StoppingClimateChange.com                                                                                              The Electricity & Hydrogen Nuke Next Door
Front Page    Contents    Prolog    About
INTRODUCTION:  Attacking Climate Change From Both Ends   A Biomass Allam Cycle Power Plant   The Electricity & Hydrogen Nuke Next Door   Harvesting CO2   CO2 Disposal Wells   Water   Geoengineering
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    The Electricity & Hydrogen Nuke Next Door
 Making the Hydrogen Economy Possible

 

StoppingClimateChange.com                                                                                                                     Contents    Definitions    Prolog    About   
Solid Tech:  The NuScale Modular Nuclear Reactor  New Tech:  The Allam Cycle Biomass Power Plant  +  Harvesting CO2  +  CO2 Disposal Wells   Hydrogen Processing   Water Processing   Geoengineering
Nuclear Powered Hydrogen for making Vehicle and Heating Fuels   Nuclear Powered Water Recycling and Desalination in every Town
 __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Repowering Coal and Gas Electricity Plants With Nuclear
                
The World's 500 cities over 1 million population and 4,000 cities over 100,000 thousand population are powered in a thousand ways by electricity made by Coal or Natural Gas electricity generation power plants.
The fastest way to end carbonizing the world is to electrify the top 4,500 cities with as much nuclear electricity as possible - about 500 12 module NuScale Reactors along with 4,000 6 or 4 module NuScale Reactor facilities.
The remainder of the world's cities, towns and villages need to be electrified by smaller Modular Nuclear or Non-nuclear smaller Biomass 50 to 300 mW Allam Cycle power plants to also remove the legacy CO2 from the air.
The World's Cities Need SOLID Electricity For: 
                 Lighting, Heating, Appliances, Automobiles, Subways                     
                          Hydrogen for making Carbon-neutral Heating Fuels, Vehicle Fuels          
                Water Pumping, Desalination, Wastewater Treating, Recycling     
Standardized Modular Nuclear Electricity Near Every Large City and Town
The United States has largely phased out it's coal power plants, replacing them with hundreds of small, cleaner, natural gas turbine power plants. Now is the time to upgrade their sites with adjacent similar sized modular nuclear.
The world has irrevocably committed itself to a dispatchable electricity & hydrogen powered fuel modern civilization. Only nuclear electricity generation everywhere can satisfy such an energy demand on a forever basis.
 https://energy-transitions.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/ETC-Global-Hydrogen-Report.pdf         -          https://www.iea.org/ , and  https://www.irena.org/

What The World's Largest Cities Need Most: Modern Modular Nuclear Reactor Replacement Electricity Plants
          
By shrinking its reactors, NuScale Power aims to compete with wind, solar, and cheap natural gas
The stone-simple gravity-circulation NuScale Modular Nuclear Reactor Power Plant is a very safe nuclear design to install adjacent to our old coal or natural gas combustion turbine plants.
The reasons for adjacent choice include NuScale site size, too much existing old power plant concrete, piping, access to the existing electrical grid, roads, rail, workforce, and community acceptance.
This can be an inexpensive way to grow a more powerful nuclear plant as more and more electric cars come on-line in the future. Start out buying just two reactors and as little concrete as necessary to build the flange tool pools.
With a full complement of 12 reactor modules, it will produce 924 megaWatts of electricity, almost twice the power of most end-of-life coal and/or natural gas turbine power plants it is designed to replace.
2 fully populated NuScale plants placed side-to-side could produce as much as 1,848 megaWatts of electricity. The world's most powerful single nuclear reactor plant is TAISHAN at 1,750 mW.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1tK73l9Nbo    Consider the replacement of a worn-out coal power plant with a new nuclear reactor approach:    https://www.terrapraxis.org/about/about-us 
https://www.science.org/news/2019/02/smaller-safer-cheaper-one-company-aims-reinvent-nuclear-reactor-and-save-warming-planet    https://www.getintonuclear.com/   

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Nuclear's Energy Reserves Dwarf Carbon's Combined Coal, Oil, and Natural Gas' Energy Reserves.

    

Hubbert was concerned with running out of fossil fuel - not with creating a "Greenhouse Effect" out of the atmosphere.
But he did point out the relative difference in the amounts of energy available from both fossil and nuclear fuels.

                  
                                                                                                                                                       https://www.ltbridge.com/lightbridge-fuel 
                                                                                                                                                            See Also:   https://www.deepisolation.com/

Mankind is the only animal able to light a fire to avoid freezing to death and to cook his food to expand what is on the menu.
The energy of choice depends on the availability and applicability of the energies at hand and range from easy-to-obtain-and-use-wood to very-difficult-to-use-uranium-from-seawater.

With so much non-climate changing energy available at such low cost it would be foolish for us to turn our backs on it because it is not yet quite perfect.

See Also:  https://www.bayotech.us/products-2 


Please look again at how much uranium mankind has available.  So much uranium is available there is absolutely no reason to recycle spent nuclear fuel waste into bombs. 
Spent uranium must be buried irretrievably immediately.  In WWII, the United States used spent uranium to easily and quickly make the plutonium nuclear bomb used on Nagasaki.
This should be a warning to us to never allow plutonium to get loose.

Once through and then Subduction Disposal for nuclear.     Since all uranium used as nuclear fuel has some plutonium bred in it during the process, it must be disposed of immediately. 
Bury It In A Subduction Zone And You'll Never Get It Back.  Also the deep borehole disposal.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_borehole_disposal 

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Nuclear Proliferation

The necessity for uranium enrichment for Light Water Reactors and the presence of plutonium in the spent fuel are the primary proliferation concerns.

There are differing national policies for the use or storage of fissile plutonium in the spent fuel, with some nations electing to recycle plutonium for use in new fuels and others electing to leave it intact within the spent fuel (IAEA, 2008a). The presence of plutonium and minor actinides in the spent fuel leads to greater waste-disposal challenges as well. Heavy isotopes such as plutonium and minor actinides have very long half-lives, as high as tens to hundreds of thousands of years (NRC, 1996), which require final waste-disposal strategies to address safety of waste disposal on such great timescales. Alternative strategies to isolate and dispose of fission products and their components apart from actinides could have significant beneficial impact on waste disposal requirements (Wigeland et al., 2006). Others have argued that separation and transmutation of actinides would have little or no practical benefit for waste disposal (NRC, 1996; Bunn et al., 2003).

Alternative nuclear fuel cycles, beyond the once-through uranium cycle, and related reactor technologies are under investigation. Partial recycling of used fuels, such as the use of mixed-oxide (MOX) fuels where U-235 in enriched uranium fuel is replaced with recycled or excess plutonium, is utilized in some nations to improve uranium resource utilization and waste-minimization efforts (OECD and NEA, 2007; World Nuclear Association, 2013).

The thorium fuel cycle is an alternative to the uranium fuel cycle, and the abundance of thorium resources motivates its potential use (see Section 7.4.3). Unlike natural uranium, however, thorium does not contain any fissile isotopes. An external source of fissile material is necessary to initiate the thorium fuel cycle, and breeding of fissile U-233 from fertile Th-232 is necessary to sustain the fuel cycle (IAEA, 2005b).

Ultimately, full recycling options based on either uranium or thorium fuel cycles that are combined with advanced reactor designs — including fast and thermal neutron spectrum reactors — where only fission products are relegated as waste can significantly extend nuclear resources and reduce high-level wastes (GIF, 2002, 2009; IAEA, 2005b). Current drawbacks include higher economic costs, as well as increased complexities and the associated risks of advanced fuel cycles and reactor technologies. Potential access to fissile materials from widespread application of reprocessing technologies further raises proliferation concerns. The advantages and disadvantages of alternative reprocessing technologies are under investigation. - from Energy Systems Chapter 7 - IPCC 5 - IPCC Working Group III - 2014.

 

Please visit:  https://www.deepisolation.com/ 

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1996/10/the-sub-seabed-solution/308434/ 

Sub-Seabed Nuclear Waste Disposal in Stable Clay Formations.pdf 

Once through and then Subduction disposal.
Since all uranium used as nuclear fuel has some plutonium bred in it during the process, it must be disposed of immediately. 
Bury It In A Subduction Zone And You'll Never Get It Back. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_borehole_disposal     https://www.deepisolation.com/  

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Comment:
This website author, (jph), would like to point out that by using only proven materials and technologies in their reactor, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Approved NuScale reactor is good to go now, not years from now.
 

  Easy-to-save reference for getting up to speed on modern nuclear power plants:   https://nuclearinnovationalliance.org/advanced-nuclear-reactor-technology-primer  (pdf)    

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

                      

                                                                                                                     This does not include tiny university materials research and nuclear medicine production reactors.

Proliferation

Our initial fuel enrichment is 15-20%, making it the lowest strategic value for proliferation potential. Lightbridge Fuel™ contains significantly less plutonium than conventional uranium oxide fuel and consumes more uranium during its operating cycle. Any plutonium in our spent fuel is “useless” for nuclear weapons, according to an April 2018 issue of Nuclear Engineering and Design.

