coal2thorium.com                                               Electricity From THORIUM
Chapter   2         A REACTOR TO REPLACE COAL BOILERS           Directory
The purpose of this page is to define what a nuclear boiler must be to replace a coal burning boiler.
Thorium-fueled molten salt reactors are nuclear's only hope of ever becoming anything more than a niche energy source.

The "Open-Source" thorium reactor:
What must a nuclear reactor be to replace coal?
The time and technology is ready for nuclear boilers to begin replacing most large existing boilers.
If nuclear is to replace coal, gas, and oil, it must be as easy and as safe to use as coal, gas, and oil.
Nuclear medicine is everywhere, nuclear heat can - and should - be everywhere also.

 

Nuclear, the inconvenient energy solution,
needs to be made "convenient enough"
 Hot enough, accessible, automatic, affordable, scaleable, portable, replaceable, disposable.

 

INTRODUCTION: "Open-Source" like "Open Office," Linux, and much copied machines.
The Goal: A nuclear boiler that can replace coal and gas boilers.
The 8 modern advances beyond your father's reactor.
In more detail:  The modern advances beyond your father's reactor.
Déjà vu all over again:  Your author lived through something like this once before.

NEWS ITEMS

 

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INTRODUCTION:  "Open-Source" like "Open Office," Linux, and much copied machines.
 

 

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The Goal: A nuclear boiler that can replace coal and gas boilers.
 

The Goal: A nuclear boiler that can replace coal and gas boilers.
Economics and applications suggest a 1,000 megaWatt (e) Molten Salt Reactor should be first.
Why a one-size-fits all converter, not breeder, reactor makes the most sense for the application before us.

New 1,000 megaWatt (e) Nuclear Boiler      New Steam Generators        Old COAL BURNING Power Plant *

The electricity generator's turbine (red) is disconnected from the coal burning boiler (center, lifted, faded), then reconnected to the nuclear boiler.
Man standing in various places with 10 foot surveyor's rod to show approximate size.  Larger image
Key novel features:  Transportable modular reactor.  Steam generators not integrated with reactor.  No pressurized vessels - only the steam pipes are pressurized.
Molten Salt heat transfer makes driving multiple steam generator sets from a single reactor practical.

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The 8 modern advances beyond your father's reactor.
 

Summary:  8 modern advances beyond your father's reactor.

(Right) From Hyperion.  A Hyperion nuclear power module in a low tech user environment.
http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/  

Advance 1. Hot enough to compete successfully with coal, natural gas or oil heat.  This reactor runs at about 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit instead of the 550 degrees F typical of older water-cooled reactors.  This enables nuclear reactors to compete with coal fire's ability to produce practical superheated steam.

Advance 2: Sufficient fuel available for thousands of reactors to compete successfully with coal, natural gas or oil heat for thousands of years.

Advance 3. Low cost, factory produced for highest quality and availability at lowest cost.   Deep pockets are no longer a prerequisite for obtaining nuclear's cheap heat. What's available?

Advance 4. Boiler-license accessible Nuclear's heat isn't just for electricity anymore.  Intended, designed, and built to be used like a common industrial boiler by non-nuclear boiler operators for general industrial heat and electricity for large building complexes such as commercial, military, hospital, college, and government buildings.

Advance 5. 100% automatic.  It is intended to run fully automatically at 80% capacity factor power for 10 or more years.  Like your water heater.

Advance 6. Super-safe, super-secure.  It is intended to be installed in secure vaults at the bottom of underground silos.  Any failure causes the reactor to go cold.

Advance 7. No nuclear waste accumulation.  After running for 10 to 30 years, it is replaced with a fresh one, the old unit is returned to the factory for refueling and refurbishing, then re-sold or re-leased to some other user.  This keeps spent nuclear fuel from accumulating at reactor sites.  This means there should be some healthy core credit discount for the spent reactor.

