A CANDU Attitude
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- čas přidán 14. 05. 2024
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The CANDU (CANadian Deuterium Uranium), introduced by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) in 1962, is among the safest and most innovative nuclear reactors in the world, able to run on a variety of fuels including unenriched natural uranium. Unfortunately, its high up-front construction cost prevented more than a handful of international sales from being made.
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I worked for AECL during the 70s in the Reactivity Mechanisms Branch. We designed and contract managed the production of the first shutdown system which consisted of about 30 drive mechanisms that drove shutoff rods into the reactor core to absorb neutrons and shutdown the reactor. These were vertically oriented devices with the drive mechanism located above the reactor on the reactivity mechanism deck. The rods fell under gravity but were assisted by a large helical spring. Others in the branch worked on other shutdown systems and various monitoring systems. It was an interesting time.
This is super interesting. I work at Bruce Power and was on the reactivity mechanisms deck in unit 7 there today.
Were you part of the same team that developed the Booster rods at Bruce A?
the safety systems in these look nearly as good modern designs! 😮 wow! Good work! 💜 and Thank You! 🙏
The Soviets: "So you're saying if we take an RBMK, turn it on its side, ditch the graphite for heavy water..... Go on comrade, keep talking... Vasyl!
Write this down"
All things that could have prevented the Chernobyl disaster. If they had the option, they would have been smart to take notes.
I was thinking the exact same thing,... sounds like a sideways RBMK with a moderator that makes it safer, especially when the talk of active refueling but sideways under water with the robotics. Really sounds like an RBMK if cost cutting wasn't a main driving factor.
@@RC-nq7mgRBMK was mostly a sideways Hanford B, good for making plutonium when over-cooled as the Americans ran it, but not so good for power when it’s that cold.
Those shots of the people handling the fuel bundles are awe-inspiring. They're handling an unimaginably large amount of energy. One of those bundles contains enough potential energy to last that single person for a life time, i reckon. If not, several life times. And you can hold it in your hands, as if it's nothing but a oddly heavy bundle of metal pipes.
How magical is that?! So much energy in such a small thing? The equvalent in coal or oil would be huge.
I previously have calculated it out, and it's roughly a coke can's worth of Uranium to supply a person's life time per capita energy needs - that means, including the energy they indirectly use through infrastructure and transportation. That's also accounting for thermal efficiency and burnup levels. I'm not sure exactly how much Uranium is in one of those bundles, but it certainly gives you an idea - one of those bundles is probably close to two or three people's life time energy requirements.
@@rdormer 19kg of U per bundle, so at least 3 or more lifetimes worth.
about 11,00 MWh of energy in a bundle the size of a log, enough for the typical 4 person home in Canada to run for 100 years
...worked on the construction of Darlingtons #4 reactor. Function, welding of the sensor bulkheads, and stainless welding of the spent fuel holding tank. An experience I'll never forget! What a place!!!
Good news, Darlington and Bruce are getting expansions with new CANDU reactors, Pickering is up next.
And now Bruce power is expanding the CANDU by another 4.8 GW! Awesome!
Darlingtons high cost was largely because of the extremely high inflation at the time. Ontario Hydro was not permitted to pay off the debt of the construction of the units until they entered into commercial service. And due to the economic downturn of the mid-late 80's, the construction time was greatly lengthened to due to the lack of demand.
To be more precise, the high inflation resulted in very high interest costs. So that together with the delays in construction and the inability to put the cost into the rate base until it was commissioned, caused the final costs to balloon. I was working for Ontario Hydro at the time so I am very familiar with the issues. Because of the high upfront capital costs of a nuclear power plant, one was said that a nuclear plant is really the interest rate poured into concrete!
This is a common pattern with nuclear construction - most of the supposed high cost is because of financing, not because of actual capital costs. Can't build a source of clean, safe energy and not let financiers get their beaks wet, after all.
Clicked for the smart title. Stayed for the detailed and objective analysis of the Canadian nuclear industrial complex and its global socio-political consequences. Bravo!
Sweet video. I didn’t realize how very different the types of reactors are. Keep it up!
Thanks! And CANDU is only the tip of the iceberg; in the future I will likely do videos on Pebble Bed, Molten Salt, Metal-Cooled Fast, and other alternate reactor types.
SILVER PRICE WILL FALL TO 19$.....
Thanks for the video
You said it. Politicians are the problem when it comes to advancing nuclear power, the cleanest form of energy we have. CANDU design looks like the answer to fears provided by nuclear energy. In the course of human technology we learn from our mistakes and improve upon designs that were good or functional to make them even better. Nuclear energy is the way forward. Politicians prevent it. We need to push for nuclear power and advancements in making a safe technology safer, we CANDU it.
Thanks for the video. Looking forward for more on nuclear tech!
It's interesting that the monazite sand also has the zirconium needed for shielding containment of rods. India sure has quite the perfect coastline for nuclear energy.