Abstract

Achieving a proliferation resistant, or possibly even proliferation proof, plutonium is a goal of the nuclear security and safeguards community. Considering that nearly all plutonium is under international safeguards, with the exception of plutonium with greater than 80 at.% 238Pu, reducing the necessity of these safeguards would be beneficial to both those in industry and in national and international security. Due to the 238Pu high decay heat, establishing a technical limit for 238Pu content in which rendering the plutonium useless for weapons purposes may be possible. Following the analysis done by Kessler, the authors analyzed two realistic models for hypothetical nuclear explosive devices seeking to establish this technical limit for 238Pu content. The given plutonium vector used for this analysis was obtained through simulations of the Lightbridge fuel design in a pressurized water reactor. Calculating the temperature profile within the two hypothetical nuclear explosive device models showed that this plutonium vector would render the two models useless by causing the high explosives to undergo self-explosion.

Lightbridge Sets Priorities for SMR Fuel Development

Lightbridge Corporation (NASDAQ:LBTR) has decided to prioritize developing fuel for future small modular reactors rather than fuel for large reactor designs, President and CEO Seth Grae said this week in a business update ahead of a webcast and conference call to discuss the company’s financial results.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Manufacturing Hydrogen Gas At A Nuclear Electricity Plant That Has A Steam-for-Hydrogen Capability

A Nuclear Powered 90%+ Efficient Solid State Hydrogen Electrolyzer

             

Haldor Topsoe's above 90% efficient solid state electrolyzer. 
Hydrogen Electrolyzers can be nuclear powered to make massive amounts of cheap hydrogen for the planned future clean combustion energy fuels. (Click to Enlarge)

A Steam Electrolysis Hydrogen Plant

Steam Electrolysis Hydrogen Plant for mass production of hydrogen from electricity and water.
(Photo of a German plant.)

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

There Are Many Sources Of Hydrogen

        

Hydrogen - Data telling a story

The many aspects of the gas Hydrogen - our future replacement substance for fossil fuels like Natural Gas, Gasoline, Jet fuel, and Diesel.    Click to enlarge.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A Proposed Deeply Decarbonized Electricity & Hydrogen Transportation Economy

 

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

https://www.paloverde.com/  

DOE awards $20M to project to produce clean hydrogen from nuclear power

08 October 2021
The US Department of Energy (DOE) is awarding $20 million in funding to a project to demonstrate technology that will produce clean hydrogen energy from nuclear power. This approach will allow clean hydrogen to serve as a source for zero-carbon electricity and represent an important economic product for nuclear plants beyond electricity.

The project, based in Arizona, will make progress on DOE’s H2@Scale vision for clean hydrogen across multiple sectors and help meet the Department’s Hydrogen Shot goal of $1 per 1 kilogram in one decade.

The project, led by PNW Hydrogen LLC, will receive $12 million from the DOE’s Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office (HFTO) and $8 million from DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy (NE) for a total award of $20 million. The project will produce clean hydrogen from nuclear power at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station in Phoenix, Arizona—the largest nuclear plant and the single-largest generator of carbon-free electricity in the US.

Six tonnes of stored hydrogen will be used to produce approximately 200 MWh electricity during times of high demand, and may be also used to make chemicals and other fuels. The project will provide insights about integrating nuclear energy with hydrogen production technologies and inform future clean hydrogen production deployments at scale.

PNW Hydrogen, LLC will be the primary recipient of the DOE award and will collaborate with multiple stakeholders in research, academia, industry and state-level government including Idaho National Laboratory, National Energy Technology Laboratory, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, OxEon, Electric Power Research Institute, Arizona State University, University of California Irvine, Siemens, Xcel Energy, Energy Harbor and the LA Department of Water and Power.

Posted on 08 October 2021 in  https://www.greencarcongress.com/ :   Hydrogen, Hydrogen Production, Market Background, Nuclear, Power Generation

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The future construction of a large-scale SOEC electrolyser production plant by Haldor Topsoe represents the cornerstone of the large-scale launch of industrial electrolysis, powered by renewable sources. Haldor Topsoe's program is in perfect synchrony with the forecasts of the Green Deal Road Map approved on 8 July 2020 by the European Community. The production of LIHC and LOHC, not a play on words, but the synthesis of green hydrogen in inorganic and organic liquid carriers, represents the only real alternative to fossil fuels. The date of 8 July 2020 will be remembered as a historic date for the entire European Community.

Facts about Topsoe’s large-scale SOEC manufacturing facility


Selected projects with Topsoe’s technology


 

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Nuclear Water Recycling + Desalination


 

             

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Electricity & Hydrogen Nuclear Plants can have "Day/Night" Complimentary Loads
 (Because you can store the hydrogen you are making until you have accumulated enough to sell.)

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A Natural Gas Turbine Site Is A Good Place To Build A NuScale Nuclear Plant
 Combined cycle natural gas turbines look like a good idea to fill in for wind farm electricity irregularities.

