PM-1 Nuclear Power Plant - the radar-powering microreactor in Wyoming from 1962
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- čas přidán 28. 07. 2024
- This is a historical US Atomic Energy Commission video about the 1 MWe PM-1 microreactor that powered a radar station near Sundance, WY in the 1960s. See: whatisnuclear.com/news/2023-0...
Catalog entry: "A filmed story of the PM-1 nuclear power plant (a pressurized water system), a joint project of the USAEC and the U. S. Air Force, which supplies the power for the radar and space heating of a remote Air Defense Command radar station in Wyoming. The film breaks down the types and contents of 16 air transportable packages, a total weight of about 30,000 pounds: reactor, steam generator, waste tank, heat-transfer apparatus, control room, turbogenerator, etc. Details are given on major components and the design and operation of the system by information on: 741 nuclear fuel tubes in 7 fuel bundles, the "flow" of primary water, the secondary water, details on the makeup of the fuel element tubes, criticality testing, nature of the control rods, tests to determine heat transfer and flow characteristics. The film recounts the airlift of the packages, erection and assembly of the power plant, the work to achieve criticality, and the varied safety controls. "
Courtesy of The National Archives, NAID 88220
00:00 Intro
02:30 Package (module) descriptions
03:04 Primary system modules
03:23 Secondary system modules
03:41 Turbine/generator module
03:55 Switchgear module
04:43 Heat transfer equipment module
05:21 Maintenance module
05:50 Decontamination and water chemistry module
06:22 Animations of design
08:37 Fuel element fabrication
10:00 Core testing in the critical facility
12:20 Magnetic jack control rod drives
13:01 Flow testing in 1/4 scale model
13:27 Factory fab and initial assembly
13:51 Airlifting the reactor and flight testing
15:10 Field re-assembly
15:45 Startup testing and criticality
17:10 2-person operation team
17:40 Safety and reliability
19:05 Summary - Věda a technologie
My Dad is at 16:16!!
No WAY! That is too cool. So glad you found him in there.
@@whatisnuclearThank you for posting this!
man, those shots of the core are amazing. I love the contrast of the Y control rods, the hexagonal packing of the rods and the round profile of the core. Simply fabulous.
its art
@@lbochtler Yes it is! And compulsory viewing for Greta. 🤣
Amazing what was accomplished back then with such limited computing power! Thanks for uploading.
Slide rules and humans made computer s . We really don't need them. They just calculate faster .
Operationally analog circuits are faster.
@@nbx2au interesting 🤔
@@nbx2au interesting 🤔
Those plants, and the one I worked at, were designed with a pencil and a slide rule. Those individuals were incredibly intelligent!
This reactor, along with several other designs intended for remote military installations, used highly enriched uranium (HEU) at 93% U-235.
Any idea on how enriched the spent fuel was?
depends on the burnout but probably less than 20@@drewthompson7457
@@drewthompson7457 This was a highly experimental reactor. The cores of these pilot plants were designed to last two years without refueling. Not very long, they mention in the video they were working on extending this (for nuclear submarines which are difficult to refuel). The PM-3 in Antarctica was shipped with two cores, and they swapped after two years. As for the percentage of fission material left, that really does depend on how the fuel was used and for how long.
Awesome video. The radar site is still there although most are just foundations. The place where the miniplant was, has completely reverted back to nature. They removed everything.
Thanks for the info. I was going to look it up. I had presumed the radar system had been supplanted. I guess the PM-1 is no longer in use...
shame, it would have made a great museum piece
Only some things. There are still parts of this reactor buried underground.
The PM-1 site was completely recalled by nature, but the radar site is still being used. Here's the original PM-1 site location on google maps, you can still see an abandoned walkway that connected the radar site to the PM-1: goo.gl/maps/W5cVmL6uvnSqvHez6
1:30 Cool-ass Tektronix scope! Looks like a 585. 😁
Ole Tekz r00l!
8:03 ~ "... this steam drives the single-extraction turboencabulator..."
What an excellent scan! This was really fascinating to watch. Those cold war budgets were really something! Thanks for posting this!
Threats exactly the Point why politicians are payed so handsomely by the industry, to start a new cold war.
We still have these cold war budgets. Most of our GDP is going to the military while schools are crumbling and we drive on potholes.
