From: stephen@sprunk.org

On 13-Apr-14 12:35, Philip Nasadowski wrote:
> In article ,
>  hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>> In the 1950s there were proposals to power a train via a nuclear reactor.
>
> A lot of French trains are powered by nuclear reactors - they have a
> high % of electrification, and get 78% of their power from nukes.  The
> Germans of course claim this can't possibly work, but like a lot of
> things that can't possibly work, it does anyway, and it works very well.

Nukes have high fixed costs and low variable costs, so you want to run
them at full power 24x7.  Demand is variable, though, so you need either
non-nuke peaking plants to vary the total output or pumped storage to
shift off-peak generation to meet peak demand.

> THere are currently 5 nuclear plants under construction in the US, which
> is at least a start.  They are all Westinghouse plants - 4 AP1000 and
> one 4 loop.  The latter is watts bar 2, which might be completed this
> year or next.  An interesting containment on that one...

Interesting or "interesting"?

> GE is gone from the nuclear industry, and has netted virtually no orders
> for the ESBWR, even though it was really a neat design (only a few
> pumps, none safety related).

Passive designs, especially in safety systems, are a great advance; I
don't know the various current designs well enough to understand why
AP1000 is doing better than ESBWR commercially, but at a conceptual
level I much prefer PWR over BWR.

S

--
Stephen Sprunk         "God does not play dice."  --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723         "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS        dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking

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