Great production value!
Brilliant, I had come to the conclusion CANDU was the best option for a safe reactor sometime ago after reading loads of stuff and knowing how well our SGHWR had performed in the UK but sadly politicians had blocked it along with our breeder program that had been successful and both projects were abandoned
Uk should have continued building Magnox or AGR reactors
Both designs are easier to construct than light water reactors, both designs also don't require enrichment.
@@ericliu5491 AGR required enrichment due to the heavier fuel cladding as the gas temperature and pressure was higher so they could achieve better steam conditions unlike the Magnox who turbines had to deal with lower pressure and temp steam compared to thermal station you have to remember the original Magnox were for plutonium production and the commercial ones were derived from them, the AGR was a great improvement there is a book called going critical by Walter Patterson it’s on PDF well worth aa read, we should have developed our SGHWR
@@BerlietGBC what's your favorite model of nuclear power reactor?
For me it's either the Hualong one or Candu.
@@ericliu5491 Now there is a question the UK were developing several reactor designs when our short sighted government throw it all away , I'm not a fan of light water reactor just the size of the pressure vessel and the pressure involves carries to much risk plus the fact you have to dismantle the reactor to re fuel is just not elegant in my humble eyes . Definitely the CANDU and out own SGHWR having a pressure tube system is much easier to construct and less of a risk from a engineering standpoint in my eye the ability to run on natural uranium and on load re fueling , , if you read the book going critical even the CEGB in the UK wanted SGHWR. I admire out fast reactors as well they ran general successfully long before anyone elece did sadly all then research thrown under a bus by the politicians .
There are some excellent old films on here if the fast reactors and the building of the first Magnox
The British politicians of all parties have a lot to answer for (and possibly the current Canadian administration!). The efficient and economical power system was privatised, leading to most of it, including all the nuclear generation ending up in foreign hands (political dogma trumps common sense every time). The steady placement of orders with British industry dried up, leading to the loss of most of the country's manufacturing capability to Europe and China, and extremely expensive electricity.
Although I spent many years working at (CEGB) Magnox power stations, they were, admittedly, expensive to build, due to the physical size of the reactors and containments, so probably not ideal for the long term, but as has been pointed out, they were based on plutonium producing reactors.
When the demand for military plutonium reduced, the credit for that in the spent fuel was no longer available, so the irradiation time was increased, gaining more energy from each fuel element at the expense of the plutonium remaining, thus improving the economics.
I have not visited a Candu station, although I did visit the SGHWR at Winfrith. The heavy water technology did work well, although the cost of heavy water in Britain is higher than in Canada (vital to avoid leaks from the calandria). I think that we have reached the stage where we are now dependent on other countries to decide what's best for us as all the home grown expertise has been given away. I hope for Canada's sake that it does not follow the same path.
Great video. My father worked in hydro for over 35 years. Worked at darlington, pickering, and Bruce. He took me to the bruce visitors center when I was in highschool. its all pretty interesting stuff in my opinion.
I went to the Douglas Point visitor center.
While working for Ontario Hydro, I entered the reactor vault of Darlington Unit 4 before it went critical.
Great video, Gilles...👍
Fantastic video
Thank you
Ontario was the birthplace of electricity and was a leader in the industry since its inception. Civil nuclear power and our difference from the rest of the world got lost locally. Ontario has a rich proud safe history of generating large amounts of power to every citizen and every industry that requires power. Power generation accommodated industry and it resulted in jobs and families living lives worth while. People tend to read when they are not kept in the dark.
Alessandro Volta was Italian, and he was the one to "invent" electricity IIRC, with the first recorded intentional generation of electricity
@@specialopsdave How many light bulbs did he illuminate in his home town?
@@BasementEngineer One. Still more than zero, and still before Edison.
@@specialopsdave Edison was not the first to make successful light bulbs, either. He gets the credit because he made a commercial success of them.
@@BasementEngineer Exactly. So? Electricity was not invented in Canada, which is my whole point
Another safety feature of CANDU arises from the geometry of the calandria itself. While the reactor has the same positive void coefficient issue as the RBMK, the configuration of the fuel bundle tubes which themselves are separately pressurised with heavy water greatly slows the time interval for a runaway neutron cascade, giving the engineers more time to bring the reactor fully back under control. And of course the reactor doesn't use graphite, so there is literally no way a Chernobyl-like accident scenario could unfold. Like any PWR, the CANDU is not completely meltdown-proof, but the design allows for a considerable cushion to stop an accident from occurring.
The CANDU is a great little reactor. Its a shame it wasnt better commercialized.
It's actually a great BIG reactor. Check out the size of the Pickering, Darlington and Bruce units. I was an Operator at Bruce A for over 30 years, the last few as an ANO in the control room. Multi-unit Candus with a vacuum building are the safest plants in the world IMO. When Bruce C comes along I hope it's another of the same type. Very practical design for the power output.
Damn that is good video
I have to say that I like the no-nonsense design of the CANDU reactor very much. Why aren't they using them more often elsewhere in the world? Yes, I get the high upfront costs, but in the end they will more than earn those back. It could also help with the spent fuel problem of other reactors as the CANDU can use that waste as actual fuel. Not to mention that the electricity produced is carbon emission free. There are so many missed opportunities here...
again plumbing nightmare.
Because they're proliferation prone.
@@missano3856
Nope. CANDUs are proliferation resistant. The Canadians knew what they wrought when they designed the CANDU. And you can extract plutonium from every commercial power reactor if you really want to. It just takes an extraordinary amount of time and you might not even get the right plutonium isotope.
@@swokatsamsiyu3590 The problem with CANDU's is that they can be refueled while in operation thus fuel can be removed before heavy PU isotopes have accumulated and it is not obvious to satellites that the reactor has had fuel removed early.
Because the global trend is to end nuclear power. CANDU reactors solve every single problem with energy generation today. It's clean, safe, and efficient. Can't be having that, can we?
ah! I think I just realized why the ZETA fusion reactor of the '50s was so named! they really liked their "zero energy" prefixes for experimental nuclear devices back then.
Time for Canada to be a nuclear pioneer again. Let's get going on building Moltex stable salt reactors.
Canada will do nothing with the prancing lisping pig at the helm. What?
Canada is too busy destroying its agriculture and industry and being woke to do any of that...
Need new leadership for that to happen. They would sell it China before you could blink. They stopped pretending to care about Canadians years ago.
The information on internet states that heavy water in these reactors cost hundreds of million dollars which is wrong. These reactors need 600 000 litres of heavy water. The cost of heavy water cost 5 dollars per litre which means a cost of only 3 million dollars. Always check what you read about on the internet.
There is a way to inform the creator of facts that reduce how much of a little shit you come off ass. Check the internet for some resources on how to help correct someone who has obviously spent hours researching to make a video and missed a minor point instead of trying to come of as a smarty pants i-told-you-so jerk.
Nice explanation .. India will continue building candu reactors..7 reactors of 700 MW IPHWR design are under construction and 8 more under planning..
IPHWR is a different series model from Candu.
@@ericliu5491 the core technology is the same. They bought the technology from Canada.
@@bryanbarnard4094 So, that doesn't mean that IPHWRs are not a different model series developed by India domesticlly.
@@ericliu5491 yes, but theyre both phwr. Just like nuscale and epr are both pwr despite radically different sizes and design.
@@ericliu5491 I think we’re both on the same team here
Candu is probably the best of the pressurized water reactors(PWR), but it is ultimately still a water cooled solid fuelled reactor which ultimately puts an upper limit on its capability compared to other alternatives such as molten salt reactors.
While I will happily agree that it is objectively better than the awful light water reactors we have been stuck with for the past 60 years, I feel we can still do better. This isn't even about Thorium, the MSR is just better than solid fuelled water cooled reactors in nearly every way.
Efforts to push for higher temps results in super critical reactors. Which Is dificult.
Impossible to melt down , heard that before.
Great video! I have a feeling that the inherent safety of the CANDU design, it's high capacity factor, and it's ability to burn PWR spent fuel, MOX, and thorium, could very well give it a new lease on life, as global climate change makes it ever more imperative that we quit burning coal in power plants. And perhaps new materials can be found to provide a neutron moderator with lower cost than deuterium oxide. The Soviet RBMK reactor burned unenriched uranium, using graphite as moderator, although the cost to fabricate the graphite was also high, and as we saw at Chernobyl, overheating graphite can set it on fire.
Well, maybe you should spend some time thinking about why is there such a big overlap between climate change activists and anti nuclear power activists...
I really like the design of the CANDU. But I don't think many people realize just how damn big the things are.
how big are they ?
@@j.s3612 I work at the Bruce. 4 reactors per plant, it takes me 10 minutes to walk from one end to the other. The vault is 3-4 stories high, and the heat exchangers are 3 stories high.
@@jordancunningham4962 sounds massive where can I visit one
@@j.s3612 I know the Bruce has a visitor's center you can go ri after COVID winds down a bit.
The UK AGRs (Advanced Gas cooled Reactor) are also huge, far large than a conventional PWR.
The other huge advantage "conventional" PWR reactors have is the ready availability to get trained operators for them.
I'm all in favor of refurbishing Pickering 'B' (and maybe Units 2 &3 of Pickering 'A').. but at current rate of usage, known uranium reserves are only enough to last a little over a century. Breeder reactors are the future and we should try to duplicate and improve on what the Russians have already done.
Candu can breed if used in the plutonium cycle. (it is needed to do more fuel changes but it was done in a test run on the embalse candu 6)
As American I find it's terrifying that the CANDU REACTOR TYPE was not adopted around the world, they would have helped stop nuclear proliferation, after the Fukushima disaster and Three Mile Island one would have thought that the CANDU REACTORS would have been an OUTSTANDING CHOICE instead of light water reactors.... Let's hope that things changed enough to where the CANDU REACTOR TYPES will become the WORLD STANDARD instead of light water reactors....
I was on a flight here in the USA about a week after the tsunami hit Japan. A middle aged man was sitting next to me. I struck up a conversation by asking if he heard about the reactor issues at TEPCO. He nervously told me "I probably shouldn't be talking about this, but".
He elaborated that he was part of GE's power generation segment, and all of GE was extremely alarmed by these events. He said Fukushima Daiichi contained late 1960's/70's designed GE MkII light water reactors. Now post flood, without grid-tied pwr or it's backup generators "this is probably going to end up worse than Chernobyl!". IE, china-syndrome in multiple cores! I'm not a nuclear expert by any means, but I understood enough to realize the severity of Japan's situation. I could only extrapolate from his conversation, that those are the expected outcomes if primary & backup cooling systems fail on those older designs! Fully scrammed and even poisoned by the accidentally induced xeon gas. It still isn't enough to stop a catastrophic core over-excusion event. Once the core(s) water boils away and the xeon gas gets digested, the fuel rod temps skyrocket from extreme over criticality!
As bad as that was, he either wasn't aware of or couldn't talk about the much worse possible outcome. TEPCO had been storing multiple spent cores in cooling ponds above the reactors! These cooling ponds in (multiple reactor containment buildings) were in grave danger of collapse and subsequently catching fire. This would have resulted in the entire atmosphere of our planet to be substantially contaminated by highly radioactive smoke. Which then would've produced invisible fallout (mainly via rain) that would contaminate all surface waters and food production over the planet!
America in 2023 operates 13 power plants, which each have multiple (although updated) GE MkII reactor cores! 👀
If only that were true. Canada cut India off from it's Candu sales (which is why India stole the design and now builds their own) because India was using the Candus they bought from AECL to cook plutonium for bombs. However, I still believe Candu is the best design ever made. Of course I'm biased having been a career Operator at Bruce A.
A machine that turns unenriched uranium into plutonium "would have helped stop nuclear proliferation"? The reason we use light water reactors instead of MAGNOX or CANDU is that it's more or less impossible to extract plutonium from light water reactors.
CANDU is basis for all INDIAN PHWRs. So, its legacy remains
Candu is probably the safest traditional nuclear reactor in commercial use.
Such a complicated reactor and hugh efforts to collect the raw materials, such as deuterium, uranium etc. Initially 200 MW.
Vesta's 2021 introduced windturbine V236 is rated 15 MW, and in serial production. No nuclear waste burden on our children and future humanity.
First, read about this reactor in 1987 in nuclear engineering International magazine. Over the years, I hoped a full robotized reactor would have been built limiting radiation exposure to workers. Is it probably the best design ? Seeing as we are stuck with uranium and oil, it is interesting that Thorium can be used in a Candu reactor. At the time, I thought this the best reactor in the world.
My first thought was , Oh a Rmbk Reactor on its side !
Just wonding how far along the boron reactors have come or are they still planing them?
Thorium is making its way into CANDU reactors this year..........and is expected to increase fuel bundle yield 700%.
Once again we see how grimy SNC-Lavalin really is.
Weirdly similar to an RBMK. Pretty cool stuff
Besides void coefficent.
It's interesting to see the contrast here between CANDU and MAGNOX/AGR. Same bottlenecks, but completely different solutions.
it is refule with hambergers?
Candu is also a pun.
It Can Do the impossible.
Canadians love pun.
The moment you said snc lavalain i felt my heart rip out nuclear is now dead in canada
where will the electric car power come from?
@@jwad297 middle east?
@@YamiPoyo no Southern Ontario. Profiling? LOL.
YamiPoyo: Well, what did you expect? Diefenbaker killed the Canadian Aerospace industry, Harper killed the Canadian nuclear industry. Yes, this is an oversimplification but in broad strokes it gets the point across.
India had a design called APSARA,meaning celestial beauty, now I know why it was so.
I believe that modular molten salt reactors are the future.
👍👍
Should be very attractive to countries who already have stockpiles of used LWR-fuel.
Should be, yes, but unfortunately the up-front cost (and fears of nuclear proliferation due to Plutonium production) have scared away most potential buyers. In many cases (e.g. Finland) it is more politically attractive to just bury the spent fuel.
@@CanadianMacGyver I was thinking of Finland actually, building a Canadian reactor should be more palatable than building a Russian one. Sweden has 5000 tonnes of spent fuel sitting in storage, recycling it is the green thing to do :-)
kind of a what-if had the designers of the RBMK reactors flipped them on their sides
Could be a interesting way to burn through the UK's civil plutonium stockpile if we build any here.
They should have went with Molten Salt or Sodium as moderator. Would have reduced cost massively
Time for a Canadian nuclear renaissance! Anything that replaces carbon-based energy is A-OK with me! Especially nuclear for large base-load power!
