tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1236895917331192509.comments2023-05-17T04:01:26.506-04:00The Neutron EconomyAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12086026121605548134noreply@blogger.comBlogger230125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1236895917331192509.post-27565097312786228352013-04-03T11:03:42.841-04:002013-04-03T11:03:42.841-04:00Thanks for this blog, Steve Skutnik, I enjoyed it ...Thanks for this blog, Steve Skutnik, I enjoyed it and learned a lot.<br /><br />Joris van DorpAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1236895917331192509.post-11243989171311561672013-04-02T21:25:17.186-04:002013-04-02T21:25:17.186-04:00Steve,
I hope your hiatus doesn't have to la...Steve, <br /><br />I hope your hiatus doesn't have to last too long, but it is somewhat understandable. I hope you are still able to tweet for the most part.<br /><br />I will try to pick up some slack and blog more frequently. Feel free to pass any ideas for blog topics along. <br /><br />EntrepreNukeEntrepreNukehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05878943100501705689noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1236895917331192509.post-75514590696296877962013-03-09T01:12:34.372-05:002013-03-09T01:12:34.372-05:00The other thing about Price-Anderson, of course, i...The other thing about Price-Anderson, of course, is that the liability arrangements are not the only thing in the Act. It's a trade.<br /><br />The public benefit is found in the way that liability cases are handled. These are on a "no fault" basis - in order to win their liability cases, the affected parties have no requirement to show that the nuclear operator failed in their duty, whether through negligence, error or malice. Joffanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18025437863119781181noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1236895917331192509.post-697236827686387562013-03-05T19:37:56.218-05:002013-03-05T19:37:56.218-05:00@Joffan: I do agree that the total area of the eva...@Joffan: I do agree that the total area of the evacuation is out of proportion with all reasonably evaluated risk - particularly when compared with other (non-radiological) sources present. I was considering this as I was looking once again at Project Safecast's <a href="http://map.safecast.org/map:light/140.1726041766169,37.81726792270237,8" rel="nofollow">open-source radiation map</a>. It would be better if individuals were allowed to make their own assessment of what constitutes "acceptable" levels of risk, rather than to have it imposed upon them.<br /><br />That being said, I view Fukushima essentially as an upper bound. There is still some area which has been rendered off-limits due to contamination and will be for some time. (And, rational or not, the government's response inherently factors into this.) Even in the worst-case scenario (i.e., taking the government's imposed exclusion into account), the consequences are still far less bad than the alternative brought on by climate change.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12086026121605548134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1236895917331192509.post-21847595836801815282013-03-05T15:13:41.629-05:002013-03-05T15:13:41.629-05:00A diversion, but I have to say...
Taking Fukushim...A diversion, but I have to say...<br /><br />Taking Fukushima as an example, "a catastrophic loss of property and perhaps even livelihoods to a localized region" is what happens when a government decides that radiological risk is thousands of times worse than it really is, and strips the populace of their autonomy to decide their own priorities of risk.<br /><br />The people near Fukushima Daiichi have had their lives wrecked for a completely insufficient reason. The refinery fire that we saw burning, post-tsunami, for ten days - images of which were used as a backdrop to Fukushima Daiichi reports by less scrupulous news outlets - will have spread carcinogenic chemicals over a wide swathe of the country. But people there were not forced to evacuate permanently, destroying their communties and the local economy, stealing the value of their homes.Joffanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18025437863119781181noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1236895917331192509.post-25519999939875216642013-03-04T17:56:29.950-05:002013-03-04T17:56:29.950-05:00The numbers quoted here, "Each reactor operat...The numbers quoted here, "Each reactor operator is required to hold private insurance for $375 million per individual unit" apply specifically to the Liability Insurance policy that the operator purchases from ANI (http://www.amnucins.com/Home.html). <br /><br />The Domestic Syndicate of ANI offers third-party nuclear liability insurance to domestic operators of nuclear power reactors, nuclear fuel fabrication facilities, waste disposal and other nuclear facilities. It also writes nuclear liability insurance for suppliers of products or services (including transportation services), to these facilities.<br /><br />The syndicate also reinsures a significant portion of NEIL’s (http://www.nmlneil.com/) nuclear property program, which provides both property and accidental outage insurance for all 104 operating power reactors in the U.S. <br /><br />The key takeaway is that NEIL insures the plants for property damage and accidental outages, and these policy limits are not affected by Price-Anderson, they are elected by each site, which has significant control over the overall business operations of NEIL, being that is it a mutual insurance company. The liability insurance policies purchased from ANI cover the decontamination costs and liability lawsuits which would undoubtedly occur if a severe Nuclear Accident involving radiation release were to ever occur. The damaged equipment and lost generation revenue (accidental outage) are covered by NEIL. <br /><br />The bottom line is that the industry is well protected from accidents and is on sound financial footing.kamarti7https://www.blogger.com/profile/00681391252136035607noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1236895917331192509.post-60921230815956758752013-03-01T14:06:28.710-05:002013-03-01T14:06:28.710-05:00Well-said. I have nothing to add to this.Well-said. I have nothing to add to this.Engineer-Poethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06420685176098522332noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1236895917331192509.post-8687655862026679212013-02-28T10:56:05.252-05:002013-02-28T10:56:05.252-05:00Thank you. Very good post.People who advertize coa...Thank you. Very good post.People who advertize coal ash for construction actually are proud how fly ash can only give you 0.28mSv/year. See here, for example, http://www.ecobuild.co.uk/var/uploads/exhibitor/209/qye56ztt9z.pdfAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1236895917331192509.post-11646038388516140292013-01-26T10:21:03.622-05:002013-01-26T10:21:03.622-05:00Steve:
We are still on.