Advance 8. Disposable.  This completely changes the costly nuclear power plant decommissioning issue.  By hauling the reactor away, we have a disposable recyclable reactor and no residual radioactivity at the user's plant site.  

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In more detail:  The modern advances beyond your father's reactor.

In more detail:  The modern advances beyond your father's reactor.

Advance  1:   Hot enough to compete successfully with coal, natural gas or oil heat.  Back to summary.

Why the author thinks these nuclear boilers have the "Right Stuff" to replace coal.
The author thinks engineers who have spent their careers around boilers and turbines like these will agree that, while this is not a perfect fit,
 it is certainly "Good Enough." 
 (If you have candidate boiler and can get the government to expense the engineering costs of an emissions feasibility study,
the author knows of a utility engineering firm that's looking for work.)

The 1,300°F promised by the Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) - LFTR folks is hot enough to be beyond question but the somewhat lower temperatures of liquid metal cooled Integral Fast Reactors (IFR) is clearly cause for concern since the superheated steam is 90°F cooler than the GE turbine's original design.

Example:  The Russian Rosatom "BN-800"

Replacing coal boilers with nuclear boilers OF THIS TYPE.
(The more advanced high temperature fast-neutron reactors are far better suited for coal replacement applications than are the older, far less uranium efficient,
and cooler common slow neutron reactors.  The BN-800 mentioned here is a commercial product.  Earlier versions go back to 1973.)

                    Taichung's 550 MWe GE Turbine           Rosatom BN-800 880 MWe Reactor        BN-800 at 2,524 psia          Conventional PWR reactor
                                                                                          (Running OEM)                           (Replacing Coal)                  Turbine Steam Loop
Steam Type                          Superheated                             Superheated                               Superheated                             Subcooled
Pressure (psia)                           2,524                                        2,000                                         2,524                                       900
Temperature (°F)                         1,000  (331
°F superheat)               910  (275°F superheat)                910  (241
°F superheat)           530
Sat. Temperature (°F)                     669                                           635                                           669                                       532
Reheat Temperature
(°F)              1,000  (from 550)               No Reheat on stock unit              Reheater could be added                 None
Enthalpy (Btu/lbm)                       1,461                                       1,415                                          1,393                                      524
Internal Energy (Btu/lbm)              1,318                                       1,283                                          1,266                                      520
Entropy (Btu/lbm-F)                            1.53                                        1.51                                             1.48                                     0.725
Specific Volume (ft3/lbm)                    0.321                                      0.358                                            0.271                                   0.021
Density (lbm/ft3)                                 3.111                                      2.796                                           3.678                                  47.231     Water = 62.4
Cp (Btu/lbm-F)                                    0.665                                      0.676                                           0.7449                                  1.249

Steam compatibilities.  Using the world's largest supersized coal plant, Taichung, as a very typical example.  Rosatom's BN-800 880MWe high temperature nuclear boiler and Taichung's GE 550 MWe turbine are a very close fit.  At 880 MWe, the reactor can provide much more steam than the 550 MWe turbine can use.  The turbine is built for 2,524psi/1,000°F steam while the OEM BN-800 delivers 2,000psi/910°F steam.  Mass flow would be about 3,187,000 pounds of water per hour.

The BN-800 has liquid-to-liquid steam generators as opposed to the much longer gas-to-liquid boiler tubes of a coal burning boiler.

Can the BN-800 make the 2,524 psia steam needed to drive the 550 MWe GE turbine to full power?  Yes, as long as the steam generators are designed for the extra 524 psi pressure, but you may not want to.  Saturated steam temperature for 2,524 psi is 669°F so making pressure isn't a problem.  This does mean the superheat and reheat would be 910°F or 241°F over saturated instead of the coal boiler's 331°F.  Compare the enthalpies.  They are 95% of maximum output with 910°F steam so 95% of maximum looks feasible without risking undue high pressure stage turbine blade/bucket erosion.  Recall that turbines cost 8% to 12% of the entire power plant so they can't be put at risk.