                 
It's best to build new adjacent nuclear while old gas turbine plants are still in service.  Well-maintained original gas turbine facilities make excellent quick-start stand-by power plants.
Unexpectedly large future loads such as large night time electric car battery recharging and extreme night air conditioning loads
might throw a monkey wrench into plans for scrapping out CO2-producing natural gas electricity generating facilities.

Also: https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Chinas-HTR-PM-reactor-achieves-first-criticality  A "Nuke Next Door" reactor hot enough to directly replace the coal section of a power plant.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 The Best Way To Get A "Running Start" Is To Build Adjacent On An Existing Coal Power Plant Site
We are going to need a small nuclear power plant on almost every shut-down coal or gas power plant site everywhere in the world. 
 

TVA CEO: Utility Will Invest in SMRs

tva-logo

According to wire service reports, TVA President and CEO Jeff Lyash said last week during an online energy conference hosted by the Atlantic Council that to reach the 100% reduction goal, the utility will need technological advances in energy storage, carbon capture and small modular nuclear reactors. (YouTube video) Lyash said TVA is on track to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by the year 2035.

Coal Plants Converted to SMRs?

Lyash said that the hundreds of shuttered US coal power plants could be repurposed as small nuclear reactor sites citing easy access to water resources and existing power grid connections. “I see those sites as very viable small modular reactor (SMR) sites.”

Lyash does not see coal as part of the utility’s future, saying TVA will continue to phase it out over the next 15 years because its coal plants are reaching the end of their lives.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who also attended the virtual meeting, agreed, “You could come online much quicker and we could accomplish this at a much faster rate than anything else we could do.”

“Some of our better manufacturing sites are the coal-fired power plants,” said Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia. “You could come online much quicker and we could accomplish this at a much faster rate than anything else we could do,” he said about the SMR potential.  - - -

Posted on May 1, 2021 by djysrv - https://neutronbytes.com/ 

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Cost Of Various Types Of Reactors and Uranium
Actually, nuclear power is safer, environmentally cleaner, and cheaper than all other forms of commercial energy.

                                            

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 


 

 

Here, corn is used as feedstock for fermenting ethanol to increase the octane of unleaded gasoline.
Massive amounts of biofuels massively drive up the cost of human fuels such as corn - as shown in this example.
It's morally wrong for humans to have to compete with machines for energy.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Safety Perimeters of Small Modular Reactors are tiny compared with a conventional huge reactor

                

Better to grab a Cat than a Tiger by the tail.

NuScale & UAMPS  (Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems) Take Next Steps to License, Manufacture, and Build the First of 12 SMRs

NuScale Power has gotten the go ahead to prepare a Combined License Application (COLA) to be submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The UAMPS COLA is expected to be submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) by the second quarter of 2023.

NRC review of the COLA is expected to be completed by the second half of 2025, with reactor construction of the project beginning shortly thereafter. NuScale expects to have the first of 8 units in revenue service before the end of the decade. Eventually, plans are for the site to have 12 SMRs. The power rating of the site is a work in progress as NuScale started with an estimate of 50 MWE, but has since increased its design objective to 60 MWe and indicated it has plans for 77 MWe.

The NuScale reference power plant can house up to 12 NuScale Power Modules for a total facility output of 924 megawatts of electricity (MWe). NuScale also offers smaller power plant solutions in 4-module and 6-module sizes with outputs of 308 MWe (gross) and 462 MWe (gross), respectively. The multi-module NuScale plant design is scalable, allowing customers to incrementally increase facility output to match demand.

NuScale Power announced this week together with Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) that it has executed agreements to facilitate the development of the Carbon Free Power Project (CFPP), which will deploy NuScale Power Modules at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL).

Fluor Corporation and NuScale (as a subcontractor to Fluor) are to develop higher maturity cost estimates and initial project planning work for the licensing, manufacturing and construction of the CFPP.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

NuScale's Control Room Simulator

Control stations for 12 NuScale Reactor Units. -  Simple NuScale Reactor units need relatively fewer controls.
The NuScale reactor actually shares a critical thermodynamic feature [convection water cooling] with the Ford Model T engine (October 1, 1908, to May 26, 1927).

 

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

How Soon?

Technology Readiness Levels for these new thermal technologies. 
The NuScale, Lightbridge, and Carbon Engineering products have been approved by the U.S. Government.
At this time, CarbFix is non-mandatory.
The Class VI CO2 Disposal Well is a U.S. Government Design for an environmentally approvable disposal license.
 

These 'Cooling the Planet' technologies are of little or no value until Rolling Back Climate Change Part 1: DECARBONIZATION (i.e., Net-Zero) has been achieved.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

About the Easy-to-Use Combustion Fuels: Their Different Hydrogen-to-Carbon Ratios

Different fossil fuels make different amounts of CO2 for the same amount of heat (BTUs)
 

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Cost and Capacity Factors are the Keys to Enabling Decarbonization Of Energy
 TO BE PART OF YOUR LIFE, ENERGY HAS TO BE DISPATCHABLE and NON-INTERMITTENT
(I.e., as much as you need, when you need it.)

             

Cost and Capacity Factors are the Keys to Converting to Hydrogen-driven Decarbonization

Electricity Risk Assessment - Click to Enlarge.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 


The United States has largely phased out it's coal power plants, replacing them with hundreds of small, cleaner, natural gas turbine power plants located nearer to their customers to increase electricity transmission reliability.
The world has irrevocably committed itself to a dispatchable electricity & hydrogen powered modern civilization. Only nuclear electricity generation everywhere can satisfy such an energy demand safely on a forever basis.
 https://energy-transitions.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/ETC-Global-Hydrogen-Report.pdf         -          https://www.iea.org/ , and  https://www.irena.org/

The group of 20 major industrialized countries have directed nearly $300 billion in new funds toward continued fossil fuel activities since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic
— far more than they have toward clean energy efforts.
It has become obvious we all must upgrade our CO2-emitting natural gas turbine power plant sites with more powerful, zero-CO2, SMALL MODULAR NUCLEAR REACTORS (SMRs).

 Nuclear Electricity + Steam for Hydrogen and/or Water Desalination

The stone-simple gravity-circulation NuScale Modular Nuclear Reactor Power Plant is a very safe design to install co-located next to our natural gas combustion turbine plant sites.
The reasons for this choice include access to the electrical grid, roads, rail, workforce, and community acceptance.
With a full complement of 12 reactor modules, it will produce 924 megaWatts of electricity, almost twice the power of the coal and/or natural gas turbine power plants it is designed to replace.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1tK73l9Nbo    Consider the repowering of a worn-out coal power plant with a new nuclear reactor approach:    https://www.terrapraxis.org/about/about-us 
https://www.science.org/news/2019/02/smaller-safer-cheaper-one-company-aims-reinvent-nuclear-reactor-and-save-warming-planet    https://www.getintonuclear.com/   

In some ways, Greenies are like anti-vaxxers. If Greenies were reasonable, there would be a NuScale nuclear power plant near any U.S. town that could make good use of that much electricity.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Co-locating Electricity & Hydrogen Modular Nuclear Power Plant Sites Next To Natural Gas Turbine Sites

             
It's best to build new adjacent nuclear while the old gas turbine plant is still in service.  Well-maintained original gas turbine facilities make excellent quick-start stand-by power plants.
Unexpectedly large future loads such as large night time electric car battery recharging and extreme night air conditioning loads
might throw a monkey wrench into plans for scrapping out CO2-producing natural gas electricity generating facilities.

Also: https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Chinas-HTR-PM-reactor-achieves-first-criticality  A "Nuke Next Door" reactor hot enough to directly replace the coal section of a power plant.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Relative Amounts Of Energy Sources Available And How They Are Being Used

             

Mankind is the only animal able to enlist external energy sources to better his life situations, i.e., such as lighting a fire to avoid freezing to death.
The energy of choice depends on the availability and applicability of the energies at hand and range from easy-to-obtain-and-use-wood to very-difficult-uranium-from-seawater.

Please look again at how much uranium mankind has available.  So much uranium is available there is absolutely no reason to recycle spent nuclear fuel waste. 
Spent uranium must be buried irretrievably immediately.  In WWII, the United States used spent uranium to easily and quickly make the plutonium nuclear bomb used on Nagasaki.

Once through and then Subduction Disposal for nuclear.     Since all uranium used as nuclear fuel has some plutonium bred in it during the process, it must be disposed of immediately. 
Bury It In A Subduction Zone And You'll Never Get It Back.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_borehole_disposal 


Comment:
This website author, (jph), would like to point out that by using only proven materials and technologies in their reactor, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Approved NuScale is good to go now, not years from now.
 

  Easy-to-save reference for getting up to speed on modern nuclear power plants:   https://nuclearinnovationalliance.org/advanced-nuclear-reactor-technology-primer  (pdf)    

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The World Now Has A Melt-Down-Proof Nuclear Fuel Rod
that can be used to replace old-fashioned fuel rods for improved reactor performance.

  https://www.ltbridge.com/lightbridge-fuel 

See Also:   https://www.deepisolation.com/

Lightbridge claims much better safety. refueling intervals, and power output on existing water-cooled reactors than obtainable from the traditional 77 year-old fuel rod design.

         

This does not include tiny university materials research and nuclear medicine production reactors.

