How shall driving gain nuclear cachet?

But some nuclear experts argue the pressure-tube design is also Candu's Achilles' heel. "Think of a car with 400 lines into the engine and 400 lines out. Who would buy a car that had that design?" said Frank Greening, a former nuclear engineer at Ontario Power Generation.

Greening said each tube has to be closely monitored and tested, and a feeder pipe connected to each tube that carries the heat used to make electricity is prone to erosion. This, he said, contributes to the need for a costly, mid-life refurbishment of Candu reactors.

Yes JSW has a limited capability right now. But they've already started a program to double capacity. Forgemasters in England is starting to restore their large forging capability. Doosan in Korea is capable of quickly increasing their size capacity. There are facilities in France that could be expanded within a few years. In the US there are mothballed facilities that formerly produced the large forgings. This whole capacity issue is bogus. You could make the same statements about windmill capacity, mirror capacity, etc.

Also, what kind of an engineer is Frank Greening? He must have never seen a boiler for a coal or natural gas fired power plant. Unless he was misquoted, he should be embarrassed.

Why not just tool up in China to produce these parts?  Quality is the problem.  These parts must be perfect for reactors to meet investor expectations.  Not to mention public safety concerns.

On the other hand, the renewable/conservation alternative only needs to be mass produced.  A glitch here and there won't contaminate whole regions of planet earth, like the Chernobyl disaster did.

"..no practical path to commercial deployment"  eyyh Ken?

Wake up and smell the GHG-free solutions.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2008/5/7/3 ...

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

As soon as it all works I'm confident the renewables will be built. I guess I'm just not smart enough to see how it can be done.

It's pretty easy to see really.  The various projects now underway have been highlighted in Grist and on other sites for years.

Xcel's Colorado smart grid project, huge shifts of capital into wind, solar thermal technology investment by Google (you've heard of them right?), farm biogas projects, a big wave of geo heat exchange heating/cooling, plugin hybrids, electric mass transit.  It's all underway somewhere and facts and figures are there for your perusal.

You are not alone in ignoring all this, Barack's energy advisor was just interviewed here and he has ignored nearly all of this too.  And he is very smart.  Hehey.


http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Indeed. All forms of electricity production are expensive in Japan.

Katakanadian wrote: My power came from the Toukyou Electric Power Company (TEPCo) which is about 40% nuclear.

That leaves 60% for other fuel-types, probably coal and/or natural gas -- both of which are more expensive than nuclear in Japan.

Katakanadian wrote: Clearly nuclear isn't cheap.

Your syllogism seems to be missing something.

Katakanadian wrote: They had to shut down a bunch of reactors for several months to conduct safety inspections and repairs which had been neglected.

They had to, or they did? Japan happens to have the strictest nuclear safety regulation in the world. Hyper-regulation is not known for keeping costs low.

Katakanadian wrote: I would not be to quick to increase nuclear power anywhere in the world. There are better options.

You are referring to coal and natural gas? Japan is currently trying to exit from those hyper-expensive options.

http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/226345

Let's just look at one in particular - Concentrating Solar Power. Here ia an article about the new Gila Bend project in Arizona.

It sounds great but look carefully at the numbers. The installed cost is $1 billion and the peak capacity is 280 MWe. That would be a capacity factor adjusted capacity of less than 100 MWe. So the equivalent installed cost is well over $10,000/kw for intermittant capacity. Why does $6000 or $8000/kw nuclear sound so unacceptable?

Oh, I know, sunlight is free and the operational costs will be very low. If you read the article, you will see that the utility will have to pay $4 billion for 30 years of electricity. If you run out the numbers you will find the production costs are about 15 cents per kw. That compares to 2 cents/kw for nuclear plants.

This technology needs an order of magnitude reduction in cost and we've been building these facilities for over 30 years with very little change in costs. When do the economics improve?

Again, I'm not against renewables. I just think we're being set up for failure by pie in the sky visons of a renewable future.

Japan Steel caters to all nuclear reactor makers except in Russia, which makes its own heavy forgings. Plus not needed for Candu reactors as noted. Areva, the world's biggest reactor builder, is considering modifying its newest design to be able to make the central reactor-vessel part from a 350-ton ingot instead of more than 500 tons as required today. Another alternative is to turn back the technological clock and weld together two smaller forgings, said John Fees, CEO of McDermott International Inc.'s Babcock & Wilcox Co., which built the Three Mile Island reactor. That technique was used over the past 40 years in the U.S. and France and is still applied in China.

Other makers of large forgings, including South Korean's Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction Co. and Japan Casting & Forgings Corp., are spending big to expand their capacity.

Doosan will have the capability to make forgings in late 2009 or 2010.

China First Heavy Industries Company Ltd. recently said it is investing $2.3 billion to increase its capacity to supply 600 tonne ingots for ultra-large forgings.

British company Sheffield Forgemasters International Ltd. said last month it will seeking financing to build a massive press for ultra-large forging - by 2011 it is hoped.

Gordon Gecko of movie fame said that "Greed is good."  Well, we are now experiencing the problems which that attitude exemplifies and will suffer more until regulations are re-imposed upon the offending corporations.  Other sources of energy production should not only be allowed but assisted to compete against the established oil suppliers who already have the government pipelines putting cash into their pockets.

Des Emery