@@rtqii That's a fact. It's scary how our entire foreign policy still basically revolves around shoving a gun in everyone's face. That doesn't work forever.
every time I see videos like this, I'm more amazed by the seeming portability of these systems, and more astounded that we've left this concept by the wayside.
It went by the wayside because these systems are a death sentence to humanity.
They just were put on a shelf until we figure how to recycle nuclear waste.
A different methode than dig a hole and forget them
PM-1 Final Report: In an attempt to correct some of these original design oversights, several modifications and additions have been made to the plant which have made it virtually a stationary plant. Consequently, the Air Force now has a plant that is neither portable nor easily maintainable or operable.
It’s sad to think this was back in the 60’s. They were making and using small modular reactors. And somehow it all fell apart, overtaken by fossil fuel and peoples misplaced fears. Hopefully we can turn it around soon and bring back more SMR’s.
Agreed. It's a bit depressing to see what they had established only to have it all shut down.
@@whatisnuclear Too many ecofags rather take up thousands of acres of land to put up solar panels.
I think, we might see comeback of these. Moreover, new generations of these reactors are designed in a way that makes them unable to melt down, because the composition of their fuel causes too high temperature to kill the reaction.
They still don't have a way to protect the spent fuel. At a reactor near me, 30 years ago I saw an article that said they were safely storing the spent fuel. They had to change the spacing of the spent fuel, as the spent fuel piles up, with no long term storage yet available. But we can leave all that problem for another generation to guard.
@@drewthompson7457the US is huge, there are plenty of places to bury it. Just NIMBY issues have prevented so far.
Awesome video, I just gotta love the aesthethic :D thanks for the upload!!
Amazing how brilliant the engineers were back then with no internet and primitive computers ...👌
It was before affirmative action so they were actually educated.....no diversity hires.
They are as good today.
An old Bell Lab film said homes would have reactors the size of hot water heaters for a life time of power.
not maintenance free and not safely lol and especially not cheaply. A micro steam turbine is going to cost big bucks
0 seconds ago
I think I saw that Bell labs 16 mm movie!
I lived in NJ as a kid and we had all those movies and Bell labs came and did a presentation and talked about fiber optics about the time most thought it was science fiction.
we were not allowed to have that future.
@@amentco8445 That future was a fantasy that didn't exist.
@@amentco8445 Lol steam turbines are perfectly legal. Go make a coal fired micro turbine for your backyard first and see how cheap/easy it is. A coal fired boiler is short bus math compared to a nuclear fired boiler
Awesome 👍 thank you
Look at them manufacturing the fuel rods by hand, often without any protection other than gloves!
Facinating !. thank you for uploading!. ...Amazing what they achieved.
I'd love to see more SMRs (i know they're being developed but more support would be great).
In particular i thought it would be interesting for public hospitals to have SMRs to give them a constant supply of heat and power. Any excess energy could then be put back to the local grid to fund the hospital.
SMRs will be costly ... so what do you want to do: pay personnel ie nurses/doctors or build a SMR from a hospitals budget ?
Or having someone else build it and then sell electricity to the hospital on rates far higher than a wind farm will sell at.
Much smarter using heating pumps and optimized energy usage.
@@TheStefanskoglund1 Off shore wind is not cheap, and getting more expensive recently. And as always, wind plus what else, when the wind is not blowing? If you intend some fossil fuel plant hiding in the background, say so here and now.
Hospitals, like too many other businesses now, tend to run shorthanded. I would prefer to see larger plants run by staff paid fixed salaries with the specific work of maintaining the powerplant, rather than small units supposedly maintained by janitorial/maintainance staff who have many other distractions. Honestly, where I would trust it most would be under the control of the US Army Corps of Engineers, US Navy Construction Batallions, and US Air Force Red Horse units where the priority would be safe operations, not maximum profit. Government civilian contracts have by this point disqualified themselves due to their regular carelessness.
It is a good example of what small modular reactors could do with the right governance.
@@leechowning2712 If you had your way jet travel would only be for the rich like it once was, and every passenger car would be a tank w a professional driver.
Make small nuclear safe as you like just don’t tell me it needs to a thousand times safer than oil gas coal, which eg burns a town to the ground every month from an oil train fire (Quebec),pipeline explosion, on and on.
A lot of good work was done on SMRs by the U.S. military back in the day, but in true govt fashion, fully classified and not shared with civilian nuclear sector. Meanwhile in China "Advancement in military is advancement in civilian sector" is built right into the industrial policy. I hope we take note this time around as we try to make SMRs great again.
