Currents = Power

[3788sam]

Little info on some PUD research - Currents at Deceptions at pretty impressive!

http://nwic-research.org/npsec/html/human/renew/tidal.htm

[SomeSailor]

Nuclear power I'm tellin' ya...

Very straightforward and clean.

[3788sam]

I agree 100%!
I have this discussion about nuke plants all the time with some of my Burenstock(sp) wearing friends!

[SomeSailor]

And ya wanna see why we pay so much more for OUR OWN hydroelectric energy... and more for a gallon of gas than California or the Eastern US?

http://www.nei.org/documents/U.S._Nuclear_Plants_Country-Wide_Map.jpg

[Seapuppy]

I agree with nuclear power being the way to go...however there are problems between a PVR reactor and a BWR system.......(PVR= pressure vessel reactor ...BWR= boiling water reactor)....
pvr's like the ones in a naval submarine are very powerful and efficient systems...they can be refuelled quickly and easily and they don't get crapped up like a BWR system....BWR's don't have the safety systems the a pvr has ...Adm. Rickover was a genious in the design of a PVR when he ordered that they fail in the closed position..meaning if something broke..the system would shut down...subsequently ..there has never been a US nuclear vessel lost to a nuclear accident..The soviets on the other hand have glow in the dark sailors...they have improved over the yrs ..but their safety records show a different story.....
BWR's like 3 mile island aren't as safe and can fail very easily....they also have a very poor record and when they need to be refuelled require extraordinary clean up methods.....the spent rods and other radio active material is difficult to dispose of and is dangerous to life forms.....I would vote for a pcr system...but only if it had the safety systems of naval nuclear systems.......just my 2 cells firing.....

[SomeSailor]

Hmmm...

Nuclear Regulatory Commision feels they have their own problems :argh

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/prv.html

[Seapuppy]

I'm not going to go into the construction of a naval nuclear reactor....suffice it to say that although irradiated imbrittlement is a problem...the nuclear reactors on board ship have been safe due to safeguards and material used in construction.... other info about the naval reactors are classified.....I did go to the nuclear school at mare island in 1980 and worked in 2340 test there for the first yr...not that I'm claiming to be an expert....but I do remember a little bit about it and rickover was a nut on the safety of the plant....civilian reactor plants don't have the safeguards built into their plants that ships and subs do.....hense chernoble and 3 mile island......
I understand what the NRC is talking about...Bremerton did surveys on some nuke boats for conversion of boomers to seal platforms and multi mission platforms and found up near the war head of a missile tube was a little bit of imbrittlement neutron penetration....but not enough to be of concern and the subs are being cleared for conversion......(a boeing engineer that got laid off before me got hired as a contractor there and we had a blast talking about that stuff, he was amazed at the sub and I gave him the nickel tour)....

[SomeSailor]

All I'm saying is that for an energy source that is as clean and abundent, we are doing pretty poorly at looking at our other options.

Here are my thoughts on it. If the middle east wants to strangle the world with it's remaining oil, we should be looking at other energy resources. As a nuclear submarine or ship is taken offline, its reactor should have been been placed in a conversion que of sorts. Let some of these smaller reactors serve their remaining years as auxillary power centers for cities before scrapping them. They could provide billions of dollars of clean power. And since they are assets that are paid for... it should be free to the grid that agrees to set it up.

If you look on the map I posted you'll see that there is a huge disparity in where our reactors are located, and who gets their benefit. There's a LOT of land in Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, and the Dakotas that could generate HUGE income for those states and get America off the dependency for foriegn oil once and for all.

[Seapuppy]

OOOOOH!!!..well..you didn't say that and unfortunate for the US that we do scrap these units instead of making them a lower powered unit and power a city with a couple until thier usable life span is over...but most of the time when they are scrapped...the really need to be scrapped...plus they are so crapped up with radiation that it isn't funny ....

[SomeSailor]

Neah... look at all the reactors that have gone through PSNS's SSRP Program alone.

PSNS Ships / Submarine Recycling Program (http://www.answers.com/topic/ship-submarine-recycling-program)



There is a pack of 688 boats just sitting there at the piers... awaiting the torch. :(

I watched them cut up several CGNs and a couple of subs while were in the yards. It's amazing how little of that boat is actually the the reactor vessel. I say run them at low power until they stop producing and and THEN store them.

[Seapuppy]

yeah....it saddens me to see such wonderful machines get decom'd and cut up for glow in the dark razor blades........ :cry:
I never got to work on a 688...nice boats ..got to go on board a few ..but never worked on them.......but still limited compared to the 21 boats and the 594/637 classes...but in reality they all had limitations to some point or another....the hard part about taking a naval rc and making it land based is that even though they are capable of running at low power levels...getting the feds to ok such a project would be damned near impossible to say the least.....in otherwords...fine in theory...tough in practice........so it's probably cheaper to dispose of them rather than to make good use of them...

[3788sam]

Kind of on the same subject . Did anyone catch the show on the History channel last week about how the military stores, referbs, and scraps.

Covered mainly the AF and Navy.

[SomeSailor]

...so it's probably cheaper to dispose of them rather than to make good use of them...

Cheaper is relative when talking about military hardware. They don't even reuse the fuel. We're currently buying that from Russian stockpiles. Savanah River is almost completely dedicated to desaturating fuel and selling it to the rest of the world. I say we use it here.

Running a reactor ashore wouldn't be any more difficult or dangerous that at sea. They have several prototypes running east of here. I have friends who've gotten out of the Navy and teach over there now.

Those 688s are like 20 years away from needing fuel too. And even then they could be extended out to over 40 years in total. Its such a waste. But it all comes down to economic feasibility and politics.

People have NO idea how many reactors are laying around here in the Northwest. They had have a dozen in lay-down at any time when I was over there... and dozens more awaiting the axe. :)

[Seapuppy]

Sam...yeah..I saw that one on history channel....pretty cool show....

[Patriot]

"Environmental activistis" have been demanding more development of wind power generation plants for decades. I just heard that one of the big windmill farms in California is being forced by these same activists to curtail operation because the windmills are killing eagles!

[3788sam]

What a shame :(
I was living in Laguna CA when the canyon went up in flames, doing billions of dollars in damage!
Found out later that they haven't done a controlled burns to reduce the under brush in years do the activists protecting the spotted owls.

After the fires you would see a bunch of bumper stickers saying "spotted owls taste like chicken" :lol: