I was at the airport when AA191 happened and it took me a long time to overcome it. When the UPS crash happened recently the first thing I told my wife is I bet the damn engine fell off - before we knew thats what happened. I still fly, but I’ll never get on a DC-10 or its derivatives. Sometimes fear can’t be reasoned with, but standing over the spent fuel pit looking at the lovely purple glow with the lights out is something to behold. Dose received 2mrem, about the same from a flight in an airplane.
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I suspect I’ve worked at the place you speak of. I agree. To me, some things should never be for profit and essential utilities falls in that category. I also think the self criticism and industry sharing that happened post TMI and even Fukushima are refreshing.
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Something to point out, that is not for profit, it’s Browns Ferry and is federal government corporation.
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I wasnt alive when the AA191 crash happened. But that UPS crash in Louisville really got to me. Since it was only about a mile away from my workplace. Its unbelievable to see that much damage from one airplane, especially seeing it in person instead of on a screen.
And yeah. I use the word shielding very lightly. Makes sense though when you consider the USSR was bankrupting itself trying to keep up with the US.
The Deep Fission project uses geothermal to regulate heat instead of relying on crazy amounts of coolant or water. Geothermal energy is interesting but it relies on picking those very specific areas with high thermal activity if you want it to be efficent and financially viable. But you right, the limitation is mostly in finding an area with low seismic activity.
As for the power companies, IOUs are something like 70 percent of the market. But the way that I look at it, they are so heavily regulated, that they might as well be government run.
I have a friend who retired from the power industry as an engineer and he has stories. Not nuclear so not quite the same but still, lots of responsibility. Anyway, the way they would hunt steam leaks was with bulk buys of regular brooms. They’d go exploring the myriad pipes with brooms held out in front of them as they walked the pipes. When bristles would get cut and go flying, they found a leak.
That was their familiarity and day to day.
I’m sure they are spotless, freshly painted, and have all their marking tapes in place. But none of that was involved in the two major accidents the world has seen. Can’t defend the actions at Chernobyl. They were trying to operate way outside the design/procedures as they kind of spitballed their “safety” test. But at Fukushima it was design and siting issues that led to the basement flooding where all their electrical stuff was located.
I know there are people being careful to follow the rules but that can’t overcome built-in issues.
And as another aside - remember all the flooding there was in the midwest in 2011? There were two nuclear power plants of similar design as Fukushima that were inches from having their flood protection overtopped. One berm at one plant did give way but there was concern for their electricals that were also located below ground. There was water all around those plants which would have made any efforts to mitigate water that much more difficult. There was a possibility for two separate events much like Fukushima that were both located right in the heart of the country where contamination would have been blown northeast into highly populated areas.
All out of the control of operators no matter how professional and careful they may be.
We’ve been lucky in this country. Sure, professionalism and preparation have helped and maybe even saved our butts, but we came close to our own disasters and it wouldn’t have taken all that much to make them so.
Just my opinion but the risks come from everywhere. Some are known and some are not. With consequences so high when things go wrong, we are doing a terrible job at minimizing those risks and leave too much to chance.
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@user_2463535618 Really? There is a country called America? I knew there were 2 continents comprised of several countries but didn’t know there was an actual country… 
Or maybe you meant that no matter what country they happened in it wasn’t named America? Ok, just kidding around a bit, I think I know what you meant.
My experience is that no matter how safe & sane something is once you get people involved things can go south pretty badly. Louis Slotin showing off with his beryllium sphere and screwdriver (wikipedia really glossed that over from other accounts I’ve read) and Harry Daghilian are 2 that come to mind from the nuclear side. I’m guessing that every energy source probably have their own Darwin awardies.
If this technology pans out you will see other companies doing their own versions. I say if because in the 1990’s I was looking at the developing Fuel Cell technology. There were some already in place powering buisnesses and a large refrigerator size unit that used propane across a catalyst to generate 5KW + was in the works. Then things just sort of disapeared.
There seems to be a lot of interest in micro reactors right now, could be a fad.
If they can just get the whole fission vs fusion thing figured out….
Mastercard was using natural gas fuel cells to run their headquarters with grid power as the backup. In New Mexico there is a data center going in that is planning to generate their power from natural gas fuel cells. I was in San Diego a few years ago and saw a fuel cell installation at the Navy base on a dock in a kind of shipping container building and those same kinds of fuel cells are also being used in disaster relief to get power back on in remote locations as long as they can tank in fuel.
They’ve really kind of fallen off the radar just because they are more routine now and much lower cost than hydrogen fuel cells. The stationary fuel cells are much cheaper and operate differently than hydrogen fuel cells. Hydrogen cells are a more difficult nut to crack for a number of reasons. They work better for portable applications but the catalysts are very expensive, there’s corrosion issues, and a number of tough engineering problems involved but my information is also possibly dated. Haven’t kept up with recent research though.
Thanks for the update. The units I was looking at were being developed home units but I can imagine they had some of the logistics issues as other alternatives. No Propane/LNG in place vs no consistant wind vs living in a shaded/cloudy area, etc.
Edit or they may have decided to focus on disaster relief and such as you mention.
Hey now, I was just replying to the name he gave! All good though.
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There’s a number of different fuel cell processes but two main ones are low temperature (hydrogen) fuel cells and high temperature fuel cells that can run off natural gas, propane, and such directly.
The low temperature fuel cells were what was being looked at for transportation uses because they are quick response and fit the driving energy profile much better. The high temperature cells are used more for more steady state types of power. I don’t know the details but they at least used to not like fast load changes and were big and heavy.
The low temperature cells use a lot of platinum (or at least used to - lots of research into using less) but last I heard there wasn’t enough platinum in the world to equip all cars with them. Plus the main route to making hydrogen is by reacting natural gas so not much benefit besides the efficiency of fuel cell electricity.
Toyota was campaigning a fuel cell-powered Highlander though and I got a chance to drive it. It was very cool and they had it engineered all the way to maintenance stickers on the bits under the hood. It was ready to go into production had they decided to sell them. Drove great with all the acceleration you see in EVs. But had they gone on sale, owners (might have only been leased) would own everything but the fuel cell because it carried at that time about $100k worth of platinum in it.
It would have been an attractive target for precious metal thieves. If you think a catalytic converter is a theft target, put something worth 50 times that or so on wheels and see how it goes. 