...and aren't designed to be run by Homer Simpsons. A trade-off between safety and function.
They are also much smaller (MW) and have much tighter operational limits. They fail "safe". ...to the bottom of the ocean.
There has never been a meltdown on a US warship including several which were lost at sea with reactors in operation. Avoiding a meltdown is a matter of dropping the rods and providing sufficient cooling to deal with the transient, which is difficult with land-based power plants but not with power plants that have a whole ocean to use as a heat sink.
In any case, the power output of the largest naval reactor in the US inventory is somewhere around 100 megawatts, 1/10 the output of a typical base-load electric generating plant, and the ones used in submarines are much lower capacity.
And this all leaves aside the different compromises that are made in military vs civilian installations.
they have a multifeet thick concrete containment vessel, like land power plants, capable of surviving a jetliner hit? that's a good part of the bulk of land plants, from what i can see from the outside.
Robatoy wrote: ...
Satellites are mostly isotopic (Pu-238) decay heat powered thermoelectric generators. The US has only had one experimental fission reactor launched and that was ages ago while the Russians have used quite a few altho I don't know just how recently.
Hmmm....this seems to be a fairly good article altho I didn't read it carefully, skimming looks reasonable---
The primary reason for the size differential is the space reactors are quite low power devices in terms of central generation requirements (otoo 2-3 to 100-200 kw instead of 1000 MW). Also they don't require much in the way of shielding onboard as there is no manned payload. There's sufficient shielding in a commercial design that one can be in containment but outside the biological shield area during operation even though that is a rare event not done in normal operation as there is no need for access there. We did do incore physics tests using manually-controlled drives to insert probes in the calibration ports of the fixed incore SPNDs (Rh-emitter self-powered neutron detectors) during initial physics testing and follow-up at Oconee I to provide verification data for the physics models and instrumentation to the NRC for final approval of the design models back in the mid-70s. It was a
100F+/80%RH hellhole in the bottom of the incore termination tank and miserable suited up but we did it. The thought that there was 2250psi/650F water just on the other side of a 1/2" diameter tube w/ only an end cap and weld was unnerving to say the least... :)And, just like the boiler in a 1000 MWe coal-fired unit isn't all that large, the reactor vessel containing the reactor core itself is only roughly 25-ft tall (about twice the height of the fuel) and 12-15 ft in diameter. All the rest is ancillary equipment. The reason containment buildings are the size they are is that they must be large enough to allow for adequate maneuverability of equipment inside and have ample volume such that the design overpressure of a design LOCA is within the ability of the containment to withstand. Years ago circle-W designed a set of reactors w/ ice containment (a huge rack lining the upper reaches of containment w/ blocks of ice and the ancillary ice-making equipment). This did allow them to reduce the initial capital cost by making the containment significantly smaller since the ice-melt during LOCA would quench the steam, thereby holding down the maximum pressure but these turned out to be high maintenance items and afaik the concept has been dropped in current generation designs on the docket for licensing now.
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That's part of the design differences of land-based versus the space constraints of naval application. They do have biological containment and that serves as LOCA containment as well.
All US naval reactors have systems to protect the core in event of a LOCA. In a sub in extreme emergency if those systems were to fail they can open valves and allow seawater to simply flow over the core, entering and leaving the sub by natural convection. Of course, the plant is trashed, but the core doesn't melt down.
In actuality, while naval operators are indeed very well trained, so are commercial operators (in fact, many commercial SROs and ROs are ex-Navy).
In many ways, the conservative design of the naval reactor makes it more "idjit-proof" than is the commercial reactor. The extreme over-design for the military exigencies provides greater margin in normal operation owing to that.
Only if all systems including the HPI and sea-water emergency systems are failed as well. Anything is possible in combat but they are definitely not designed as disposable single-failure systems as your posting makes them sound.
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Many. Not all. I've known a few.
The submarine itself is a "disposable single-failure system", given a large enough "single" failure. It *has* happened, without the Earth ending.
dpb wrote: ... I intended to add that I believe "containment" on subs is a bulkhead on either end of the reactors which isolate it. Naturally in such a confined space one isn't going to build the equivalent of the commercial reactor containment building--for one thing, they don't do refueling and other maintenance operations in anything at all similar manner that requires the area around the reactor in the commercial LWR.
I believe the carrier reactors are "packaged" to provide similar isolation/containment, again with space constraints albeit not to the degree of sub's.
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Quote-- (... many commercial SROs and ROs are ex-Navy).
