus studying in Sweden, willing to draw public attention to atomic technology development, security and consequences of its usage.

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Part  6:  Going 100% Nuclear is the way to obsolete fossil fuels.

Going 100% Nuclear is the way to obsolete fossil fuels.

The New Reactor Opportunities
Its not your father's reactor anymore.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Nuclear_Safety_in_the_U.S.            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/  Nuclear_Power_2010_Program  

By the thousands.  Toshiba's 10 MWe 4S reactor and Hyperion's 25 MWe uranium hydride reactors are, in many ways, the author's idea of how nuclear reactors should evolve into consumer-accessible nuclear energy sources.  Both of them are intended to be used by people ignorant about nuclear energy.  This puts nuclear power at our fingertips just as our personal computer puts the power of software at our personal disposal.  Both reactors are well-suited for powering the world's 50,000 small towns and rural multi-village populations of less than 30,000.  Hyperion's suggestion for a small town nuclear power plant.

This will be a big, hotly contested market with as many as 15 other similar entries from other countries.  Hyperion will first offer a non-automatic 25 MWe fast-neutron reactor based on a Russian lead-bismuth cooled submarine reactor.

An Automatic "Coal Yard Nuke" Module?  Both of the above automatic reactors are at the small end of the reactor power spectrum.  At the other end of the reactor power spectrum, the Rosatom 880 MWe BN-800 impresses the author as having a similar potential for use by nuclear-naive operators.  This would put massive amounts of very low cost nuclear energy into the hands of America's supersized coal power plant utilities - something guaranteed to drive the cost of electricity into the bargain basement since the BN-800 is a fast-neutron reactor that could take 20 years to burn its nuclear fuel down to near nothingness.  A much more efficient E = Mc2 device.  M (uranium) is reduced to almost nothingness as it is turned into E (energy).  At least 15 times better uranium mileage than your father's slow-neutron reactor.

By the hundreds.  There are several thousand small coal steam and natural gas turbine electricity generating units in the 600 larger power stations in the United States that will be replaced over the next 20 years, both for environmental and capacity expansion reasons.  Two other reactor companies, Babcock and Wilcox, with their modular 125 MWe mPower, and NuScale with their modular 45 MWe reactor have already fine-tuned the design of their products for this market.

Overview: Both of these reactors are small versions of well-proven conventional water-moderated slow-neutron technology powered by smaller amounts of standard nuclear fuel rods, and both companies intend to mass produce their products on assembly lines in the same manner as today's low-cost coal fired electrical generating equipment.  Both reactor module designs have advanced "Nuclear Waste" strategies and spent fuel rod handling equipment. 

Market Potential: Babcock and Wilcox (Ohio) have, over the years, made most of the reactors for our nuclear navy and that expertise shows in their mPower nuclear module.  NuScale (Corvallis, Oregon) has a product that reflects their "West Coast" attitude toward things nuclear.  Their obsession with safety has produced a reactor almost the same size as mPower's but only about 1/3 as powerful.  We'll see how this plays out in the marketplace.  These are the power plants for United States and other first-world cities between 30,000 and 1 million population.  A huge market.  If the reactor's price reflects it's power and they both soon obtain the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's "Seal of Good Reactor Design" - which virtually guarantees many foreign sales - this will turn into a real horse race.

Nuclear Construction Credentials, Engineering, Cost Estimates, Supply Chains: Babcock and Wilcox have worked with Westinghouse over the years on every Westinghouse nuclear project in the world so their nuclear contractor connection credentials are impeccable.  NuScale has a formed a partnership with Kiewit Power Constructors Co., the power construction division of Peter Kiewit Sons, Inc.  Kiewit holds current ASME certificates needed to begin construction of nuclear power facilities including NA, NPT, CC and NS certificates of accreditation but, as far as the author knows, Kiewit has never actually built a nuclear power station.  There are many sub-contractors who have fresh experience in the current offshore reactor building boom that should be in a position to make their construction cadre available to either modular reactor manufacturer. 

General Electric-Hitachi have developed the PRISM, a 311 MWe modular fast-neutron reactor that, as part of their ARC nuclear waste recycling system, feeds on the unsellable, but still useful, actinides left over from recycling.  Five conventional large slow-neutron reactors produce enough actinides to power two PRISMs.

