As India embarked on its commercial nuclear power production in 1969, its nuclear power program was conceived to be a closed fuel cycle, to be achieved in three sequential stages. These stages feed into each other in such a way that the spent fuel generated from one stage of the cycle is reprocessed and used in the next stage of the cycle to produce power. This kind of a closed fuel cycle was designed to breed fuel and to minimize generation of nuclear waste. The stage at which India is currently at in its nuclear power production cycle will be a major determinant of the future of nuclear power in India.

The three-stage nuclear power production program in India had been conceived with the ultimate objective of utilizing the country’s vast reserves of thorium-232. It is important to note that India has the world’s third largest reserves of thorium. Thorium, however, cannot be used as a fuel in its natural state. It needs to be converted into its usable “fissile” form after a series of reactions. To aid this and to eventually produce nuclear power from its thorium reserves, Indian scientist Dr. Homi J. Bhabha drew the road map of the three-stage nuclear program.

In the first stage, Pressurized Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs) will be used to produce energy from natural uranium. PHWRs do not just produce energy; they also produce fissile plutonium (Pu)-239. The second stage involves using the indigenous Fast Breeder Reactor technology fueled by Pu-239 to produce energy and more of Pu-239. By the end of the second stage of the cycle the reactor would have produced more fissile material than it would have consumed, thus earning the name “Breeder.” The final stage of the cycle would involve the use of Pu-239 recovered from the second stage, in combination with thorium-232, to produce energy and U-233 — another fissile material — using Thermal Breeders. This production of U-233 from thorium-232 would complete the cycle. U-233 would then be used as fuel for the remaining part of the fuel cycle.

As of now, India produces about 6.7 GW power from nuclear fuel from its 22 nuclear power plants, effectively contributing 1.8 percent to the total energy mix. This is way lower than the vision of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), which hoped to produce at least 20 GW of nuclear power by 2020, and at least 48 GW by 2030. While India has successfully completed the first stage of its nuclear fuel program, the second stage is still in the works and has taken much longer than expected. The first 500 MW Pressurized Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) BHAVINI, being set up in Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu, is still in the process of being commissioned and has suffered from significant time and cost overruns. It is expected to be ready by 2022-23, with an estimated total cost of a whopping 96 billion Indian rupees.

The government of India, after a long pause, in its budgetary announcements of 2017-18 provided for the construction of 10 units of 700 MW indigenous PHWRs. Of these, the Kakarapar Atomic Power Project being developed in Gujarat became the first one to achieve criticality. The Indian government has announced that seven more reactors with a cumulative capacity of 5,500 MW are under construction. It has also cleared the paperwork for 12 more reactors with a cumulative capacity of 9,000 MW.

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While these are significant initiatives, the future of nuclear energy in India looks less promising than it did about a decade ago. With the signing of the India-U.S. nuclear deal in 2008 and other important agreements with France and Japan, India’s nuclear energy sector looked set for a promising overhaul. However, post- 2011, there has been an evident slowdown in the country’s nuclear energy sector.

The observed slowdown and the below par level of contribution of nuclear energy to India’s total energy mix can be attributed to a slew of factors. A primary reason has been the delays in rolling out the second stage of the nuclear fuel program. Technological problems arising in the process of commissioning the PFBR and the associated time and cost overruns have contributed significantly to the delay. Other factors involve the critical disruptions that renewable energy technologies have caused in the global energy systems. With the commercialization and enhanced use of renewable energy technologies, the per unit cost of electricity produced from renewables has gone down significantly. The cost of solar power in India right now is Rs 2.62 per unit, almost half of the per unit cost of electricity being produced by the recently operational Kudankulam nuclear power plant (Rs 4.10 per unit).

Additionally, the nuclear power sector in India has witnessed its share of controversies and protests over issues of land ownership, location, as well as the safety and security of power plants in the event of natural or man-made disasters. These have also contributed to the time and cost overruns of India’s nuclear power projects. Another very important contributing factor to the state of nuclear energy in India has been the global retrenchment in the sector following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster of 2011. That event led to a situation where countries rolled back significantly on their nuclear power programs and global nuclear majors like Areva and Westinghouse declared bankruptcy.

Given, however, rising energy demand in the country, and India’s huge dependency on import of not just oil and gas, but also critical raw materials like lithium, cobalt, and nickel used for the production of solar panels and other renewable technologies, indigenously developed nuclear power plants that are fueled by domestically available thorium reserves remain an important pillar of India’s energy independence. This would, however, require the Indian government to push forth with its nuclear power program by investing in cost-effective technologies, cutting down red tape in processing approvals, streamlining land reforms, and creating special purpose vehicles for the development of nuclear power plants. A competitive domestic nuclear energy sector is key to India’s energy security. It must be developed keeping in mind India’s limited options when it comes to other forms of energy resources and technologies.

Niharika Tagotra is a nuclear physicist and currently Doctoral Candidate in International Politics at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Nick Touran, 2020-01-12. Reading time: 85 minutes

“You have to know the past to understand the present” — Carl Sagan

The dream for economical nuclear power was born well before the discovery of nuclear
fission, but the quest for it began in earnest in the late 1940s and involved some 100,000
persons for several decades in the USA alone. This page is a grand tour of reactor
development programs from 1945 to about 1970, also known as the nuclear heyday. As we proceed
with new reactor development programs today, remembering what was done back then may help
us navigate developments of the future.

Our economics page discusses developments and
economics from 1970 to the present.

The starting point

When nuclear fission was discovered in 1938, ²³⁵U existed at 0.7% in natural
Uranium (decayed down from over 25% when Earth was formed). Without isotopic enrichment
available (of uranium or hydrogen in water), only a handful of configurations could
sustain a chain reaction. Enrico Fermi and co. figured it out by 1942, and operated the
first nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile 1 (CP-1), using pieces of natural uranium metal
dispersed carefully in a lattice of high-purity graphite blocks in a Chicago squash court.

Note: This is written largely from the US perspective.
Developments in other countries are not well covered here. Also, the chains
of events are difficult to classify so the time linearity of the following is not perfect.

Nuclear weapons production reactors

Vast wealth and effort was first invested in nuclear reactor development because the
unique characteristics of the atomic chain reaction could provide fundamental and dramatic
military strategic advantages. Accordingly, the first high-power reactors were designed
and built to produce plutonium as fuel for nuclear explosives.
As in CP-1, they had natural uranium fuel dispersed in a graphite moderator.

Workers laying graphite in the Hanford B plutonium production
reactor under construction (from HAER-WA-164)

Unlike CP-1, the Hanford reactors were cooled with ordinary water. Since water is a
neutron absorber, the reactor had to be large, and it required extra-pure graphite with
minimal neutron-absorbing impurities (like boron). It also needed a lot of
metallic natural uranium. Eugene Wigner proposed cooling with low-pressure,
low-temperature water instead of high-temperature, high-pressure helium because he was
worried that the fuel would not survive high temperatures, and that pumping and
maintaining an inventory of helium would be challenging. His calculations showed that a
water-cooled reactor would indeed chain-react, and his unwavering drive to beat the Nazis
bolstered his confidence. Water-cooled reactors were built.

After the plutonium-producing B reactor at Hanford was operational, the scientists who
designed it began imagining a better time, beyond the war, when the newfound power of
the atom could be applied to the peaceful enrichment of humankind. The first documented
reactor innovation sessions occurred around this time. Many reactor concepts were dreamed
up at these New Piles Committee meetings. No one knew whether
nuclear-powered electricity generating stations could be cost-competitive with
conventional power plants.

Some
early reactor ideas from MUC-LAO-42. See also
the Piles of the Future
Review from October, 1944 where a longer discussion of their views of future reactors
is recorded. They thought pressurized water would lead to corrosion issues at high
temperature and considered liquid metal (specifically lead-bismuth) to be the most
promising coolant. Written 5 days after Hanford B came online, it does have a pretty funny suggestion about gold being the
best shield.

Putting nuclear heat to work

After the war, the civilian Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) took responsibility for US
nuclear technology, as authorized by the Atomic Energy Act of 1946. Building up new
weapons material production capabilities and weapons technology dominated its efforts,
but power reactor development did legitimately begin at this time.

Truly exotic energy conversion was seriously considered in the 1940s
(thermionics, endothermic chemical reactions, etc.), but converting heat to
electricity in a standard steam cycle was considered the easiest way to reach
economical nuclear power. This conversion requires high-temperature,
long-endurance fuel that can withstand an intense radiation environment. This
was a fundamental technological departure from the plutonium-production
reactors, which generated heat only as a nuisance and were kept at low
temperature. Robert Oppenheimer explained this
well.