CANDU reactors are really neat, they still produce almost all medical isotopes used in North America if memory serves me right as well as most of the worlds commercial supply of Tritium. The US due to politics lost most if not all our medical isotope production capacity. Due to Tritium being needed for nuclear weapons we did not lose our ability to make tritium because of course we didnt.
Of course, tritium is no longer needed for thermonuclear weapons as it is made on the fly by the primary atomic bomb irradiating lithium deuteride.
Good Report, very interesting (and depressing)
CANDU has its benefits and drawbacks. Its biggest benefits are continuous operation even when refuelling, its capability to utilise both natural uranium and low-enriched uranium, and its potential in utilising thorium.
From my days as a nuclear engineering student, the biggest drawback for a CANDU is its staggeringly time consuming refurbishment project. Not only replacing steam generators but also dismantle hundreds and hundreds of fuel channels and calandria tubes after defueling. A process that takes years to complete.
For a typical PWR, such an operation could be done during an extended outage. Some operators will replace a reactor’s steam generators first, and then during the second extended outage replacing the reactor vessel head. During the third extended outage or together during the second extended outage replacing the high and low-pressure turbines to extend its lifespan to 60 years. For example, the operator of the Diablo Canyon plant replaced its steam generators first during the early months of 2009. Then during the next outage, the reactor vessel heads were replaced for both Diablo Canyon units.
the operation takes 8 months and only after 30 years of operation
@@anuvisraa5786 Are you sure it’s only 8 months??? Point Lepreau’s refurbishment took more than 4 years to complete (2008-2012). As of right now, Darlington unit 3 is undergoing refurbishment since late 2020. Unit 3 is not scheduled to re-enter service until late 23.
@@mab9614 well embalse embales was 3 years offline but the main work in the reactor was least of a year
@@anuvisraa5786 From defueling unit 3 to reinstalling fuel channels, it took nearly two years for OPG to complete. Yes, I won’t deny that they are already much faster than others.
Unless you are only mentioning the disassembly phase, I have no idea where you get the “several months.”
Yes, Look how quickly the Bruce units are being refurbed. Longer than 8 months but pretty darn quick. And unlike most PWRs with pressure vessels, a Candu can actually be rebuilt. The calandria shell might be good for more than 100 years. @@anuvisraa5786
every known reactor has a fatal flaw..
some of those flaws are still unknown by designers..
maybe they should ask an expert
@11:14 darlington B? Darlington isn't split like Pickering and Bruce
They were going to make a darlington B with ACRs and it would have been split. Pickering isnt split, the units share a common ECI and NPC system. Bruce however is physically 2 different sites, each with their own systems
Before the Three Mile Island meltdown there was one at Chalk River, which Jimmy Carter participated in the cleanup operation. I guess this wasn't a Candu reactor. Someone can perhaps explain the details to that one....
That was the NRX reactor, which did pioneer some of the design features of CANDU. However, unlike CANDU, the fuel channels in the calandria were vertical instead of horizontal, and the reactor was heavy water moderated but light water cooled. This meant that a) the channels could not distort out of alignment due to gravity (slowing the reaction) when overheated and b) the reactor could suffer a loss-of-coolant incident while retaining its moderator, allowing the reaction to continue unchecked. Since CANDU is heavy water moderated AND cooled, loss-of-coolant automatically scrams the reactor. There were also major problems with NRX's control and automatic shutdown systems which were corrected in subsequent designs. Plainly Difficult and Geographics both have videos on the accident if you're interested.
The heavy water used in Candu reactors has 2 Deuterium molecules attached to the oxygen
atom (1:54) and the price for it was between $250 to $300 litre back in the late 70's.
The graphic shows Semi heavy water. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water
Plutonium is hard to extract because it's an oxide? As if reducing is complicated for somebody planing to build a nuclear bomb..
Canada is a nice country
INTERESTING TO HEAR THAT CANADA NOT CAPABLE OF MAKING A HEAVY WATER REACTOR FOR LESS THAN 22 BILLION DOLLARS.
Sadly Canada lost its national pride by ditching its very own design this week and switching to a small GE-designed light water reactor. Why???
A lot of politics, but The BWRX-300 is a highly promising design based on proven technology that can be built today. Being a first mover means much of the supply chain will be localized in Canada and will create thousands of Canadian jobs. Canada is also hopefully going to be building at least two different fast reactors, a 300 MW reactor from Moltex and the ARC-100. Hopefully terrestrial IMSR and CANDU get built as well.
We picked that one because its being manufactured in Cambridge, Ontario at BWXT Canada. Means that all the other units already ordered will also be produced in Canada. Hence, we get to export nuclear again.
@@diybotic Not sure it makes sense. Any of the designs would have been localized. CANDU is already local and operates on natural uranium - not enriched, which is in shortage now. In the future Canada will depend on other countries for its fuel.