Proliferation

Our initial fuel enrichment is 15-20%, making it the lowest strategic value for proliferation potential. Lightbridge Fuel™ contains significantly less plutonium than conventional uranium oxide fuel and consumes more uranium during its operating cycle. Any plutonium in our spent fuel is “useless” for nuclear weapons, according to an April 2018 issue of Nuclear Engineering and Design.

Abstract

Achieving a proliferation resistant, or possibly even proliferation proof, plutonium is a goal of the nuclear security and safeguards community. Considering that nearly all plutonium is under international safeguards, with the exception of plutonium with greater than 80 at.% 238Pu, reducing the necessity of these safeguards would be beneficial to both those in industry and in national and international security. Due to the 238Pu high decay heat, establishing a technical limit for 238Pu content in which rendering the plutonium useless for weapons purposes may be possible. Following the analysis done by Kessler, the authors analyzed two realistic models for hypothetical nuclear explosive devices seeking to establish this technical limit for 238Pu content. The given plutonium vector used for this analysis was obtained through simulations of the Lightbridge fuel design in a pressurized water reactor. Calculating the temperature profile within the two hypothetical nuclear explosive device models showed that this plutonium vector would render the two models useless by causing the high explosives to undergo self-explosion.

Lightbridge Sets Priorities for SMR Fuel Development

Lightbridge Corporation (NASDAQ:LBTR) has decided to prioritize developing fuel for future small modular reactors rather than fuel for large reactor designs, President and CEO Seth Grae said this week in a business update ahead of a webcast and conference call to discuss the company’s financial results.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Manufacturing Hydrogen Gas At A Nuclear Electricity Plant That Has A Steam-for-Hydrogen Capability

A Nuclear Powered 90%+ Efficient Solid State Hydrogen Electrolyzer

             

Haldor Topsoe's above 90% efficient solid state electrolyzer. 
Hydrogen Electrolyzers can be nuclear powered to make massive amounts of cheap hydrogen for the planned future clean combustion energy fuels. (Click to Enlarge)

A Steam Electrolysis Hydrogen Plant

Steam Electrolysis Hydrogen Plant for mass production of hydrogen from electricity and water.
(Photo of a German plant.)

 

News_211203-1e
 

This vessel was developed to provide a means of transporting liquefied hydrogen at 1/800 of its original gas-state volume, cooled to –253°C, safely and in large quantities over long distances by sea.
The vessel can carry 75 tonnes of liquefied hydrogen in one trip. With the goal of making hydrogen just as common a fuel source as petroleum and natural gas, Kawasaki joined together in 2016 with Iwatani Corporation (Iwatani), Shell Japan Limited, and Electric Power Development Co., Ltd. (J-POWER) to form the CO2-free Hydrogen Energy Supply-chain Technology Research Association (HySTRA).

 

There Are Many Sources Of Hydrogen

        

Hydrogen - Data telling a story

The many aspects of the gas Hydrogen - our future replacement substance for fossil fuels like Natural Gas, Gasoline, Jet fuel, and Diesel.    Click to enlarge.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

https://www.paloverde.com/  

DOE awards $20M to project to produce clean hydrogen from nuclear power

08 October 2021
The US Department of Energy (DOE) is awarding $20 million in funding to a project to demonstrate technology that will produce clean hydrogen energy from nuclear power. This approach will allow clean hydrogen to serve as a source for zero-carbon electricity and represent an important economic product for nuclear plants beyond electricity.

The project, based in Arizona, will make progress on DOE’s H2@Scale vision for clean hydrogen across multiple sectors and help meet the Department’s Hydrogen Shot goal of $1 per 1 kilogram in one decade.

The project, led by PNW Hydrogen LLC, will receive $12 million from the DOE’s Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office (HFTO) and $8 million from DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy (NE) for a total award of $20 million. The project will produce clean hydrogen from nuclear power at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station in Phoenix, Arizona—the largest nuclear plant and the single-largest generator of carbon-free electricity in the US.

Six tonnes of stored hydrogen will be used to produce approximately 200 MWh electricity during times of high demand, and may be also used to make chemicals and other fuels. The project will provide insights about integrating nuclear energy with hydrogen production technologies and inform future clean hydrogen production deployments at scale.

PNW Hydrogen, LLC will be the primary recipient of the DOE award and will collaborate with multiple stakeholders in research, academia, industry and state-level government including Idaho National Laboratory, National Energy Technology Laboratory, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, OxEon, Electric Power Research Institute, Arizona State University, University of California Irvine, Siemens, Xcel Energy, Energy Harbor and the LA Department of Water and Power.

