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Richard Feynman tells a story about this in Surely You're Joking.
At the Manhattan Project, an engineer was proudly showing Feynman a diagram detailing the enrichment system. There were all sorts of redundant systems so not too much U235 would collect in one place no matter what failed.
But Feynman didn't know what one of the diagram symbols meant. He figured it'd soon be clear from context, but the explanation went on and on and he still didn't get it. Not knowing the symbol made the whole explanation meaningless.
After half an hour he was desperate. He didn't want to admit he'd wasted half an hour of the guy's time. Hoping to find out what the damn thing was, he pointed at one of the symbols and said "what if this one fails?"
The guy said well, if this fails then that does this and over here that happens, and Feynman was getting a sinking feeling that he was going to have to fess up, when suddenly the guy opened his mouth like a fish and said "you're absolutely right sir!" and scurried off.
Feynman never did find out what the symbol meant.
Assuming you're a high school student, I'd start with Nuclear Energy in the 21st Century and get more technical once you've finished that.
> The Fukushima Unit 2 (1F2) accident has been deeply analyzed during the last years [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10] because there were several unexpected events during the transient. Despite of radioactive materials released from the 1F2 and indication of core damage, no hydrogen explosion occurred, and there are many uncertainties about the core state. The Reactor Core Isolation Cooling (RCIC) system kept the reactor cooled for almost three days although it was initially designed to operate for approximately four hours.
https://www.amazon.ca/Nuclear-Power-Canada-Beyond-Roger/dp/189711351X
Edit: this is the one linked by candu_attitude elsewhere. Redundant
> 1) saturate the renewable capacity (i.e. build as many renewables as can adequately supply needs before their variable nature would lead to brownouts.)
I hate to tell you this, but in some areas we are already there. Pick this up and give it a read, you'll be glad you did (I'm working with the author to correct errata):
https://www.amazon.com/Shorting-Grid-Hidden-Fragility-Electric-ebook/dp/B08KZ51SDP
> 2) backfill conventional power with nuclear power until there are no conventional plants left running.
As Angwin writes in "Shorting the Grid", the unreliable "renewables" require 1.14 MW of fast-ramping backup for each MW of unreliable power (NBER study). You can't follow net load that fast with nuclear plants, you need simple-cycle gas turbines. To put it bluntly, "renewables" are a guarantee to natural gas producers that they'll have a market. Further, it's a much bigger market than is justified. If we ran combined-cycle gas plants and no renewables, most parts of the USA would burn LESS gas than using simple-cycle plants plus wind and PV. It would be cheaper overall, too, because of lack of duplication, less need for transmission lines to remote wind farms, etc.
Mobile phone cameras are advanced enough to detect not just light, but higher energy gamma rays. This, combined with the proper app, can turn a smart phone into a proportional gamma counter. It then converts the count and incoming gamma wavelengths into dose rate.
Not sure on the price question. There are a huge range of standalone dosimeters out there. Some are cheap, some are expensive. I would guess it comes down to reliability and range of function.
Seeing that you are a chemical engineer interested in the nuclear field, you might be interested in the molten salt reactor designs. These Gen IV reactors have generally languished as there are many chemical related components in it, in a field dominated by physicists. You might be interested in Dr Stephen A Boyd who has a Ph.D in chemistry and is a proponent of MSR. Link is one of his recent videos in this field.
> We just need to stop fighting each other and build. > > Stop fighting renewables. > > Stop fighting nuclear.
The problem is that "renewables" fight everything else, both in grid physics and in politics. Pick this up for a run-down on the details:
https://www.amazon.com/Shorting-Grid-Hidden-Fragility-Electric-ebook/dp/B08KZ51SDP
Basically, absent some major advances in technologies like storage, renewables force the use of 1.14 MW of fast-ramping gas turbines for every MW of capacity. This doesn't play nice with anything else, nuclear included.
Literally anything that's potassium chloride instead of sodium chloride. Potassium chloride has natural K-40 so you'll get a beta response from the container, usually about twice background. NuSalt is common and usually only costs a dollar or two.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000H1558E/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_fab_eSMGFbCKN0FN8
Not sure if this is what you're after, but I found it to be quite an interesting book.
>nobody is suggesting that nuclear is simple and cheap
That is exactly what you are suggesting. When someone follows a statement by "however", then you can pretty much disregard the original statement. You are just trying to seem reasonable so you don't yeeted out the Overton Window.
Simple? Depends on what you compare it to, an iPhone? an airplane? Nuclear might be a bit more sophisticated than "Hot Rock, Make Steam" but not as much as people assume.