GE-Hitachi Advanced Recycling Center .pdf       GE-Hitachi  ARC - Advanced Reactor Designs .pdf      GE-Hitachi Prism Congress .pdf

By the dozens. (WNA)  In the USA there are proposals for over twenty new reactors and the first 17 combined construction and operating licenses for these have been applied for. All are for late third-generation plants, and a further proposal is for two Advanced Boiling Water Reactor units.  It is expected that 4 to 8 new reactors will be on line by 2020.

These are large conventional slow-neutron reactors built by Westinghouse, General Electric, and Areva.

You can track the new type small  U.S. reactor's certification progress. 
The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission:  http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/advanced.html
Also: New Reactor Licensing Process Video:  http://video.nrc.gov/Player.aspx?Event=378   

 

Nuclear issues that concern the general public.

Nuclear Energy Facts Report - April 2010.pdf
Why You Can't Build a Bomb From Spent Fuel-2 .pdf
Would 10,000 Nuclear Power Plants Cook the Planet?. pdf
Safe Transportation of Spent Nuclear Fuels .pdf  Fresh and spent nuclear fuel transport:  "No container in normal use or involved in an accident has released any of its contents, nor has any increase in emitted radiation above levels allowed by the design ever been noted."


 6A:                   SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL (Nuclear Waste) RECYCLING (Reprocessing)
Reprocessing down to vitrification volumes and levels (actinides of about 5% original uranium mass) via fast-neutron reactors makes the most sense to the author.

Yucca Mountain: All nuclear electricity paths lead to Yucca Mountain. 
If we use current generation slow-neutron reactors and recycle the spent fuel 10 to 15 times, we end up with 5% mass actinides that are highly radioactive to begin with but rapidly decay down to raw uranium ore radioactivity in a couple hundred years. 
If we use next generation fast-neutron reactors and just run the uranium down over 20 or 30 years, we end up with 5% mass actinides that are highly radioactive to begin with but rapidly decay down to raw uranium ore radioactivity in a couple hundred years.

Yucca Mountain is a heck of a fine national nuclear asset that has already been paid for by the American electrical consumer.  Obama was wrong in shutting it down.  Storing small-mass actinides vitrified in glass instead of huge volumes of slightly used uranium pellets in enormous storage casks should give that place useable storage space for the next ten thousand years.

 
http://www.energy.gov/news/8584.htm  President Obama's Blue Ribbon Commission on Nuclear Waste.  Interim Report Due summer 2011, Final Jan 2012.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Isolation_Pilot_Plant  WIPP, in New Mexico, is the U.S.' current repository for non-high level military nuclear waste.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#Long_term_management_of_waste  High-level repository considerations.  National management plans
Sub-seabed Nuclear Waste Disposal .pdf
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf69.html   pdf    Processing of Used Nuclear Fuel.   The United States built 3 in the past, has as many as 3 new under consideration.  Savannah River Plutonium Recycling is an Areva project under study, General Electric-Hitachi's ARC is a more advanced process under consideration.
http://www-ns.iaea.org/tech-areas/waste-safety/disposable.htm  The IAEA Nuclear Waste and Spent Nuclear Fuel Group.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing  Excellent overview of today's state of worldwide spent nuclear fuel reprocessing.

Minor actinides are the broken atoms that result from the splitting of uranium, plutonium, or thorium atoms during nuclear fission. 

Areva's automated actinide vitrification facility is a shocking example of how the United States has permanently become a second world nation with mostly vestigial industrial capacity.  The 5% of true nuclear waste you have on hand after spent nuclear fuel reprocessing - the residual actinides - is very nasty stuff.  It is extremely radioactive and a rich source of lethal gamma radiation.  Fresh minor actinides aren't even safe to touch with a 10-foot pole.  "Too hot not to cool down," the more intense radioactivity is, the quicker it decays into near non-radioactivity.  In this case, perhaps as little as 200 years. 