No excuses, but let me e...Steve:<br /><br />We are still on.<br /><br />No excuses, but let me explain the confusion. I tried to find a post with the terms of the original wager. I thought I had written a subject focused blog on the topic. The best I could find was the following:<br /><br />http://atomicinsights.com/2012/11/why-are-north-american-natural-gas-prices-so-much-lower-than-rest-of-world.html<br /><br />That post includes the following quote mentioning our bet:<br /><br />"I have a public bet with one of my readers that natural gas being sold to US electricity generating customers will be trading for more than $10 per MMBTU for at least one month before the end of 2014. Would you like to make a similar wager?"<br /><br />I should have written a special post or at least put the original bet in a more searchable form.<br /><br />The market still provides me with some confidence that I have a chance to win the wager, just a lower chance than I thought.Rod Adamshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03652375336090790205noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1236895917331192509.post-56167205545056866622013-01-26T09:13:18.139-05:002013-01-26T09:13:18.139-05:00@Rod: I have little doubt natural gas marketers ha...@Rod: I have little doubt natural gas marketers have a significant financial interest in creating new demand by knocking out competitors by exploiting the force of the government. This is not exactly a surprising claim. I do think you're missing the basic economics of supply and demand - the highest marginal price per unit is not necessarily the profit-maximizing one, namely because it depends upon the elasticity of demand - but whatever. A feature to notice is that this situation only arises when pipeline capacity hits near-full utilization - in other words, it's a price signal for to build more pipelines.<br /><br />But in any case, I'm not trying to convince natural gas marketers: I'm making the case that on a pure economics standpoint, dumping pre-existing nuclear for natural gas makes zero sense in the Northeast, something which may not be completely obvious if one only pays attention to the spot price of natural gas. This is the whole point, and one which I'd hoped you of all folks would appreciate - namely that the price of gas is much more controlled by regional variation than is commonly reported, at least in the Northeast. This, in my mind, is a far stronger argument against gas than hypothetical future arguments about price - namely because the data is here in the present and pretty unambiguous.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12086026121605548134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1236895917331192509.post-23370482472925818702013-01-26T09:03:17.765-05:002013-01-26T09:03:17.765-05:00@Rod: Those were not the original terms. I will qu...@Rod: Those were not the original terms. I will quote your exact words for reference:<br /><br />http://atomicinsights.com/2012/08/where-is-the-huge-increase-in-natural-gas-supply.html#comment-25563<br /><br />"@Steve – here is a public wager. By the end of 2014 there will be at least one month in which the price of natural gas at Henry Hub will exceed $10 per MMBTU.<br /><br />The bet is $50. Are we on?"<br /><br />You stated further in the same thread:<br /><br />"@Joel – the bet is for one month with a reported average price at Henry Hub of $10 per MMBTU by the end of 2014.<br /><br />That level will be enough to destroy some demand, so I am not sure how long the level will last. I could have slanted the bet more in my favor by picking New York City gate as the delivery point or by stretching the period until the end of first quarter of 2015, but I’m still pretty confident.<br /><br />It would be wonderful if I was wrong, but I don’t think that’s true."<br /><br />The price at Henry Hub *is* the commodity price, and the one you originally stated in your bet. You may have intended to bet about the retail electricity cost (an obviously more favorable bet to you), but that is not the assertion you originally made, nor is the average electric cost in any way equivalent to the Henry Hub price. And that's the whole point of the post, which I'm surprised that you seem to have missed - I have no dispute that citygate prices in a congested distribution region like New York will potentially spike. However, my bet was that the raw commodity price would stay relatively flat. Your original assertion was that they were not.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12086026121605548134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1236895917331192509.post-22301080823089077652013-01-26T08:49:45.473-05:002013-01-26T08:49:45.473-05:00@Steve
BTW - I just want to remind you of the ter...@Steve<br /><br />BTW - I just want to remind you of the terms of our wager - my contention is that natural gas being sold to US electricity generating customers will be trading for more than $10 per MMBTU for at least one month before the end of 2014.<br /><br />The specific table I am intending to use as the metric is located at http://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_pri_sum_dcu_nus_m.htm; the row I am referring to is the bottom row labeled "Electric Power Price".<br /><br />That particular metric is calculated based on averaging out the prices that electric power generators pay. When there are delivery constraints and the generating companies have decided against purchasing sufficient long term contracts, the elevated spot market prices get reported.<br /><br />Therefore, the analysis underlying my bet is not about the "raw commodity" price or reflective of my estimates about the available resources in the ground.Rod Adamshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03652375336090790205noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1236895917331192509.post-67277711949391549382013-01-26T08:37:04.478-05:002013-01-26T08:37:04.478-05:00@Steve
