Typhoon winds up to 110 mph to hit Fukushima Daiichi, storm surge advisory issued. enenews.com
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Geiger Readings for October 11, 2014
Ambient office = 110 nanosieverts per hourAmbient outside = 87 nanosieverts per hourSoil exposed to rain water = 70 nanosieverts per hourCarrot from Central Market = 87 nanosieverts per hourTap water = 79 nanosieverts per hourFiltered water = 73 nanosieverts per hourDover Sole – Caught in USA = 103 nanosieverts per hour -
Nuclear Fusion 13 – Technical Details on ITER
In my last post, I talked about the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor ITER project. A consortium of nations including European Union, India, Japan, People’s Republic of China, Russia, South Korea and the United States formally agreed in 2006 to collaborate on the construction of an experimental nuclear fusion reactor. Billions of dollars and decades of work are dedicated to the project. Today I am going to delve into some of the technical details of the ITER reactor.
ITER will utilize the fusion of deuterium and tritium to create helium and release energy. This is the equation for the ITER fusion reaction:
The top number for each element is the number of neutrons and the bottom number is the number of protons. The product of fusion is a helium nucleus, a neutron and over seventeen million electron volts of energy. This reaction requires the least energy to ignite of all the possible fusion reactions. It produces about three times the amount of energy released by uranium fission and millions of times more energy than any chemical reaction such as burning coal can release. Tritium today is created in nuclear reactors but there is a virtually an infinite supply of deuterium and tritium in the oceans of the world. There is also a lot of tritium in the soil on the Moon that could possibly be mined.
ITER is based on the tokomak design. This is a donut shaped chamber surround by powerful magnets. The plasma of deuterium/tritium injected into the change then heated and confined by magnetic fields. Beyond the wall of the chamber, there are test blanket modules that include one that will absorb the neutrons released by the fusion and breed more tritium from lithium in the blanket. When completed, ITER will weigh about five thousand tons. It will be the biggest tokomak ever constructed at sixty four feet in diameter by thirty seven feet in diameter.
The ITER is supposed to be able to generate about five hundred megawatts for a period of at least one thousand seconds. In order to accomplish this, about two hundredth of an ounce of a deuterium/tritium mixture will be fused inside the approximately one thousand cubic yard reactor chamber. It is hoped that ITER will be able produce ten times the amount of energy that is consumed to heat the plasma although no attempt to convert heat to electricity will occur. The following is a list of goals for the ITER project:
- To momentarily produce ten times more thermal energy from fusion heating than is supplied by auxiliary heating (a Q value equals 10).
- To produce a steady-state plasma with a Q value greater than 5.
- To maintain a fusion pulse for up to 480 seconds.
- To ignite a ‘burning’ (self-sustaining) plasma.
- To develop technologies and processes needed for a fusion power plant — including superconducting magnets and remote handling (maintenance by robot).
- To verify tritium breeding concepts.
- To refine neutron shield/heat conversion technology (most of the energy in the D+T fusion reaction is released in the form of fast neutrons).
As I said yesterday, there have been many problems, delays, cost increases, design changes, etc. that may ultimately overwhelm the project. It is quite possible that ITER will never be completed and operated as envisioned.
Artist’s cutaway diagram for ITER:
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Radiation News Roundup October 10, 2014
Monstrous supertyphoon on course to hit Japan this weekend. enenews.com
Vongfong typhoon is on course for a direct hit at the Fukushima nuclear plant next week. enenews.com
Poland’s Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (OCCP) has approved the formation of a joint venture between three utilities and a mining company to build the country’s first nuclear power plant. world-nuclear-news.org
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Geiger Readings for October 10, 2014
Ambient office = 72 nanosieverts per hourAmbient outside = 93 nanosieverts per hourSoil exposed to rain water = 75 nanosieverts per hourBanana from QFC = 81 nanosieverts per hourTap water = 136 nanosieverts per hourFiltered water = 119 nanosieverts per hour -
Nuclear Fusion 12 – The ITER Nuclear Fusion Project
I have blogged about nuclear fusion projects in the past. There is an old joke that it will take forty year to create a nuclear fusion reactor that produces more power than it consumes. The joke part is that this has been true for fifty years. Generating controlled and sustained thermonuclear fusion has proven to be a very difficult task. Billions of dollars have been poured into research because the payoff would be an efficient and non-polluting source of electricity with a virtually infinite supply of fuel in the form of deuterium and tritium which could be extracted from seawater.
There have been many failed research projects over the decades that tried to achieve a sustainable fusion reaction that would produce more power than it consumed to operate. The big project these days is the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) based on the tokomak design being built in France.