Areva now has a safe automated way to embed large amounts of fresh actinides in glass - the safest long-term disposal storage container of all - and the best way to use Yucca Mountain.  The United States has the largest amount of spent nuclear fuel in the world and will have to license foreign technology to complete what it started 65 years ago.  Induction heating of metals (Areva's "Cold Crucible Method") is a common technology that has been known since 1831 and is no more exotic than a induction heating kitchen range.  Since we trashed our nuclear recycling facilities over a generation ago, we never got to the point where we needed to develop a safe way to vitrify substantial quantities of actinides for disposal in Yucca Mountain. 

Vitrification - Areva Cold Crucible Method .jpg    Vitrification - Areva Cold Crucible Method .pdf 

Hyperion Power Plant 2010.jpg        The size of a hot tub? >

6B: Small Reactor Buyer's Guide.

Small Reactor Buyer's Guide
 

Far less expensive, these new small and simple reactors are designed to fight Global Warming by making coal obsolete.

A frequently updated high quality source of World-Wide information about small nuclear reactors:   
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf33.html
 

The International Atomic Energy Agency indicates that more than 50 new concepts and designs for advanced small or moderate size reactors are under development in more than 15 IAEA member states.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the newer nuclear reactors.     (the newer reactors.htm)
NOT YOUR FATHER'S REACTOR  Small reactors for medicine, teaching, aircraft carriers, and submarines.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wind, Solar, Geothermal, Coal, and Nuclear Horsepower Race

The bar graphic at right gives us some idea of the power league the electricity utility people are playing in.  Nuclear reactors in brown.

At right is a graphic showing the SINGLE UNIT relative horsepowers of the energy sources listed below.
(Using the international standard of 746 electrical watts equal one horsepower.)

Source - (Top device in table is left device in graph.) Device Horsepower 
   
Vestas V90 1.8 MWe Wind Turbine - Typical Size Wind Vestas V90 Wind 1,300
Solar Thermal Tower - Brightsource, CA Solar, Thermal 27,000
Hyperion 25 MWe nuclear MicroNuke reactor - Very Small Hyperion MicroNuke 34,000
Geothermal - West Ford Flat, CA - Biggest Geothermal Geothermal 36,000
Olmedilla, Spain, World's Largest Photovoltaic Solar System Solar, Electrical 80,500
Big Bend, FL  (450 MWe Coal Unit, 1 of 4) - Typical Size Coal Big Bend Coal Unit 603,000
Rosatom BN-800 high temperature, fast neutron reactor BN-800 Reactor 1,180,000
Modern typical size conventional nuclear power plant Average Nuclear Plant 2,200,000

Typically you will find two to six of the same type source at a single power plant location.

 

 

 

Today's "State of the Nuclear Power Plant Market"

The "Big Boys"

Mainstream current designs for Nuclear Power Plant Deployment by 2020

•           Westinghouse AP-1000, advanced pressured water reactor (APWR), about 1,200MW capacity

•           AREVA EPR, also an APWR, 1,600-1,700 MW

•           GE Hitachi ABWR (advanced boiling water reactor), 1,300-1,600MW

•           GE Hitachi ESWBR, 1600 MW

•           Mitsubishi Heavy APWR, 1,500MW

•           Rosatom VVER-1200, PWR, 1,100MW

•           Atomic Energy of Canada ACR (Advanced CANDU Reactor), 1,200MW

•           Korea, APR-1400, PWR, 1,340MW

•           China, CPR-1000, based on AREVA Gen II design, 1,000MW

•           India PHWR (pressurized heavy water reactor),540-700MW

 

The new "Generation IV" reactors

Concepts for Gen IV Systems

•           Sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR)

•           Very High Temperature Reactor (VHTR)

•           Super-Critical Water-cooled Reactor (SCWR)

•           Gas-cooled Fast Reactor (GFR)>

•           Lead-cooled Fast Reactor (LFR)

•           Molten Salt Reactor (MSR)

All the Generation IV reactors will generally be smaller, but of higher temperature, and intended to more closely mimic the things we now do with coal and natural gas.

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Part  7:  Bringing nuclear energy to you.  There is much more "Small" than "Large" energy.  What will the "Small Energy" picture be like then?

