While watching a television program, I heard the following statement:
...splitting atoms is a technology form the Stone Age...
that the speaker probably alludes to nuclear fission (which is of course splitting cores NOT atoms) was very clear from the context... but why should that be a technonoly from the Stone Age?
Following my curiosity I looked into the history of nuclear fission especially the civilian use, and made two very amazing discoveries:
- The 'nice' gentleman with the long hair in hid woolen sweater didn't make a temporal but rather a rhetorically statement to make a mental devaluation of nuclear fission ... that was pretty clear ... buuuuuuut...
- and that confirmed him in one or the other way: for the under 50-years-old the currently most widely used forms of nuclear fission reactors are really a pre-natal technology relic of the 60s!
"But wait! Many nuclear power plants were first built in the late 70s and 80s!" you might say...
So how is it that I'm speaking of technical dinosaurs?
Well ... nuclear power plants can be divided into so-called "generations"... look at this illustration:
As you can see...
....there are essentially 5 levels of nuclear fission reactors, however, one has to say that Generation I, which is the first stage of nuclear reactors were more experimental reactors, which should demonstrate the technical feasibility.
The following "Generation II" is to an amount of 98% the typ of the current world's operating reactors. The technique is based, as I mentioned earlier, really on the knowledge of the 60s ... thus the majority of today's nuclear power plants can really be called: a technology relic...
Generation III and Generation III + are (only) an evolutionary step... same risk ...same problems (meltdown, security systems, radioactive waste for millions of years, running out of uranium), but further developed.
Inherently save, so save according to natural laws (not even 'god' can break it), are these reactors not.... unfortunately.... It would be welcome if instead of the Generation II power plants there would only be the more modern reactors worldwide... be even then, there would have been still much going on in Japan...
"Hey Mike, aren't there any nuclear reactor designs which can not melt? Where no waste is produced? Where you could even get rid of old rubbish? Aren't there any reactors in which the current may be gone, where all can go home technician, and it wouldn't still happen anything?"
Well... dear reader... there are...
Generation 4
No! Not improvements... new designs... breeding reactors with sodium cooling or gas cooling, lead reactors, running 30 years, reactors with helium cooling, reactors with supercritical water, and molten salt reactors...
But this are all but dreams and utopias, dear Mike!
For real? Hmmm. I would rather say that this is very old, but for keynesanian reasons for decades unheeded knowledge.
How is that?
There already many research reactors worldwide in operation and have been already some small power plant built on the type 4 ... but it's pretty quiet around this technique ... here is an example:
From 1964 to 1969, a molten salt reactor was operated at ONRL ( here the appropriate wiki entry. As this article is still quite complex, I'll probably will write about their them in another post). Now you can, as I have done, go through the trouble and look for more sources (Source 1) (Source 2) and be surprised to hear that this reactor was run without any problems. Also, the test reactor has met all expectations. Any technical difficulties could be resolved. Many reports about it confirm that...
So what happened?
As someone described from his own experience, it was apparently quite simple: Keynesian herd mentality and military calculations. No one wanted a reactor with absolute inherent security at a higher price, with the possibility of destroying all long-lived radioactive waste.... and not even produce material usable for nuclear weapons...
No... we don't want that!
Lots of light water nuclear waste and every other other day a little melt down is cheaper that absolute freedon from all of that...
Hmmm..
By the way... the modern versions of these oldest and yet "most modern" idea of nuclear energy are even more efficient ... hydrogen production included ... but more of that in another in another post ...
The grandfather driven by fiat money prevented his grandchildren from growing for so long until the grandfather died... and the grandchildren couldn't grow anymore
Demographic change with a difference ....