scaleablity of a reactor?

[Rematog]

Aeronaut,

I’m discussing the FF modules power conditioning, cables etc. INSIDE the module.

LOL, A station tranformer yard would need 25 Modules (or a whole lot more, in our case 115 modules) to power it.

My point in these posts was that the board seems to be invisioning pencil sized cables and shoe box sized power conditioning modues inside the FF skid. More like wrist thick cables and desk sized modules.

Rematog

PS: Google “arc flash video clip”. I personally know two men who had “died” until revived by CPR and were crippled by their burns in two seperate arc flash accidents. Look at “High voltage arcs and sparks” and “Arc flash while racking a breaker”. Remember guys, we are discussing deploying >100,000 FF modules that will have many 10’s of thousands of men and women working in them. The power industry uses big, heavy equipment (expensive) for, amoung other reasons, the desire to send it’s employees home alive at the end of the day.

[Aeronaut]

Rematog wrote: Aeronaut,

I’m discussing the FF modules power conditioning, cables etc. INSIDE the module.

LOL, A station tranformer yard would need 25 Modules (or a whole lot more, in our case 115 modules) to power it.

My point in these posts was that the board seems to be invisioning pencil sized cables and shoe box sized power conditioning modues inside the FF skid. More like wrist thick cables and desk sized modules.

Rematog

PS: Google “arc flash video clip”. I personally know two men who had “died” until revived by CPR and were crippled by their burns in two seperate arc flash accidents. Look at “High voltage arcs and sparks” and “Arc flash while racking a breaker”. Remember guys, we are discussing deploying >100,000 FF modules that will have many 10’s of thousands of men and women working in them. The power industry uses big, heavy equipment (expensive) for, amoung other reasons, the desire to send it’s employees home alive at the end of the day.

I agree, Rematog. Safety is job 1. I’ve heard stories about lowly 480 volt grabbing people and creating fire balls. We can’t really sketch out the power conditioning equipment until we know what voltage and current ranges we can tweak the output cap bank(s) to provide.

I’ve been seeing 1GW plants like stacking modules in a 3D matrix. Suppose we can get 15 amps of 382kV from our 5MW, and we arrange these modules in a circle with the transmission transformer(s) in a very physically isolated part of the site. Something like circling the wagons, but turning the wagons 90 degrees so the business end of each module faces the transformer.

[Rematog]

We use isophase buses for generator output (at 25Kv). Big copper bars inside an insulated conduit. A system like this would be likely. I’d think it would be more linear, like a trailer court, with an access road with FF modules along it, and a back “alley” with power, control, cooling water, etc. services in a “duct bank” along the rear, with the “back” of two rows of FF modules up againt it. At the end, the main service building with tranformers, DCS system (controls), Control room, cooling water pumps, etc. Like so:

M M M M M M M M M M M M .Control. M M M M M M M M M M M M
–duct bank——————–Building—————duct bank——-
M M M M M M M M M M M M …here…. M M M M M M M M M M M M

The M’s are FF modules.

But, again my point is that INSIDE the FF module, you will have large conductors and big, heavy switchgear, etc. I just want people who havn’t dealt with this kind of thing to get an idea of what it’s like. Your run of the mill residential/commerical electrican could easily kill himself trying to work on this stuff. It take proper training and tools to do so.

Rematog

[Aeronaut]

Rematog wrote:
But, again my point is that INSIDE the FF module, you will have large conductors and big, heavy switchgear, etc. I just want people who haven’t dealt with this kind of thing to get an idea of what it’s like. Your run of the mill residential/commerical electrican could easily kill himself trying to work on this stuff. It take proper training and tools to do so.

Rematog

These modules are beginning to sound like stubby double-wides on a lot of acres of gravel. And the scariest part is that electrical training and licensing to service these might take 20 years or more to trickle down to local use. Do you see co-ops and villages running a handful of FF modules within 5 years of when production begins?

[Rematog]

Aeronaut,

No.

Rematog

[Aeronaut]

That’s the way I read it, too.

[Rematog]

I’d assume 2 modules per acre, plus a couple of hundred acres for cooling towers, switchyards, office, maintenance, and warehouse bldgs and site “buffer”.

The plant I work at, (3x 575MW coal) sits on 2,000 arces, with about half of that in use, the rest is leased to a farmer and is for any future expansion.

Rematog

“Think big, really big, then double it….”

[Aeronaut]

Okay. Let’s skin this cat another way, pulse it a lot slower and take industrial style 480 out of the cap banks. I hate rain clouds.

[Rematog]

An example of the dangers of an “untrained” workmen. The following is from an article in the online version of “Electric Light & Power” dated June 9, 2009. The same “ingenuity” in someone working on very high Kva power could easily be fatal.

Enjoy,

Rematog

I was on a business trip to Dallas and happened to look out of my hotel room window. I observed a group of workers cleaning the side of a building across the parking lot. It was obvious the workers were clueless to the danger they had placed themselves in.

The challenge for these workers was the distance between the parking lot and the building to be cleaned with a pressure washer. Add to this the need to raise and lower the worker operating the pressure washing wand. We often talk about human ingenuity. Well, workers can be quite innovative and get the job done yet put themselves in a precarious situation without even recognizing it.

These workers had parked a mobile scissor lift in the parking spaces parallel to the sidewalk and the building. The building was approximately twelve feet from the scissor lift. Employing a two by twelve wood board about sixteen feet long, they lashed one end to the floor of the scissor lift. This resembled a diving board, if you can imagine. Being astute innovators of equipment, they positioned three large workers as counter balances to hang on the outside of the guardrail of the lift. Being safety minded the employee with the wand in his hand was standing at the end of the “diving board” wearing fall protection that was clipped onto the basket of the lift twelve feet away (and yes, I am sure the lanyard employed a de-accelerator). Got the picture?

Being a studious safety professional, I quickly went downstairs and walked toward these hard working, creative gentlemen. As I approached, I said, “I am not with OSHA, but as a certified safety professional it is my duty to stop your operation.” They all got wide-eyed. It was obvious that they heard, “OSHA” and misinterpreted. They stopped working abruptly so I assume they knew their behavior was unsafe. When I asked who was in charge, one of the workers ran through a door and quickly produced the supervisor who was very cooperative.

The supervisor explained that it was his idea to use the innovated contraption until the rental company delivered the snorkel lift (expected to arrive on site in the next two hours). After a few minutes of discussion with the supervisor and the workers they realized the consequences of their behavior could have been serious. We all shook hands and agreed that they would wait until the rental company showed up with the proper equipment and I promised to not write them a citation (they still thought I was with OSHA). It was just another day in the life of a safety professional.

[Aeronaut]

Thanx, Rematog. I was overdue for a good laugh.

Seriously, though, we’ve been taking an engineering point of view towards distributing 5MW per FF unit. Just because the FF can crank out 5MW steadily if all goes well doesn’t mean every application will require that much power. How often do most people use every HP in their engine? If they ever do, how long is that burst? Only long enough to pass (hopefully) one car. We could leave the 5MW in the (cap) bank, reducing total neutron emission and number of maintenance cycles in some cases. Eventually another pulse would fill the output bank back up.

Now this is where it gets dangerous, because I’m thinking of limiting the power out through a bunch of system safeguards that reek of paddlewheel riverboat boiler relief valves being tied down. Ya just can’t make something foolproof because fools are so ingenious.

What I’m getting at is that 480 training and licensing is much more available, and it supports the goal of cheap distributed power.

[Rematog]

The FF module needs to be able to crank out 5MW 24-7, 365 per year, for 20 years, with only planned maintenace shutdowns, 95% of the time or better.

That’s how the, what 100,000 modules, needed to replace the existing power plant fleet needs to designed if it is to do what existing coal/fission/gas/oil plant do. (except we design for 30 years and expect to get >50 years service).

Most will be cycling between 100% and 50% capacity on a daily/weekly/seasonal load demand curve.

Why is the goal cheap distributed power? Why not just cheap power? Let the market and engineering experience (once we get some with FF, so Eric, when can I buy 100 modules?) determine if distributed is cheaper, and how centralized (or decentralized) the modules should be. I’ve never been convenced that un-attended operation will happen in the normal power market, for at least 20, more like 40 years. (of course there will be special cases, miliary apps, etc wher un-attended operation may be used).

[Aeronaut]

Rematog,

The problem with the grid is that it fails catastrophically rather than gracefully eroding, which could be the case if we were generating power at or near the township level. The local model is the one that can actually improve standards of living around the world. That’s the model driving the question of how do we easily ship these modules.

[Rezwan]

Rematog wrote: But, again my point is that INSIDE the FF module, you will have large conductors and big, heavy switchgear, etc. I just want people who havn’t dealt with this kind of thing to get an idea of what it’s like. Your run of the mill residential/commerical electrican could easily kill himself trying to work on this stuff. It take proper training and tools to do so.

Yes, the safety issues need to be made clear. I just read this article about Hybrid safety. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31112317/ If we’re headed into an electrical world, we need to understand how to deal with it. Not take it for granted.

