Talk:Nuclear reactor/Archive 1

message: Copied from the danger of nuclear power.  I think most of the points are already in the article.
Nuclear power is considered to be unsafe by some, who claim:
*There is no solution to the problems related to disposal of highly radioactive waste.
*There is no solution and often no money to safely decommission a nuclear reactor.
*The mining, processing and handling of nuclear materials is spreading radioactive waste into our environment.
*The plants are potential terrorist targets.
*Many plants have had accidents in which radioactive materials have been leaked into the environment.
*During regular operation of these plants, many different radionuclides are released into the environment.
*The fuel and waste from the plants has facilitated the spread of nuclear weapons across the planet.
:I didn't notice before, but that last comment is particularly controversial. There have been dual-use plants, certainly, but nobody has yet produced a bomb by diverting material from a plant built purely as a power reactor, and there are good reasons for thinking nobody ever will.
:This whole section was POV, in my opinion. In hindsight there is also some possibility that the attempt to redefine the term LWR to include Chernobyl, which I addressed below, was politically motivated. Andrewa 09:03 30 Jun 2003 (UTC) 
-----
Most of these points are false.  The idea of no solution for radioactive wastes is a perfect example because we have fuel re-processing in Europe and Japan which gets rid of the Pu, then we have spallation and IFR technology literally sitting on the door step.
About the only criticm that is valid is that when you have vast amounts of energy in a small place then any problems can take on a sinister new meaning.  This is true of any concentrated energy sources such as explosives, oil tankers and expecially the LNG tankers, big bottles of propane and so forth.  It isn't the nuclear character which is the problem - it is the concentration of the energy.
-----
Actually, in regards to the danger of nuclear power, most of these points are correct, verifiable and with historical precedent. I would also like to point out that fuel re-processing is neither a solution for nuclear waste, nor as you erroneously stated, does it get rid of Pu. None of the technologies you mentioned either reduce the radioactive hazard of nuclear waste or provide a solution for it's long term storage. I think that it's extremely important to be objective about this type of article, but ignoring proven facts just because they don't fit with your own view of nuclear energy or because they are sometimes spouted by radical environmental groups shouldn't preclude them from this article. I think it would be highly pertinent, for example, to include links to the websites of such groups in the interest of balance and to allow the reader to make their own conclusions.
:Fuel reprocessing can remove all but trace amounts of uranium, neptunium, plutonium, americium, and curium, and all those can be used to fuel a fast-neutron reactor.
:The remaining waste will only be hazardous for centuries instead of millennia.
:That does indeed get rid of the plutonium, reduce the radioactive hazard, and provide a solution for long-term storage. Oralloy 05:10, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Many of these problems are either A. Negligent, B. False, or C. Solvable. I also agree that these are POV and should not be introduced into the article.--128.227.142.136 15:40, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Danger of NP

message: From the bullet point on fast reactors:
This type of reactor is used in some mobile applications, where space constraints are a major concern, 
I don't think that's true. The thermalised units used by the US navy are at least as successful as the liquid metal cooled fast reactors of the Soviet navy. There may be advantages to this class of propulsion unit, but they have yet to be proven. Andrewa 06:22, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Removed text

message: This article currently covers a great breadth of subjects, from types of nuclear reactor to nuclear power stations. I've replaced the redirect at nuclear power plant by a stub, and propose to progressively move material from this article to more suitable places, including the new stub. Help of course welcome! Andrewa 21:09, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Wow, I'm responding to some old comments here, but here's my take;  This article needs more sub articles.  There is WAY too much information repeat in the nuclear reactor/plant related articles.  I want to put a lot of "main article: ..." headers to the sections here, because for pretty much every one, a stand alone article exists.  We need this so that those articles get attention and that this article doesn't get convoluted and confusing.  I intend to be bold and do that, so please add your own thoughts.  Thanks! theanphibian 23:40, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: New article

message: What about operational safety? For example, I've been reading the us government accident reports on criticality accidents alone, and they're pretty disturbing. For example, the technicians responsible for the Tokaimura incident weren't even informed what a criticality was! Public information archived before it was "yanked" by 9/11 hysteria can be found here:http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/index.html
Tokaimura was not a nuclear reactor facility. I am not defending anything, but it wouldn't belong in a Nuclear reactor article. I had a quick scan through the article lists but couldn't see any really relevant ones; can you be more specific. Dabbler 12:35, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Operational Safety

message: Why is there no mention of Gas Core or Vapor Core reactors? I have heard of these ideas several times from other sources.  I guess I should just be bold and start it.
:Perhaps you are thinking of Gaseous fission reactors, a kind of nuclear thermal rocket?  They're still very speculative. 
:Currently, this page is focused on reactors used for commercial power; much of the information belongs on nuclear power plant.  This page could then be generalized to discuss all sorts of nuclear reactors. --Andrew 19:51, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)
::Vapor-Core Reactors offer very high efficiency, but will be quite a ways into the distant future.  Even molten-core reactors, while having a representative (the Molten Salt Reactor) in the Generation IV reactor initiative, are not likely to be built for quite some time. Oralloy 07:54, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: This page is called though 'nuclear reactor' not 'commercial nuclear reactor'. Until the page name is changed the information belongs here. I've put it under a 'gen V+ section' and made it clear these are very far future designs.ANTIcarrot 15:41, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Gas / Vapor Core Reactors

message: This information was requested in a note in the article.  As can be seen from the data, significant numbers of cancellations had started even before Three Mile Island (1979).  After Chernobyl (1986) few plants were cancelled.
Plants cancelled by year :
1974 - 5
1975 - 6
1976 - 1
1977 - 7
1978 - 8
1979 - 4
1980 - 15
1981 - 10
1982 - 14
1983 - 6
1984 - 6
1985 - 2
1986 - 2
1987 - 0
1988 - 1
1989 - 0
1990 - 1
1991 - 0
1992 - 0
1993 - 0
1994 - 1
1995 - 2
3 TVA plants haven't officially been cancelled even yet
Simesa 15:54, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The link is now broken: fortunately we have the data from it.  27 plants cancelled 1974-1978, 4 in 1979 (the year of TMI), and 55 cancelled 1980-1986. Simesa 22:49, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Cancellation of US plants by year

message: Image  was apparently deleted by user:Mel Etitis - anyone know why? Simesa 11:40, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for Commons - I hadn't used it before. Simesa 17:53, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Image deleted

message: Is there anyone else out there that thinks that there should be an article devoted to the "nuclear power controversy"?  This has been done with other aticles as well and really helps to clean them up.  I am proposing that we do this because currently, on many nuclear powerplant related articles the same arguments against nuclear power are listed over and over again.  Also, it reads poorly to have things like 
"Currently all commercial nuclear reactors are based on nuclear fission, and are considered problematic by some for their safety and health risks. Conversely, some consider nuclear power to be a safe and pollution-free"
in the opening paragraph.  The article is supposed to be about nuclear reactors, not the controversy.  By inserting the controversy for every nuclear article, we lose conciseness.  I don't want to look like a nuclear proponent here (although I am), but take a look at evolution and how they introduce the controversy page.  
This "problem" happens way to frequently in the nuclear articles and is messing them up, lets move the controversy to its own page so the articles read like an encyclopedia entry and don't read like arguments.  Nuclear power is a technology, and as such, it should be defined like one, let the politics have there own page.  I'm not saying we ignore the nuclear opponents, this will actually give us a more standerdized and, I think, fairer way of covering the arguments.Lcolson 19:31, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree.  We should mention the controversy where appropriate but it should not get in the way of explaining what anuclear reactor actually is. I have noticed similar things in pebble bed reactor, list of nuclear accidents, and its children.  --Ignignot 19:35, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Agree agree. zowie 00:04, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Break nuclear power controversy into its own article

message: Some experts predict that electricity shortages, fossil fuel price increases and concern over Greenhouse gas emissions will renew the demand for nuclear power plants. Watts Bar 1, which came on-line in 1997, was the last U.S. commercial nuclear reactor to go on-line.
As of 2004, the immediate future of the industry in many countries still appeared uncertain,...
As the introduction to the section on The future of the industry, that's both US-centric and extremely misleading. As the section already later (grudgingly? and unclearly) admitted, there has been little if any hesitation, ever, on the part of most other countries in adopting this technology. That's not to say that there have been no demonstrations! There has been political activity everywhere. But only in the USA, the Philippines and parts of Europe has it been successful.
Despite my admitted POV (green and pro-nuclear, both for >40 years) on this I think something needed to be done. That sort of political spin is I would hope embarrassing to all Wikipedians. 
(IMO the export of expensive Western politics to the economically defenceless Philippines at a cricial time in the development of their democracy will one day be seen as one of the saddest developments of the entire 20th century. But that's another story! I think we agree on one thing: Whoever was to blame, the story of Bataan Nuclear Power Plant is quite tragic.) 
The phrasing is still not entirely consistent, and I'm not altogether happy with still starting the section with the US perspective, but it is IMO the most frequently quoted worldwide by both sides so perhaps it's not inappropriate if properly identified as a US perspective. Andrewa 16:16, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Attempt at NPOV

