So I've been away a while again....

J

jfb9301

[H]ard DCOTM February 2016
Joined
Jan 11, 2005
Messages
1,652
The title kind of says it all. I have yet again taken a long hiatus from participating in the forum.

For those who remember I discussed that I was going to school to obtain a Commercial Pressurized Water Reactor Operators License. Link here for those who want to peek into the wayback machine. https://hardforum.com/threads/big-progress-in-fah-daily-production.1875725/page-11#post-1042232289

Well, today I opened my mailbox, and I got the best present of the season. My license, signed and approved by NRC region 1. Just thought I'd fill y'inz in, and let you know I will be stopping by more often.

John
 
Congrats man! Been wondering where ya been.
 
Great news; good to hear and welcome back. So you could make us and operate a [H]-reactor ? Cool ...
 
Hey, I operate them, I don't design or build them. Westinghouse is falling on hard times, maybe you could get one from them on the cheap.... y'anno a couple hundred million or so, and you'd have to pay a contractor to build it, and then some fuel. I suppose first you'd have to get a preliminary license to build and operate, pay off the tree-huggers who insist that nuclear is bad, once it's built, you have to finalize that license, and hire a few more operators than just me since minimum manning is a condition of that license..... It's a short to-do list, but then yep, I can operate it.

Alternatively, they are shutting them down here and there, so maybe you could get a used one, that at least is built and comes with the licenses. Your options are pretty much limited to California though. I imagine that the view of the Pacific from San Onofre or Diablo Canyon would be stunning.
 
I'm not anti-nuke at all. IMHO it's pretty much the best massive power option out there... it's just a question of the "spent" fuel.

That said, I recalled that there are people out there trying to figure out how to continue using that "spent" fuel further, vs. just storing it as-is. Found the GE / Hitachi "PRISM" project, which might be what I was thinking of (http://gehitachiprism.com/); however I'm sure there are more, too.
 
fastgeek said:
I'm not anti-nuke at all. IMHO it's pretty much the best massive power option out there... it's just a question of the "spent" fuel.

That said, I recalled that there are people out there trying to figure out how to continue using that "spent" fuel further, vs. just storing it as-is. Found the GE / Hitachi "PRISM" project, which might be what I was thinking of (http://gehitachiprism.com/); however I'm sure there are more, too.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure I fully follow "massive power option".

Just basing on my experience. Nuclear is a good option for what we call "Base Load", load that with be there 24/7/365. Nuclear is really good for coming up to power and staying there for months on end. Nuclear challenges you if you want to raise and lower power on a daily or hourly basis. It can be done, but it isn't fun for the operators or the plant. I know a lot of people are big fans of wind and solar, but IMHO, those cannot be relied upon 24/7/365, so use them to cover surge loads (for morning to evening when load increases throughout the day). In my region of the country surge load is generally covered by coal/natural gas plants.

In this day and age CO2 emissions seems to drive the decision making of a lot of people. I would like to say that nuclear is zero emission. In essence it nearly is, how ever we still have maintenance requirements to test out our Emergency Power systems, which in my case is a diesel generator, so once a week, for a couple hours we do have to run one of our diesels, thus nuclear will have some small carbon footprint. Compared to fossil fuels though, we might be greener, depending on the view about spent fuel.

I should probably get off my soap box now.

Hey W.Feather
 
See, this is what we get for talking about things we don't fully understand. :p ;)

By massive power option, I mean a plant that can just generate a huge supply (base load) day in and day out. I'm not nearly well versed enough to understand the cons to a nuke plant generating more than it needs, I'm sure they're there in the form of extra fuel consumption; but as you basically said, once they're chugging along, they'll keep going and going. What we need is a better way to store all that extra power a nuke, or any, plant puts out. In my crude understanding, this would allow for a nuke/etc plant to run at a steady, but lower, load 24/7 in which it meets the needs not fully met by the renewables, with the bulk of the power output going to the storage facility. Then, once the sun goes down / wind stops, the storage facility can be depleted in conjunction with the plant still outputting the same amount. Grossly simplistic, I know, but it seems like a good idea to me.

BTW, just saw that Westinghouse was bought out by some Canadian power consortium (might be wrong term) today.

And I have no problem with a little soap boxing in here... just throw in a few distributed computing references and we'll be good. Like, ummm, maybe you can squirrel away a few boxes at work in a supply closet to take advantage of the extra plant capacity. No harm, no foul, right? :D :)
 
fastgeek said:
See, this is what we get for talking about things we don't fully understand. :p ;)

By massive power option, I mean a plant that can just generate a huge supply (base load) day in and day out. I'm not nearly well versed enough to understand the cons to a nuke plant generating more than it needs, I'm sure they're there in the form of extra fuel consumption; but as you basically said, once they're chugging along, they'll keep going and going. What we need is a better way to store all that extra power a nuke, or any, plant puts out. In my crude understanding, this would allow for a nuke/etc plant to run at a steady, but lower, load 24/7 in which it meets the needs not fully met by the renewables, with the bulk of the power output going to the storage facility. Then, once the sun goes down / wind stops, the storage facility can be depleted in conjunction with the plant still outputting the same amount. Grossly simplistic, I know, but it seems like a good idea to me.

BTW, just saw that Westinghouse was bought out by some Canadian power consortium (might be wrong term) today.

And I have no problem with a little soap boxing in here... just throw in a few distributed computing references and we'll be good. Like, ummm, maybe you can squirrel away a few boxes at work in a supply closet to take advantage of the extra plant capacity. No harm, no foul, right? :D :)
Click to expand...

Yeah, something pretty close to what you are describing helps make solar more viable.

As it is our the two base load nuke units at my site run 100% (each just shy of 1 Gigawatt) 24/7/365, for just under 17 months before refueling. Less than a mile a way the 3 600 Megawatt coal units of another power station cycle up and down. They have generally one unit running at any one time and start one or two week day mornings, and shutdown in the late evening. Though with the cold snap right now, or during the hot months, they will run more than that.

Your folding suggestion reminded me of using a USB key to fold on a computer without the ability to network many many years ago. I can't now remember what we called doing that. Yea, I could probably use some power for a rig but without a network to upload/download, it would have to be on a USB key and not getting QRB would make it not worthwhile.

ahhh the old days, pherret boxen, pizza boxen (had a couple of those), timeless tinkers. By the time I made it to the No Scroll Zone, no one seems to know what that is anymore.
 
I like the idea of pumping water uphill into a pool (BOINC bunker) when surplus energy is around and when energy is needed open the drain and let gravity do its work.
No Li-Battery needed for that one. Just need some steep enough hills.
 
jfb9301 said:
ahhh the old days, pherret boxen, pizza boxen (had a couple of those), timeless tinkers. By the time I made it to the No Scroll Zone, no one seems to know what that is anymore.
Click to expand...

Some of us old timers know what that is, and some of us are there . Actually the most active forum members are on page 1 and many are in the zone. Gratz on the license and welcome back.
 
ChristianVirtual said:
I like the idea of pumping water uphill into a pool (BOINC bunker) when surplus energy is around and when energy is needed open the drain and let gravity do its work.
No Li-Battery needed for that one. Just need some steep enough hills.
Click to expand...

Man, you guys come up with some good ideas, and yet industry is just a step ahead of you. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/oregon-transform-lake-battery-charge-electricity-grid

Don't let that crash your hopes though, you could still do it small scale for personal use.
 
Yep, they're out there, you just have to know where to look. They are once again a growing trend in the power industry. Elon Musk can build his Li-ion batteries, and yes they will be higher power density, but these are huge and won't burst into flames if you miss-operate them.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top