Do you think that gas marketers have never...@Steve<br /><br />Do you think that gas marketers have never noticed this effect? Do you honestly believe that they think it is "insane" that they can occasionally sell every therm they can deliver at prices WAY above the price that they paid to purchase the gas?<br /><br />No recent news has disabused me of the theory that the major pushers behind the efforts to shut down Northeast nuclear plants are people who make a ton of money by selling natural gas and distillate fuel at prices way above their cost of production. They have rented (or purchased) some very effective politicians to carry their water. The thing I still fail to understand is why there are some otherwise reasonable people who seem to care about the cleanliness of the environment who are going along with the pro fossil fuel effort to destroy electricity production facilities that run on uranium instead of hydrocarbons.<br /><br />Rod Adams<br />Publisher, Atomic InsightsRod Adamshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03652375336090790205noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1236895917331192509.post-32386174133142730182013-01-23T18:49:41.801-05:002013-01-23T18:49:41.801-05:00Lord, I wish someone would get some form of fusion...Lord, I wish someone would get some form of fusion going, so we wouldn't be building up thousands of tons of radioactive crap to store somewhere every year for hundreds or thousands of years. I think this whole discussion is mildly mad.mlytlehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02798407539915718313noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1236895917331192509.post-89429811477036065262013-01-22T09:17:58.185-05:002013-01-22T09:17:58.185-05:00Retired Senator Bingaman (D,NM) authoried S.3469, ...Retired Senator Bingaman (D,NM) authoried S.3469, Waste Administration, publically stated that the bill would never pass Congress. The bill was almost a direct copy of the BRC. That bill is still sitting in committee. I appears that the Administration is moving forward without Congress or any approved budget. So where is the money going to come from for all the storage? <br /><br />Personally, I believe the 'waste' should be recycled through future reactors like IFR or LFTR.kralspaceshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01799038204900035355noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1236895917331192509.post-78223841765723057092013-01-20T10:52:29.250-05:002013-01-20T10:52:29.250-05:00@Damon: The considerations of heat load and dose ...@Damon: The considerations of heat load and dose rate don't apply more than marginally to pyroprocessing, do they?Engineer-Poethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06420685176098522332noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1236895917331192509.post-40048189468949568572013-01-19T12:53:00.585-05:002013-01-19T12:53:00.585-05:00I'm sure Areva and EdF could provide a good co...I'm sure Areva and EdF could provide a good cost model for PUREX reprocessing, which would be a good starting point for DOE.<br /><br />The bentonite was planned to cover each canister as it was loaded. The titanium drip shield was obviously ill-advised (it would have required a large fraction of the world's Ti production capacity. Both of these design features were added when EPA/NRC changed from a 10,000 year lifetime to a 1,000,000 year lifetime. DOE didn't think the fancy nickel alloy canister would last a million years if water dripped on it, so they added the drip shield to keep the water off the can. But the drip shield could corrode away too fast, so the bentonite was added. Clay is not very water-permeable, so maybe a little pyramid of clay would keep the water off the can. Engineers can always come up with new ideas when faced with ridiculous design constraints. The used fuel will be less radioactive that uranium ore in 8000 years or so, which was the point of the 10,000 year limit. A million year design life is patently absurd.Damon Brysonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03071694151220410682noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1236895917331192509.post-70726214257332069322013-01-19T11:17:37.763-05:002013-01-19T11:17:37.763-05:00@Damon: Valid points you bring up re: heat-generat...@Damon: Valid points you bring up re: heat-generating Pu isotopes. This is perhaps a limitation of the ORNL study, in that it's looking mostly at fissile worth and not estimating relative cost of processing. It would be interesting if one could create a cost model to account for these factors and perhaps apply an optimization study based on the collected isotopic inventories within the report.