Stand-alone gas-fired superheater and reheater boosters are quite feasible.  Only 90 degrees F needs to come from the stand-alone boost units.  That's about 216 million BTU/hr for the superheat at 2,524 psia, 138 million BTU/hr for the reheat at 552 psia, or a total of 354 million BTU/hr or, at $4 per million BTU, = $1,420 per hour for that last 25 MWe boost to full throttle OEM output.  Might be worth it on a peak load summer day.

(Interesting aside: "The mPower is designed so as to produce steam with +50 °F (10 °C) [that's what they wrote] of superheat, allowing the steam turbogenerator to run in the superheated regime, and avoid the issue of having to deal with low-quality, efficiency-reducing moist steam of the saturated regime, as non-B&W light water reactors (such as the Westinghouse AP1000 and the General Electric ABWR and ESBWR) are well known for producing large quantities of.")  - - [?] exact quote from Wikipedia's mPower

General Electric Steam Turbine Service advertises the services of their turbine rebuilding division. They suggest that they have newer blade designs for older turbines that will improve the turbine's efficiency.  After conversion from coal steam to BN-800 nuclear steam, when the turbine becomes rebuild-ready, blades optimized for the lower superheat and reheat nuclear steam could be installed instead of simply renewing the 20+ year old coal steam blades.  Heck of lot cheaper and easier than a whole new turbine.  Give them a call.

Another aspect is what to do with all that extra steam power that will be available on sites that have coal units smaller than 880 MWe?  A second turbine gallery with new small low-cost coal steam turbine-generators comes to mind.  The second gallery could also be located in another unneeded portion of the coal yard.  Dual set of heat exchanger-steam generators.  The fact that the reactor has a common liquid coolant for both sets means the control rod system doesn't need to be any different. 

Come to think of it, you could bus the secondary coolant into multiple steam generators and run an entire older coal plant with a half-dozen turbines, perhaps adding a couple of new ones, off a single BN-800.

  Back to summary.

 

Advance  2:   Sufficient fuel available for thousands of reactors to compete successfully with coal, natural gas or oil heat for thousands of years.

Fuel Considerations

A 1,000 megaWatt (e) reactor designed for a core discharge temperature of 750°C (1,380°F) and an 85% capacity factor, this type of reactor's radioactive fuel is dissolved in hot unpressurized liquid salt that functions as the reactor's coolant.  It is a reactor that uses nuclear graphite as its moderator.  It can run on uranium, thorium, or plutonium. 

(Right, from Dr. Robert Hargraves' "Aim High" Google lecture.)

Right, above, the starting fissile load and resulting fission products of a conventional solid fuel reactor.

Right, below, the starting fuel load and resulting fission products of a liquid fuel Fluoride reactor.

Take 2: (Following paragraph from Dr. David LeBlanc's Google lecture.)

Starting Fissile Material Loads:  One major advantage is that while conventional PWR reactors are not too bad - say, 60 million dollars worth of fuel rods, compared with other advanced reactors such as the Sodium Cooled Fast (12 tons) and the Lead Cooled Fast (20 tons) the "Converter" Molten Salt Reactors takes only 1 1/2 ton (1,500 kg) - a much smaller initial starting load of radioactive materials to get under way.  Once up and running, 800 kg per gigaWatt-year (e) thorium consumption - costing about 50,000 dollars a year to make about 500 million dollars of electricity - has been stated by Dr. David LeBlanc, Physics Department, Carleton University, Ottawa, in a Google talk on Feb 19, 2009. 

The entire U.S. supply of plutonium from spent fuel and weapons programs could only start 30 to 40 Sodium or Lead cooled fast reactors - and we need thousands to impact Global Warming.

  Back to summary.

 

Advance  3:   Low cost, factory produced for highest quality and availability at lowest cost.  Deep pockets are no longer a prerequisite for obtaining nuclear's cheap heat. 