Posted on 08 October 2021 in  https://www.greencarcongress.com/ :   Hydrogen, Hydrogen Production, Market Background, Nuclear, Power Generation

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The future construction of a large-scale SOEC electrolyser production plant by Haldor Topsoe represents the cornerstone of the large-scale launch of industrial electrolysis, powered by renewable sources. Haldor Topsoe's program is in perfect synchrony with the forecasts of the Green Deal Road Map approved on 8 July 2020 by the European Community. The production of LIHC and LOHC, not a play on words, but the synthesis of green hydrogen in inorganic and organic liquid carriers, represents the only real alternative to fossil fuels. The date of 8 July 2020 will be remembered as a historic date for the entire European Community.

Facts about Topsoe’s large-scale SOEC manufacturing facility


Selected projects with Topsoe’s technology


 

 

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Electricity & Hydrogen Nuclear Plants can have "Day/Night" Complimentary Loads
 (Because you can store the hydrogen you are making until you have accumulated enough to sell.)

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A Proposed Deeply Decarbonized Electricity & Hydrogen Transportation Economy

See Also:  https://www.bayotech.us/products-2 

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 The Best Way To Get A "Running Start" Is To Build Adjacent On An Existing Coal Power Plant Site
We are going to need a small nuclear power plant on almost every shut-down coal or gas power plant site everywhere in the world. 
 

TVA CEO: Utility Will Invest in SMRs

tva-logo

According to wire service reports, TVA President and CEO Jeff Lyash said last week during an online energy conference hosted by the Atlantic Council that to reach the 100% reduction goal, the utility will need technological advances in energy storage, carbon capture and small modular nuclear reactors. (YouTube video) Lyash said TVA is on track to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by the year 2035.

Coal Plants Converted to SMRs?

Lyash said that the hundreds of shuttered US coal power plants could be repurposed as small nuclear reactor sites citing easy access to water resources and existing power grid connections. “I see those sites as very viable small modular reactor (SMR) sites.”

Lyash does not see coal as part of the utility’s future, saying TVA will continue to phase it out over the next 15 years because its coal plants are reaching the end of their lives.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who also attended the virtual meeting, agreed, “You could come online much quicker and we could accomplish this at a much faster rate than anything else we could do.”

“Some of our better manufacturing sites are the coal-fired power plants,” said Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia. “You could come online much quicker and we could accomplish this at a much faster rate than anything else we could do,” he said about the SMR potential.  - - -

Posted on May 1, 2021 by djysrv - https://neutronbytes.com/ 

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Cost Of Various Types Of Reactors and Uranium
Actually, nuclear power is safer, environmentally cleaner, and cheaper than all other forms of commercial energy.

                                            

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 


 

 

Here, corn is used as feedstock for fermenting ethanol to increase the octane of unleaded gasoline.
Massive amounts of biofuels massively drive up the cost of human fuels such as corn - as shown in this example.
It's morally wrong for humans to have to compete with machines for energy.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Nuclear Proliferation

The necessity for uranium enrichment for Light Water Reactors and the presence of plutonium in the spent fuel are the primary proliferation concerns.

There are differing national policies for the use or storage of fissile plutonium in the spent fuel, with some nations electing to recycle plutonium for use in new fuels and others electing to leave it intact withinthe spent fuel (IAEA, 2008a). The presence of plutonium and minor actinides in the spent fuel leads to greater waste-disposal challenges as well. Heavy isotopes such as plutonium and minor actinides have very long half-lives, as high as tens to hundreds of thousands of years (NRC, 1996), which require final waste-disposal strategies to address safety of waste disposal on such great timescales. Alternative strategies to isolate and dispose of fission products and their components apart from actinides could have significant beneficial impact on waste disposal requirements (Wigeland et al., 2006). Others have argued that separation and transmutation of actinides would have little or no practical benefit for waste disposal (NRC, 1996; Bunn et al., 2003).

Alternative nuclear fuel cycles, beyond the once-through uranium cycle, and related reactor technologies are under investigation. Partial recycling of used fuels, such as the use of mixed-oxide (MOX) fuels where U-235 in enriched uranium fuel is replaced with recycled or excess plutonium, is utilized in some nations to improve uranium resource utilization and waste-minimization efforts (OECD and NEA, 2007; World Nuclear Association, 2013).

The thorium fuel cycle is an alternative to the uranium fuel cycle, and the abundance of thorium resources motivates its potential use (see Section 7.4.3). Unlike natural uranium, however, thorium does not contain any fissile isotopes. An external source of fissile material is necessary to initiate the thorium fuel cycle, and breeding of fissile U-233 from fertile Th-232 is necessary to sustain the fuel cycle (IAEA, 2005b).