<br /><br />As far as Yucca goes, I was under the impression that the bentonite would be put in only following closure of the repository (although I could be mistaken); although the titanium drip shield certainly was a bit of gold-plated silliness brought on in part due to the "retrievability" standard. It seems if one is going to maintain "retrievability," dry cask storage is indisputably the best solution - so why not again figure out what is likely to be useful in the future, store that in casks at the repository site, and bury the rest? It makes for a much cheaper "retrievability" standard.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12086026121605548134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1236895917331192509.post-51364794845849017312013-01-19T11:08:04.773-05:002013-01-19T11:08:04.773-05:00I did look at the figures you mentioned. You also...I did look at the figures you mentioned. You also have to look at the Pu-238 and Pu-240, which are undesirable isotopes and make the reprocessing facility more difficult to build (due to the high decay heat load and dose rate). Pu-241 also puts out a lot of dose, though it fissions nicely. MOX fuel assemblies built using high burnup fuel would have higher dose rates due to these isotopes, making it more difficult to ship and receive them. These problems can be solved with time, distance, and shielding, of course. But this is why reactors that use MOX recycling do not burn their fuel to high burnups like we do in the US. Existing reactor designs work best with low-burnup MOX. High burnup MOX (as well as 2nd-time recycled MOX) is more challenging and would probably require more design modifications to existing reactors. I understand the AP1000 and ABWR are designed to be able to handle more MOX fuel.<br /><br />As to retrievability, even the Yucca Mountain was not very retrievable. The packages were to have titanium drip shields and be buried in bentonite clay. Each storage drift would only have one cask that was easily retrievable (the one in front). The criteria even say that retrievability does not require it to be easy or cheap. I suppose the concern at WIPP is that we probably have not put any large, hot canisters in the salt mine yet, so we might not be sure exactly what will happen if we put a 30-40 kW canister in there.Damon Brysonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03071694151220410682noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1236895917331192509.post-9231814210188663152013-01-19T09:19:36.934-05:002013-01-19T09:19:36.934-05:00@Damon: Have a look at Figures 16 & 17, which ...@Damon: Have a look at Figures 16 & 17, which gives Pu-239 equivalence for thermal and fast recycle, respecively. While you're correct that the Pu-239 fraction of low-burnup fuel is higher, this mostly is true for BWR fuel. For PWR fuel, the total Pu content ends up outweighing the lower Pu "grade", especially for higher-burnup, more recently discharged fuel. The report also looks at the neutronics of fast-spectrum recycle (Figure 17) - the late-discharged, high-burnup PWR fuel is going to be *much* more useful than low-burnup BWR fuel, or even some of the higher-burnup fuel.<br /><br />I will put the caveat that they did this in kg Pu-239 equivalent per assembly, which has the obvious problem that PWR assemblies tend to be bigger than BWR assemblies. A good question then would be to normalize Pu equivalent per unit MTHM, which would more closely tie to the fuel "worth" versus amount processed.<br /><br />I think the reason the industry wants the used fuel issue "solved" related largely to public perception; as much as you or I might view medium-term dry storage as a workable technical solution until that fuel could be processed, most of the public does not. Even then though, I think we'd still bump up against a need for triage - some fuel is simply not worth recovering and would be simply easier to dispose of.<br /><br />As far as WIPP goes, I agree that it's technically retrievable in the strictest sense, but that's not really how I'd say the definition has been used with respect to geologic repositories. The point of retrievability is being able to directly pull the package back out with minimal effort - which again is a bit of a foolish notion if we apply it universally to *every* assembly, regardless of which ones may have little future economic value.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12086026121605548134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1236895917331192509.post-61848933302189756802013-01-19T09:10:06.223-05:002013-01-19T09:10:06.223-05:00@Rod: Let's be honest here - at ~$20 billion a...@Rod: Let's be honest here - at ~$20 billion a pop, chances are pretty good we're going to only get one reprocessing facility to start with. Unless capital costs for reprocessing come down significantly (say, with pyroprocessing or another variant), it doesn't seem likely we'd start off with more than one industrial-scale facility, especially if we were to go the conventional PUREX route. So, that assumption seems reasonable to me.<br /><br />I will say that having followed this research for about the last year or so from its start, I was a bit disappointed to see the rather sweeping conclusion based mostly upon an input/output ratio, when there was considerable work being done (and still is being done) on isotopic characterization.