[Aeronaut]

Rezwan wrote:

But, again my point is that INSIDE the FF module, you will have large conductors and big, heavy switchgear, etc. I just want people who havn’t dealt with this kind of thing to get an idea of what it’s like. Your run of the mill residential/commerical electrican could easily kill himself trying to work on this stuff. It take proper training and tools to do so.

Yes, the safety issues need to be made clear. I just read this article about Hybrid safety. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31112317/ If we’re headed into an electrical world, we need to understand how to deal with it. Not take it for granted.

There’s a lot of food for thought in that article, Rezwan. Thanx for the link. Imagine all those 600 volt batteries already on the road. Something the article didn’t point out is what might happen if the wreckage shorted out the actual wiring somewhere downstream of the battery pack.

I did some rough numbers to provide 100 houses with the full 100 amps of 220 volts that the main cutoff breaker is rated at. These numbers are rough because true power (RMS or Root Mean Square value) is 70.7% of that, I assumed steady load at 50% of max, and I used watts instead of Joules. I also rounded down, in favor of safety and headroom. For instance, what if (100) 30A heat pump compressors all kicked in at the same instant? What if (100) 30A clothes dryers also spiked the load at this same instant? Maybe its dinner time and there’s 20 to 50 electric ranges on 50 amp breakers lurking… In short, this is no place for optimistic numbers.

The first level of safety is the circuit’s breaker. Second is each house’s (or pole barn’s) main cutoff breaker. Third safety/fault isolation level is the local pad transformer, which I presume is protected by breaker or fuse. The local FF plant in this neighborhood would supply the 13.2kV highwire to use the pole-mounted transformers as the 4th safety level as well as minimize modifications to the existing electrical system. This just happens to be handy and highly visible on a major artery with plenty of police traffic on any given day, and the land is available in this neighborhood. New safety concerns are now isolated to roughly 1 acre (lots of buffer area inside the fence) housing 2 FF reactors to guarantee power is always on. One could also be tasked to selling power most of the time to pay for the installation, when not needed locally. Four or five of these sites just might be enough to power my township with a total of 6 to 10 FF reactors.

Periodic maintenance and emergency site visits would be sub-contracted to the big utility, who should be glad to have few guinea pigs to observe without committing capital until they determine their network architecture. Who knows- they may decide this is the way of their future. In any case, they already have the licensing and relationships to help make this happen smoothly.

Here’s the numbers:

100 houses @ 24kW peak rated load/house=2.4MW
Round up to 25kW peak load=2.5MW
Double that to allow for pole barns, etc….
===========================
5 MW peak rated load

Every shot puts 5MW profit in the output cap bank
60 hz (shots/second) picked to match line frequency
300 hz pulse rate could power 5 separate DC->AC converters to further isolate 80% of the system from a serious issue within the other 20%.

Conclusion: keep the kids from jumping the fence(s) and you have a reasonably safe local power system. A four site package could maybe cost 5 to 10M$. Primary payback mode would be reduced- or free- electricity. Second mode would be selling surplus electricity to the big utility. Damn! I want one of these packages in my township! How soon do you think we can make FF useful for something other than making heat?

[Rematog]

Aeronaut,

Very interesting analysis. Now your getting a feel for “obligation to serve”, which is what a regulated utility has to it’s customers (the utility takes on this duty in exchange for the regualated monopoly status).

Not mentioned in this is the added cost per house to “own” their own power supply. If the FF module, installed on site, costs $1,000K, and the distribution system to these 100 homes costs $500K to install, that adds $15k to the construciton cost of each of these 100 homes.

I went back to a cost of power I’d work up in an old post, and maintenance for a FF module (1 day every 4 weeks + 2 weeks/year, I’d be glad to post if you’d like) @$119,240/year. Now, as this is being done in field, rather than a centralized plant site, multiply this by 25% (time to drive to site each day, cost of vehiles, and crafts being less well supervised) = $149,000 per year / 100 homes = $1,490/year. Plus, you have to have a back-up power supply (the Grid?) for those 24 days per year. (12 of the days would only have about 8 hrs down time so it works out to about 96% availablility, not a bad number at all).

With a cost of money of 6%, the capital investment costs + maintenance costs: $15K@6%= $900 + $1,500 maint = $2,400/yr or $200 Month.

While not a huge electric bill, this does not seem to me to be the “cheap power” the board is assuming.

WHY?

Because, the 5MW module is being sized for peak load which was done so it could be DEDICATED to a DISTRUBUTED location. The grid allows the central station to keep it’s units much more evenly loaded, so they actually generate a much larger percentage of their rated capacity.

So, Aeronaut, your example, to me, provides another arguement against distributed generation. (and I’ll not even discuss the “keep the kids from jumping the fence” safety issue.)

Rematog

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