In 1947, the AEC proposed and funded four new reactors, all of which made use
of new availability of enriched uranium rather than natural
uranium. All four were completed in the early 1950s:

• Fast reactor — A fast reactor to explore the possibilities of breeding (now known as EBR-1)
• Navy thermal reactor — a prototype for submarine propulsion (now known as STR or S1W)
• Materials Testing Reactor (MTR) — A testing facility to investigate potential materials
  to be used in power reactor construction. The resistance of materials to the environment
  required for power production was the primary challenge of power reactor development.
• Knolls intermediate reactor — to explore the possibilities of breeding and to develop usable
  power (soon repurposed as another submarine prototype, called SIR and/or S1G)

The first three were built in Idaho, thus creating what was then called the National
Reactor Testing Station (NRTS) and is now the Idaho National Lab (INL). The fourth was built
north of Schenectady, NY in a giant sphere at the center of Knolls Atomic Power Lab’s
Kesselring site. During design of the MTR, Oak Ridge National Lab (ORNL) built a
mechanical mockup reactor, which they then converted to a real reactor called LITR: the
first water-cooled, water-moderated reactor.

Specialized military reactors after WWII

As nuclear weapons have orders of magnitude more destructive force over conventional
explosives, nuclear engines for submarines, ships, rockets, and aircraft offer orders of
magnitude more range than conventional fuels. Accordingly, the next major application of
the chain reactor was in specialized military contexts.

Naval reactors

The nuclear-propelled Navy was developed by Captain Hyman G. Rickover. Rickover’s role in
the development of naval propulsion goes without saying, but his influence on the
commercial industry simply cannot be overstated. He was born in 1900 in a Polish ghetto,
moved to New York at the age of 6, and then to Chicago’s West Side. He entered the Naval
Academy in 1918 and requested submarine service in 1929. He translated Das Unterseeboot
from the Imperial German Navy as a labor of personal interest. In 1937, he became a
Engineering Duty Only (EDO) officer, focused on the design, construction, and maintenance
of ships. After WWII ended, he was sent to Oak Ridge to learn about nuclear technology as
part of a team to investigate nuclear ship propulsion. He established himself as the
leader of the team and fought hard to secure funds and authority to kick off the naval
reactors program.

He kicked off two reactor development programs in parallel for naval propulsion: the
sodium-cooled beryllium-reflected/moderated reactor (Project Genie) and the pressurized
water reactor (Project Wizard).

The PWR and the Nautilus

Alvin Weinberg and the Oak Ridge team suggested using pressurized water as a submarine
reactor coolant and moderator for two reasons: (1) the distance neutrons in water travel
is one-fifth the distance they travel in graphite, so the water reactor could be very
compact (good for small enclosed spaces), and (2) water systems are simple, familiar, and
reliable in a naval context. The ORNL team made preliminary sketches of such a reactor.

The preliminary work of ORNL was transferred to Argonne along with a team of engineers who
were coming off the just-cancelled Daniels Pile project, which had attempted to
develop a high-temperature pebble-bed gas-cooled power reactor using highly-enriched uranium.

Against the prevailing wisdom (e.g. of Weinberg), Rickover boldly decided to build the
full-scale Nautilus prototype reactor (STR) in Idaho without first building a much-cheaper
pilot model. Simultaneously, construction of the Nautilus submarine itself began in
Connecticut. Rickover’s ruthless and aggressive schedule was driven by a conviction that
whoever developed nuclear engines first would rule the seas.

Rickover strictly required that the two projects fit together. At one inspection, he
forced the Idaho team to move a coffee maker outside the hull since it would not be in the
real submarine.

During STR development, the effect of radiation on components and equipment was tested in
the MTR. Vast programs successfully developed the hermetically sealed pumps with
appropriate bearings, thin stainless steel or Inconel liners, motor winding cooling, and
high-pressure electrical terminal seals. A complete line of hermetically sealed,
hydraulically operated stainless steel primary system valves was developed.
Welding of heavy wall stainless piping was developed. Weldability and weld
cracking as functions of material composition was found and understood. Design criteria
for auxiliary systems supporting waste disposal, coolant purification, emergency cooling,
fuel handling, ventilation, as well as feasible engineering techniques to satisfy the
requirements were developed.

STR went critical on March 31, 1953 and reached full power by May 31.

After a massive reactor technology development program and the operation of a land-based
prototype reactor in Idaho, the second major application of nuclear reactors became the
propulsion system of naval submarines, marked by the message
from the USS Nautilus on Jan 17, 1955:

UNDERWAY ON NUCLEAR POWER

The launch of the USS Nautilus (SSN-571). Click the photo to enlarge; you will
not be disappointed. (Credit: Naval History and Heritage
Command photo UA 475.05.02)

The astoundingly high energy density of nuclear fuel allowed the submariners to gallivant on wild new
adventures, such as reaching the North Pole under
ice
for the first time and circumnavigating the
world in one non-stop submerged
session for the first time. Such high adventures are remembered by people who were young
at the time (like Gwyneth Cravens) as deeply inspiring.

The SIR and the Seawolf

The sodium-cooled intermediate-spectrum power breeder that GE was working on for the AEC
at KAPL got swooped into the Naval Reactors development program, and its first reactor
became the land-based prototype for the USS Seawolf. At first, Rickover preferred the
sodium-cooled approach with a beryllium reflector/moderator because it used silent
electro-magnetic pumps and offered very high thermal efficiency. The prototype (S1G)
experienced leaks in the superheaters due to an incompatibility between the liquid metal
sodium and the particular steel used. Because of Rickover’s insistence in building
prototype concurrently with the real thing, the real Seawolf also experienced
superheater leaks. They plugged tubes, performed difficult repairs (sodium has high
induced radioactivity and high chemical reactivity), and eventually bypassed the
superheater. Seawolf worked at reduced efficiency, logged some tens of thousands of
hours, but eventually had its propulsion system swapped out for a PWR.

Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion

Alongside the naval propulsion project, the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion (ANP) program was
launched. Long-range bombers that could stay in the air for months or years at a time
with unlimited range were thought to be militarily important. In addition, significant R&D
on nuclear-powered cruise missiles and scramjets was performed.

The ANP was a massive program spanning more than 10 years and a billion (1955) dollars.
JFK ended the program early in his presidency at the recommendation of Alvin Weinberg.
Progress in ICBMs effectively eliminated the need for nuclear-powered bombers. The molten
salt reactor technology still actively discussed today is a direct descendent from this
massive development program.

The Army Nuclear Power Program

With the Navy and Air Force reactor programs in full swing, the Army was not to be left
out. The Army Nuclear Power Program (ANPP) focused on the deployment of very small
reactors to remote locations. It got going in the late 1950s and early 1960s, well after
the Navy and Air Force programs. Small nuclear reactors were built and tested at factories
and then transported to, re-assembled, and operated in a military ice base in Greenland
(Camp Century), McMurdo Station in
Antarctica, the Panama canal on a mobile barge, Sundance Air Force Station in Wyoming, and
Fort Greely, Alaska. An exotic nitrogen-cooled truck-mounted model was developed and
tested in Idaho but not deployed.

After the STG and Nautilus, the third PWR to operate was the first plant built under the ANPP: the
APPR-1 (later designated SM-1). It was built by Alco and Stone & Webster, and
came to power in April, 1957. While the Shippingport design effort predates APPR-1 effort
(discussed below), the APPR-1 team pioneered some ideas, such as the vertical vapor
container, as opposed to Shippingport’s horizontal ones. They innovated a lot while
considering internal missile protection, but ended up with a rather expensive reinforcing
job.

Before fabricating the fuel, Alco Products built a critical testing facility to perform
zero-power experiments with their proposed fuel and control design. The mock-up core
was built in a 2500 sq. ft. facility, and by 1957 they were soliciting other companies to
perform related experiments in it.

The PM-3A and PM-2A remote military reactors in Antarctica and Greenland were also PWRs.

The development of civilian reactors

AEC Civilian Reactor Programs

The AEC executed several programs specifically dedicated to the quest for economical
nuclear power. In this period, its prospects were highly tentative, and the magnitude of
work needed to achieve it was regularly estimated somewhat accurately (3-5 years to make a
little power, 20-30 years before contributing significant power). Nonetheless, everyone
was eager to see if it could be done.