What's available?

Power to Save the World:  These are not your father's reactors.   Coal-hot, Small, Cheap,  Automatic, Accessible, Low-carbon, Large-scale sources of power. The New Family of Smaller, Naturally Safer, Modular Reactors (SMRs) Mature examples in 2 flavors - slow and fast - and a variety of sizes - 25, 45, 125, 311, 880 MegaWatts

Uranium Reactors, Thorium Reactors, Slow Reactors, Fast Reactors, Solid Reactors, Liquid Reactors, Small Modular Reactors.

Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), not your father's reactor.
Introducing the New Small Modular Reactors (SMRs)

Deep Pockets No Longer A Prerequisite.

A few of the new small mass-produceable reactors on parade:
Militaries and Space Agencies around the world have produced portable nuclear reactors as small as backyard grille propane tanks.
A common theme for this generation of more practical reactors is to simply place them in underground silos for radiation containment and physical safety.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf33.html  Best summary of all viable small reactors.

mPower *     Hyperion     Toshiba      NuScale     IRIS     PRISM     PBMR     TERRAPOWER     ARC     GA *     HTR-10

Red designates reactors on http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/advanced.html docket for certification for manufacture, sale, and operation in the United States.
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      Small Modular Reactors - NEI Position Paper .pdf      mPower - TVA wants 6 SMRs .pdf 
http://www.holtecinternational.com/

B&W to build mPower test facility 28 July 2010  Babcock & Wilcox (B&W) is to construct a test facility for the mPower reactor design in Bedford County, Virginia.  The facility - not far from B&W's headquarters in Lynchburg - will be used to support licensing activities for the small, modular reactor design.

"Ferrara said B&W has a cost target of $4,000/KW for its new SMR. Two potential customers are TVA and First Energy.  Last July TVA said it is interested in the mPower reactor and pledged support for the licensing process.  An executive with First Energy told FCW that the firm is providing user requirements to B&W.   Moul said that First Energy is in exploratory discussions with B&W about its mPower 125 MW SMR, but that no decision has been made to acquire one.  The small reactors would allow the utility to add capacity as demand occurs without having to bet the company on a single large plant. Building a new 1,000 MW plant is much further in the future and far more problematic mostly for financial reasons."  See:  http://djysrv.blogspot.com/2010/10/nuclear-fabrication-vendors-waiting-for.html  for full story.

It will take not hundreds, but tens of thousands, of small nuclear reactors to make fossil fuels obsolete, end Global Warming, and bring the cost of energy down again*.

Designers Tout Safety Of Small Modular Reactors At Conference.
Platts (5/24, Freebairn) reports, "Small modular reactors are less vulnerable to some types of accidents," including complete loss of power accidents like those at Japan's Fukushima plant, said "potential manufacturers of the new reactor designs [at] Platts Small Modular Reactors conference Monday." NuScale Power's chief marketing officer Bruce Landrey said his company's 45-MW modular units have "no reactor coolant pumps because they rely on natural circulation for emergency cooling." Landrey said a NuScale analysis shows its unit "does not need an external supply of water or any power to maintain cooling," because it rests "inside an area flooded with 4 million gallons of water that can be used for cooling, he said." Babcock & Wilcox exec Jeffrey Halfinger said their 125-MW "mPower" concept would also use "passive cooling," but as a last resort, after multiple other stages of backup cooling systems are exhausted.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_Moderated_Self-regulating_Nuclear_Power_Module  Dr. Peterson's original reactor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_small_nuclear_reactor_designs  List of small nuclear reactor designs.
THORIUM instead of URANIUM:   
www.nucleartownhall.com  Interview: Thorium Proponent Kirk Sorenson .pdf     Is Thorium really a viable option? 

 Back to summary.