message: How much fuel is in a fission reactor? I have heard up to 100tons of uranium, but that seems a bit much. Is it linked to the chance of nuclear meltdown? Could someone please edit this into the article, and include a credible source? Thankyou :) - Jak (talk) 14:53, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fuel quantity 

message: I have removed this request by an IP poster from the article text for consideration here: “Storing high level nuclear waste above ground for a century or so is considered appropriate by many scientists. Someone who knows what this means, please clarify.”  Moonraker88 18:20, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Waste storage above ground

message: 192.235.8.4 changed a paragraph to read "Pressure vessels holding steam heated by the reactor are used by most commercial and naval reactors. The pressure vessel serves to balance out pressure transients in the primary loops which occur with reactor power changes. The pressure vessel also serves a small role as a primary coolant make-up source. The pressure vessel is almost always lined up to the reactor and is only isolated from the reactor for special maintenance or testing."  This paragraph is confusiong to me, a nuclear engineer -- normally the RPV (reactor pressure vessel) is the "pot": 192-235.8.4 seems to be confusing the pressure vessel hull of a submarine with the RPV.  I'm not sure how a steel pressure vessel serves as a coolant makeup source.  Without unilaterally rewriting this text, would others care to comment? Simesa 21:25, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clarification / Rewrite? 

message: Recently an unregistered user requested the creation of an article on this reactor in development.  Please feel free to discuss the issue here and incorporate relative information into the Nuclear reactor article.  I have very little knowledge of reactors and would not be able to contribute much to the article. - cgilbert(talk|contribs) 02:47, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The result from the link is that this article (on a neutron source) was declined due to not being verifiably sourced. Simesa 22:41, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  MYRRHA 

message: Of course, nuclear reactors have been operating successfully since the 1940s, and accidents which have led to the death of people are rare. A single death occurred in 1958 at a research reactor in Vinca, Yugoslavia. In 1983, there was a single fatality at the RA-2 research reactor facility in Argentina.   There has really only been one widespread nuclear catastrophe in the civilian power industry, the Chernobyl disaster of 1986. It led to the death of 56 people, according the sources cited by that Wikipedia article. I must interject that the RBMK reactor used at Chernobyl was designed to be able to acquire weapons-grade plutonium, even retrieving and refueling the reactor while operating. In other words, its design offered a military advantage and suffered from numerous safety disadvantages. Its design is extremely unwise. See civilian nuclear accidents
As for the military, both the US Army and the Soviet Navy have encountered fatal nuclear mishaps while operating reactors. In the US Army's single fatal accident, the SL-1 reactor near Idaho Falls, Idaho was destroyed in 1961 during a shutdown maintenance activity. All three personnel on site were killed when the reactor's central control rod was manually pulled out too far. The US Army no longer operates any reactors. The Soviet Navy, however, had a long history of repeated accidents and failures. Contrast this to the US Navy, which has never had a major nuclear accident of any kind.
For a list of military nuclear reactor incidents, see List of military nuclear accidents (although this describes problems with nuclear warheads, nuclear fissile material, and nuclear waste, too), Database of radiological incidents and related events, and WISE - Nuclear issues information service. There you will find descriptions of the Soviet's K-8 sub (high radiation doses), K-19 submarine (fourteen total deaths), the Icebreaker_Lenin (thirty estimated deaths), the K-27 sub (nine deaths), the K-314 submarine (ten deaths), and other non-fatal accidents.
In all subjectivity, besides Soviet-designed reactor plants, there appears to be a very small casualty rate amongst nuclear reactor plants in the last sixty years (five). This is a volatile subject, however, since in most cases there is a tendency to lump reactor plant incidents with other radiological incidents, as seen in the websites above. With thousands of reactor plant years in operation, the designs of the civilian nuclear power industry in the West have a good track record of being safe. This includes dominant nuclear reactor designs in Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, Switzerland, and the United States. The designs utilized in the West typically include a heavy emphasis on safety, containment, and emergency systems. None of these countries have suffered a human casualty in any commercial reactor plant due to a reactor accident.
:I guess deaths at the Philidelphia Naval Yard thermal enrichment prototype plant during WWII don't count, since the Navy put out a cover story to the newspapers during the war.  Join the Navy, no one ever dies or even gets hurt.  Truthunmasked 03:47, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Known Fatalities

