Am flying to ABQ to attend TEAC11. TEAC11 is overlapping with ORNL MSRW 2022, so am missing ORNL’s day 2/2 presentations.
Here is Dr. Amanda Lines ORNL MSRW presentation from yesterday (day 1/1, 2022-10-11)...
Online Monitoring for Molten Salt Reactors and Supporting Systems
...which I am only able to watch now (on a plane) thanks to some screen-recording on my MacBook.
PNNL is collaborating to develop and demonstrate on-line monitoring technology that enables characterization and analysis of chemical composition.
Successful demonstrations on key gas and molten salt phase systems are laying the foundation for expanded applications and opportunities.
Our goal: support timely, safe, and cost-effective deployment of MSs.
Other PNNL Teams Amanda calls out for particularly tight integration with their own work…
Bill Glass bill.glass@pnnl.gov Ultrasonics For: vessel integrity, heat x monitoring, energy harvesting, communication.
Bruce McNamara bruce.mcnamara@pnnl.gov Kilogram scale: production and volatility of fluoride salt, processing of chloride salt systems.
Praveen Thallapally praveen.thallapally@pnnl.gov MOFs for off-gas Capture.
Brian Riley brian.riley@pnnl.gov Waste Forms for Salt Wastes and Partitioned Salt Wastes: dehalogenation (remove halides), waste forms (glasses /glass-ceramics /ceramics).
What On-line Monitoring (OLM) Provides:
Sensors directly in or on the process.
In situ and real-time analysis of a given process or system.
Flexibility in Information and Integration:
Chemical composition: identification, quantification, redox state, Speciation.
System matrix: solid, liquid, gas, molten salt.
System scale: commercial scale, lab scale, micro scale.
How OLM Can Support MSRs:
More timely development and demonstration of processes
Process control and monitoring of deployed MSR systems
Examples: gas treatment, salt handling, fluorination.
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Iterating Thorium Doc
I’ve been enjoying editing a new iteration of Thorium doc. Has been going well, though I hope to pick up some key interviews at TEAC11. I’d have loved to attend ORNL MSRW and would certainly have tried to capture interviews there too, but they’re overlapping. I’m of more use to TEA than to ORNL as far as video capture goes.
Currently I’m about 40m into the doc’s iteration which will come to 90m - 120m… will just see how long it gets. Again, I’m front-loading it with ~5m of info-dump, although this time I’ll try a new strategy for propagating info.
The video needs to be truly viral. And so the info delivered in the first 5m is really secondary to making a video which holds a person’s attention. If it doesn’t hold people’s attention then it doesn’t go viral, and ultimately fewer people are exposed to any info at all, be it the first 5m or the whole thing.
So, back to same ideas as TR2011 for the intro, although I’m focusing on potential efficiency gains rather than a more overt comparison to PWR and their respective safety systems.
I really don’t want to diss PWR to the extend I did in TR2011.
Have been spending some effort online trying to keep existing nuclear running, and I hope anyone reading this would consider putting in a bit of effort on that front as well.
One org I’m a member of is C4NE.ca (Canadians For Nuclear Energy), and it seems C4NE has been successful in saving the Pickering nuclear power plant.
And a great many people recently succeeded in saving Diablo nuclear power plant. (I tried to help too years ago, but Gavin Newsome was definitely not taking notes when I was speaking.)
If you’re reading this on Oct 12th or 13th, there’s a task I’d like you to consider… one that you don’t have to be a Canadian to participate in, as some of my previous requests have required…
Sign the German petition to keep their nuclear fleet online.
Or...
Help Reduce Russia’s Energy Leverage
...is another way I might articulate this request.
Yes, anyone in the world can fill out the official German government petition. It is almost at 50k, and once it hits 50k the gov will have to respond.
“That is dumb, governments always just crap out boilerplate talking-point responses to petitions!”
Here is why you should do this.
Takes 3 minutes.
48K people have already put in effort. Get this across the finish line! It could go either way.
If you are the 50,000th person to sign it will be like winning a braggart lottery.
German gov won’t respond now, they’ll be responding when things get MUCH worse… but they’ll know the victorious petition is looming. They'll have to excuse their stupidity in the middle of an energy-scarce winter.
I’ve done it on my MacBook for myself, and on phones when helping (berating?) friends to do it too.
Start by registering with The Germans...
https://epetitionen.bundestag.de/epet/registrieren.html
The pages are in German, so you’ll probably want to see if your browser has an auto-translate too in the address bar. (Usually on the immediate left-side or right-side of the address bar.)
If you can’t figure out how to translate the web-page in your browser, forget it. You tried. Thanks for trying. Good effort.
…still reading? Look at you, translating German!
Create your account. (Yes, with a valid email and address and create an account password.)
Germany will send you a confirmation email, click that link in your email.
Head to here to sign (and read?) the petition itself…
https://epetitionen.bundestag.de/content/petitionen/_2022/_07/_26/Petition_136760.html
…and that’s it!
—
Yesterday Greta Thunberg, the Swedish girl who opposed fossil fuel and nuclear power because she considers both a threat to the environment… changed her position on operating nuclear.
Now she says, if a reactor is operating it should continue to operate. That People should focus on closing down coal plants instead of nuclear plants. She said that to a German TV interviewer.
Don’t anyone get up in my grill about Greta… I’m not a follower of Greta. Many other people are. This is good news.