The 5-year plan

In 1954, the AEC announced the government-funded Five-Year Plan to explore reactor
concepts from a commercial point of view. They included:

• Shippingport Pressurized Water Reactor
• Experimental Boiling Water Reactor (EBWR)
• Sodium Reactor Experiment (SRE)
• Homogeneous Reactor Experiment-2 (HRE-2)
• Experimental Breeder Reactor-2 (EBR-2)

Atoms for Peace

Eisenhower (the first Republican president in 20 years) vastly increased the AEC’s focus
on private participation in nuclear technology with his famous December 1953 Atoms for
Peace speech.
The first international conference on peaceful uses of atomic energy was held in Geneva
in 1955. It was an incredible event filled with optimism and excitement.
Private funding, ownership, and operation was on its way.

Volume 2 of the delegation report (June 24, 1955), recorded AEC Chairman Strauss giving a
rousing speech about how American industry was willing to cover 90% of the Power
Development Reactor Program plant costs. He also hinted at the political situation,
justifying the stockpiling of weapons as protection against “menaces from those who have
destroyed freedom in the expansion of their own ruthless philosophy”. While investments
in conventional weapons could only be recovered as scrap in times of peace, the nuclear
material being stockpiled could be used later for peaceful purposes:

But when the day comes that our atomic armament is no longer required to deter
aggression, the nuclear material which it contains can be easily converted into
energy sources to provide very great amounts of power to turn the wheels of industry,
furnish us with light, heat, transportation, and the many other conveniences
and blessing of peace. We who work in the Atomic Energy Commission work with
the vision of that day before use.

Certainly Atoms for Peace contained an element of propaganda. All involved wanted to
realize a peaceful application for horrifying weapons. By this time, thermonuclear fusion
“H-bombs” had been developed, which were literally 1000x more powerful than the atomic
bombs dropped on Japan. Their horrible implications almost defy comprehension.
Nonetheless, applying the newfound force of nature to the betterment of civilization by
making useful power was a noble goal.

The Power Demonstration Reactor Program

The AEC’s Power Demonstration Reactor Program (PDRP) kicked off after the Atomic Energy
Act of 1954 allowed private ownership and operation of reactors. It involved 3 separate
requests for proposals from private industry wherein the AEC would provide nuclear fuel and
perform research and development work necessary to bring forward commercial nuclear power
plants.

The three invitations between 1955 and 1960 are visible in the figure below, with some
straggling proposals trickling in around 1960. Utility consortiums sent in significant
and bold proposals covering a diverse range of reactor types and sizes including pressurized
and boiling water reactors, an organic cooled/moderated reactor, two nuclear superheat
BWRs, a sodium-cooled fast reactor, and a sodium/graphite intermediate reactor.

The reactors of the 3+ phases of the AEC’s Power Demonstration Reactor
Program (PDRP). These were funded jointly by the AEC and the commercial partners. Note that
several of the reactors are what we would consider today exotic.

The commercialization of the pressurized water reactor

The positive experiences with the STR and the APPR-1, plus a strong desire to stay ahead
of the Russians and to catch up with the UK resulted in strong support for a large-scale
water-cooled demonstration reactor. At the same time, a troubled aircraft carrier
prototype reactor program was just defunded by Eisenhower. The project was converted to a
commercial power prototype called Shippingport. It would become the USA’s first
commercial nuclear power plant.

The initial Shippingport core used highly enriched uranium. High temperature, high-burnup
fuels in water conditions were developed. Metallic uranium fuel in water failed rapidly.
They found promising results when they alloyed uranium with molybdenum, niobium, and both.
Alloys with 3.8% Silicon with intermetallic U₃Si silicides were also promising
(more recently revived under the name Accident Tolerant
Fuels), but a suitable clad
fabrication process with this fuel was elusive. A high-temperature in-pile loop had to be
developed to carry out this alloy development program (at both MTR in Idaho and NRX in
Canada). Troubles with Uranium-Molybdenum cladding were encountered, and high medium-speed
neutron absorption was discovered. Along the way, it was discovered that the ceramic
uranium oxide was surprisingly good as a reactor fuel.

Many lessons were learned in early Shippingport operation. Valves sometimes bounced
between open and closed during the operation of other valves, and valves drifted from
closed to open in certain situations. Pressurizer steam relief valves leaked due to
thermal distortions. Leaks in four steam generators were found, caused by stress
corrosion. Pieces of the turbine moisture separator ended up breaking off and lodging in
the turbine low-pressure blades due to vibrations. Excessive fission products appeared in
the coolant, likely due to defective UO₂ blanket rods.

Despite the trouble, Shippingport was a successfully-operated plant, but its capital cost
was about 10x more than an equivalent fossil-fueled plant. Economical nuclear power was
elusive.

Given the realities of Shippingport, utilities continued in their hesitation. The PWR was
urged toward commercialization by the AEC’s public/private PDRP. The Yankee reactor at
Rowe was proposed in the first round of the PDRP by a consortium of 10 New England
utilities, who funded the entire capital cost. It reached full power of 110 MWe in Jan
1961. Yankee Core I was the first to use UO₂ fuel with stainless steel
cladding. The Yankee experience was very positive from R&D to construction to operation.
They completed the plant 23% below projected capital costs. Now things were looking up.

Indian Point was a 163 MWe PWR that went critical in August 1962 with homogeneously mixed
oxides of highly enriched uranium and thorium. Its purpose was to develop the thorium fuel
cycle for power breeding in order to extend the resources available to PWRs in the event
of a global-scale fleet ramp-up. The benefits of thorium fuel proved elusive, and so the
second core was low-enriched UO₂ with no thorium.

Also in 1962, the small 20 MWt Saxton PWR “hook-on” reactor became critical in
Pennsylvania. It added nuclear-generated steam to an existing fossil-powered turbine.

San Onofre and Connecticut Yankee came online in 1968, and then somewhat of
a deluge of orders became the majority of today’s nuclear fleet.

A land-based prototype for the NS Savannah merchant ship’s core was built and operated
in Lynchburg, VA in February, 1960. This reactor had full-length fuel assemblies and
provided information needed before finishing the NS Savannah plant.

On the military side, dozens of land-based prototypes of new naval PWRs have been
built, along with hundreds of their deployed at-sea counterparts (mostly
in subs and aircraft carriers, but also in a few Destroyers).

Many variations on the PWR, like the thorium-fueled spectral shift control PWR
were studied but didn’t break through.

The N-reactor at the Hanford site was a dual-purpose water and graphite
moderated variation on a PWR used to make power for the area as well as weapons materials.
This was a somewhat significant deviation from the low-temperature earlier production
reactors.

As cost dynamics pressured PWRs in the 1970s, simpler and more economical
designs were developed. France chose a standard PWR and built them in bulk.
South Korea also developed highly-optimized PWRs based on CE designs. This will
be covered in a follow-up article.

The development of the boiling water reactor

With the PWR developed for naval propulsion, the Argonne National Lab (ANL) set forth to
develop a simpler and cheaper water-cooled reactor intended specifically for power
production. The Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) avoided the 2000 psi pressure, reduced the
required pumping power, and eliminated the costs and complications of intermediate heat
exchangers (i.e. the steam generators). For the most part, it was able to leverage the
materials and fuel work already done for PWRs.

Boiling water in a reactor was mentioned on the front page of the New York Times in 1939.
Early concerns about whether a reactor with boiling in the core would be stable were
investigated in lab tests of heat transfer in boiling water at the ANL. After
calculations suggested stability was possible, Argonne performed a series of BOiling water
ReActor eXperiments (BORAX) with real chain reactions at the NRTS in Idaho to prove it.

BORAX-1 was built by the AEC in a hole in the ground. It proved that BWRs could be
self-regulating, though it indicated oscillatory “chugging” with 1 second frequencies
given certain large reactivity insertions. A larger experiment, BORAX-2, was built to
ensure stability at higher powers. It was re-designated BORAX-III with the addition of a
turbine, which subsequently powered the entire town of Arco, ID for one hour.

Positive indications in these small experiments motivated the creation of a small but
prototypic reactor called the Experimental Boiling Water Reactor (EBWR) rated at 5 MWe.
R&D plus construction were estimated to cost $17 million.

The EBWR was built at ANL. It was a direct-cycle BWR making saturated steam at 600 psig
(489 °F). A complete, integrated power plant was necessary to answer questions associated
with direct coupling between the reactor and the power generating equipment: uncertainties
in induced radioactivity, reactivity feedback, corrosion, erosion, leakage, and water
quality control. The EBWR was unusually flexible because it was an experimental plant
intent on providing as much information about future BWR operation as possible. It
accommodated future conversion from light water moderator with natural circulation cooling
to forced circulation and heavy water moderation.

