European Salon de News, Discussion et Klatsch - 11 September | 131 comments (131 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: emergency cleanup (none / 0)

Wasn't there evidence that casting the metalwork needed for reactors was a significant bottle neck? You'd need a couple of years to build the systems required to build a lot of reactors, at least. Or you'd end up using more dangerous reactors.

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Wed Sep 12th, 2012 at 06:36:46 AM EST
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Re: emergency cleanup (none / 1)

Bloomberg: Samurai-Sword Maker's Reactor Monopoly May Cool Nuclear Revival (March 12, 2008)

From a windswept corner of Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island, Japan Steel Works Ltd. controls the fate of the global nuclear-energy renaissance.
There stands the only plant in the world, a survivor of Allied bombing in World War II, capable of producing the central part of a nuclear reactor's containment vessel in a single piece, reducing the risk of a radiation leak.
Utilities that won't need the equipment for years are making $100 million down payments now on components Japan Steel makes from 600-ton ingots. Each year the Tokyo-based company can turn out just four of the steel forgings that contain the radioactivity in a nuclear reactor. Even after it doubles capacity in the next two years, there won't be enough production to meet building plans.

Much water under the river since early 2008...

If you are not convinced, try it on someone who has not been entirely debauched by economics. — Piero Sraffa

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Sep 12th, 2012 at 06:42:19 AM EST
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Re: emergency cleanup (none / 0)

Has there been an expansion of capacity?

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Wed Sep 12th, 2012 at 06:46:22 AM EST
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Re: emergency cleanup (none / 0)

In the middle of a depression?

If you are not convinced, try it on someone who has not been entirely debauched by economics. — Piero Sraffa

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Sep 12th, 2012 at 07:05:06 AM EST
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Re: emergency cleanup (4.00 / 4)

There are but a very few forges in the world which can make the unwelded containment vessels, i think. Current capacity was a half dozen a year, again, off the top of my head.

China and South Korea could indeed build more forges and ramp up the supply chain within five years. Then we'd be back to the original blindness that the answer is staring us in the face, but we refuse to see it.

A healthy civilization would want its energy directly from the sun, distributed throughout society, period. Not with 400 million years of poison added on, not with ersatz suns created by a military-technical elite, not with the danger of a "whoops" hanging around for a few thousand years.

But what do eye know?

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

by Crazy Horse on Wed Sep 12th, 2012 at 06:49:50 AM EST
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Re: emergency cleanup (none / 0)

So that's a build time of five years plus a few years for a reactor, and producing enough of them to be useful could take twenty years? (Leaving aside the whole question of whether we should be building them at all.)

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Wed Sep 12th, 2012 at 07:00:19 AM EST
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Re: emergency cleanup (none / 0)

And by then we'll have clean fusion anyway ...

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Wed Sep 12th, 2012 at 07:00:48 AM EST
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Re: emergency cleanup (none / 1)

What, in 50 years' time?

If you are not convinced, try it on someone who has not been entirely debauched by economics. — Piero Sraffa

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Sep 12th, 2012 at 07:04:16 AM EST
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Re: emergency cleanup (none / 0)

No, that was 30 years ago.

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Wed Sep 12th, 2012 at 07:32:33 AM EST
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Re: emergency cleanup (none / 0)

Yeah, now it's more like 60 to 80.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue
- Queen Elizabeth II}