Maybee not perfect either...
Thanks for uploading this. I lived in that area and did a couple field days up on Warren peak
Wish we had some follow up of how the PL 1 reactor performed, and why the Army canceled its program of small reactors in the 60s. I know the Antarctic reactor leak forcing a cleanup, but I doubt they all did.
I'm working to get the final PM-1 report via a FOIA request.
It exploded.
@@tedolphbundler724 No that was SL 1 in Idaho
@@ivanbremer8662 they already told me my request was approved and they're scanning it in.
@@ivanbremer8662 yes? How would you know? Or is your comment a joke?
Why is this 1960's setup, tech and work culture seemingly more advanced than today? We'd just have a ridiculous diesel generator today.
You know why... Reasons... National Security and self reliance are not taught anymore. Only feelings. Can you imagine what modern college grads would do with this tech?
Motivation to out do the Soviets is a helluva thing. Now money is thrown at the problem and the Gov't is bilked for program failures.
Because this mini reactor probably costs a bloody fortune compared to a diesel genset. I wouldn’t be surprised even at todays fuel prices if the diesel fuel is cheaper then the highly enriched uranium over a 2 year fuel cycle. The nuclear powered merchant ship NV Savana was so damn expensive to build and operate it lost money and had to be subsidized. Small scale nuclear energy is just cost prohibitive, it only makes economic sense when you are somewhere like the moon or even in a place like Antarctica where the cost to deliver conventional fuel is astronomical.
Fascinating, but I do wonder who narrated this and a few other such films of the era - because it certainly sounds like none other than Peter Graves in this one!
very cool! nice find.
I knew about the doomed SL-1 but was not aware of this one... interesting. One thing I saw (unless I missed something): The water and steam are all primary stage, not isolated so it was all radioactive? More modern systems use two stage, isolated systems so that the water reaching the generator and for the heating are not radioactive. One issue SL-1 was having was warping of the rods from heat making them stick in the guides, inhibiting the ability to scram and was ultimately the cause of the criticality incident that destroyed the reactor. Not sure if this reactor had this issue or not.
This is a PWR reactor so the primary coolant goes from the core to a steam generator but does not go to the turbine. You can see the primary loop at 7:27. Note that 1/3 of power reactors today are of the BWR type (boiling water reactor), where the primary coolant does go from the core directly to the turbine. Since the fuel is encapsulated in cladding, the water/steam is not overly radioactive, and these reactors work great.
As for SL-1, the issue there was that a single control rod was sufficient to make the reactor supercritical. One rod was removed manually while the reactor was shut down, and that caused the accident. It wasn't about an ability to scram, that reactor was already scrammed.
@@whatisnuclear SL-1 yes but the warped rods made them difficult to remove manually and interfered with their movement. This was noted prior to the accident in logs and later was attributed to the accident. The rod stuck and the guy likely jerked it, causing it to come out too far and cause an event. Thanks for the info on the PWR. I was familiar with them but did not realize this was a PWR. My mistake. Thanks.
Wow this is such a great piece of history. Really interesting to see this stuff as an aussie. I wonder what happened to it all at the end?
Radars are beautiful
Excellent. Thanks!
I love those old-fashion educative documentaries.
Great thing.
Interesting! Thanks for posting!
According to the Letter of Decision of the USAF dated 2011, the reactor is still there "entombed" at the site and there are detectable levels of Cesium 137 in an area of "off site contamination", but the area is not "of concern" and ready for public access and recreation use! 🤔
Cesium 137 has a half-life of about 30 years; that's 1.83 half-lives since it was shut down in 1968. So it's a bit over a quarter of the original activity. The rule of thumb is that after about 7 half-lives, radiation is under 1% of the original. "Detectable levels" doesn't mean much, since detectors are extremely sensitive.
I have a surplus geiger detector that will detect a handful of potassium chloride water softener salt/salt substitute. But who cares about science, radiation bad feelings good!