Cheap, yes, Hargraves may be specifically referring to Thorium but almost everything he says also applies to Uranium and is even a source used by Jack Devanney's book that you cited.
Unbuffered energy is the instantaneous output of the capture devices. Buffered energy incorporates some kind of storage in order to smooth the net output and provide a degree of on-demand response.
The buffering systems generate no energy and require energy both to build and to run, so the EROEI of buffered "renewables" is considerably lower than just the wind and solar themselves.
Energy Return On Investment. Ie, how much energy out for how much energy in. Buffered vs Unbuffered is likely referring to hydrostorage or battery storage of energy necessary to run a reliable grid off that power source, which is why buffered vs unbuffered is identical for coal, but intermittant sources lose a lot of ROI because the batteries necessary take a lot of mining and manufacturing to make and have short functional lives.
There was a bunch of work on the concept in the 50s and 60s. There was even a small test reactor, though its temperature wasn't as high as you'd think.
What you want to search for is "gas core reactor" in the relevant journal collections, much of it was published in aerospace rather than nuclear journals.
Also worth noting the highest temperature reactors (>2000K) actually built all used solid fuel. Uranium alloys can have very high melting temperatures, and this was exploited to make rocket engines (though no such projects have ever been finished). Existing systems all used highly enriched fuel which is a nonstarter, but NASA has reopened NTR research starting with looking for alloys that will work at lower enrichment levels, which would potentially be economical.
Radioactive wastewater leaked at Neckarwestheim nuclear power plant
Neckarwestheim Radioactive water has leaked at the Neckarwestheim nuclear power plant. According to the Ministry of the Environment on Wednesday, neither people nor the environment were affected.
The GKN II nuclear power plant is to remain on the grid until the end of 2022. EnBW has already submitted the first dismantling application.
According to international criteria, this is a reportable incident of minor safety significance. The leak was discovered during a routine inspection in a separate room last Wednesday. Residue had been found on the housing cover of a fitting and on the floor.
Minor contamination
The affected section processes radioactively contaminated wastewater and is not part of the nuclear power plant's safety system. Although the system section was in operation at the time the finding was made, no more leakage of liquid medium was observed. The valve was replaced. The cause should be investigated. The affected room, which is marked as a restricted area, was very slightly contaminated, the press release from the Environment Ministry said.
Unit II in Neckarwestheim is the last nuclear reactor in Baden-Württemberg still producing electricity. It is scheduled to be shut down by the end of 2022 at the latest.
Translated with www.DeepL.com from www.stimme.de
For a more historical read, I would reccomend "Proving the Principle" by Stacy. It is about the history of the Idaho National Lab since WWII. (Technically the book only goes up to when it was the Idaho National Engineering and Environment Lab). A huge majority of the US's test reactors where at INL (EBR-I, MTR, ETR, EBR-II, BORAX, TREAT, ZPPR, ATR, NRF prototypes, etc).
IIRC a huge problem with calling the evacuation orders is that they had limited wind models that could only handle ~50 miles from the site, and beyond that plume predictions were kind of guess work based on usual winds. So with this limited info the regulator called for overly conservative evacuations. Don't quote me on this it was a while back. It was this book
The article says it was during the Fifties & Sixties, but it was really more the Sixties & Seventies.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/book-incited-worldwide-fear-overpopulation-180967499/
https://www.amazon.com/Earth-Crowded-Spaceship-Isaac-Asimov/dp/B000NUWLYK
It's time to quote Greta back at Greta:
> "Our main enemy now is physics. And we can not make ‘deals’ with physics.”
Sadly, with her kowtowing to the Green party line Greta has given legs to this meme.
> A discussion I found suggested that the structure of the energy supply bidding market in Illinois was advantageous to natural gas plants over nuclear plants because the CCGT plants were easier to turn on and off, whereas the nuclear plant would continue to produce power whether or not it won the bid.
This is pretty much the problem all over. The problem is that subsidies for "renewables" (which use a lot of non-renewable resources in their manufacture) allow them to sell into the wholesale market at negative prices. Natural gas plants can collect payments for capacity while generating no energy, waiting for prices to rise high enough to justify feeding them fuel... and don't pay for their carbon emissions either.
Nuclear power gets the short end of the stick. It gets no credit for being carbon-free and has to generate most of its revenue from sales of energy (which can be priced negative) rather than capacity. Meredith Angwin goes into detail on the perverse incentives in "Shorting the Grid", which I recommend for its details on policy (ignore the errors in grid physics, Angwin is not an engineer). I also recommend "A Question Of Power" which delves into many related but different issues.
It's kept in a non critical mass configuration with control rods and neutron absorbers such as boron. Most reactor fuel is a relatively low concentration of u235 to u238.