Ultimately, full recycling options based on either uranium or thorium fuel cycles that are combined with advanced reactor designs — including fast and thermal neutron spectrum reactors — where only fission products are relegated as waste can significantly extend nuclear resources and reduce high-level wastes (GIF, 2002, 2009; IAEA, 2005b). Current drawbacks include higher economic costs, as well as increased complexities and the associated risks of advanced fuel cycles and reactor technologies. Potential access to fissile materials from widespread application of reprocessing technologies further raises proliferation concerns. The advantages and disadvantages of alternative reprocessing technologies are under investigation. - from Energy Systems Chapter 7 - IPCC 5 - IPCC Working Group III - 2014.

 

Please visit:  https://www.deepisolation.com/ 

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1996/10/the-sub-seabed-solution/308434/ 

Sub-Seabed Nuclear Waste Disposal in Stable Clay Formations.pdf 

Once through and then Subduction disposal.
Since ALL uranium used for nuclear fuel has bred some plutonium in it, it must be disposed of.  Bury It In A Subduction Zone And You'll Never Get It Back.
Since all uranium used as nuclear fuel has some plutonium bred in it during the process, it must be disposed of immediately. 
Bury It In A Subduction Zone And You'll Never Get It Back. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_borehole_disposal     https://www.deepisolation.com/  

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Safety Perimeters of Small Modular Reactors are tiny compared with a conventional huge reactor

                

Better to grab a Cat than a Tiger by the tail.

NuScale & UAMPS  (Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems) Take Next Steps to License, Manufacture, and Build the First of 12 SMRs

NuScale Power has gotten the go ahead to prepare a Combined License Application (COLA) to be submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The UAMPS COLA is expected to be submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) by the second quarter of 2023.

NRC review of the COLA is expected to be completed by the second half of 2025, with reactor construction of the project beginning shortly thereafter. NuScale expects to have the first of 8 units in revenue service before the end of the decade. Eventually, plans are for the site to have 12 SMRs. The power rating of the site is a work in progress as NuScale started with an estimate of 50 MWE, but has since increased its design objective to 60 MWe and indicated it has plans for 77 MWe.

The NuScale reference power plant can house up to 12 NuScale Power Modules for a total facility output of 924 megawatts of electricity (MWe). NuScale also offers smaller power plant solutions in 4-module and 6-module sizes with outputs of 308 MWe (gross) and 462 MWe (gross), respectively. The multi-module NuScale plant design is scalable, allowing customers to incrementally increase facility output to match demand.

NuScale Power announced this week together with Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) that it has executed agreements to facilitate the development of the Carbon Free Power Project (CFPP), which will deploy NuScale Power Modules at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL).

Fluor Corporation and NuScale (as a subcontractor to Fluor) are to develop higher maturity cost estimates and initial project planning work for the licensing, manufacturing and construction of the CFPP.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

NuScale's Control Room Simulator

Control stations for 12 NuScale Reactor Units. -  Simple NuScale Reactor units need relatively fewer controls.
The NuScale reactor actually shares a critical thermodynamic feature [convection water cooling] with the Ford Model T engine (October 1, 1908, to May 26, 1927).

 

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

How Soon?

Technology Readiness Levels for these new thermal technologies. 
The NuScale, Lightbridge, and Carbon Engineering products have been approved by the U.S. Government.
At this time, CarbFix is non-mandatory.
The Class VI CO2 Disposal Well is a U.S. Government Design for an environmentally approvable disposal license.
 

These 'Cooling the Planet' technologies are of little or no value until Rolling Back Climate Change Part 1: DECARBONIZATION (i.e., Net-Zero) has been achieved.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

About the Easy-to-Use Combustion Fuels: Their Different Hydrogen-to-Carbon Ratios

Different fossil fuels make different amounts of CO2 for the same amount of heat (BTUs)

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Cost and Capacity Factors are the Keys to Enabling Decarbonization Of Energy
 TO BE PART OF YOUR LIFE, ENERGY HAS TO BE DISPATCHABLE and NON-INTERMITTENT
(I.e., as much as you need, when you need it.)

             

Cost and Capacity Factors are the Keys to Converting to Hydrogen-driven Decarbonization

Electricity Risk Assessment - Click to Enlarge.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 " What’s Needed to Save Funding for the Versatile Test Reactor?   (Please read - Posted on  https://neutronbytes.com/   October 15, 2021 by djysrv)

It is time for the major developers of advanced nuclear reactors, and small modular light water reactors, in the U.S. to support funding for the Versatile Test Reactor (VTR). 

The reason is that these firms will need its testing capabilities to certify that their fuels, materials, sensors, and components will work in the demanding conditions that these plants are designed to operate in.
There is no other way to do it. Self-certification either directly or with fuel and component vendors, is not a viable strategy.

Real-time measurements and post-irradiation examination techniques will provide valuable information on how fuels, materials, components and instrumentation withstand the extreme conditions inside nuclear power plants. This is crucial information needed to design, license, and build successful implementations of advanced nuclear reactors."

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________