*Catalog description:* A filmed story of the PM-1 nuclear power plant (a pressurized water system), a joint project of the USAEC and the U. S. Air Force, which supplies the power for the radar and space heating of a remote Air Defense Command radar station in Wyoming. The film breaks down the types and contents of 16 air transportable packages, a total weight of about 30,000 pounds: reactor, steam generator, waste tank, heat-transfer apparatus, control room, turbogenerator, etc. Details are given on major components and the design and operation of the system by information on: 741 nuclear fuel tubes in 7 fuel bundles, the "flow" of primary water, the secondary water, details on the makeup of the fuel element tubes, criticality testing, nature of the control rods, tests to determine heat transfer and flow characteristics. The film recounts the airlift of the packages, erection and assembly of the power plant, the work to achieve criticality, and the varied safety controls.
Amazingly clear video - and expertly narrated and scripted - I wish modern Discovery mini-documentaries were like this - without all the distracting edits!
The narrators for educational films (like this one) from the 50's to 70's were great.
why don't we build more of these!!
They're still having an intense conference about the gender of the reactor and what two name it this time?
They did build more of these. Search for: *Army Nuclear Power Program* - Many of the program reports have been declassified and are available online. These reactors, each and every one of them, were one off prototype designs. They had a lot of problems, and American Marietta had to go back, after the reactors had been installed, and redesign some things. They made modifications to get the reactor/generator system to work that resulted in a machine that was no longer portable, was way overweight, unreliable due to numerous reactor SCRAMs, required a trained crew of 25, in order to keep a shift in the control room and on the reactor floor 24/7... And expensive to run... Difficult to maintain because of the compact design.
The PM-1 Nuclear Power Plant was also utilized at McMurdo Station, Antarctica.
That was actually the PM-3A. Similar but different. They called it Nukey Poo. czcams.com/video/GcgS_xnzvlA/video.html
@@whatisnuclear I stand Corrected. Thanks.
The Navy Sea Bees had a small plant in Antarctica also .
The Museum at Port Hueneme Ca near Oxnard had the controls
Similar to what is shown here.
Not sure if it is in display as they moved from on the base
To just outside and open to the public.
this is pretty darn cool
You can't stop Scientific curiosity, designs that are totally safe ,especially under the pressure of regulation that serves competitors, will be exhaustively detailed.
Yes, very safe, especially the PM-3A in Antarctica...
@@FrozenHaxor thanks for the info, surprised to find out about it.
Very cool Thanks WiN. standards for "quality electricity" have increased significantly since the 60's --> lol @ 2% frequency variation ; )
Super cool.
about @5:55 that looked like a sweet little Monarch lathe .
Ohh yeah good catch. I see it at @5:41.
I can't imagine how much all those packages cost in their entirety.
Wasn’t this the same type of reactor they used in the base in Antarctica that raked a ton of radiation so they had to shut them down?
They have a diorama model of this site in the museum in Sundance.
No way! I will contact them. Thanks!
Yeah, it's sweet. I wonder if the Crook country museum in Sundance has a copy of this video? They do have a movie playing, but it's been a couple years since I've seen it.
@@biggdogg285 I emailed them and they say they do have a copy of this playing that the air force gave them.
@@whatisnuclear Thank you!!
Notice the white flashes on the flim when they're filming the fuel rods...
Great video, thanks for sharing. I don't know what safety precautions you're supposed to take, but it's surprising seeing those workers handle fuel rods like that.
Until they are in the reactor, they can be handled like that. Uranium's half-life is long and corresponding radioactivity low.
They built one in Antarctica to power a base, it had lots of issues and was eventually dismantled and removed, it had the unfortunate nick name of "Nuki-poo"
There's a video about that one too: czcams.com/video/GcgS_xnzvlA/video.html
that fuel rod has a bit of bur on it and it wont fit into the sheath. Hey charlie can you take that thing out to the lathe and smooth it out a little? go real slow but we are in a hurry
just go at it with a rasp
Ya…not like the shavings of uranium will spontaneously ignite
seems like these guys were ready to deliver nuclear power plants on demand :D
I guess small modular reactors are nothing new!
small reactors have been powering the world's navies for many decades.
@@jay_321not all navies have done it well though.
The lineup consisted simply of six hydrocoptic marzelvanes, so fitted to the ambifacient lunar waneshaft that sidefumbling was effectively prevented. The main winding was of the normal lotus o-deltoid type placed in panendermic semiboloid slots of the stator, every seventh conductor being connected by a non-reversible tremie pipe to the differential girdlespring on the ‘up’ end of the grammeters. Moreover, whenever fluorescence score motion is required, it may also be employed in conjunction with a drawn reciprocation dingle arm to reduce sinusoidal depleneration.