General Electric rallied hard for the 1954 changes to the Atomic Energy Act allowing
private ownership and operation of nuclear facilities. Before it passed, they had
three nuclear departments: operating the Hanford production reactors, doing submarine
testing at KAPL, and working on the aircraft nuclear propulsion project. They also
contributed significantly during the Manhattan Project. After the 1954 act, they added a
fourth nuclear division: an atomic power equipment department.

At this time, General Electric (GE) boldly took on a contract to build what became the
large-scale Dresden BWR. They started performing vast amounts of commercial nuclear R&D on
their own dime because they were convinced at this time that commercial nuclear was going
to be big business. Regarding the proposed large-scale Dresden BWR, GE’s VP McCune said
in 1956 that:

I have already testified that the developmental work required to produce this plant,
particularly fuel element development, will be very expensive. Unless we obtain
substantial future business, we will lose considerable sums on the Dresden station. At
the time we contracted to build this plant for Commonwealth, we were well aware of this.
We are aware also of the difficult technical problems ahead of us and of the large
investments in developmental facilities, these very expensive tools of the trade, which
would be required.

Moreover, when we signed the Commonwealth contract, we faced serious problems in
addition to the technical ones. The regulatory and licensing situation was still
unsettled. The Commission was just beginning to break down the information barriers.
Above all, the liability problem had not been resolved.

Nevertheless, we took on the Dresden station because we were convinced that by doing so
we would serve the long-run interests of our share owners, our responsibilities to the
system of private enterprise, and the national interest. Out decision to go forward was
also based on the belief that Congress expected this kind of a job to be done by private
industry. We had faith that Congress, and particularly this committee, as well as the
Commission, wanted to encourage private development and would take all reasonable steps
to promote that development.

Soon, GE enlisted services of their steam turbine-generator department for the plant
design, their induction motor department for special motors, their carboloy department for
fuel development, their general engineering lab for instrumentation, and their R&D
capabilities, also for fuel development. They created the 1,600-acre Vallecitos Atomic
Laboratory in California to be their component testing grounds, with a hot lab and an
experimental physics building containing a critical experiment facility. They went so far as to
build the Vallecitos BWR (VBWR) on the site with 100% private capital to help GE staff
gain the knowledge and experience necessary to deliver on the large-scale Dresden BWR
project. It was about the same size as the AEC’s EBWR (Senator Anderson even prodded
McCune about what they’d learn at VBWR that wasn’t learned at EBWR), but featured a dual
cycle, where steam could be generated from the stream drum or from a lower-pressure steam
generator. This was expected to improve load-following capabilities. It was also higher
pressure: 1000 psia instead of 600.

As Dresden was being designed, GE had 2,250 scientists and engineers in their four nuclear
departments.

Given their experience operating the Hanford production reactors, GE spent a lot of their
own money exploring the design of a graphite-moderated electricity-producing plant. They also
looked hard into homogeneous reactors. But, when the time came, they decided that the BWR
design was the most promising, and they leapt in full-force with the Dresden contract.
Specifically, Dr. Walter Zinn’s confidence in the ANL-designed BWR is what convinced GE to
go for it rather than the homogeneous reactor.

Dresden featured a dual-cycle steam system, and produced power in April, 1960. The
plant operated well. After Dresden came Humboldt Bay with natural circulation.

BWR development history/timeline/geneology (from ANL Summer school, 1961)

There was one tragedy along the BWR development pathway. The Army’s SL-1 in Idaho was part
of the Army Package Power Program, previously called the Argonne Low Power Reactor, ALPR.
It was designed to be built on the tundra above the DEW
line to power radar stations.
It suffered an explosion on January 3, 1961 that resulted in 3 casualties. SL-1 was a
small, natural circulation, direct cycle BWR designed and built by ANL. ANL directed the
project, and Pioneer Service & Engineering Company was the A/E. Operation was turned over
to Combustion Engineering after the plant was operational.

Before the accident, the reactor had been shutdown and the night-shift workers were
preparing for a power ascent. The procedure required them to lift the inserted central
control rod about 4 inches to hook it back to the drive mechanisms. For a reason that will
forever be unknown, the worker lifted the rod quickly by 20 inches. A prompt-supercritical
(e.g. very fast) chain reaction ensued, vaporizing and expanding fuel before the water had
time to boil and add its negative feedback component. After the core was at very high
power (around 20 gigawatts), the vaporizing fuel elements vaporized and rapidly boiled the
water. The steam accelerated the seven-foot column of water above the core, slamming it
into the lid of the pressure vessel at 160 feet per second, forming a massive water
hammer. The shield plugs ejected at up to 50 feet per second, along with much of the
shielding. The three military personnel who were on
top of the reactor head at the time suffered fatal and gruesome injuries (one was pinned
to the roof through the groin by an ejected moderator assembly). The creation of 10,000
psi pressure from the water hammer within the sealed pressure vessel had not been expected.
Had the vessel featured an open top, for example, the most destructive effects would not have
occurred. It became an important lesson to never put reactors into such a configuration.

Analysis showed that the control rod was pulled with less than full force. Some have gone
so far as to hypothesize that a love triangle was involved, and that this accident was a
murder-suicide by nuclear chain reaction. (This seems very unlikely). In any case, a
cleanup ensued and the site is now barely noticeable as you drive through the Idaho
sagebrush.

Big Rock Point in Charlevoix, MI (critical on September 27, 1962) first conducted a 4.5
years AEC research program demonstrating high power density
cores that had
been tested in VBWR. Obtaining more power out of a volume would possibly allow smaller
pressure vessels and uprates at existing plants. After the tests, the plant switched over
to producing commercial power for the region, which coincidentally is where I spent my
childhood. I grew up about 10 miles from Big Rock, which operated well until my teens.

Elk River was another small “hook-on” reactor that added steam to an
existing conventional plant. It was a BWR though, and a part of the PDRP. Its criticality
was 2 years behind schedule. Steel strikes and other strikes delayed the project, as well
as hairline cracks discovered in the cladding inside the pressure vessel. Repairs were
made and authorization to operate was given. It was coupled to a coal-fired superheater.

In 1964, GE sold the Oyster Creek reactor to Jersey Central Light at a guaranteed fixed
capital cost that was competitive with fossil fuels. Widespread euphoria spread throughout the
nuclear developers. At a State of the Lab speech, Alvin Weinberg shouted:

Economic nuclear power is here!

Between 1963 and 1966, 10 utilities purchase 12 PWRs and BWRs from GE and Westinghouse
under these turnkey contracts.

Alas, the turnkey era was short lived. The reactor vendors struggled to make money on
these sales. Coal executives claimed that GE had priced Oyster Creek below cost. GE denied this,
saying they’d make a small profit unless unforeseen difficulties were encountered. The plants
were still large, complex, and expensive. Increasing public scrutiny and the associated
regulatory instability caused various cost escalations.

Today, multiple PWRs have had to shut down prematurely due to intractable steam generator
problems. This at least partially validates the major BWR advantage of having a direct
primary cooling loop.

Advanced-model BWRs were developed in more recent years, focusing on simplicity and economics.

The Hallam sodium-graphite reactor in Nebraska

Ok, you may have been aware of the developments so far, but let’s now dip into some of the
more exotic developments of the days gone by.

Liquid metal is an excellent coolant fluid, enabling low-pressure operation, phenomenal
heat transfer, and thrillingly little corrosion. It was used in the EBR-I fast-neutron
reactor in 1951. Since fast-neutron reactors require far more fissile material to start
up, a sodium-cooled, graphite-moderated reactor was envisioned as a potential candidate
for producing low-cost nuclear electricity. This would allow low-pressure operation
without all the expensive and thick pressure containment systems and backup cooling while
also allowing the reactor to run on natural or very-slightly enriched fuel.

On the downside, many liquid metals are chemically reactive with water, air, and concrete,
and the complications related to inerting the environment and dealing with leaks and fires
would have to be weighed against the aforementioned benefits. Additionally, sodium becomes
highly radioactive as it passed through a nuclear core. The combination of radioactivity
with chemical reactivity necessitates an additional intermediate heat transfer loop,
especially when a metal-water steam generator is used. The extra loop comes expensive
additional equipment: pumps, valves, instrumentation, controls, heaters, and piping.

