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TRISO nuclear fuels are called "TRI-SO" for the tristructural- isotropic poppy-seed size micro-particles of nuclear fuels (uranium, thorium, plutonium) that make up their bulk. This multi-coating containment of the nuclear fuel particles with layers of silicon carbide and pyrolytic carbon is necessary to keep the fission waste product gas, xenon-135, which can stop the reactor, from getting loose in the reactor. Additional containment also means additional safety.
TRISO fuels can withstand temperatures as high as 3,600°F but TRISO nuclear fuel
heated reactors typically “cruise” at 1,700°F and a natural physics phenomenon
called Doppler-broadening will keep the reactors from ever getting hotter than
about 2,700°F, leaving an almost 1,000°F safety margin.
Technically Speaking
The famous thermodynamic idiot Amory Lovins advocates quitting by thinking in "Negawatts" - a great idea if you don't think about the consequences. Turning off, rather than cleaning up, the engines that power the world humans must have to survive is the path of suicide for both modern nations and the world itself in the face of ever-intensifying Global Warming.
Technically Speaking Section Index:
The Hard Truth about Energy
--- You can't win, you can't break even, and
you can't quit the game.
Cars, Trucks, Airplanes, and
Trains
---
Where their energy goes.
The diminishing
returns of increasing efficiency.
--- Spending a lot more to get a little more.
Learn More About Nuclear
Power Quickly. ---
The Energy market is a market where value is expressed in units of HEAT. So, thermal is what it's all about.
A fact or "Law" of thermodynamics: You cannot get all the ENERGY OUT IN WORK that you put in IN HEAT.
Success is defined by: (1) how much you get out for how much you put in and (2) how little damage the process does to the environment.
In the case of automobile engines, jet engines, electric power plants, etc., the Second Law applies. This is because the engine's exhaust gasses are still hot (ideally, exhaust gasses should be at room temperature) as they leave the engine and, since this heat is dumped into the environment around the engine as part of the engine's exhaust, it's just plain lost.
The second “law" of thermodynamics allows us to capture as mechanical energy only about 1/3 of the heat energy consumed by any heat engine (automobile, jet, power plant, etc.) we build.
About 2/3 is usually wasted. "Lost" is the word used in the chart about U.S. energy below. To make matters even worse, heat engines that run at variable speeds, such as automobile engines, rarely achieve even 1/3 efficiency since they are rarely running at their most efficient speed. The more gears in a car's transmission, the better. Running only when needed and, at a more constant speed when running, gives hybrid automobile engine systems their big advantage in city driving. Power plants and jet engines usually run at constant speeds.
Water is a wonderful way to turn heat energy into mechanical energy because when you turn water into steam, it expands its volume 1,600 times. If steam is not allowed to expand in volume, its pressure will go up drastically. That's where all that piston-pushin power in a steam locomotive comes from.
This means
we will always need a lot of
heat to drive the engines that power our society.
In other words, the power plant has to burn three lumps of coal to make one lump of heat in your toaster.
Hard Facts:
1. It is impossible to capture and
contain all the dangerous polluting chemicals of combustion.
2. It is easy to contain all the
dangerous materials from a nuclear reactor.
Nuclear heat is the only kind of heat we can safely use forever.
A fact of physics: No one, including the government, will ever get the Second "law" of thermodynamics repealed.
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Cars, Trucks, Airplanes, and Trains:
Example: For a Lycoming airplane piston-engine at steady cruse. The limiting case is described by the Carnot cycle: (Gasoline's Burn Temperature minus Engine's Exhaust Temperature) divided by the Gasoline's Burn Temperature - all in absolute degrees. Thus the engine's efficiency = (2,660 - 1,800)/2,660 = 0.32 or, roughly, 1/3.
The bigger the difference between burn and exhaust temperatures, the more efficient the heat engine.
[All in degrees Rankine which equal Degrees F + 460.]
Eventually you will come to C P Snow's "Last Law of Thermodynamics": You can't win, you can't break even, and you can't get out of the game.
Thermodynamics is the study of
the inter-relation between heat, work and internal energy of a system.
The British scientist and author C.P. Snow had an excellent way of remembering
the three laws:
1. You cannot win (that is, you cannot get something for nothing, because matter
and energy are conserved).
2. You cannot break even (you cannot return to the same energy state, because
there is always an increase in disorder; entropy always increases).
3. You cannot get out of the game (because absolute zero is unattainable).
http://www.SecondLaw.com
Light-hearted exploration into the implications of the second law of
thermodynamics. Or, "Why nothing lasts forever".
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The diminishing returns of increasing efficiency.
The European "Liters per 100 Kilometers" is a more honest way to state an automobile's efficiency than "Miles per Gallon" since "Miles per Gallon", while giving you bigger and bigger numbers, doesn't make clear the fact you're in an area of diminishing returns where the expense of getting that better mileage becomes ever more costly while the value of those additional miles per gallon is worth less and less. As you can tell from the chart, "Liters per 100 Kilometers" changes very little at the efficient end of the fuel consumption curve and drastically at the bad end. It's just plain stupid to be at the bad end.
99 % of our cars are somewhere on that chart's curve. In the long run, especially if you're leasing or making payments on a car, your biggest automobile expense is depreciation, not gasoline, even when gasoline costs $3.00+ per gallon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_automobiles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake_specific_fuel_consumption
Your car is much more than just a car. It's your personal freedom tool that lets you choose between lifestyles, activities, and who you live, pray and drink with. Never before in the history of mankind has the average person had so much "everyday freedom" and nuclear oil is the environmentally-friendly way to make sure freedom of choice remains available in the future so your children and grandchildren can prosper and enjoy lifestyles of their own choosing while often ignoring your advice during their early years. Loosing freedom of mobility diminishes your life options substantially.
Nature is not efficient, but rather, effective.
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Learn More About Nuclear Power Quickly. Selected Single Page Briefings: Top
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_energy Nuclear energy's roots. Where it all starts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power Nuclear Power Plants
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enriched_uranium Uranium Enrichment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fuel_cycle The nuclear fuel cycle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor Making all the nuclear fuel we can use forever.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste All the different kinds of radioactive waste
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_nuclear_fuel Spent Nuclear Fuel or "Nuclear Waste"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing Spent nuclear fuel (nuclear "waste") recycling