 

Advance  4:   Boiler-license accessible.  Nuclear isn't just for electricity anymore.  Intended, designed, and built to be used like a common industrial boiler by non-nuclear boiler operators for general industrial process heat and electricity for large building complexes such as commercial, military, hospital, college, and government buildings .

Sealed away from users, usually in an underground silo. - No nuclear knowledge needed to obtain or use a nuclear boiler.
 

Nuclear fuel rods, when thermally cold, can be safely handled with bare hands.

Nuclear fuel rods, when so radioactive they are thermally hot, produces neutron radiation capable of going through as much as six feet of water.  Humans are mostly water.  Radiation this intense can kill humans.

This source of radiation must be kept away from humans.  The best containment design appears to be to keep the reactor's core in an underground concrete vault with walls thicker than 3 feet.  Reinforced concrete is cheap and very tough.  We make roads out of it.  Being in an underground vault, ground moisture acts as water, stopping neutrons in a very short distance.

Hyperion Power Module
http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/             http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_Power_Generation

(Right) The 1,000°F Hyperion 25 megaWatt (e) 10-year lead-bismuth fast-neutron reactor is the closest to a "Boiler License Accessible" general-consumer industrial reactor on the market so far. 

(Yellow circle) The Hyperion has dual truck serviceable reactor silos - one for active, one for cool-down.  Notice the reactor silos are located outside the power plant. 

A semi-trailer pulls over the cooled down reactor silo and hoists spent reactor up into the trailer, then a factory-fresh reactor is lowered and eventually connected to the steam generators.

 

 

 

 

 

Toshiba 4S
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_4S 

 

 

(Right) The 30-year 10 and 50 megaWatt (e) Toshiba 4S is also in the running.

The Toshiba 4S reactor for Galena, Alaska, has its core almost 90 feet into the ground.

The Toshiba 4S is intended to be replaced every 30 years with a fresh core.  In the case of Galena, Alaska, located on the Yukon River, it would be withdrawn from the its silo, placed on an ocean-going barge and returned to Japan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 nuclear power plant to power a small town.
 

< Hyperion reactor    Gas boiler >

  (Hyperion calls it a "Power Module.")
http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/ 

 

 

 

Replacing natural gas applications are where tiny nuclear boilers will find their niche.  Burning natural gas for heat is stupid when you consider you can easily turn it into gasoline.  See  Oil

By replacing natural gas, you end the CO2 natural gas makes - about 2/3 as much as coal.
See:  CO2 emissions from various fuels - Pounds per kWh - EPA .pdf 

 

Certainly not nuclear cars, but it is very likely that apartments, offices, schools, hospitals, government buildings, military bases, and large airport terminals will all be heated, cooled, and electrically powered by these hot tub-sized reactors located in underground silos beneath basements and boiler houses. 

China is talking about doing exactly this in over 1,000 locations.

  Back to summary.

 

Advance  5:   100% automatic.  It is intended to run fully automatically at 80% capacity factor power for 10 or more years.  Like your water heater.

A Repackaged Nuclear Technology.  Completely Automatic Operation. 


It doesn't get any more "Hands Off" than this Hyperion reactor application.  The Hyperion is designed to run full power for 10 years between trips back to the factory for refueling.

The Toshiba 4S reactor intended for Galena, Alaska, is designed to be buried in a 90 foot deep silo and go untouched for thirty years.

If this surprises you, recall that our nuclear submarines have a single desk-size nuclear reactor core and there is no way to refuel or replace it.  Those reactors can provide full power for more than the 30 year operational life of the ship.  The fact there is only one reactor speaks volumes about what our Navy has learned about reactor reliability in over 50 years of use.

Our nuclear navy sailors spend months at a time sealed up under water within a few feet of the reactor.

  Back to summary.

 

Advance  6:   Super-safe, super-secure.  It is intended to be installed in secure vaults at the bottom of underground silos.  Any failure causes the reactor to go cold.

Bringing power plant radiation standards up to nuclear medicine radiation standards.

 

SRNL Partners With Universities, Labs To Form Radioecology Center.
The Aiken (SC) Standard (1/28, Dolianitis) reports, "Radioecology experts at the Savannah River National Laboratory have partnered with universities and laboratories from across the United States, as well as France and the Ukraine, to form the National Center for Radioecology (NCoRE), a network of expertise in environmental radiation risk reduction and remediation." The program aims "to work with key partners to establish a training and education program for radioecologists to develop future capability as the existing pool of experts reaches retirement age, and to serve as faculty for courses offered at some of the partner universities." Wendy Kuhne of SRNL, one of the lead researchers for NCoRE, said, "The growth in new nuclear energy capacity is going to require the ability to realistically assess the health and environmental impacts of nuclear facilities."

 

 

Example of passive cool-down.

 

(Right) GE-Hitachi PRISM fast neutron reactor passive auxiliary cooling system.  Cool air (blue), drawn in by the air heated by the reactor (red) creates a natural, unpowered, reactor core cooling system.  A typical example of the advanced safety features found in modern smaller reactors.

Something SMALL is happening.  Local nuclear to keep our small towns and villages sustainable.  Remember when millions of microcomputers popped up alongside huge mainframe computers?  Well, it's déjà vu time all over again! 
This time it's SMALL, LOW COST nuclear boilers instead of your father's huge costly "mainframe" nuclear reactors.

  

 

 

 

  Back to summary.

 

Advance  7:   No nuclear waste accumulation.  After running for 10 or more years, it is replaced with a fresh one, the old unit is returned to the factory for refueling and refurbishing, then re-sold to some other user.  This keeps spent nuclear fuel (nuclear waste in common terms) from accumulating at reactor sites.  This means there should be some healthy core credit discount for the spent reactor.

Not your government's nuclear waste policies.

The Russians are delivering on what our government promised, then failed to deliver: Spent Nuclear Fuel Takeback.

Russia's Spent Nuclear Fuel take back offer.

A Wiser "Spent Nuclear Fuels" Policy

Atoms for Peace .pdf 
President Eisenhower's good 1953 American idea that Jimmy Carter trashed in 1977. 
Now, 30 years later, the world has stepped in to restore it.
Think of how much Global Warming Jimmy Carter caused by delaying nuclear and turning the United States into a nuclear backwater country.

 

IAEA Approves Global Nuclear Fuel Bank .pdf
Russian state nuclear energy company Rosatom said that it had completed arrangements for the fuel store in the vault of the International Enrichment Centre at Angarsk. It will be managed under the auspices of the IAEA.
http://www.iaea.org/ 

 

(Author’s Opinion) No old, cold, spent fuel rod storage anywhere.

If there isn’t 6 feet of water between you and a spent fuel rod fresh out of a running reactor, you’re dead pronto.

Spent fuel rods contain a mix of plutonium 239 (great for making bombs) and plutonium 240 (makes bombs go off prematurely). 

Some day, someone is going to figure out how to separate those two isotopes (we tried, we failed).

The Russians are planning to snatch back and recycle the spent fuel rods from their reactors while they are still unsafe for untrustworthy hands to handle.

  Back to summary.

 

Advance  8:   Disposable. 

 This completely changes the costly nuclear power plant decommissioning issue.  By hauling the reactor away, we have a disposable recyclable reactor and no residual radioactivity at the user's plant site.

Disposable Reactors - Taken away when no longer needed.
 

(Below) The author's idea for a 1,000 mWe Model "T" reactor mounted on a concrete ocean-going barge.  Many of the largest coal burning power plants are located on navigable water for access to coal barges and cooling water.  The idea is to cut a shallow temporary channel from the water adjacent to the power plant to a location in the coal storage yard near the power plant's turbine gallery.

When the reactor is worn out in 30 years or so years, the channel would be re-opened and the reactor barge hauled away for disposal.