North American Aviation contributed $2.5M to the $10M cost of research, development,
and construction of the 20 MWt Sodium Reactor Experiment (SRE) at Santa Susana, CA.

Heavily informed by the AEC’s S1G submarine prototype reactor in New York and the Sodium
Reactor Experiment north of LA,
the Hallam Nuclear Power
Facility was a 75 MWe
attempt to approach commercial viability of a sodium-graphite reactor. It was proposed in
the first round of the PDRP.

The component testing and R&D in advance of Hallam operation was astounding. In spite of
experience acquired at from the smaller SRE, Atomics International still knew they
needed to build much of the equipment at the larger scale in order to shake down the
scaled-up designs. For example, they built an entire mockup fuel handling facility and a
full-scale fuel handling
machine and
operated it at temperature, in sodium! This allowed them to fix scaling design issues as
well as to practice the various fuel handling activities that would be required in the
operation of the plant.

The Hallam facility was built relatively quickly but struggled with reactor problems
during the shakedown period. After many repairs and lessons, the issue of rupturing
moderator cladding and subsequent over-expansion and closing-off of coolant channels was
the final straw. Consumers Public Power District chose to not purchase the facility from
the AEC, and it was grouted in place by 1969.

The Hallam Nuclear Power Facility
grid plate during construction (from Mahlmeister 1961)

Today, the fossil side of the plant still operates, and if you look at a satellite
view
you can see the perfect outline of the nuclear part partially entombed in beautifully cut
grass, which is actually part of the containment. You can also see a big coal train right
outside…

Organic cooled/moderated reactors: Piqua in Ohio

The second solicitation for the PDRP specifically sought small reactors. The Piqua
proposal fit the bill, at just 11.4 MWe. It featured organic coolant and moderator made of
terphenyl isomers (hydrocarbons). It was supposed that organic coolant
would lead to low capital costs. The low vapor pressure of the coolant allowed
low-pressure operation at high temperatures, reducing the weight and bulk of the pressure
vessel while increasing the thermal efficiency. Organic coolant also has low corrosion,
allowing conventional materials like carbon and low-alloy steel to be used rather than
stainless steel in the pressure vessel, pumps, pipes, etc. Lastly, induced radioactivity
in pure organic liquids is very low, unlike in the liquid metals.

The price to pay for the benefits of organic coolant comes in the form of decomposition
cleanup and purification systems. Radiation and heat both cause the fluid to break down
into water vapor, hydrogen, methane, and other hydrocarbons. Also, the heat transfer
characteristics are generally worse than for water, requiring high surface area
fuel element design.

The AEC contracted Atomics International (AI) to do research and development at the
Organic Moderated Reactor
Experiment (OMRE) in
Idaho. This established the basic feasibility of organic-cooled reactors, and allowed AI
to build experience in the system. They measured coolant properties, fabricated fuel,
built and operated the reactor, measured heat transfer, operated purification systems,
built control rod test towers, built a hot cell to examine irradiated fuel, and performed
dozens of other R&D tasks.

The Organic Moderated Reactor Experiment in Idaho provided Atomics International
with the technology and experience to design and build the Piqua plant (from AI
Annual Report 1959 and Nov 1956
Prog. Report)

As a follow-up to OMRE, the AEC contracted AI to build the Experimental Organic Cooled
Reactor (EOCR), also at the NRTS. This facility was built to 99% completion by the
contractor, but ended up never operating.

The OMRE established the organic-cooled concept sufficiently to motivate the Piqua team to
submit a proposal for a commercial plant.

The business plan for Piqua was that the AEC would own and operate the plant for 5 years,
selling steam to the city for the same price of conventional fossil-fueled steam. After 5
years, the city would have an option to purchase the plant from the AEC. Given their
experience from the OMRE, Atomics International was again contracted to design and build
the Piqua plant.

Piqua was brought to criticality on June, 1963, and reached full power in January 1964.
The plant produced 20% of Piqua’s power in 1965, and the city proudly referred to itself
as The Atomic City.

Piqua operational history in 1964 (from Progress report
5)

In 1966, two control rods were found to not move freely in their guide tubes, and four fuel
elements required abnormally high forces to unseat and would not reseat. The obstruction
was found to be a carbonaceous deposit. Fuel was shipped to Atomics International for hot
cell examination, where a hard continuous film was found on the surface, patches of film
were found on the tips of the cladding film, and the inner moderator space was found to be
full of carbonaceous material. A three-phase core disassembly/rehab program was developed.

As the rehab was ongoing, it became clear that Milton Shaw, the director of Reactor
Development at the AEC, had given up on the organic concept:

There is an expression used around our office about reactor projects. It is not
those that have the slow death that worries us; it is those that have a life after
death.

He concluded that the AEC would support the Piqua facility but would otherwise discontinue
all work on the organic cooled concept. The writing was on the wall. In the FY1969
authorization hearings of the
AEC, the
announcement to terminate the Piqua contract was made:

The Commission is in the process of terminating the operating contract for the Piqua
reactor project. Several factors entered into this decision including: an increasing need
for available resources (manpower and funding) by higher priority programs; little
programmatic interest since support for organic cooled and moderated reactors and the
HWOCR concept has been phased out; the technical problems which continue to delay
reoperation of the plant and the unlikelihood of the City to purchase the plant.

Today the small dome still stands, and it looks
like
it’s used as a warehouse. The City had to change its nickname to “The City of
Opportunity”.

A 23-minute video explains Piqua in some detail.

Direct nuclear superheat in Puerto Rico and South Dakota

The Korean peninsula has been hit by record-breaking precipitation, with state-run Korean Main News Company (KCNA) reporting last week that floods had ruined 40,000 hectares (154 square miles) of farmland, 16,680 houses, and 630 other buildings all over the nation.

Commercial satellite imagery of the Yongbyon nuclear reactor, the nation’s primary nuclear center, captured the attention of analysts at 38 North, a North-Korea analysis website moneyed by the Washington-based Stimson Center.

38 North reported that although the five-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon does not appear to have actually been recently operating, “damage to the pumps and piping within the pump houses provides the most significant vulnerability to the reactors.”

“If the reactors were running, for circumstances, the inability to cool them would need them to be shut down,” the report stated.

RFA’s Korean Service Thursday talked to Olli Heinonen, former Deputy Director-General for Safeguards at the International Atomic Energy Firm (IAEA), and current prominent fellow with the Stimson Center’s 38 North program.

He talked about the potential damage that the flooding might cause to Yongbyon and the Pyongsan uranium mine, another flooded center. The interview has actually been modified for length and clearness.

RFA: It has actually been reported that the North Korean nuclear facility in Yongbyon was impacted by the recent flooding. Do we have a major disaster on our hands?

Heinonen: As you understand, I have been a number of times to Yongbyon, and I have likewise been there during flooding, and in fact this flooding is about as bad as I think I saw when I was there. I believe the first big flood I saw there, maybe it was in 1992, that long earlier.

So I believe my first reaction to these images, which likewise come from the company which I now serve, the Stimson Center, … North Korea is aware of this flooding, they put on’t come as a surprise, and they have actually taken some countermeasures in the design of these nuclear facilities to conquered any difficulties. This is the very first point, and I’ll return to it quickly.

The 2nd thing we requirement to keep in our mind is actually that these facilities are virtually not operating now. So when you appearance at the satellite image survey, the five-megawatt reactor doesn’t run, the speculative light-water reactor is under building and construction, the processing plant is far away from the river, but it still needs water in order to keep it.

Same concern the uranium enrichment part, they need some water but the real operation, we are not so sure how much it’s operating now. And then there are some other setups that use radioactive product. Not nuclear material, but [they conduct] radioactive experiments for medical, scientific and other purposes.

I wear’t think this flooding has had much of an impact on those, so from an general security point of view, there is not a substantial issue for the time being.

The next question: Has this flooding triggered damage to the devices there?

I wear’t think there is any huge damage for the following factors:

Let’s appearance now at the experimental light-water reactor and the five-megawatt reactor. I believe that they can go for a while without having much water in utilize, or taken from the river, so they can stop the pumps… In addition to that, these kinds of installations, when they operate, they have a kind of filtering system in the front of the piping that takes the water. So it will also screen away some of the dirt, so if they requirement to briefly take some water I think they can maybe manage it.

But certainly under present scenarios, you can not go to long-lasting operations till the water level comes down, and until the front of these water-taking locations are cleaned and put back in complete order.

So this is my take on this, and I have seen them also designing and taking part in a reactor that was constructed in Syria. And I was at that point in the IAEA and we have actually composed some Syria reports about the water for that reactor…and it was I think, a relatively typical commercial plan for the water to be taken from the river, and how this system was made in such a way that it can manage likewise flooding.

Now we see that the consumption structure or the pump home in Yongbyon, especially for the reactor, is surrounded by water, however I wear’t think that it makes a huge damage on that due to the fact that at least in Syria we saw that the electronic devices part was fairly well protected.

Then I also see that the individuals have not looked at the other water intake places. They are all concentrated just on water intake for the five-megawatt reactor and the experimental reactor.

On the other side of the river is a pump house which probably takes water to the river… and the situation there is quite much the same as for the reactor, so there is a lot of water around the pump house… so that’s where we are.

So I put on’t think that there is any significant situation. They requirement to do some repairing, but it’s not extremely likely that they are all damaged.

There is one thing that people likewise need to remember. The construction of the buildings, in North Korea, their standards are not that advanced as you and I have become used to.

For example when it rains a lot, in some centers, water can get to the cellar because of the bad isolation in the basement. So that’s another thing that is most likely taking place in some of the centers. We’re just not seeing it because satellite images will not program it.

What kind of damage has that triggered? It’s tough to say. A lot of likely they simply requirement to pump some water away and tidy the properties, the cellars, and the lower levels of those buildings.

But once again, I wear’t think it will stop the operation of those centers, considering that it didn’t do anything in the 1990 s, so why would it do that today?

RFA: What is the danger of flooding at the Pyongsan uranium mine?

Heinonen: When you do the uranium mining, you usage a lot of water to tidy the ore, which in this case is anthracite coal in Pyongsan. So you have to clean it, you have to liquify it, and then when you do this cleaning and this dissolution, you recover uranium, which is fine, however the exact same time you leave a lot of radioactive waste like radium, thorium, and then both of those, they are radioactive materials, so at one point in time, they decay to radon, which is a gas.

So, when you have these huge ponds where the wastewater goes, we wear’t understand how well they are developed and how they deal hen there is a huge rain—whether the rain simply falls into these open ponds, or whether they overflow and then this radioactive waste gets to the environment, groundwater, and then ultimately either to the river, or to the drinking water of the people.

If that takes place, then it has an effect.

Also, we put on’t understand how well these ponds are actually made. In regular cases, really they are like substantial swimming pools. So they are not such that there is a pond or lake on a typical rice paddy or regular ground. You need to isolate this waste liquid from the rest of the ground water.

Since we wear’t know how they have done that, I think that’s why when we appearance at this heavy rain, which was likewise in the Pyongsan location, that may be a matter of issue.

There is a possibility that water might overflow and get to the environment.

I’m not so worried about the milling center itself, the one that takes the ore and separates uranium there, since they are chemical procedures and they occur in piping and vessels and numerous tanks, so it should not effect the operations of those.

But the waste containment ponds are a different story. When you appearance at the image on the website, there are in fact 2 such ponds. One is near the actual mine, up there on the mountain, and then there is a pipeline that [connects with the] milling center, and then the liquids, which are waste from that milling center, they cross the river in another pipeline and go to a pond over there.

So those 2 ponds, one on the other side of the river and one up there on the mountain, I believe, might have some dangers when there is such a heavy rain as we have seen in the last couple of weeks.

Reported by Sangmin Lee for RFA’s Korean Service.

Once again it’s time to open up our mailbag for students. Today we’re going answer questions from students of all ages from all walks of life, sent in from all over the world. And if you’re a student yourself, you can do this too — just listen until the end to find out how. Today’s questions cover infrasound to enhance horror movies, the miraculous claims attributed to Padre Pio, whether oysters are vegan, how we can protect people thousands of years in the future from today’s nuclear waste, and finally, whether wearing yellow-tinted glasses can protect your eyes from damage from using screens. Let’s get started!

Infrasound in Horror Movies

My name is AJ Rodriguez from Bakersfield, CA. I have heard that infrasound (inaudible sound below 20 Hz) has been used in horror movies to increase fear in moviegoers. Is there any scientific basis for this?

There may well be. In the most famous such experiment, researchers in 2003 designed a controlled study where 750 people heard four pieces of music in a concert hall, some of which were accompanied by inaudible infrasound at 17 Hz. Sure enough, a statistically significant percentage of the audience — 22% — reported increased feelings of unease, sorrow, chills down the spine, or even worse feelings such as nervousness, revulsion, and fear when the infrasound was present.

But has this been done successfully in the wild? No. A movie theater’s subwoofers — or indeed any commercially available subwoofers — cannot come close to the infrasound levels needed to show an effect in these studies. They required a gigantic specially designed acoustic pipe seven meters long.

Padre Pio

Hi Brian, my name’s Bernard and I’ve got a topic that I’m not sure you’d touch with a bargepole to be quite honest. Tonight I was watching on Unsolved Mysteries a story about Father Pio and it really started to hit a lot of notes that we talk about to be Skeptoid of, and I’d really be grateful if you could have a look into it for me.

Padre Pio (1887 – 1968) is a famous Catholic saint. All sorts of miracles are attributed to him, both during and after his lifetime. He was most famous for his stigmata, wounds on the body (most notably on his palms) corresponding to the crucifixion injuries of Jesus. We’ve actually mentioned him here on Skeptoid before, back in episode #126 on incorruptible corpses — bodies that do not decompose after death but remain lifelike, generally with some alleged divine cause. The Catholic Church lists Padre Pio as an incorruptible, even though by their own admission his body was badly decomposed when it was exhumed for display, and today a silicone reproduction is shown. And this one tidbit is a fair metaphor for everything about Padre Pio.

It’s not my practice to criticize belief systems here on Skeptoid, only factual claims that can be proven or disproven through science. There is no implied criticism of Catholic religious beliefs in pointing out that virtually everything about Padre Pio has been found to be fraudulent, and not just by outside investigators, but by some of the Church’s own investigators too. In 1919, an emissary was sent from the Vatican to check out reports of healings and other miracles attributed to Padre Pio, and found that every single one of them was bogus.

Much has been written about this; whole books have been devoted to debunking the claims of Padre Pio. This is to be expected, as any Catholic saint is (almost by definition) a controversial figure and is going to draw both passionate critics and passionate supporters, regardless of the merits. What counts is what the findings are and their validity. There’s no record of anyone actually observing Padre Pio self-inflict his stigmata, but he was known to keep and frequently request resupply of bottles of carbolic acid, a few drops of which produce a gory wound on the skin. He spent most of his life wearing fingerless gloves to keep his palms out of sight, consistent with someone who’s tired of putting acid on his hands — hands which were, at his death, found to be entirely injury-free. Many of his writings describing mystical experiences he’d had were later found to be plagiarized word-for-word from an earlier stigmatic, Gemma Galgani, and so we know for a fact that those claims did not reflect any experiences he’d actually had. The examples go on and on.

Did Padre Pio also make true miracles happen? Well, maybe he did; but if we believe that, we’re forced to consider why he would have also faked so many others.

Are Oysters Vegan?

Hi, I’m Jules Sans, and I am wondering: Are oysters vegan? I heard they do not feel pain and do not have a brain. Are oysters vegan?

So what you’re asking here really isn’t a science question; it’s a marketing question. Vegan is not a scientific term, it’s a word used to define a segment in the food marketing industry. This is handled differently in different countries, but in the United States, private companies arose to take advantage of this and sell their own self-styled certifications to food producers to assist them in promoting their products to customers who choose vegan diets. The certification is not official or legal, it’s purely marketing. Chief among these is Vegan Action, a 501(C)(3) nonprofit. Under their criteria, oysters are no way, nohow considered vegan. Products they certify contain “no animal ingredients or animal by-products, [use] no animal ingredient or by-product in the manufacturing process, and [are] not tested on animals.”

However, outside of this commercial context, different people may use the term vegan to refer to different things. Some may choose to apply it to products containing nothing from animals that have brains and/or feel pain, as you describe. To others it may not mean that. So, truthfully, there’s no hard-and-fast answer to your particular question. Without a strict scientific definition for what vegan means, it turns out to be a matter of personal preference.

Nuclear Waste in 10,000 Years

Hi Brian, my question is how do we warn people in the future not to open our containers of nuclear waste? I mean, we don’t know what language they’re going to speak, or if they’re even going to be us. All the best, Rich Cattle.