Back in the late 1970s, Russia and the U.S. decided to work together on developing a practical fusion generator. The ITER project was born in 1988 but it took until 2006 to finalize the international agreement and provide funding. There are seven members of the ITER project including the European Union, India, Japan, People’s Republic of China, Russia, South Korea and the United States. The European Union is hosting the project and its contribution is about forty five percent. The other members of the project are contributing about nine percent each.
It was anticipated that the project would take ten years to construct and that it would operate for twenty years. If it is successfully completed and operated, a prototype DEMO power reactor will be build based on the knowledge gained from ITER. The original estimated cost of the project was about eleven billion dollars. With the rising cost of materials and construction along with changes to the design, the cost is now estimated to be about twenty billion dollars. The ten year construction period was supposed end in 2019. As of 2013, the estimate for completion of the project was 2027.
An ITER Management Assessment Report was summarized in a New Yorker magazine article in early 2014. Some of the eleven recommendations were to “Create a Project Culture”, “Instill a Nuclear Safety Culture”, “Develop a realistic ITER Project Schedule” and “Simplify and Reduce the IO Bureaucracy”. The fact that such things are being suggested so far into the project indicates that there are many existing problems interfering with the advancement of the project.
The U.S. Senate published a report in July of 2014 that directed the Department of Energy to work with the State Department to withdraw from the project. The energy field is so turbulent these days that it is impossible to predict what the best energy generation system will be in ten years let alone thirty years. It is possible that ITER will never be completed.
ITER logo:
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Radiation News Roundup October 09, 2014
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Geiger Readings for October 09, 2014
Ambient office = 77 nanosieverts per hourAmbient outside = 114 nanosieverts per hourSoil exposed to rain water = 92 nanosieverts per hourBanana from QFC = 98 nanosieverts per hourTap water = 120 nanosieverts per hourFiltered water = 94 nanosieverts per hour -
Nuclear Reactors 172 – European Commission Gives Britain Permission to Subsidize a New Reactor at the Hinkley Point Nuclear Power Station
I recently wrote about the more than twelve billion dollars of loan guarantees that the U.S. government is handing out to the nuclear industry for the construction of more reactors. Part of the reason for these guarantees is that investors are very skeptical about nuclear power and some of these projects might not be able to finance themselves without the involvement of the government. This pattern is not unique to the United States.
Britain wants to build a new nuclear reactor at the Hinkley Point Nuclear Power Station. They are going to be retiring aging nuclear plants and want to stop using coal because of carbon release. The Hinkley Point reactor will be the first new nuclear power reactor built in the U.K. in twenty years. Britain considers nuclear power good way to reduce their carbon dioxide emission.
Since the U.K. is part of the European Union, there is a E.U. Commission that monitors state subsidies in member states. Critics of the Hinkley Point reactor project have charged that Britain is breaking the rules about how and much state aid can be given to such a project. The Commission has just ruled that the Hinkley Point plan does not break the rules and that Britain is free to proceed.
EDF Energy, the company that wants to build the reactor, estimated that the cost would be about twenty six billion dollars. On the other hand, the European Commission claims that by completion of the reactor in 2023, the cost will be more like thirty eight billion dollars and there is a possibility of a further sixteen billion dollars in charges.
A very critical report on the original subsidy arrangement between EDF and the U.K. Department of Energy and Climate Change was issued by a E.U. competition Commissioner. Following further negotiation, the Commissioner said that there had been sufficient changes to the subsidy agreement so that it limited distortions of the competition in the European single market.
The new subsidy arrangement guarantees that the company building and operating the reactor will receive about one hundred and fifty dollars per megawatt hour for the entire thirty five year projected lifespan of the new nuclear power reactor. This price is twice the current price of electricity in Britain. The increased cost is justified by the claim that fossil fuel costs will rise sharply in the near future and that the nuclear reactor will emit much less carbon dioxide than fossil fuels. Hinkley Plant will be able to provide about seven percent of the electricity for Britain.
The Austrian Chancellor has stated that the Hinkley Point decision sets a bad precedent. Previously, guaranteed prices for electricity in the E.U. were reserved for renewable sustainable sources of energy such as wind and solar. He rejected the claim that nuclear power was sustainable or a good way to fight climate change. He also said that Austria was considering bringing a law suit against the subsidy decision.
Critics in Britain say that this arrangement will punish consumers with unnecessary high prices for electricity for decades. Some critics say that the British government is not competent when it comes to making complex commercial arrangements. Other countries are abandoning such price guarantees for new nuclear power reactors because of the uncertainty and turbulence in the global energy market. I think that Britain is making a bad mistake in guaranteeing a high fixed price for Hinkley Point electricity over thirty years. EDF and the British government will be lucky if both they and this agreement last for the expected thirty years.
Hinkley Point Nuclear Power Plant:
