A Very Fast, Very Safe, Very SLIMM Nuclear Reactor

““One of the latest to emerge is the SLIMM – the Scalable LIquid Metal–cooled small Modular reactor. This is a fast reactor that uses liquid sodium (Na) to cool and exchange heat, and that generates 10 to 100 MW for many years, even decades, without refueling, depending on what power level is desired. It’s very smaller version, the VSLIMM, generates 1 to 10 MW.

Its designers, Drs. Mohamed S. El-Genk, Luis Palomino and Timothy Schriener from the University of New Mexico’s Institute for Space and Nuclear Power Studies in Albuquerque, describe it thus:

"Fully passive operation with no single point failure, cooled by natural circulation of sodium during operation and after shutdown, high negative temperature reactivity feedback and redundant control and safety shutdown, walk-away safe, long life without refueling, factory fabricated, assembled and sealed, shipped to the construction site by rail, truck, or barge, installed below ground to avoid direct impact by missiles or aircraft, and mounted on seismic oscillation bearings to resist earthquakes.”

The reactor has redundant and passive decay heat removal by heat pipes and natural circulation of ambient air.

In other words, it can’t melt down, is cheap to construct and only needs ordinary outside air to cool off if it does shut down quickly for any reason. With Na’s very low vapor pressure, the reactor operates below atmospheric pressure so there is no pressure vessel to worry about.””
     — James Conca

Tags: clipping ∙ thorium ∙ nuclear power ∙ reactor ∙ James Conca ∙ Mohamed S. El-Genk ∙ Luis Palomino ∙ Timothy Schriener ∙ University of New Mexico ∙ Institute for Space and Nuclear Power Studies

Tags: video ∙ guest content ∙ Manhattan Institute ∙ solar power ∙ renewable ∙ nuclear power ∙ Mark Mills ∙ green new deal ∙ Nature

Cross posted at www.teknopagan.com/files/Thorium190619.html

Tags: guest content ∙ video ∙ ColdFusion ∙ thorium ∙ nuclear power ∙ cross posted

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❝❝*sigh*

Pardon, but global climate change is a scam designed to take political power and money away from people. The figures are not accurate, the goalposts keep getting moved, and the solutions always seem to boil down to "give us money and don't ask questions."

I've done the research. Short of reducing the number of people or removing access to energy, there is not a lot that can be done. At present, there are exactly two off-the-shelf technologies that can meet power needs without adding to the "carbon footprint." Those are hydroelectric and nuclear plants. There are a limited number of rivers that can be dammed up to produce power. There are very few alternatives to high-pressure fission plants. Nobody wants either close to their homes.

Despite what you've been told, most "green" technologies are anything but. Ethanol can't be produced economically without subsidies. It's much more chemically unstable, making it harder to store, transport, and use in engines. Electric cars don't mass as much, making them more dangerous in an accident. Manufacturing and maintaining electric car batteries has a bigger impact on the environment. Solar and wind require parallel systems to meet peak demand. The cost of solar is prohibitive. Wind power attracts and kills birds. It may also contribute to local warming.

This is a big mess, and it's not going to be fixed by a top down legal solution.

Given the games that have been played over the years, we don't know what contributes to global climate change. We don't even know if there is human caused climate change. Climate changes, it happened before humans were here, and it will continue long after our descendant's descendants have turned to dust.

Meanwhile, we're still pumping water into swimming pools and golf courses. We still have waste plastics and trash piling up. We're destroying the rainforests and wiping out species.

But that doesn't matter because we're going to fix global warming. Eventually.

---

Pardon, but I didn't say that nuclear or dams are an acceptable solution. I said that they were the only existing off-the-shelf solutions that could meet demand and not add to the "carbon footprint."

As far as the predictions being short of reality, well, no. Back in the 1970s, the fear was about global cooling. In 1990, the IPCC predicted that temperatures would rise by 1ºC by 2025. As of the end of 2017, the actual change has been between .3ºC and .5ºC, depending on which database you use. Wildfires were supposed to increase, they declined. Snow was supposed to become a rare event, it stayed about the same. The Arctic Ocean was supposed to become ice free, but there's been no measurable decline. The sea level was supposed to rise four feet by now, it's been three or four inches. In 2005, there were supposed to be 50 million "climate refugees" by 2015.

This is the problem. Someone will proclaim disaster, but they are never held accountable for previous predictions. The goalposts keep moving.

---

What I'd like to see is the ecological issues separated from the climate change claims. There is a tremendous amount of power and money at stake without any accountability.

That is what I meant by a scam. People want to help. Pagans and Earth-centered faiths especially want to help the planet. Somebody is profiting without actually "saving the planet." If it were anything else, we'd call them out. But because it's climate change, we accept the outrageousness.

---

I agree with you about the dams. They aren't a good solution. They are one of the very few proven technologies that can deliver the energy.

Pardon, I wasn't clear. Electric vehicles devote most of their mass to batteries. There have been some impact studies that do not show electrics in a good light.

I don't advocate reducing the population. But it is one of the solutions that is "on the table." Oddly enough, it's focused mainly on highly industrialized nations.

---

Pardon, but it is not about "deepening our understanding."

Somebody predicted something, it did not happen, and rather than owning their mistake, they predict more disaster just around the corner.

We don't know what makes climate work. I wouldn't trust anyone who claims to know what the temperature "should be."

I do know that we don't have big enough baselines. They talk about "the worst weather in a century." But the planet is more than four and a half billion years old. That's about .0000022% more or less.

---

If I told you that your favorite relative was coming in a red car, wouldn't you notice more red cars?

If the news was telling you that there were more storms, wouldn't you notice more storms?

You should ask IF there are actually more natural disasters or if someone wants more viewers/readers.

I'm not disputing that there are ecological problems. In my first post on this thread I mentioned water and waste disposal. What I am disputing is if global climate change is human caused or even a problem.

Electric cars have always had the battery problem. Add to that generating the electricity in the first place. Both have a huge environmental and economic impact.

Solar and wind are cheap, but converting them into something we can use is not. I live in Arizona, one of the sun shiniest states in the union. But that won't produce electricity at night or during a storm. The sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow.

Don't underestimate the power of profit and the free market. It's why we have things like grocery stores and comfortable shoes. Not to mention dirt cheap ballpoint pins, cheap computers, clean water, and affordable eyeglasses. See, the thing about the free market is that you have to offer as good as your competition or you lose business. If the competition makes it better or cheaper, you have to match them just to stay afloat.

And that brings us back to solar. In a world where practically anything can be sold at a profit at WalMart, don't you think that if cheap, durable, efficient solar cells could be made they would be?

I'm not asking for predictions to be one hundred percent accurate. But I do think the accuracy should be better than chance. Especially if the people doing the predictions want scads of money and tremendous political power to fix the "problem."

---

You're using solar supplementally. That's good.

Let me make it clear that I do not oppose solar. I just do not think it's practical or affordable as a primary source on a mass scale as it has been sold. I'm a big fan of decentralization. I also think that much of our architecture doesn't support the wise use of energy.

I'm not sure that solar is practical as a primary electrical supply, even on a small scale. Aside from AC, there are things like freezers, refrigerators, hot water heaters, washers, and dryers. These appliances are designed for a constant flow of power.

Ideally I think there should be earth houses or something along the lines of the works of the late Malcolm Wells.

---

The weather isn't the same every year. My high desert is having a very dry year on top of several others. Lake Powell and Lake Mead are at very low although not record low levels. It's enough to trigger the restrictions on the water treaties though, which means that Arizona and Nevada won't be getting their full allotment from the Colorado.

There was one year when I was a kid that there was snow every two or three days. Not a lot of snow, but very unusual for a desert and unheard of.

Even a human lifetime is not enough to establish a baseline. What is weather in a century when the planet is billions of years old? The planet has had several ice ages, which means there were warm periods too.

I want to stress that I am not dismissing environmental issues like clean water. When I first saw the PBS series based on Cadillac Desert I was horrified. That made me take a hard look at what was happening with water in the Southwest.

No, my issue is with anthropogenic climate change. From what I can tell, there are alarmists but no evidence. And a lot of failed predictions.❞❞

Tags: climate change ∙ scam ∙ money ∙ hydroelectric ∙ nuclear power ∙ green energy ∙ anthropogenic climate change ∙ water ∙ swimming pools ∙ golf courses ∙ plastic ∙ rainforests ∙ species ∙ global warming

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