Why is it that app politicians think of is getting reelected. In doing so sometimes the best decision for the country takes a back seat.
Did Canada work with Britain on nuclear power plants?
No, not in the 20th century. but we are now. See Moltex energy
Britain went its own way because it always aimed to have dual use technology: online refuelling, potential to produce plutonium for weapons and electricity. But the idea was always fraught: the necessary configurations have produced unsafe machines. First at Windscale, then at Chernobyl, dual-use reactors have either burst into flame or exploded in steam. The problem is graphite and water at high temperature, and positive void coefficient in some configurations. The failure for the British projects was in fact so acute that they wound up having to buy plutonium weapons pits from the Americans, at least initially, along with the Polaris missile. The Magnox project had to be redesigned into the AGR which was a graphite moderated, carbon dioxide cooled design which while technically capable of weapons production, could not run well if trying to do so.
Out of all the potential dual use configurations, only Canada has successfully produced one that runs well, yet has been optimised away from producing weapons plutonium by design. You really do have to choose one or the other: the countries that tried to have it both ways ended their experiments in ignominy. For the British it almost meant it would be a "great power" that was incapable of making its own nuclear weapons and had to buy them from the abhorrent Yankees. For the Soviets it was one factor that brought the capitalist "reformers" into power which led to the unravelling of the country and mass starvation in the 90s.
Today, Moltex Energy is trying to commercialise a British reactor (non-dual use this time) of molten salt configuration in Canada. They couldn't get off the ground in the UK because Rolls Royce muscled into the SMR competition. And of course the old British staple won out over the unknown upstart, but Moltex also faces stiff competition in Canada from ARC, Terrestrial Energy, and another lead cooled reactor I can't remember the name of the company of at the moment.
Personally I see no future in Canadian new builds of SMRs. CANDU has been too successful, its refurbishment projects have gone off quite well, and as a developed country the emergence of new load centers is quite unlikely unless a lot of heavy fuel oil and natural gas turbines are shut down. That means fighting the vested interests in the Canadian oil industry, which means fighting the Albertans, which means telling the province that contributes a lot of tax revenues that their major industry is going to be wound down. Not going to happen under the Libs, which are weak, nor the NDP, which is even weaker, nor the Tories, which rely on Albertan votes.
If you want to look at what success looks like in nuclear new build, look to the East. Russia and China are cranking out light water reactors and look set to take over Eastern Europe. The key to success is in repetition and small iterations. The Russians and Chinese with a legacy of Communist planning, plan their reactors down to the last bolt and screw, and take into account the weather forecast. In contrast, the Americans and Canadians haven't built new reactors for decades. Restarting reactor production on the American's part was so problematic and error ridden that it looks like they might even give up after Vogtle. Same for the UK: they keep life extending their AGRs, which means no load for the new nuclear plants to service. And the UK and US don't even have their own heavy reactor forges: they shipped that capability off to Japan and France. Hinkley C is Franco-German, which is a stain on the lost glories of Sheffield; while Vogtle's modules built by a shipwright don't even fit together. Again, a stain on a legacy of a country whose history included the Liberty ships cranked out by the dozen.
The future of Canada, and the US, and the UK, is not a return to the glory days of economic planning, explosive growth, mass mobilisation of the population to rebuild a planet shattered after WW2. It's $500,000 apartments held empty for speculation, sold to yuppies and bankers buying $10 coffees while the homeless sleep in dumpsters. It's crumbling roads and schools while the military procures more weapons than it knows what to do with. It's politicians talking about human rights while poverty spirals out of control, shelves run empty, and people ask why shipping factories overseas hasn't made anyone richer except for Wall St and the City of London. Building a reactor? In these conditions? That requires mass mobilisation and education of a population? That requires that authorities trust the skill and care of workers and that people trust the authorities in turn?
That would be about as likely as pigs flying.
@@MonMalthias this is very helpful thank you. But windscale was only meant to produce fuel . And the Chernobyl was unstable because it was to big and could have one part in melt down and inactive in another as well bad a list of design flaws like no contament building. And I thought we brought the polaris missile because we went down the kerosene root and not solid fuel and was hence ussles for submarine use and I totally agree production/ factory work pays a lot better than service work . I wonder if you could help I don't understand what was stored in the grafite in the wind scale reactor and hence why it would just run hot?
@@gingernutpreacher Wigner energy contributed to both accidents. Graphite when irradiated by neutrons builds up defects inside the crystals of the bulk graphite itself. At high temperatures above 250 degrees Celsius this can be annealed out. High heat allows the graphite to become more plastic and this allows healing of the defects within the graphite crystals.
At windscale, the annealing operations carried out on a routine basis nevertheless were unable to get all of the Wigner energy out. The spike in temperature helped start the fire.