A lot of danger comes from the enrichement process, which has been a source of what are known as "criticality" accidents. James Mahaffey has an excellent book about pretty muc ever nuclear and radiological accident in recorded history, good primer to start with anyway.
https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Accidents-Meltdowns-Disasters-Mountains/dp/1605986801
Also, a wikipedia read of "Criticality accident" would give ya some more info than i could sitting here typing atcha.
> We need abundant, affordable, on-demand energy that is ALSO clean and energy-dense.With large-scale plans for VRE grids, we are literally doing the opposite of what is required.
You're talking to the guy who gave the author of Shorting the Grid some highly technical feedback, and has volunteered to do the same for her next book.
> Batteries are only necessary as a THING because the SOURCE we are choosing does not meet our needs.
You're talking to the guy who has been calling wind and solar "unfit for purpose" for years now.
> We are creating a problem that requires more material to solve to get the clean energy we need, when we should just...build clean power to begin with?
Yes, but there are some people who just don't get that (e.g. Germany) and are pig-headed enough that they'll have to fail at it before they try anything different.
> It makes no sense.
Because engineers aren't the ones making policy, or running the environmental lobbies.
It looks like the episodes are on YouTube:
Amazon also sells it:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Drive-Nuclear-Reactor-Springer-Praxis/dp/3030338754 Though I can't claim to have read this yet, I know the author and he's very good at communicating the physics of it. The AGRs aren't going to be around much longer so I'd focus on PWR if I were you.
It's a bit oversimplified, I made it when I was 15, but it's arted and soundtracked by yours truly. That's an electronic version Danse Macabre you're hearing in the background.
Here's the link!
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.UpsilonStudios.Nucleogenesis
If you think that a legislator who hired and employed Gregory Jaczko—an admitted nuclear saboteur—is giving nuclear a fair shot, then may I suggest you're being insufficiently cynical.
Similarly, if you think a politician is being fair to nuclear simply because they say they are, then you are being credulous.
Finally, if you believe that Sen Markey is going to do more to reduce carbon emissions that Joe Kennedy, I welcome you to show me the evidence.
Amazon $6 used
https://www.amazon.com/Canadas-Early-Nuclear-Policy-Character/dp/0773520775
​
Are you familiar with Canada's nuclear policy? It is rather unique. They decided to embrace nuclear energy, but not nuclear weapons. Hence they developed the CANDU reactor which does not need enrichment.
This is the health physics text I used in college its decent enough and should be approachable by someone with an engineering background and a basic grasp of radiation. It's mostly concerned with the the math used when dealing with radiation, but it does have some good high level discussion of detection/health effects.
What sort of information are you looking for about the field? Seems like the specific focus you want to search for is "health physics".
This is the book I read. The author said he is a nuclear engineer. He sited a lot of good sources in the book, but I could be misremembering this part of course. I think the book said that the scientists didn't realise the fission would play a contributing roll...
I have to say I think it's probably true because the fission fragments produced from the U28 fissions were much more toxic than from U25. The fallout involved was so bad it forced a shutdown of the world's largest fish market in Japan seriously hurting their economy and people. So I feel like if the scientists knew the U28 fission reaction would be that way they wouldn't have done it... plus they didn't intend to completely destroy the island.... and they definitely knew the energy from fusion so the only way their calculations would have been so off and the explosion magnitude was so large and unknown is because they didn't know the U28 would fission... plus the U28 had significant contribution of energy or they would have done it over the ocean so they didn't erase the island...
Just my thoughts.
It's not entry level, but after you get your feet wet I'd recommend this.
After Fukushima: What We Now Know: A History of Nuclear Power and Radiation https://www.amazon.com/dp/1534946306/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_AGezCb49DE1V7
Not only can you legaly posses it, but thanks to the wonders of the internet you can easily purchase it on Amazon for about $40 USD. As others have pointed out, naturally occurring Uranium ore, and DU are legal without too much restriction. But for Special Nuclear Material (Enriched U-235, Pu-239, other isotopes capable of a critical reaction) you would need a NRC License (in the US).
The other comments are really focusing on Reactor theory texts. While these are very good texts, a more general discussion of nuclear engineering is more appropriate for pre-university reading IMHO. The introductory nuclear engineering class at my university uses:
Fundamentals of Nuclear Science and Engineering by Shultis & Faw http://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Nuclear-Science-Engineering-Edition/dp/1420051350
I found this to be a very easy read and think that this book covers a much wider range of nuclear engineering technologies than the other texts that have been referenced. I also highly recommend another text by the same authors for radiation shielding.
Good luck!