So this is a question that scientists have been wondering about for a long time. The field actually has a name: nuclear semiotics, referring to durable, language-agnostic symbology that could be used to warn some future party about the danger. This decades-old conversation even has its own Wikipedia page. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, various international teams made all sorts of proposals and reports for how this message could be reliably communicated tens of thousands of years in the future.

But in the opinion of this writer, it’s one of those questions that’s more of an interesting, speculative thought experiment than it is a realistic problem in need of a serious solution. It’s like wondering “How do I keep aliens from beaming into my living room and stealing my TV,” which is also a difficult problem to solve, but probably one that we don’t need to worry too much about. I say this because all signs are that nuclear waste is a temporary problem — albeit a thorny one.

While it’s true that most nuclear power plants under construction today are still the same basic 60-year-old open fuel cycle design that produce radioactive waste, those on the drawing board are closed fuel cycle reactors that can consume the most dangerous components of existing radioactive waste. So far China is the only nation actively developing these so-called Generation IV designs, such as the liquid fluoride thorium reactor, of which they already have several under construction. (For a complete rundown on these, see episode #555, Thorium Reactors: Fact and Fiction.)

Combined with the fact that technology for reducing and recycling existing nuclear waste continues to proceed — including options like simply diluting it into the oceans at levels far below the natural background, and even depositing it into subduction zones where nobody would be able to get to it even if they tried — my opinion (not presented as fact) is that such waste will be a historical footnote within a century or two, long before we have to worry about semiotics.

Yellow Glasses to Avoid Computer Eye Strain?

Hello Brian, this is Tim. I understand that UV light is harmful to our eyes, but lately I’m seeing advice from optometrists that anyone who’s in front of a computer screen for long periods should wear yellow tinted glasses to protect against blue light. I understand blue light interferes with being able to sleep, but is there any validity to blue light damaging your eyesight?

Wherever there is a product that can be sold, you can be assured that plenty of people will come up with plenty of reasons to sell it. Glasses claiming to block blue light from computer screens are the perfect example.

The American Academy of Ophthalmology, the world’s largest association of eye physicians and surgeons, has published a series of articles (like this and this) debunking virtually every claim you’ll find for such glasses. These include that blue and ultraviolet light from your computer screen will harm your eyes over time, both by retina damage and eye strain. The products have been successfully marketed, in part by misrepresenting a published study that retinal — a form of Vitamin A found in your eye — can damage cells when overexposed to powerful blue light. However nothing in the study was relevant to eyesight; that association was just marketing spin by the people selling these glasses.

Yes, overexposure to blue light and ultraviolet can indeed damage your eyes; but computer screens produce no measurable UV and the normal amount of blue light they produce is not harmful. Eye strain is real and has a number of causes, but blue light is not among them. To avoid it, sit the proper distance from your screen or use glasses to help you comfortably focus. Blink regularly. Follow the 20-20-20 rule: Every 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds. You’ll be just fine. Conversely, if you buy the yellow glasses but don’t do anything else to avoid eye strain, you’ll be just as susceptible as you were before.

Teachers!

So teachers, if you’ve got a classroom full of students — particularly if that’s a virtual classroom — let’s hear from your students. Use the Teachers Toolkit, which is our free platform for sharing collections of Skeptoid podcast episodes to a classroom full of students in a free, secure, anonymous, and accessible way. Have your students listen to some episodes in the field you’re currently teaching, and then get them to send some questions to be answered right here. In some cases I can even have the episode come out on a specific date that you request. It’s completely free and a great way to share Skeptoid with a classroom, and maybe make it an extra credit opportunity. For all the details, just come to skeptoid.com and click Answering Student Questions.

By Brian Dunning
Follow @BrianDunning

 

By Dan Lennon

1. Nuclear Accidents Have Been Overblown:

Due to media hype surrounding three major nuclear accidents, the risk of nuclear power has been greatly overstated and therefore public opinion is against it. As a result, this very valuable tool in our arsenal against climate change is being left on the sidelines. This will be seen someday as a mistake of enormous proportions.

Let’s consider each of the accidents:

A. Chernobyl:

The Chernobyl accident occurred on April 26, 1986 when the fourth reactor suffered a huge power increase, leading to the explosion of the plant. The reactor at Chernobyl was designed and built by the Soviet Union. Two very serious safety omissions were the absence of a steel containment vessel around the reactor core and the absence of a concrete containment dome around the reactor itself. With no containment, any significant failure was bound to be catastrophic. Furthermore, the personnel that operated the reactor were inadequately trained. These are radical departures from standard design and operating procedures in other countries, therefore the Chernobyl accident should be seen as an outlier, not a representative case.

As a result of the accident, 29 disaster relief workers died of acute radiation exposure in the immediate aftermath of the accident. In 2011, The Union of Concerned Scientists estimated the worldwide additional long-term cancer deaths at 45,600, an increase of 68 millionths of one percent. The worst affected were the 25,000 residents in the most contaminated areas. They experienced an increased cancer incidence of 4%, producing an estimated additional 1,000 early deaths over time. The IAEA had predicted 4,000 deaths. After the accident, all people were evacuated from a one thousand square mile exclusion zone. With man gone, wildlife has flourished so much that the area has become a tourist attraction.

B. Three Mile Island:

On March 29, 1979, a reactor at the Three Mile Island Plant in Middleton, Pennsylvania experienced a partial meltdown. Approximately 2 million people who lived around Three Mile Island during the accident received an average radiation dose of about 1 millirem above the area’s usual background dose of 125 to 150 millirem per year. By comparison, a chest X-ray is about 6 millirem. In spite of serious damage to the reactor, the accident had negligible effects on the physical health of individuals or the environment. There were no deaths.

C. Fukushima:

On March 11, 2011, power supply and cooling to three reactors was disabled following an earthquake and tsunami, causing a partial meltdown of all three. Although 154,000 Japanese citizens were evacuated from a 12-mile exclusion zone around the power station as a precaution, radiation exposure beyond the station grounds itself was limited. There was no major public exposure, and no deaths from radiation, however Fukushima prefecture counted 1,368 deaths related to the Fukushima plant accident. The cause was mainly displacement of the sick and elderly while in temporary housing and shelters, degraded living conditions, and separation from support networks.

There are 60 nuclear power plants in the U.S. and 450 worldwide that have been operating for decades without incident. Exaggerated reporting about these accidents has caused the safety concern in the public’s mind about nuclear energy to be greatly magnified. Surprisingly, coal presents a far greater risk of exposure to radioactivity.

2. Fossil Fuels are More Dangerous than Nuclear:

A. Death Rates From Nuclear v Fossil Fuels:

The fear of nuclear power has gone viral, but it is fueled by emotion. Here are the facts:

Coal has 333 times the death rate of nuclear; oil has 249 times the death rate of nuclear, biomass has 63 times the death rate of nuclear, and gas has 38 times the death rate of nuclear.

B. Coal Plants Emit More Radiation than Nuclear Plants:

Because coal contains trace amounts of uranium and thorium, and because a typical coal-fired power plant burns 10,000 tons of coal per day, the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant, a by-product from burning coal for electricity, carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy. This is because the radioactivity from coal plants is not regulated whereas the radioactivity from nuclear plants is. This is why working at a nuclear power plant is extremely safe.

3. Disposing of Nuclear Waste:

The issue of nuclear waste storage and disposal is complex and fraught with controversy. As in the United States, nearly every nuclear waste disposal program around the world has fallen behind schedule due to scientific uncertainty and public opposition.

In 1987, the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Depository was designated as the site for the disposal of U.S. nuclear waste. But the plan was vigorously opposed by the citizens of Nevada, the State of Nevada, and other non-local groups. As a result, funding for the depository ended in 2011. This was not a technological failure, but a political one. Nuclear waste continues to be stored in spent fuel pools at reactor sites where the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has determined that spent nuclear fuel can safely be stored for at least the next 100 years.

As of 2019, the status of the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain remains uncertain. The site has been abandoned and nothing exists but a boarded up exploratory tunnel; there are no waste disposal tunnels, receiving and handling facilities, and the waste containers and transportation casks have yet to be developed. Moreover, there is no railroad to the site, and the cost to build a railroad through Nevada could exceed $3 billion. Today, the only thing that actually exists at Yucca Mountain is a single 5-mile exploratory tunnel. And there is also ongoing debate over whether the geologic features and proposed engineered barriers at Yucca Mountain will provide sufficient isolation for permanent disposal.