At Chernobyl, graphite tipped control rods and positive void coefficient design of the reactor core meant that an emergency lowering of control rods would actually cause a spike in temperature and boiling of the water coolant. Boiling water is less dense than liquid and this loss of density further increased heat output of the reactor, which boiled more water, and so on. Wigner energy is thought to have contributed to the graphite fire at Chernobyl as after the steam explosion coolant was lost, graphite heated up and perhaps it was Wigner energy release that started the graphite burning.
@@MonMalthias I don't buy the Wigner for Chernobyl however like you say if they had not been using graphite they would not of needed to tip the control rods to get a eaven burn . But at windscale they had filled the fuel rods with stuff that it was never designed for and cut the heat fins down to about 5mm meaning the aluminium got to hot and melted basically we were doing stuff a graphite reactor was never meant to do. Anyway so it's neutron's thanks
Of the water reactors, I rank the CANDU as the best. But molten salt reactors will rule entire energy sector.
isone needs candu
Soviets: this looks familiar wait is this a horizontal RBMK
It really is an RBMK on its side, but then done properly. You know, with proper safety systems, a containment building, no smelly graphite etc. As a hobby I study nuclear reactors, with the emphasis on the good old RBMK, and when first seeing videos about the CANDU I went like; "Hey, this thing looks just like an RBMK, but then put on its side." So, I started reading up on the CANDU and the more I read about them, the more I realised the two might as well be family. The same pressurised fuel channel design, on-power refuelling, no pressurised reactor vessel etc. The CANDU can even have the same positive void coefficient as the RBMK under certain circumstances. But because it has no graphite moderator, a lot of safety and control systems in place, and the designers made sure that certain reactivity aspects react rather slow in a CANDU, there is ample time for the operator to intervene before things would get out of hand. It really is a very well-behaved and safe reactor that I happen to like very much. It could also close the nuclear fuel cycle because it can use the "waste" from a PWR as fuel with little processing (Dupic fuel cycle). There is a lot of room for the two reactor types working together.
@@swokatsamsiyu3590 They're really only the same in the sense that they're both channel type reactors. In every other way the CANDU design is vastly better.
@@rdormer
That's kind of what I said in my reply. The CANDU is everything the RBMK could have been if they had sat on the design longer, and give it the things it needs in order to be a safe, stable, and happy reactor. But instead they made it big and grumpy, gave it every unfavourable characteristic in the Physics book they could find, and didn't even bother giving it a proper house (containment building) to live in. Nope, they plunked it out into the world in little more than its bare fuel rods and see how that went. As we know, it didn't end well.
Sweden tried but failed to design a Candu type reactor at place called Marviken.
What was the cause of the failed attempt? Political, monetary? India licensed that technology from Canada, and has many power plants successfully operating on that design. Unlike America, at least India was willing to foot the upfront cost to ensure that they wouldn't have catastrophic nuclear accidents in the future!
@@xxxxxxxxxx6903 Political. The Marviken reactor was intended as a dual use reactor, generating both electricity and Plutonium for a nuclear weapons program. Eventually Sweden came to their senses and decided not to pursue weapons, at which point the reactor project was dropped.
@@rdormer - Interesting! And you are probably correct, unfortunately! It's funny how politicians always talk about "green initiatives" & "safety" until it's not lining their pockets! 🙄
The Canadian nuclear capacity factor isn't great anymore. The US fleet has seen the upper half of rxs operate above 90% cf.
I think the best reactor is Ben stein
The reason why this super reactor never became the dominant reactor is because of proliferation concerns. Wrong about capital costs for heavy water reactors.
exactly
it's pretty dominant whit 42 units in operation and more than 12 derivatives under construction, hab been operated in 7 countries they were quite dominant in the third world
I live next to a CANDU, darlington, and I've felt safe the entire time I've been near it. How ever they still have a nuclear emergency plan like putting out KI pills.
LIvinging between Pickering and Darlington, I feel safe that they're CANDU plants. CANDU can't melt down.
Umm, Actually it's just highly unlikely that they could melt down, but it's not impossible. As an Ex ANO at Bruce A NGS we were trained to make sure all safety systems and cooling systems operated properly, but in theory any reactor can melt down. The Candu has a negative fuel temperature co-efficient, but that doesn't mean that when the chain reaction stops that the fission products can't overheat and melt. However, it's a great design and extremely safe.
👏👏👏👏👍🔝💯🥇
Sembra un imitazione dell RBMK.
Not really. RBMKs are graphite-moderated and light water cooled and fuelled by enriched uranium, whereas the CANDU is moderated and cooled by heavy water and fuelled with natural Uranium. Also unlike the RMBK, the CANDU's fuel channels act as its pressure vessel while the Calandria that holds the heavy water moderator is not designed to be pressure-bearing.
The best nuclear reactor is no nuclear reactor.
5:50 This analysis seems totally confused. A meltdown generally occurs in a reactor that is already shut down, but lacks sufficient cooling. A design where there could be a runaway fission process is a whole different sort of problem.