Brought to you by Chrysler Corporation! 😆
@@MickeyMishra No, its from Rockwell Automation.
No WAY! Rockwell? Like the Aerospace Manufacturer? COOL! @@haraldhechler3557
17:16 Synchronization with AC 3-phase network :)
Here's all the cool kids talking about small modular reactors, when it was in operation 60 years ago.
It's amazing they actually manufactured the fuel rods themselves in situ! But wait a minute...are those blokes actually handling the U-235 rods with only gloves for protection?!? 😵
(Nevermind the "No Smoking" signs -- that's the least of their worries!)
U235 is handled with white gloves even today. It's barely radioactive, which is why it still exists today rather than decaying away billions of years ago. Serious radiation only begins after start splitting atoms.
@@whatisnuclear Thx for clarifying. I assumed it's highly radioactive from the outset, since enriched.
Nuclear submarines were just starting to be built and small nuclear reactors were a interesting concept for the US at the time.
😎
and they glowed happily ever after
Did they do this in Greenland ?
Yes, that's the story of Camp Century and the PM-2A czcams.com/video/1Ujx_pND9wg/video.html
Radar site looks like that mw3 map.
Off Grid.
At 3:27 the NCO has more stripes than I have ever seen.
I was Navy so can an Army person explain ??
USAF Chief Master Sergeant (E-9) I think.
Thank you for explaining .
Micheal?,
I looked e-9 up and there were only 3 stripes on the bottom . That guy at 3:26 has many more!
N2yun
@@josephpadula2283 you have to find the USAF insignia designs from 1960, not the current ones which have changed.
@@josephpadula2283 (Look here. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Air_Force_enlisted_rank_insignia) That's a pre-1991 E-9 CMSgt insignia. Can't see the star because of the crease in the sleeve.
At around 17:47, we are told of a phenomenon described at Naval Nuclear Power School as “negative temperature coefficient of reactivity”, an important safety design. And God help anyone by a system having the dreaded Cold Water Accident! But what do I know, being a graduate of NPS Class 8304 (Section 2)? 😄☢️😄
The soviets built thousands of much smaller "Beta-M" RTG-type nuclear generators big like a barrell used to power remote antennas, lighthouses and such. When the soviet union split up they were abandoned to decay. Decades later they had to be tracked, collected and dismantled at great expense after people started to scavenge them and at least one person died as a result.
There's still a number of them that haven't been accounted for, or where the government won't let organizations in to clean them up. There's a good YT video on I ran across recently. It's a shame YT doesn't let commenters link to other videos.
*men nonchalantly runs metal dust material through machines, heat forming, hammering into a rod*
Narrator: The PM-1 uses metric half tons of highly en-riched youranium two-thirty-five
Me:
It's a lot less scary than you might think - the decay chain for both 235U and 238U is all alpha and beta, so you don't need much shielding. The biggest risk derives from inhalation or ingestion, since that would put the radioactive material inside your body with no shielding.
Note this is only the case before the fuel has been used - after it's been run in a reactor it contains a mixture of unburnt fuel, fission products and actinides - some of which are extremely radioactive.
Uranium is naturally occurring throughout the Earth's crust, all this fuel comes from digging it up from the ground. It's also where radon gas comes from. Drinking water has measurable quantities of Uranium that leaches out from the rocks your water touches. Our bodies have evolved to be able to handle and remove small quantities of Uranium. As mentioned, a particular hazard is actinides in used fuel because the existence of elements heavier than Uranium are artificial. Your smoke detector has Americium-241 which is extremely toxic, I've heard about 10x worse than Plutonium.
@@TrimeshSZ Thanks for this detail - I was not aware how relatively easy the unused uranium could be processed.
@@Bricked4You The half life of 238U is 3.5 billion years, roughly a third the age of the universe. 235U is "hotter" stuff, with a half life of a mere 700 million years (which is why it is just 0.7% of raw uranium. Neither one is very active on human time scales.
@@Bricked4Youuranium is not very radioactive. Before being used as nuclear fuel it was routinely used in everyday pigments and even glassware for drinking. It is not any more dangerous than handling lead or other heavy metals. It’s toxicity is mainly from its chemical nature rather than its extremely low radioactivity.
How do they re-tolerate the frequency harmonicier?
We need to building brand new sources of power like this they can be excellent.