message: But to the great discredit of even the best designed reactor plants, there are still enormous issues regarding the acquisition, installation, removal, and processing of the fissile material required for operating all of these "safe" reactors. Nuclear waste is a "hot" topic, for health and safety reasons. It used to be that even the most conscientious of nuclear programs would overlook the need to effectively dispose of waste nuclear materials. The US Navy used to release their radioactive resin and other wastes into the open ocean, saying to the world, "Dilution is the Solution to Pollution." While true to some extent, this 1950s ideology is not going to last much longer. I think even the Navy got tired of issues in which radiation alarms would be set off by submarines with leaky valves and contaminated hulls, so they voluntarily stopped their waste discharge practices in the 1970s<citation needed>.
To start a reactor out fresh, it needs fuel. It takes literally months or years for the raw uranium to be mined, processed into LEU/HEU (if necessary), combined with oxygen (for U2O), and formed into pellets. There are often nuclear poisons mixed in, too. By the time the fuel is pelletized and ready, it usually has to be inserted into special fuel cell components, as mandated by the design. This must all be done with careful regard to criticality and radiation levels of the people performing this manufacture. This can all be dangerous work, especially the mining of the raw uranium and the enrichment process.
Once nuclear fuel is spent, it must be removed from a reactor core and disposed. If you thought being careful with new fuel is imperative, try to be even more careful with spent fuel! Fission products are practically laden with radioactive elements of all kinds. The radiation level of spent fuel is so enormous, that it is essentially the last thing in the world anyone would ever steal. Many refueling operations allow for a temporary "cooling off" period in which the spent fuel containers are allowed to remain submerged in a pool of water to help remove heat and to maintain a radiation barrier. However, temporary storage of spent fuel is becoming permanent in many reactor facilities due to the fact that few are prepared to process the spent fuel. It is extremely expensive, life-threatening, and challenging to handle and dispose of spent fuel.  A lot of this must be done by robotics and machines and cranes and lead-lined boxes.
Where does all of the high level waste go? More often than not, it goes nowhere, literally. Most plants have to keep their spent fuel. Low-level waste is challenging enough, but it can be processed safely.
So although the operation of most nuclear reactor plants can be shown to be extremely well-organized, well-designed, and well-maintained, we must also consider the offshoots, or the sidelines, which require similar vigilance and attention to detail. A lot of focus is placed on the reactor plant itself, but what about the guy who mines uranium? What about the researcher who handles small amounts of fissile material? Is the crane operator in charge of refueling the reactor plant trained to handle fissile material? Will he cause the safest reactor in the world to meltdown by moving the fuel too sloppy? These issues are just as important to the safety of the public as the operation of the reactor itself.
:I agree that this section should be removed.  The editor has done some reading but obviously has no nuclear schooling, training or experience, nor does he/she cite any sources.  
:He/she knows very little about the storage or handling of spent nuclear fuel - for example, the movement of SNF is planned out by computer and the movement plans pre-verified by hand.  The reactor is subcritical at the time of movement and can't meltdown - even the consequences of a dropped bundle onto the reactor core have been studied and limitations imposed.  I could go into more examples and details, but there are just too many of them. 
:The NRC is preparing a new safety study (see NUREG-1150 for now - CRAC-II is almost garbage) that will addrsss all these issues.  When it is published I will start or add to an article on it.  Or we could ask an expert in the field to start an article.  But it's a huge topic, and "some reading" just isn't going to make anyone able to write a credible article. Simesa 23:05, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Article started and "stub" up: see Nuclear safety in the U.S.  Simesa 02:37, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Industrial and Radiological Health Hazards of the Fuel Cycle

message: Already discussed on Nuclear power: These articles have much duplication of material. I propose that that Nuclear reactor should be renamed to nuclear reactor technology or something similar. The duplicated material, like history and fuel cycle should be moved to this article.Ultramarine 03:46, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nuclear power vs. Nuclear reactor 

message: Fast reactors can also be breeder reactors, whereas thermal reactors generally cannot. However, the first plutonium production reactors were thermal reactors using a graphite moderator.
This is confusingly oversimplified, and self-contradictory. The point that I think it's trying to make is that an LWR can't even theoretically breed fuel from uranium, owing to the enormous neutron losses to the moderator. But add any one of thorium fertile material, heavy water moderator or graphite moderator to the equation, and it becomes theoretically possible. India is notable in its pursuit of a thermal breeder power reactor program, using both heavy water and thorium - this is already described later in the article. Andrewa 21:02, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Removed text