Big Brain Bradley's Nuclear News

[max225]

None actually. Neither place is SF 20-40 miles away. California is not all parts of downtown SF/LA/SD. The burbs out here are quite nice. This is a big state... biggest in the nation by population + 3rd biggest by size. SF is the worlds SMALLEST best known city, and even then you're talking only parts of it that are shit. SF is smaller than Austin, Jacksonville and Columbus Ohio for example.

ok but you were literally just complaining about where you live.

I was pointing out a refinery flaring event + nuclear fusion. No idea what you're talking about.

[golftdibrad1]

ok but you were literally just complaining about where you live.

I was pointing out a refinery flaring event + nuclear fusion. No idea what you're talking about.

.. i thought it was sarcasm about the location of your domicile.

[max225]

I was pointing out a refinery flaring event + nuclear fusion. No idea what you're talking about.

.. i thought it was sarcasm about the location of your domicile.

somewhat yea... just keeps things interesting. This area is wild... All the tech giants, Tesla Factory, giant military bases for space, water shit... refineries, nuclear labs. I bet we're on top of the nuke list for our "Friends" in russia along with the Pentagon + NYC

[ChrisoftheNorth]

Oh, no doubt. At least it'll end swiftly for you.

I have to ride out the nuclear fall out in the bunker. I'm half joking, but it was somewhat a selling point for me for this place. 3'-6' thick concrete walls and pre cast concrete ceiling 75% buried in the ground. Pretty sure the dude that built it did so out of concern of nukes during the cold war (built in 79). Any DFDers that survive are welcome here if you can make the trek.

Where I live is probably the lowest on the list, other than being on the largest body of fresh water in the continent. It'll be contaminated in no time, so no need to target us.

[golftdibrad1]

By the time its safe enough to travel your bunker offer wont be needed...because its safe enough to travel. But you are a gracious host to offer.

You will be ok but detroit might be a strategic target

Max is ok'ish id imagine because itd be a bad look to nuke such a population center with such little direct strategic military presence.

But if any of you live in Sandy eggo or near to Norfolk....

[ChrisoftheNorth]

By the time its safe enough to travel your bunker offer wont be needed...because its safe enough to travel. But you are a gracious host to offer.

You will be ok but detroit might be a strategic target

Max is ok'ish id imagine because itd be a bad look to nuke such a population center with such little direct strategic military presence.

But if any of you live in Sandy eggo or near to Norfolk....

Good point.

Detroit or Chicago would be our biggest risks. Neither do much for military, or even manufacturing anymore, so I imagine if they become targets, the world is done anyway.

[Johnny_P]

Glad they are doing fusion 15 min from my house down south and refineries are blowing up 15 min up north. What a place to be alive in

Flaring is far from blowing up. Flares are safety devices.

[razr390]

Just like the simulations

[golftdibrad1]

update on Helions efforts

[golftdibrad1]

this should surprise no one


"h/t Felix; The 2025 planned date to create a plasma has been set back for “months, even years”.


International nuclear fusion project may be delayed by years, its admits

Facility in France still far from being able to show feasibility of generating carbon-free energy despite recent breakthrough in US

[golftdibrad1]

AFP in Saint-Paul-Les-Durance
Sat 7 Jan 2023 05.35 AEDT

Iter’s previously stated goal was to create the plasma by 2025.
But that deadline will have to be postponed, Pietro Barabaschi – who in September became the project’s director general – told Agence France-Presse during a visit to the facility.
The date “wasn’t realistic in the first place”, even before two major problems surfaced, Barabaschi said.
One problem, he said, was wrong sizes for the joints of blocks to be welded together for the installation’s 19 metres by 11 metres (62ft by 36ft) chamber.
The second was traces of corrosion in a thermal shield designed to protect the outside world from the enormous heat created during nuclear fusion.
Fixing the problems “is not a question of weeks, but months, even years”, Barabaschi said."


https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/01/09/ ... -by-years/


To illustrate the scope of the problem, a personal story I have on this project.

We responded to an RFP from Oak Ridge National labs to do the piping stress and support design for just the roughing vacuum piping. Its one of three vacuum trains that is part of getting the reactor down to near perfect vacuum. This was being done internal to ORNL but they were behind schedule so got approval to get outside help or something.

Even for a nuclear qualified piping it was fairly straight forward.

We submitted our proposal in July 2022. It was supposedly URGENT, with an anticipated award date sometime in September and kickoff shortly thereafter.

As of now the project has still not been awarded to anyone.

[golftdibrad1]

always learning something new, history is rich with lessons:

https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/the ... ankee-rowe

[golftdibrad1]

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/06/03/ ... -and-more/

I believe on DFD 1.0 I had a really detailed post about the 'fraud' of LNT model and why it keeps people afraid of radiation. The above article is long but the cliffs are: The gov bureaucratic machine does not want to change because they would admit they are wrong and / or put themselves out of jobs.

[golftdibrad1]

https://www.powermag.com/nrc-accepts-ap ... on-permit/

I guess this is why all the big engineering firms are opening offices and hiring like mad in the area.

https://www.wate.com/news/kairo-power-t ... le-energy/

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. (WATE) – Kairos Power, a nuclear energy company, has received approval from the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to build a demonstration nuclear reactor named “Hermes” in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Kairos Power is a nuclear technology company that commercializes a clean, carbon-free, safe, and affordable energy source. They specialize in the fluoride salt-cooled, high-temperature reactor.


Courtesy of Kairos Power
This approval is a significant step towards making Kairos Power’s advanced nuclear technology, which promises to deliver clean, safe, and affordable energy, available to the public.

TVA collaboration bringing nuclear reactor to Oak Ridge business park
The NRC’s approval for the Hermes reactor came after a thorough review of the company’s application, completed before the scheduled time.

The NRC is also reviewing Kairos Power’s application to build a two-unit demonstration plant called “Hermes 2,” which will provide electricity to the grid and demonstrate the architecture of Kairos Power’s future commercial plants.

The Hermes series of reactors is expected to help Kairos Power reduce risks and achieve cost certainty for its advanced nuclear technology. Lessons learned from the project will be integrated into the company’s future commercial deployments planned for the early 2030s.

TVA retires Bull Run Fossil Plant in Claxton
Kairos Power has received funding from the Department of Energy to develop, construct, and commission the Hermes reactor. The project is being carried out in collaboration with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Idaho National Laboratory, Materion Corporation, and the Electric Power Research Institute.

On December 6, The United States Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm met with Tennessee Valley Authority leadership to welcome the Clinch River Nuclear Site to Oak Ridge. According to Secretary Granholm, the nuclear site can generate 200 gigawatts of nuclear power, which is roughly equivalent to the power output of 100 Hoover Dams.

Secretary of Energy visits Oak Ridge to discuss small modular reactors
Kairos Power has also agreed with TVA to provide engineering, operations, and licensing services for the Hermes reactor. This reactor and the Clinch River Nuclear site are part of the United States’ efforts to triple nuclear power by 2030.

For more information on the virtual house, visit kairospower.consultation.ai

old article describing more detail... as you can see they are already years behind...

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) will review Kairos Power’s construction permit application (CPA) for its Hermes non-power demonstration reactor, which the firm has proposed to build at the East Tennessee Technology Park Heritage Center site, in Oak Ridge, and begin operating by 2026.

The NRC formally accepted the CPA for review on Nov. 30, noting Kairos had submitted the first portion of the application, a preliminary safety analysis report (PSAR), on Sept. 29, and the remainder, comprising an environmental report, on Oct. 31. While the NRC’s acceptance of the CPA marks a formal “docketing” of its review, it stems from a lengthy process that involved extensive pre-application discussions and activities that began in March 2018. The NRC said this week that “barring unforeseen delays,” it expects to complete its environmental and safety reviews within a tight 21-month schedule, by September 2023.

As Kairos’s CPA enclosures show, the company had urged the NRC to complete its review and approve the Hermes construction permit by April 2023 so construction of safety-related structures, systems, and components could begin in mid-2023. Because the firm bagged a $303 million federal award under the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP) risk reduction pathway, it is targeting initial operations by mid-2026. “Given these objectives, the earliest start date for construction is expected April 2023; the earliest projected date for completion of construction is the latter half of 2025, and the latest projected date for completion is December 2026,” the company told the NRC.

The acceptance milestone is nonetheless a notable achievement for Oak Ridge–based Kairos Power, which was established in 2016. The Kairos Hermes demonstration will test a 50-MWth reactor based on the Kairos Power Fluoride Salt-Cooled High-Temperature Reactor (KP-FHR) design as part of a cost- and risk reduction–focused development pathway that ultimately envisions commercial deployment of a 140-MWe “KP-X” plant. The NRC refers to the Hermes test reactor as a “non-power” reactor, though Kairos in press materials calls it a “low-power” reactor.

A ‘Non-Power’ Test Pebble-Bed Reactor
The KP-FHR test reactor is essentially a graphite moderated, “randomly packed” pebble‐bed reactor with molten fluoride salt coolant (a chemically stable molten fluoride salt mixture of 2LiF:BeF2 [Flibe] enriched in Li‐7), operating at high temperature and near‐atmospheric pressure. The fuel in the KP-FHR is based on tri-structural ISOtropic (TRISO) particle fuel in pebble form with a carbonaceous‐matrix coated particle design. “The fuel kernel and some of the coatings on the particle fuel provide retention of fission products. TRISO particles are dispersed within the graphite matrix of fuel pebble’s fuel layer,” the company said.



The Kairos Power FHR (KP-FHR) is a novel advanced reactor technology that leverages TRISO fuel in pebble form combined with a low-pressure fluoride salt coolant. Courtesy: Kairos
“The KP‐FHR fuel pebbles are buoyant in reactor coolant under steady-state and postulated events.” The reactor coolant also provides retention of fission products that escape from any fuel defects. The design also includes a pebble handling and storage system (PHSS) that continuously inserts pebbles at the bottom of the reactor core and extracts them from the top of the reactor vessel during normal operations. Pebbles will be examined for burnup and damage, and are either returned to the vessel or directed to storage, Kairos said.

This May, the company garnered engineering, operations, and licensing backing from the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a federal corporate agency, under a cooperative development agreement for its demonstration at the East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP). The 2,200-acre ETTP site hosted a complex of federally owned facilities that enriched uranium for 40 years before the Department of Energy terminated its uranium enrichment operations. (The area has now begun a major environmental site cleanup and it seeks to convert the ETTP into a private industrial park called Heritage Center Industrial Park.)

In a statement on Tuesday, Mike Laufer, Kairos Power co-founder and CEO, highlighted the quick turnaround that led to the NRC’s acceptance of the CPA for review. “This licensing milestone represents a significant achievement, concluding a tremendous cross-functional effort by the Kairos Power team to complete the application just 18 months after the decision to build the Hermes reactor was made,” he said.

Since 2018, Kairos Power has submitted 11 topical reports “that have been approved or are under review and a number of technical reports, which will contribute to future applications,” the company noted. “Additionally, the lessons learned from Hermes will inform the licensing process for future reactors, consistent with Kairos Power’s rapid iterative development approach,” noted Peter Hastings, vice president of Regulatory Affairs & Quality with Kairos.

The NRC’s Second Advanced Nuclear Application
The NRC’s acceptance of review of Kairos’s application marks the second advanced nuclear reactor application in recent years. The first came in June 2020, when the NRC announced it had accepted for formal review a first-of-its-kind combined license application (COL) from Oklo Power to build and operate the company’s 1.5-MW Aurora fast microreactor at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) site in Idaho. The speed at which the NRC accepted the application that Oklo submitted in March 2020 is remarkable, especially because it was the first COL application submitted of any type since 2009.

The NRC said Kairos submitted its CPA pursuant to Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR) Part 50. NRC regulations typically fall within 10 CFR, explains the Nuclear Innovation Alliance (NIA), a think tank that works to enable and deploy advanced nuclear power, in a September 2021 technology primer. “All operating commercial reactors were licensed under 10 CFR Part 50, which is a historical two-step process involving a construction permit and an operating license as the plant approaches completion,” it said.

In the 1990s, the NRC approved a second pathway, 10 CFR Part 52, “which allowed an applicant to receive a combined license for construction and operation, with optional steps such as a reactor vendor applying for approval of a reactor design or builders applying for a site permit,” the group said. “The NRC staff approved the NuScale SMR design under Part 52, but the NRC had to determine which parts of its rules were applicable to the NuScale design.”

Separately, as directed by the 2018-enacted Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act (NEIMA), the NRC is developing 10 CFR Part 53. Part 53 is “intended to simplify the licensing of advanced reactors by setting safety performance standards as opposed to prescriptive rules and letting applicants demonstrate how they achieve the safety standards,” NIA said. “Part 53 is better suited for advanced reactors than the existing Part 50 or Part 52, which are prescriptive systems tailored to conventional light-water reactors.”

My thoughts? Any move forward is positive, but these pebbles have alot of the same intrinsic storage problems as rods do that leave alot of energy in a 'spent' pebble and are difficult to reprocess. It also limits the breeding potential, something we need to get our heads around as a species if we are to sustain our high energy way of life into the future 1000's of years.

Good things are the high temp and virtually near atmospheric operation of the reactor. This is a stepping stone to what they SHOULD be doing, which is dissolving the fucking fuel into the coolant.