We're going to have to build people strenuous enough to handle this kind of thing. I mean today if you miss gender someone they absolutely break down and start crying in the corner and need a safe space. Imagine if they miss gender the reactor or some of the particles today? They would have a literal meltdown!
I bet it was built in a year too. I get we need to spend time building quality reactors. But nowadays some take 20 years or more if theyre ever built at all. Legislation and union rules have made it so impractical to build nuclear and I've never understood quite why? Is it the oil companies? Excessive fear? I believe they should take a long time to build but 20+ years?
They have to take time out these days for all the training that needs to be done. There is a new segment of the alphabet each month or so...
And don't forget that any man that was willing to do this went through some divorce in his marriage, so just having a demanding job like this means you lose your family.. Weird right?
Dude, don't even get me started on the fiasco that Vogtle units 3 & 4 have turned into and how us consumers get to pay for their screw ups. Original estimated cost was $14B and supposed to be online in 2016, now it's $17B cost overrun and 7 years late. I'm pro-nuclear, but the ineptitude and corruption that goes on in Southern Company and its contractors is insane. SC and it's partners should have been forced to pay for it out of pocket, and not allowed to charge consumers until it was producing. We've been paying a "Nuclear Cost Recovery Fee" in our bills for YEARS and it wasn't until July 31st 2023 that unit 3 entered commercial operation.
Isn't Rolls Royce getting all excited about their new truck deliverable modular reactor? Isn't this basically the same thing?
Pretty much. It's like the rediscovery of classical texts after the dark ages.
No. The key difference is that all of these reactors, like naval reactors, require the use of highly enriched uranium due to their small size. HEU is a proliferation hazard because it can be used to make nuclear weapons, creating a security and political issue (see Iran). R-R SMR uses LEU like a normal nuclear power plant, but is consequently much larger, the electric power output is about 50-200x greater than these reactors.
So why don’t we use these more?
Basically just economics. They were too much more expensive than diesel that time around.
Sad the way PM-1 ended, and how they boasted of safety in this video.
You're thinking of SL-1, which was a totally different reactor. They were in the same program though.
Yeah, I realized after posting! @@whatisnuclear
Alco made the other non Martin plants. They made steam locomotives then diesel.
Part of the company exists making parts for old diesels for Alco locomotives and marine use engines etc
Fairbanks Morse, another early engine maker that only built diesels locos never steam ones them.
The nuclear business was sold to Allis Chalmers after they lost money.
No nuclear steam locomotive engines were ever made ….. but great click bait!!!!
very silly putting a nuclear reactor inside a military target but very cool!
What did you expect from a cold war military installation?
Like an aircraft carrier? Lol.
Do you somehow think that "civilian" nuclear facilities are NOT a target?
and 40 years later, kingcobraJFS would be born in wyoming.
90,000 us dollars today buys a 1250kw diesel generator
More installed, and then start paying for about 100 gallons an *hour* at full load, delivered onsite. The noise btw rules out many use cases if it’s onsite, eg hotel.
For more, search for:
Sundance Air Force Station
PM -1 REACTOR CORE FINAL DESIGN REPORT
PM-1 NUCLEAR POWER PLANT PROGRAM PARAMETRIC STUDY REPORT
Fun
Proved mechanics with good old automation can do everything. But where are the remains of the pm-1 now? I expect this also has some horrible backstory to it, like the reactors they put in the ice and "forgot" that is somewhere down there today in the polar areas.
I’ve been to this site many times, it is still a hazmat site
3:40 'They don't want Russians getting their hands on the Uranium'.
Russia is the worlds largest country. It produces its own Uranium. How do you think the Soviets ended up with 40,000 nukes?
This is impossible with wind or solar.
Not according to advocates, in which solar wind can magically do anything, night, calm wind, whatever.
I always wondered why this mountain top glowed at night, now I know
Scram. Safety Control Rod Ax Man
I would love to see an entire lifecycle analysis of this. Universities should be doing these things not “me too” research on climate change.
There are lots of full lifecycle assessments of nuclear power plants in general. Like this one, and many similar: group.vattenfall.com/dk/siteassets/danmark/om-os/baeredygtighed/vattenfall-lca-brochure.pdf
@@whatisnuclear Denmark would do that. The US is trying to harness cow farts. How quickly we were corrupted after 1913.