The Yucca Mountain repository would have a capacity of 77,000 tons. In 2003, 46,000 tons of high-level waste was stored around the country. Nuclear power facilities produce an additional 2,000 tons of waste a year. However, spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste would be shipped to Yucca Mountain on an unprecedented scale. According to a recent study completed by the National Academy of Sciences, just one year of waste shipments to Yucca Mountain would exceed all shipments made in the past 30 years. This raises a big question about the safety of transporting this material.

4. Cost of Nuclear v Solar:

If you consider only construction costs, solar is cheaper than nuclear. But nuclear plants operate at 90% capacity and solar plants only operate at most around 25%, so you would need to build four times the capacity of solar power to equal the power of nuclear.

Even with this adjustment, some calculations show that solar is still cheaper. It remains a subject of debate. But the cost of a solar plant does not take into consideration the cost of providing backup energy for solar which is legally mandated in most jurisdictions. The costs are both financial and environmental because this backup is provided by plants that run on fossil fuel. And it doesn’t count the considerable cost involved in building a vast global energy storage capacity that is currently not within the realm of our technology. The same argument applies to wind turbines, except that wind turbines are about twice as efficient as solar farms, so would need to build twice the capacity for them in order to match nuclear.

5. Lead Time to Build/Need for Federal Subsidy:

In 2013, after 30 years with no new construction of nuclear power plants, work began to expand the V.C. Summer nuclear power plant near Jenkinsville, S.C. Two new reactors were to be built at a cost of $9B. Unit 2 was to become operational in 2016 and unit 3 in 2019. By 2017 the operational dates had been pushed back to 2020, the project was only 40% complete, and cost overruns were expected to run the project cost up to $23 billion. The owners decided to abandon the project rather than saddle their customers with additional costs.

In 2013 work began to expand the Vogtle nuclear power plant near Waynesboro, Georgia. Two new reactors were to be built at a cost of $14 billion. They were scheduled to become operational in 2016. By 2018 the operational dates had been pushed back to 2021 for unit 3 and 2022 for unit 4, and cost overruns were expected to run the project cost up to $28B. Despite talk of abandoning the project, work continues.

Here’s why these projects have been plagued with problems:

• Since these are new designs with passive safety systems and a smaller footprint, they should be less expensive to build, but with new designs there is always a learning curve.
• Since no nuclear plants have been built in the U.S. in 30 years, there is little experience. For the same reason, everything from manufacturing to supply chains to regulation is ad-hoc.
• There is no existing manufacturing infrastructure and therefore no economies of scale, so the contractors must bear the high fixed costs of building the infrastructure.
• Without trained personnel, quality control and construction problems increase.
• On the regulatory side, the NRC and state authorities err on the side of caution which dramatically slows the building process.

The drawback with evaluating the success of these projects based solely on return on investment and cost to consumers is that it ignores the consequences of continuing to rely on fossil fuels. The cost of continuing to increase GHG emissions will ultimately be much higher than the cost of building these plants.

Moreover, one-third of the United States’ nuclear power fleet – 21 of 60 facilities – could be closed in the next decade before their operating licenses expire. These are mostly smaller, single reactor plants, but they provide more than one-fifth of the country’s 800 TWh (terawatt hours) of electricity from nuclear power. If they are not replaced with new nuclear plants, they will be replaced with coal and natural gas plants which would generate an estimated 275 million tons of additional CO2 annually.

What we don’t seem to be factoring into our decisions about nuclear is the consequences of not replacing fossil fuels as quickly as possible. It should not just be a matter of letting the markets decide. Nuclear is not a substitute for renewables, but it is a clean source of energy that should be included in a portfolio of GHG emission abatement efforts.

The government must step in and pay for the cost overruns on these new plants as part of an aggressive R&D budget. Once the problems normally associated with cutting edge technology and the learning curve associated with its implementation are solved, the costs will be much lower and in the range that are economically competitive.

But the Federal Government is not doing enough. The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) is a Federal program mandated by Congress to coordinate Federal research and investments in understanding the forces shaping the global environment and their impacts on society. In 2016 (the latest I could find) it’s budget was $2.6 billion divided among 13 different agencies. By comparison, the 2018 R&D budget for the Department of Defense was $96 billion. We have the money to do this, but our priorities are terribly wrong. Another aircraft carrier or nuclear submarine is not going to be very helpful if we can’t feed ourselves.

6. Baseline Load:

To be efficient, the electric industry must match power supply with power demand. And it must provide electricity reliably. Most electricity is provided by large coal, gas, and nuclear power plants that run constantly at a maximum capacity that is designed to meet the grid’s usual demand (the baseline load). These plants are the most efficient at generating power, but it takes 8 to 10 hours for them to warm up and come on-line, and they can only operate at their peak power and cannot be adjusted to meet peak demands. In industry jargon, they are not “dispatchable” sources. To meet this demand, the industry has power plants that use gas turbines or diesel engines. They can come on-line in 10 or 15 minutes but are not very efficient.

Now consider renewable energy sources. Because their power supply is intermittent and does not match demand, we cannot count on them to supply either a base load or peak demand. This means that, until battery technology can be deployed on a global scale so that renewable energy can be stored for when it is needed, we will continue to need both large baseline power plants and peak supply power plants.

The largest battery backup plant in the world is the facility built by Tesla at the Hornsdale Power Reserve in Florida. It can store a maximum of 129 megawatt-hours of electricity – enough to supply 30,000 houses with electricity for 8 hours. This is tiny compared with the amount of renewable energy that will eventually have to be stored globally. And the plant cost $61 million, so large-scale deployment of the current technology is not feasible.

Raising the share of electricity produced by renewables above 40% creates at least two adverse effects:

• First, because baseline power produced by large power plants cannot be reduced, more and more solar farms and wind turbines must be unplugged from the system during their most productive hours because more electricity is being produced than is needed. This adversely affects both traditional power suppliers and renewable suppliers.
• Second, more back-up generating capacity is needed to fill in when wind and solar are not generating power. So there is a natural stopping point at which a marginal increment of wind or solar will become unprofitable. It has been estimated that solar and wind can only economically supply electricity to its maximum rated capacity. For wind power, this typically ranges between 20 and 40 percent, while for solar it runs between 10 and 25 percent. This means that the maximum percentage of electricity that can economically be generated by solar and wind is between 30 and 55 percent of demand.

7. Nuclear Fusion

Work continues on fusion powered plants. The advantages of fusion are high power density, low and manageable waste production, and no possibility of uncontrolled energy release. But fusion requires heating hydrogen to over 100,000,000o C at which temperature electrons are stripped from nuclei and the hydrogen becomes a plasma. This is no mean feat. And controlling the plasma is also very difficult. The behavior of plasma is chaotic. It is too hot to touch the walls of the tokamak (the containment vessel), and so it must be suspended in air by magnetic fields. Stellarators are devices that control the magnets that control the plasma by twisting its flow in specific ways. A recent new stellarator design using a fixed magnet offers a simpler approach than previous designs, and this may accelerate progress in controlling the plasma.

The largest fusion experiment in the world is ITER (the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) being built by an international consortium in Provence in the south of France at a cost of $2 billion. But despite its price tag, ITER is just a proof-of-concept plant and will not provide energy for public use. And it isn’t scheduled for full power operation until 2035. Optimistically, if we get some breaks and don’t run into any insurmountable obstacles, we could see the first fusion plant online between 2050 or 2060. In the meantime, we need non-polluting baseline power now, and only fission can provide that.

Nuclear is not the sole solution, but it could be the most important element of the EDF’S portfolio of Fourth Wave Environmental Innovation to bridge us to the day when we get all our power from fusion reactors.

8. Conclusion:

We must immediately begin replacing fossil fuels with clean energy at a scale that can provide both secure baseline power and reliable peak demand power. It makes sense that we choose the only source of clean energy that can do this – nuclear.

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Previously published on Emagazine.com.

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Photo credit: istockphoto.com

 

2019 video gives a good primer .

“THORIUM 232 – From History to Reactor

This is a visual summary of all the information about thorium.
Thorium is a weak radioactive element with atomic number 90 and a half-life of 14.05 billion years. About the age of the universe. Although it is one of the rarest metals on earth, its availability is much higher and stable than that of Uranium. 99.98% of this element is encountered as thorium 232 while uranium is mostly found in as Uranium 238 which is a poor contributor for the production of energy.

Uranium reserves are estimated to be about 5.5 million tones but only 0.72% of that is U235 necessary for the reaction. In comparison, thorium reserves are estimated to be 6.3 million tones with a 99.98% usability.

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