Space power station

[Moxi]

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technol ... 8b0bc6c959

Why do they insist on chucking good money away on crazy ideas? I know we have to theorise and test new concepts but when money is arguably very tight why not just spend it on proven technology instead on this sort of lunacy ?

I have no doubt that its possible to do this but how are countries and people going to react to having what is in effect a giant death ray pointing at them from orbit ?

More government smoke and mirrors with our hard pressed cash - clowns!

Moxi

[nowty]

I have no doubt that its possible to do this but how are countries and people going to react to having what is in effect a giant death ray pointing at them from orbit ?

That's the real reason for funding, just like the real reason for Calder Hall and Chapelcross.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calder_Ha ... er_station

"The primary purpose of both plants was to produce weapons-grade plutonium for the UK's nuclear weapons programme, but they also generated electrical power for the National Grid."

[Stinsy]

This sort of thing really annoys me too. I guess some guy wants to play with space lasers and politicians / budget holders get carried away with the sci-fi nature of it all…

If the money was spent on solar/wind and a teeny bit of storage the problem would be solved by now.

I guess that isn’t sexy enough…

[AE-NMidlands]

I have no doubt that its possible to do this but how are countries and people going to react to having what is in effect a giant death ray pointing at them from orbit ?

That's the real reason for funding, just like the real reason for Calder Hall and Chapelcross.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calder_Ha ... er_station

"The primary purpose of both plants was to produce weapons-grade plutonium for the UK's nuclear weapons programme, but they also generated electrical power for the National Grid."

This has always been my reaction, but every time I have mentioned it I have been shouted down...
(but maybe people objected to my comment that I wouldn't want to live anywhere near the ground station in case something went wrong with their aiming...
"This system is controlled by a computer, so nothing can go wrong... (click) go wrong... (click) go wrong... (click) go wrong..."

[Moxi]

Nowty,

It wasn't just ChapX and CalderH that were the plutonium piles but several other Magnox stations had the capability to breed Pu239 in case of national demand (war) or faults at the main sites.

However ChapX and CalderH were the only sites that had the handling facilities to harvest the material, ChapX had its own facility and Calder obviously sent it next door to the Windscale / Sellafield site.

Lest anyone be of the misunderstanding that nuclear power in the UK was primarily aimed at making electrical power it wasnt, it was championed for National defence, global political and socio-political reasoning. It was more, and remains more expensive than other current forms of electrical energy generation.

Don't get me wrong, I like nuclear power reactors and nuclear physics, it has a role to play in society BUT its not the sort of technology you want in the hands of people interested in profit because thats not how reactors run best. One or two medium reactors set up to be multi use would allow us to produce all our own (and much of the worlds) medical radio isotope requirements which are becoming difficult to obtain, they could supply other material as and when required in smaller quantities and when required could produce power for the grid. I note that multi use means inefficiencies and in medical isotope terms a smaller dedicated unit would be ideal BUT the CANDU units used to produce a large volume of medical isotopes as well as power so it can be done.

I also saw this week that the Welsh government are championing an Isotope reactor at Trawsfynydd just down the road from me, I welcome this as I would another reactor at Wylfa as I am not a nimby BUT I would prefer these energy/ material sources to be run on a national benefit basis and not a profit and loss private ownership basis - remember Davies-Bessie in America - that was a narrowly averted disaster because of the desire to be earning revenue rather than doing proper safety checks, where as three mile island was the computer and the control room team misinterpreting a false signal created by maintenance clearing a line with compressed air. So if we cam mess this stuff up on the ground on complex plants then what chance have we in space or as AE-M says what can possibly (click) .......go wrong ?

Moxi

[nowty]

As you know Moxi, I was working at Springfields (BNFL nuke fuel production site) in the 80's. I found this photo online of one of the production lines which I used to help maintain. I remember a gas pressuriser vessel which was used to compress the magnesium alloy can onto grooves in the uranium fuel rods with thousands of PSI. It was sealed with a paper gasket which would sometimes fail and explode with a very large bang which scared the carp out of you if you were stood next to it.

You can see the person is wearing a blue film badge for radiation monitoring. It had a open window for alpha, a plastic cover for beta and an aluminium strip for gamma. He is also wearing a yellow criticality belt for neutrons. In a criticality area there was a constant tone beeping to keep you assured that the monitoring was working. If the criticality alarm went off which meant that the fuel had spontaneously started to fission the instruction was to run for your life.

You had to give weekly pee samples and if someone had a high reading you had to poo in a jar.

Great days.

[Moxi]

Yes Nowty I remember you being part of the "brethren" which one is you in the pic

The fuel elements on the table are the pipa element, used in four of the UK reactors IIRC and also in the Japanese magnox units, one of the longest if not the longest elements for Magnox fuel.

I remember well the main 6 different alarms we used to have to listen for and also react differently to at Sellafield, some of which really curdled your blood!, besides those there were also the "monitor health" noises to let you know activity in air and other monitors were working correctly. It was always an assault on the senses and the nerves going in to different buildings and getting used to local rules and sounds

Heres a flash from the past regards criticality, the methods and physics are the same for today but the instrumentation has, sometimes, caught up with the times.

[nowty]

I recall there was a criticality event in Japan in 1999 although I did not know the details at the time as I had left the industry by then. But reading up on it now its totally incomprehensible to me how this could have occurred, total incompetence.

One died 12 weeks later, another 7 months later, would not have been a good way to go either.

https://world-nuclear.org/information-l ... ident.aspx

"On 30 September three workers were preparing a small batch of fuel for the Joyo experimental fast breeder reactor, using uranium enriched to 18.8% U-235. It was JCO's first batch of fuel for that reactor in three years, and no proper qualification and training requirements had been established to prepare those workers for the job. They had previously used this procedure many times with much lower-enriched uranium – less than 5%, and had no understanding of the criticality implications of 18.8% enrichment. At around 10:35, when the volume of solution in the precipitation tank reached about 40 litres, containing about 16 kg U, a critical mass was reached."

[smegal]

Yes Nowty I remember you being part of the "brethren" which one is you in the pic

The fuel elements on the table are the pipa element, used in four of the UK reactors IIRC and also in the Japanese magnox units, one of the longest if not the longest elements for Magnox fuel.

I remember well the main 6 different alarms we used to have to listen for and also react differently to at Sellafield, some of which really curdled your blood!, besides those there were also the "monitor health" noises to let you know activity in air and other monitors were working correctly. It was always an assault on the senses and the nerves going in to different buildings and getting used to local rules and sounds

Heres a flash from the past regards criticality, the methods and physics are the same for today but the instrumentation has, sometimes, caught up with the times.

The training sticks in your mind. If you hear that specific alarm, run. If someone falls over, don't help them up.

There used to be a number you could call that played the alarms and their function.

[nowty]

The training sticks in your mind. If you hear that specific alarm, run. If someone falls over, don't help them up.

I remember being instructed, if your holding an oxy-acetylene welding torch, don't even turn it off, just drop it and run.