@@whatisnuclear Vattenfall is not a neutral source at all. I am not generally against nuclear power, but we used to have a NPP from Vattenfall here and it is ridiculous what incidents and mishandling of the NPP and failure to report incidents authorities have found at their NPP. It is one of the last companies I would entrust with running an NPP.
However, universities do work on designing and evaluating nuclear reactors of course. However, for this old PM-1 I couldn't find an independent paper in the scientific literature. I guess it's just too old, so nobody cares today. And back in the days also no university worked on it - presumably because all data was classified.
@@fr89k Check out the meta-analysis of hundreds of non-biased sources here for more info: whatisnuclear.com/nuclear-lifecycle-co2.html
@@whatisnuclear I never doubted that there are papers in general. I just don't have any specifically about the PM-1 reactor.
put it in my back yard!
This is an important piece of history. However, realize that this was told by cheerleaders and in a naive age before we truly understood the dangers and risks. The full story is a much darker tale.
Before you get excited about the prospect of these reactors, you need to learn a huge amount more about them, about history, about nuclear safety, safety culture, hubris, human arrogance and human incompetence. These small reactors were inherently dangerous. Judged by the approaches of the day they were regarded as safe. They weren’t. SL-1 (a different design) showed just how dangerous when it blew up in 1961 killing its three operators. That reactor holds the reactor vessel high jump record. And until Chernobyl it held the reactor shot put and reactor javelin records too.
All of these reactors were designed using bomb grade fuel. PM-1 at least met the one cold stick rod criteria (barely). SL-1 didn’t.
SL-1 ejected one of its control rods when it was manually pulled too far out of the reactor during maintenance. The rod penetrated one of the operators in the reactor explosion that followed - nailing him into the ceiling. The second operator on the vessel head was crushed when the reactor vessel jumped nine feet upward. The third operator was blown against the building wall and lethally irradiated. He died more slowly.
The accident resulted in a fast transient prompt criticality that splattered the fuel plates and control blades radially outward against the reactor vessel as the coolant instantly flashed to steam generating a 10,000 psi water hammer against the vessel head. It was the force of that water hammer that sheared all of the reactor piping and launched the whole vessel skyward, all in less than a few seconds.
It suffered an in-core very low yield nuclear detonation, just as Chernobyl Unit 4 was to do two decades later. Both reactors flashed their coolant to high pressure steam. Chernobyl launched its thousand ton lid into the ceiling, destroying the ceiling and the building as it ricocheted seven times around the hall.
In the case of Chernobyl, and like;y SL-1, the rapid heating of the fuel and the intense instantaneous irradiation of the water in the core generated an enormous amount of hydrogen gas both from fuel water interactions as they oxidized, and from driving interstitial hydrogen gas out of the cladding and fuel in a giant hydrogen fart. When that hyper hot hydrogen mixed with air in Chernobyl it detonated which then completely blew the roof and building apart.
The so-called steam explosion each suffered is no such thing. Steam cannot explode. However the near instantaneous vaporization of the water by the prompt criticality did create enormous over-pressures that ruptured the primaries. And with no safety building in either case, all of the released fission products and very-short half-life very-high gamma intensity N-16 was immediately released. The N-16 is created by neutron bombardment of oxygen-16. It is the reason for the primary radiation shields in reactors.
These reactors lacked most safety features required in power-reactors. The safety features they had were very rudimentary. They had no containment dome, no emergency cooling, and lacked many other safety features. The safety margins were extremely minimal based on the actual reactors performing as designed. SL-1 didn’t. It became significantly more powerful. That led to other ad-hoc changes that ultimately led to the conditions that destroyed the reactor and cost three men’s lives.
They were buried in lead lined caskets mostly. Portions had to be disposed in high radiation burial. A significant part of the core uranium was never accounted for. It was vaporized. And a large portion of the fission inventory was released on the wind.
Technology is enticing. High power density is particularly enticing, especially to young men with lots of testosterone. But these conditions are extraordinarily dangerous, and the combination leads to disasters a la, Chernobyl, Fukushima, SL-1, and others.
And this doesn’t even touch on the nuclear proliferation issues, cancers, extraordinarily long lived wastes that must be isolated for longer than humans have existed, and other dangers.
The SL-1 accident taught us some early design principles that we follow now. Any new industrial technology development has risks. When steam boilers were invented, many people were mutilated and killed before we established the ASME codes. When fires happened in buildings, we established fire codes. Nuclear is now among the safest ways we know to make electricity. It avoids deadly particulate air pollution that kills 8 million/year, and avoids making any greenhouse gas. ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
How many people have been killed by accidents at coal and oil plants? Far higher. Safety isn't that big of an issue for small reactors, see how many nuclear subs and carriers are in operation. You're focusing on the wrong issue. The problem is the use of HEU and proliferation, which is as much a political issue (e.g. Iran).
@@straightpipediesel No. You are. The abysmal safety record of oil and gas has nothing at all to do with this.
Your conflation of commercial power reactor safety with US nuclear Navy safety is completely wrong. The US nuclear Navy operates under very different principles than commercial plants do. They are operated under struct nuclear safeguards created by Admiral Rickover. They embody Safety culture.
The commercial industry is more properly compared with the Russian nuclear Navy and their abysmal safety record.
The use of HEU is indeed a serious problem. However, it is not the key point. Proliferation is indeed a major issue. The operation of the commercial nuclear plants has put us awash in separated plutonium that cannot safely be used in reactors, cannot be launched into space, cannot be dumped, and cannot assuredly be placed in deep disposal without serious risks far into the future. And for weapons use, it only gets better and better with age.
Reactor proliferation IS a huge nonproliferation issue. There will always be the temptation at the least to divert or convert to weapons production. Liquid Metal and salt reactors make this much easier. So too does laser isotope enrichment and salt recovery separation.
The short term largest risk is the destruction of one or more reactors, OR one or more spent fuel pools, either through design error, natural disaster, human stupidity, cost pressures overriding safety culture, or terrorism or war. Any single severe event results in the near or actual destruction of the host nation economically, and psychologically as an immense area is contaminated, people must be moved from their homes forever with the loss of their lives and possessions with no warning.
The longer term risks involve nuclear proliferation, waste releases, economic burdens and defaults, lesser accidents, and incidents, and others.
Nuclear is a dead end. The so-called "small" rectors at one-quarter the size of 1,000 megawatt commercial facilities are anything but small. Their hazards are every bit as bad as the big boys. And they can no more economically compete than can the large reactors. About the only improvement they actually provide is a lesser loss of power on loss of a single unit from use due to maintenance or problems. In a natural disaster entire clusters will be shutdown together and no improvement exists.
And none of this accounts or deals with the unrecognized catastrophe hazard that the spent fuel pools pose, or the rapid destruction of the pool concrete from high gamma doses. We are on the ragged edge of having a Chernobyl scale accident at any one of the spent fuel pools in the world at any time.
And this doesn't even account for the now quite obvious risks from nuclear terrorism or war. Add the change to drone warfare and drone swarms and defense of existing facilities is all but impossible to assure.
The nuclear age has ended.
@@tunneloflight TL;DR: Commenter is autistic.
"The full story is a much darker tale."
>Proceeds to tell a well known story about an earlier design which informed the much safer one in the video.
The trade off of 3 lives for substantial safety progress is minuscule. Almost all safety standards are written in blood, and usually the lives number in the hundreds, thousands, or more. We're still learning the fossil fuel lesson despite having spent actual millions of lives on it. Some day we'll learn a lesson about the eternally promised renewable miracle, which requires millions of tons of technology to be produced in countries with nearly no environmental protections.
These were TEST reactors. The goal was discovering the unknown. Some of the unknown was made clear in their production and use. They were successful experiments, not dark ones.
Here's a new channel for me. What is nuclear? Safe. Nuclear is a lot of things, if nothing else, it's safe. Producing the critical commodity plutonium is expensive. Turning the waste heat into electricity with a promise of too cheap to meter will allow plutonium to be produced inexpensively, utility customers paying the cost with a guaranteed profit margin.
It's a TURBINE!!!! Not a turban! TUR-BINE!!!!!! Got it?? Who wrote this script? ( it's probably the same guy who doesn't know the difference between silicon and silicone. ) T-U-R-B-I-N-E!!!!! < end of rant>
I share your annoyance over silicon/ silicone, but tur-bun is a common pronunciation of the word "turbine" in parts of the US and in most places that get their English from the British.
hard to tell what gave them cancer, the electromagnetic radiation or the nuclear one.
You got any evidence that anyone from this site got cancer at a rate higher than the average?
Not great, npt terrible.