<br /><br />To answer your question, have a look at Figures 16 (Pu-239 equivalence for fuel assuming thermal recycle), Figure 17 (Pu-239 equivalence, fast recycle). Now advance the clock 20 years. <br /><br />A relevant consideration in my mind would be, "What fuel will be *worth* going after? As you see from the graphs, used fuel is a lot like uranium deposits - not all of it is of high enough grade to be worth initially going after - we'd want to hit the high-grade stuff first. Which in this case appears to be high-burnup PWR fuel. Considering now we'd have 20 years of the highest-grade material, the assumption that much of this (although I'm not sure I agree that it would be almost <i>all</i> of it) becomes a little more plausible.<br /><br />In any case, much of the data is calculated from the RW-859 used fuel database; a lot of the work going forward has been in collecting irradiation history data from the utilities to fill in the gaps.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12086026121605548134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1236895917331192509.post-33134728213662087232013-01-19T05:53:49.503-05:002013-01-19T05:53:49.503-05:00This research seems to have been conducted only fr...This research seems to have been conducted only from the point of view of research, not a commercial operation. Why would anyone assume the start up of an entirely new industrial process that limited itself to a single production facility? A more important question in my mind is how valuable could the material be if used to its highest and best use, instead of assuming it is all waste to be disposed of as cheaply and as quickly as possible.<br /><br />I hope that your colleagues release details of the material composition so that people like my friend NNadir can perform analysis using a completely different paradigm.Rod Adamshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03652375336090790205noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1236895917331192509.post-86370068666074121502013-01-18T20:02:33.832-05:002013-01-18T20:02:33.832-05:00The recycle decision is based upon the future of n...The recycle decision is based upon the future of nuclear power in USA. With little future, used fuel is only a liability that should be sent to the deep geologic repository. WIPP can accommodate this material without delay, so get started and bury that shit.<br />When/if the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) model is needed for delivery of new and recovery of used fuel, the USA can rest assured that the mines, the factories, the supply chains, the technologies, and the workers can be outsourced. <br />Food comes from the grocery store, electricity comes from the wall socket and money comes from entitlements. Productivity and technology, why?Carlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09772862865362404361noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1236895917331192509.post-53337160298105318432013-01-18T16:02:14.530-05:002013-01-18T16:02:14.530-05:00While it's true that Pu-241 will decay and red...While it's true that Pu-241 will decay and reduce the recycling value of older used fuel, it's also true that older used fuel has a much lower burnup. This means it has less Pu, but more of the Pu is the best kind - Pu-239. Existing reactors were built in the days when we thought reprocessing/MOX would happen (like it did overseas), so enrichments and burnups were low. With recycling, there is little incentive to achieve high burnups. Some of the oldest fuel probably also has the highest remaining energy.<br /><br />However, it is also likely that we would not be able to use LWRs to effectively burn the recycled fuel. I agree it is likely we will not be recycling on a large scale within 20 years. We probably won't have to do large scale recycling for 50-100 years, given the large amounts of uranium that have been discovered in recent years. I believe centralized dry storage will be effective for this time period, so we have time to do research on advanced recycling technologies.<br /><br />I agree the intent of the ORNL report was to justify use of a place like WIPP as a repository. However, I would argue that even in a salt deposit, the canisters will still be retrievable. If we were technologically able to dig the hole in the first place, we should still be able to retrieve the canister later. It may not be easy or cheap, but it is still retrievable.<br /><br />Ultimately, I believe the nuclear industry wants the used fuel question to be "solved". Up until now, we have been working towards a repository as the "solution". However, used fuel is very stable and easily managed. As we all know, the problems are mainly political in nature. Politics are really only effective at dealing with imminent problems, not long-term issues. Used nuclear fuel will never be an imminent issue, so I don't expect political leaders to ever "solve" it. The root cause of our problems is the agreement in 1982 for utilities to hand the used fuel over to the federal government for disposal (in return for the $1/MW-hr high level waste tax). The utilities generate the used fuel, and we should be dealing with it ourselves.Damon Brysonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03071694151220410682noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1236895917331192509.post-1749157762029486502013-01-17T17:33:04.075-05:002013-01-17T17:33:04.075-05:00Interesting that elimination of Pu and its radioto...Interesting that elimination of Pu and its radiotoxicity isn't listed as a consideration for reprocessing.Engineer-Poethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06420685176098522332noreply@blogger.com