I cover that scenario immediately afterwards. The CANDU is protected against meltdown from the short-lived fission products in the fuel by a) the high heat capacity of the heavy water in the Calandria, and b) the convection-driven heat-exchange system, which can cool the core passively even with the main coolant pumps shut off.
@@CanadianMacGyver Tat was not my point. At about 5:50 in the video, there is wording that seems to conflate runaway fission with meltdown after the reaction shuts down, as if they were part of the same situation, when in fact those are almost completely different things. (I say almost, just because I suppose you could have a runaway reaction, somehow followed by a shutdown and then a meltdown, but I've never heard of such an event, and don't even know if it could happen.)
Fair enough; that was an error of phrasing on my part. This is one of my older videos, and definitely due for a remake. Cheers.
Water with one deuterium is semi-heavy water, real heavy water has an ABSORTION cross section 600 times lower than light water but smaller SCATTERING cross section than light water as you basically said. The physical properties do not change so much between heavy water and semi-heavy water, but the cross sections does. For light water reactors there *were some proposals* to use semi-heavy water that has properties between the two.But to my knowledge that were never implemented as the proposals are relatively new. AFAIK all low enrichment reactors use pure (as much as it is possible) heavy water, so that diagram with just one deuterium is wrong or at least misleading. Things are more complicated and nuanced as U238 (97% of natural Uranium) can only undergo fission by fast neutrons an U235 (0.7% of natural Uranium) can undergo fission by slow (thermal) and fast neutrons, but the probability for fast neutrons is 1000 times smaller, this is not a problem in an atomic bomb, of a fast neutron reactor, but as U235 when undergoes fission emits fast neutrons in a thermal neutron reactor that neutron will escape and so those neutrons must be moderated to thermal energies (less than 1eV) so they can be used again and a chain reaction can occur. Fast neutron reactors are different beasts.
9:34 "Ordinary PWR of same generation spend half of operating time being refueled" So what generation is this? CANDU is gen 2. I'd say more like 20-10% of operating time is refuelling for gen 2 PWRs. 50-50 makes no sense.
Latssssszy
They are and were a plumbing nightmare.
Can you be more specific?
look at the candu design. They won't build any more.
@@jwad297 There are a number of reasons why CANDU reactors are out of favour, but the external piping is definitely NOT one of them.
What may look like a rat's nest of pipes to the neophyte is, in fact, a very carefully thought out piping system that lends itself to factory prefabrication.
Although not my project, my employer at that time fabricated these pipe runs in our factory and shipped them to site.
@@BasementEngineer I worked in that rats nest for 30 years. Neophyte.
@@jwad297 Maybe you missed your calling? Perhaps selling vegetables was more your thing?
why cant america use this sort of reactor?
This is not the best reactor. Thorium molten salt reactor is.
I agree, but none have ever successfully achieved commercial status. The CANDU is the best reactor design that has actually been built and commercially operated.
In theory…….
Salts and their derivatives are highly corrosive. Even with Hastelloy, Monel, Inconel, and other super-alloy metals. Corrosion and erosion of pressure/reaction vessels, Piping & Fittings is an ongoing issue for salt based systems!
You chose to omit how much radioactive waste is produced per megawatt-hr and what the plan is for that waste.
Because CANDU reactors consume most of the waste in it's own reaction, and it produces waste with an unprecedented low longevity of about 100-200 years, which we can just store for that long before it becomes mostly harmless
SILVER PRICE WILL FALL TO 19$....
Yeah sure. “Best”. NRX was the worlds first reactor melt.
And a Model T was mechanically problematic ergo don't buy a 2023 F150?
@@samurphy if the fundamental design of ‘cars’ caused them to produce wastes that can never be resolved, and which accumulate, and that produced fissile materials for use in nuclear weapons, and … then yes. This a very poor analogy. It presumes that some degree of technical development will resolve minor problems. The problems are in no way minor. And they fundamentally cannot be resolved.
Candu sistem its at our Cernavodă atomic central Tht give Romania 27,% of electricity IT was made IT with canadian companys in the 1973 in time of.Nicolae Ceaușescu ITs used even now whn the price of electricity its skyrocekting this candu works safety after 40 years and its good for Romania even in 2021 but every year they renew everything with new pieces If they need
For such a tiny population you guys are badass. Take your nuclear excellence back. Toss out Fidel Trudeau!
Uh, It was harper who gave away the technology of the Candu reactor to SNC Lavelin for $15 Million. Bad deal of the millennium!
Classic political crap, trade safety and long term sustainability for "ooo look how cheap it costs to put in".
I don't know about you guys but I'd say if a reactor spends half it's life being refueled then they are charging me full price for half a reactor. I'd be using the Canadian reactors, the things seem to run on anything are are more forgiving of mistakes.
Indian stealing (or scamming) technology, impossible!
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Boron. Salt molten. Tritium unanium " filter" hydrogen 3 reaction