 

 

 

The Russians are putting entire small power plants on barges and hauling them to the Arctic to power remote Siberian Cities.

Nuclear electricity barges such as the one depicted here also typically will have desalinators to provide drinking water to the cities they are powering.

15 Countries have expressed interest in leasing these barges.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

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Déjà vu all over again:  Your author lived through something like this once before.
 

Déjà vu all over again:  Your author lived through something like this once before. 

"FLOPS" are to computers as BTU (heat units) or, less commonly, horsepower, are to boilers. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOPSA measure of the power the device can produce.  In computing, FLOPS (or flops or flop/s) is an acronym meaning FLoating point OPerations per Second.  A simple calculator needs only about 10 FLOPS to be considered functional.  As of 2010, the fastest PC processors had a theoretical peak performance of 107.55 giga[109]FLOPS (Intel Core i7 980 XE) in double precision calculations.  In October 2010, China unveiled the Tianhe-I. A supercomputer that operates at a peak computing rate of 2.5 peta[1015]flops.

"In browsing for some data to use in this discussion, I saw an article that claimed it used to cost $150 per CPU hour to rent time on an IBM 360/50. At this charge rate per computation [FLOP], not taking into consideration inflation, it would cost 200 billion dollars an hour to use a modern fast large computer. If we included inflation, the cost in current dollars would be about a trillion dollars an hour." - David Moursund  ( http://iae-pedia.org/Speed_of_Computers )

The cost of the work a computer does - the FLOP - has gone to near zero.

In 1974, your author was working for the Upjohn Company, a $1 billion/per year pharmaceutical firm.  We had two IBM 360 Mainframe Computers (see above).  One was dedicated to pharmaceutical research, the other dedicated to running the company.  I was asked to build a programmable controller for a production line packaging machine using the then-new Intel 8-bit wide 8080A microcomputer.  It had a power of about 600,000 instructions - partial FLOPs - per second, far, far faster than the 1/20th of a second mechanical logic relays I replaced.  And, to make it run a bit differently, I only had to change the program (burn another PROM - Programmable Read-Only Memory), not have to rewire 50 some relays.  I was in hog heaven.  Never looked back.

Why does this matter?  Because the microcomputer revolution that brought computing power to everyone, along with the assembly line revolution that brings all sorts of machines to everyone at very affordable prices, changed paradigms forever.

Paradigms lost.  This same sort of thing is now well under way with nuclear reactors.  Nuclear reactors are the source of heat for steam boilers.  Steam boilers power 2/3 of our world, internal combustion engines (cars, trucks, airplanes) power the remaining 1/3.

It took about 100 years for the first huge and inefficient steam pumps (Newcomen, 1712) that kept English coal mines clear of water to evolve into steam engines small enough to be mounted on a railroad coal car frame to form the first steam locomotive (Trevithick, 1804).  Then the age of steam really began to roar as the steam engine was put to work gathering and transporting much more energy from the coal mines than mere humans and horses ever could.  Much more reliable and powerful than windmills and waterwheels, steam-powered factories eventually sprung up all over the world.  Eventually millions of residences were heated with coal burning steam boilers along with the first crude coal-burning steam-powered household appliances.

We have seen this growth of widespread use of a machine so many times in the past, from airplanes to zippers, one can only wonder why we haven't picked up yet on the new generation of mini-nuclear reactors and the implications of what will happen when the man on the street gets his hands on something that runs on uranium instead of coal. 

Why is this so important?  Pound-for-pound, uranium produces 3 million times as much heat as coal but a pound of uranium certainly doesn't cost 3 million times as much to mine.  Put another way nuclear heat is 1/3 to 1/20th as expensive as coal heat.  It's the reactor that still costs too much.  Now that's changed.

Near-zero cost energy is almost here.  Or, as they said in the beginning: "Electricity too cheap to meter."  Coming to a reactor dealer near you.

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NEWS ITEMS

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