I met a quite sizable number in 30+ years in commercial nuclear power...and know a fair number of those from reasonably to very to about a dozen extremely well...
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As is everything (including the Earth). The sub is, however, designed to come back from quite a severe mauling w/o that event occurring rather than that being the first or expected result.
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*Any* power plant works by moving energy from one place to another, usually as heat, sometimes (in the case of hydro), 'potential' energy of position..
When you're tapping a 'heat flow', you have to have 'somewhere' for the heat to go _to_. Nuke plants, being a closed system have to have *BIG* cooling towers to transfer the heat from the circulating coolant to the atmosphere. The actual "power-plant" at a nuclear generation facility is relatively small.
Naval plants have the ability to use the 'external' water that they're surrounded with as a heat dump. *also* _most_ of the output from the 'teakettle' is _not_ used to generate electricity, which vastly reduces the size of the actual electrical generators. The marine nuke's primary purpose is to generate _steam_, used to drive turbines that are connected to the propellers. Yup, "modern" warships are *STEAM*DRIVEN*
Space-based units can simply 'radiate' the heat away. Keeping in mint that any such units used in space generate _miniscule_ amounts of power relative to a power utility plant.
For land-based power generation, the actual generators need the same amount of space, regardless of where the steam that drives them comes from (coal-fired, other fossil-fuel, nuke, concentrated solar).
A fossil-fuel plant has to have a _lot_ of space for fuel storage and an automated feed-system that provides controlled continuous delivery into the combustion area. 'Waste' heat is simply vented directly to the atmosphere.
Nuke plants don't have _any_ of those space requirements for handling incoming fuel. The steam-generator system is somewhat larger, because f the self-contained fuel supply, the 'more extreme' operating conditions, and mandated additional safety systems.
Robert Bonomi wrote: ...
But, not significantly larger for conventional fossil plant of the same thermal output (some, as nuclear units don't have as high a thermal efficiency as do fossil), but not to the extent that one notices it.
And, of course, there are both fossil and nukes that also use water as the ultimate sink and therefore don't have cooling towers (Oconee I, II, III, ANO-I, ...)
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In the same manner as a nuke...some have cooling towers, others have lake or river water...whatever, it requires an ultimate sink somewhere and the association of the cooling tower w/ the nuke plant is simply a figment of the press and their penchant for the backlight steam plume w/ the red filter to create ominous mood.
OTOH, in the US owing to the political stalemate they have requirements for spent fuel storage although that is counterbalanced by ash disposal at coal-fired units that requires even more actual space.
I don't follow the logic/intent re: steam-generators; again there's little difference although owing to the higher boiler outlet temperatures compared to PWR exit temp's the thermal efficiency is better for fossil. BWRs, of course, don't have external steam generators, only separators before the turbines. I don't understand the 'more extreme' operating conditions at all...as noted, as for the thermal cycle fossil is both higher temp and pressure than nuclear.
The additional safety systems do require some space but they're all on the primary side HPI/LPI/etc., ... Makeup and so on are very similar.
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There is certainly at least one solar panel farm in that area of the desert. It's between Ontario and Ridgecrest, close to the federal prison (don't remember what the highway designation is)
You are probably referring the to facility on 395 at Kramer Junction.
dpb wrote: ...
Those statistics were for seven years of operation and were quite consistent from year to year in the monthly peaks and valleys reflecting climatological trends, not just a one-year aberration.
The data were only available on a monthly generation basis so the extremes in availability would be greater as looked at shorter time periods if that level of reporting were available. Last week in the doldrums SIL came by the wind farm on way here for visit and reported only 2-3 of the whole installation were turning.
While the fuel is free it isn't always being delivered and is a diffuse source so takes a lot of infrastructure to concentrate it into useful form. That translates to $$/kw on grid; I don't think there would be any significant interest by utilities at all if it weren't for the various State-legislated mandates for percentages of generation from green sources passed onto the utilities and the various tax incentives to subsidize part of the cost.
Whether it will be cost-competitive eventually w/o those is anybody's guess; certainly C-taxes if introduced will change the playing field immensely in foreseen and unforeseen ways (and I personally expect more of the latter than former). Unfortunately, however much scale and technology improvements benefit the capital cost/installed-MWe, the fundamental nature of the intermittent fuel supply can't be improved or eliminated so the required conventional reserve capacity will still be required which essentially doubles the cost for every MWe that isn't available or reduces grid reliability if not there.
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