Bringing nuclear energy to you.
 There is much more "Small" than "Large" energy.
What will the "Small Nuclear Energy" picture be like?  >

What are we overlooking now?

To reduce all of Global Warming by 38%, these nuclear boiler modules will have to be installed in the world's largest coal burning power plants which are located in at least 67 different countries, many of which may never be "nuclear-ready."

Fossil Fuel Boiler Awareness
Most coal and natural gas is burned in boilers so most Global Warming could be considered to be happening in boilers.

Hidden away, largely forgotten, all over the world, perhaps a billion huge-to-tiny boilers, hot water heaters and furnaces are silently making most of the Global Warming CO2 that's overwhelming Nature.  All day, every day. 

 

Click on pictures for larger images.
 

230 feet high, open-air for cooling, a pair of Babcock & Wilcox supersized coal burning power plant boilers. - Photo: B&W Brochure

 

Boiler awareness:   Boilers Produce over half of all Global Warming

I'm watching Hyperion closely because its one of the reactors that is in a position to replace the thousands of coal and natural gas boilers for smaller applications such as boiler houses for hospital, colleges, shopping malls, etc.  Replacing these fossil fuel boilers is the key to making fossil fuels obsolete.

 (Left) Notice the Hyperion reactor below the combination electricity generator and water desalinator..

This is the unrealized brick wall that is stopping real progress against Global Warming.  Renewables are nothing but "Cargo Cult" attempts at replacing fossil fuels that appeal to scientists and politicians, not engineers who had to understand thermodynamics as a pre-requisite for graduation.  Few scientists exhibit an understanding of thermo as taught to engineers.

 
The key pre-requisite for ending Global Warming is coming up with nuclear heat sources that can be purchased and used by nuclear-ignorant people.  Just like gas and electric hot water heaters are used by electricity and gas ignorant people.  We think nothing of this really huge gap in user understanding.  Think about how much the average car driver knows about intake valve timing.
 
Until nuclear energy's heat is as accessible as coal's and gas' heat, Global Warming will remain impossible to end.  This is the understanding Hyperion's, Bill Gate's, Toshiba's, Babcock & Wilcox's, NuScale's and at least 50 other companies share.

 

What will the "Small Energy" picture be like then?

There is a huge gap between the 70 MWt obtainable from the smallest commercial reactor that's about to come on the market - the Hyperion - and what thermal energy may be obtained from a 4kV 3 phase electrical distribution line.

An 800 boiler horsepower boiler consumes about 33,600 SCF or 105 MegaWatts thermal per hour in natural gas.

To do 70 MW thermal at 4,000 volts 3Φ, would take 4,000 amps.  This is an impractical amount of current.  400 amps is about as high as we can go.

A great little electrical power calculator:  http://www.jobsite-generators.com/power_calculators.html 

Basic electricity distribution components.  Below, from:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_distribution  Notice all circuits are 3 phase (Φ), 60 Hz.

 

 

 

(Right) Basic components found in a more complete electricity distribution grid.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alternate Energy Holdings, Inc. Signs MOU With Hyperion Power to Manufacture Small, Modular Nuclear Reactors in China and Market World-Wide

14 June 2010

Alternate Energy Holdings, Inc. signed a memorandum of understanding with New Mexico-based Hyperion Power Generation, Inc. The MOU is the beginning of a joint venture between the two companies to license, build and market Hyperion’s small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) earlier post) on a world-wide basis.

Hyperion announced the ultra-small reactor, which already has more than 150 purchase commitments from customers such as mining and telecom companies, in 2009. Hyperion transportable reactors are sealed at the factory and are not refueled onsite. When the reactor has exhausted its fuel, it is returned to the factory and a new reactor is installed in its place.

Alternate Energy Holdings is the US’ only independent nuclear power plant developer seeking to build new power plants in multiple non-nuclear states. AEHI China, headquartered in Beijing, develops joint ventures to produce nuclear plant components and consults on nuclear power.

Alternate Energy Holdings

http://www.alternateenergyholdings.com/ 

Hyperion

Original Reactor:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_Moderated_Self-regulating_Nuclear_Power_Module 
Current Reactor:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_Power_Generation