Reply #48: spent rod storage

[divvy]

I undertand the advantage of gravity assisted control rods. There is no way to have an efficient steam drum with a bunch of holes in it... BWRs mke steam in the reactor. Why isn't everything in casks? ... because of the confusion over the ultimate storage location of fuel... spent fuel was supposed to be the government's problem. That was the law when these plants were built. I think you would still have to have a couple reloads in the pool before casks can hold them. You have to let them cool off. U4 deteriorated the fastest, because it had the most recently removed fuel. The heat load on a fuel pool cooling sstem doubles during refueling and immediately after removing "fresh" spent fuel. There is a big difference in heat coming from a 10 or 20 year old spent fuel bundle and one that came out 3 mos ago. The old bundles are put in casks.

out on a limb here ..

why not drive a sub right into the plant's loading jetty and hook up a cable? When we pulled into port we could hook up to shore power in much less than an hour and shut down the reactor. Except run it in reverse - let the sub provide the power. You just need 1 nuclear submarine + 1 power cable. I'm sure somebody has thought of this.