AHC/WI: BWR Beats PWR for Civilian Nuclear Energy

Delta Force

Banned
The pressurized water reactor is great for a naval vessel, especially a submarine, but the boiling water reactor has a number of advantages over it for civilian nuclear energy. BWR designs tend to be less stressed due to operating at lower pressure, radiation, and temperature levels. They also tend to have less components and a simplified design overall, including a merger of the primary and secondary coolant loops into a single system. With proper design, a BWR could even operate using natural convection for coolant, eliminating pumps and with it the entire class of station blackout scenarios.

While PWR received a head start due to its development by various world navies, the BWR is a similar design that uses similar technology. Could BWR have become the civilian nuclear standard instead of PWR? If so, might there have been less nuclear energy incidents due to the failure modes of Three Mile Island and Fukushima being less likely in a BWR, as well as nuclear incidents overall? Might nuclear energy be somewhat more economically competitive?
 

Delta Force

Banned
Can BWRs use low pressure or even gravity feed Emergency Core Cooling Systems, perhaps in conjunction with natural convection?
 

Phyrx

Banned
The consensus at the BWR I work at is that PWRs are better, since you can take a shit in the turbine building.

:D

In all seriousness, though - I think that theoretically BWRs are supposed to be cheaper, but the thing is that the nuclear industry is pretty much more politics than business, and PWRs are cleaner. Not talking about emissions, of course - I mean that since so much more of the plant (especially the turbine building, as I mentioned :p) is outside the RCA (radiologically controlled area), the amount of dose picked up by workers is much, much lower.

I'm kind of rambling. Since I have nothing to do with the financial side of the business I can't really comment much on which approach is more economically competitive, but in my experience, it's the PWRs that get all the praise and funding from the Powers That Be, not the BWRs. Take that for what it's worth.

I'm sure you're familiar with ESBWRs and the other "Gen III+" designs that are floating around. All that fancy "passive safety" stuff was discussed in Reactor Theory class but since I don't exactly use that knowledge on a daily basis I've forgotten most of it. But I doubt I ever learned anything you can't read on Wikipedia anyways.

And I guess if BWRs had become the norm you might not have seen TMI or Fukushima, but being the freak occurrences they are, I sorta suspect that's just a crapshoot.


EDIT: Typed all this before Anderman commented. As for whether passive safety could have been used back in the sixties and seventies when they built all the plants, well, I don't know honestly. I have to assume that it is, or was, or was thought to be, less effective / economical in one way or another.
 

Delta Force

Banned
I'm kind of rambling. Since I have nothing to do with the financial side of the business I can't really comment much on which approach is more economically competitive, but in my experience, it's the PWRs that get all the praise and funding from the Powers That Be, not the BWRs. Take that for what it's worth.

I think only General Electric and Hitachi still develop them. Why do you think the PWR is more popular even for civilian nuclear energy?

I'm sure you're familiar with ESBWRs and the other "Gen III+" designs that are floating around. All that fancy "passive safety" stuff was discussed in Reactor Theory class but since I don't exactly use that knowledge on a daily basis I've forgotten most of it. But I doubt I ever learned anything you can't read on Wikipedia anyways.
Are there any nuclear reactor safety equipment systems that have been proposed or are being adopted other than the ones mentioned here?

As for whether passive safety could have been used back in the sixties and seventies when they built all the plants, well, I don't know honestly. I have to assume that it is, or was, or was thought to be, less effective / economical in one way or another.
In another thread someone linked to an American supplied research reactor built in the FRG in the late 1950s. It featured natural circulation, and I think it was a BWR.
 
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