Nuke plants

With the confusion over energy policy the push toward nuclear power is growing. There is a new type of nuclear power that is much safer. Recall the two major concerns about nuke plants are the core meltdown and radioactive waste. The new technology deals directly with both of these issues. The new plants will likely be what are called “pebble plants”. This fuel is still U 235 but it is incased in tennis ball size units and they are added over time as the old ones are depleted so there is no need to shut down the reactor to recharge. More importantly the pebbles operate at a higher temperature and this allows the heat to dissipate without cooling fluid. In other words if the cooling fluid were disrupted the core would not melt but it would lose heat though natural convection. This eliminates the first danger which is core meltdown. Second it does not use water as the cooling medium but rather an inert gas like helium. Since the gas does not absorb the radioactivity like water, the contamination of other parts of the system is held to a minimum. In operation the heated gas is passed through a heat exchanger which heats water to high temperature steam which is used to power the generators. Since the gas is not radioactive nothing is transferred to the water or in turn to the generators. The radioactivity is maintained in the core area and all this drastically reduces the radioactive waste such as old pipes and pumps. It appears to me that nuclear power represents the transition away from carbon based fuels to the future of either solar or cold fusion.