Summary

• Objects (1 modified, 1 added, 0 removed)
  • Caselist.RoundClass[9]
  • Caselist.CitesClass[10]

Details

Caselist.RoundClass[9]

EntryDate

...	...	@@ -1,1 +1,1 @@
1		-2016-11-14 05:08:26.229
	1	+2016-11-14 05:08:26.0

Caselist.CitesClass[10]

Cites

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,10 @@
	1	+Counterplan: The United States Federal Government ought to increase the production of nuclear power through denatured molten salt reactors.
	2	+Williams ‘16: Stephen Williams writes in “How Molten Salt Reactors Might Spell a Nuclear Energy Revolution” on July 4th, 2016 for ZMEScience. Stephen Williams is a retired software engineer and former technical writer. Since retiring, Stephen has become preoccupied with the many issues surrounding energy use, such as climate change, ocean acidification, energy poverty, and pollution. http://www.zmescience.com/ecology/what-is-molten-salt-reactor-424343/; AB
	3	+Since former NASA engineer Kirk Sorensen revived forgotten molten salt reactor (MSR) technology in the 2000s, interest in MSR technology has been growing quickly. Since 2011, four separate companies in North America have announced plans for MSRs: Flibe Energy (started by Sorenson himself), Transatomic Power (started by two recent MIT graduates), Terrestrial Energy (based in Canada, which recently partnered with Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory), and Martingale, Inc., which recently made public its design for its ThorCon MSR. In addition, there is now renewed interest in MSRs in Japan, Russia, France and China, with China also announcing that MSR technology is one of its “five innovation centers that will unite the country’s leading talents for research in advanced science and technology fields, according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences.” Why this sudden interest in a nuclear technology that dates back to the 1950s? The answer lies in both the phenomenal safety of MSRs and their potential to help solve so many of today’s energy related problems, from climate change to energy poverty to the intermittency of wind and solar power. In fact, MSRs can operate so safely, they may alleviate public fears about nuclear energy.
	4	+MSRs don’t create radioactive waste and can actually get rid of current waste.
	5	+Williams ‘16: Stephen Williams writes in “How Molten Salt Reactors Might Spell a Nuclear Energy Revolution” on July 4th, 2016 for ZMEScience. Stephen Williams is a retired software engineer and former technical writer. Since retiring, Stephen has become preoccupied with the many issues surrounding energy use, such as climate change, ocean acidification, energy poverty, and pollution. http://www.zmescience.com/ecology/what-is-molten-salt-reactor-424343/; AB
	6	+Conventional reactors use solid ceramic fuel rods containing enriched uranium. The fission of uranium in the fuel releases gases, such as xenon, which causes the fuel rods to crack. This cracking, in turn, makes it necessary to remove and replace the fuel rods well before most of the actinides (elements that remain radioactive for thousands of years) such as uranium have fissioned. This is why nuclear waste is radioactive for a very long time. However, the actinides that remain in the cracked fuel rods is still an excellent source of fuel for reactors. France, for example, recycles the waste instead of burying it so that these actinides can be placed in new fuel rods and used to make more electricity.¶ Because MSRs use liquid fuel, the release of gases simply bubbles up, typically to an off-gas unit in the coolant loop (not shown in figure) where it can be removed. Since the liquid fuel is unaffected by the releases of gas, the fuel can be left in the reactor until almost all the actinides are fissioned, leaving only elements that are radioactive for a relatively short time (300 years or less). The result is that MSRs have no long term issue with regard to nuclear waste. Not only do MSRs not have a long term waste issue, they can be used to dispose of current stockpiles of nuclear waste by using those stockpiles as fuel. Even stockpiles of plutonium can be disposed of this way. In fact, conventional reactors typically use only 3-to-5 of the available energy in their fuel rods before the fuel rods must be replaced because of cracking. MSRs can use up most of the rest of the available fuel in these rods to make electricity.
	7	+Therefore, accidents and radiation are caused by rod cracking, which doesn’t happen with MSRS
	8	+AND MSRs don’t require crazy safety investment, which makes them cheap and easy to upscale.
	9	+Martin ‘16: Richard Martin writes in “Fail-Safe Nuclear Power” for MIT Technology Review. Richard Martin is the senior editor for energy at MIT Technology Review. My book Coal Wars: The Future of Energy and The Fate of the Planet was published in April 2015 by Palgrave Macmillan. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602051/fail-safe-nuclear-power/
	10	+Given unprecedented access to the inner workings of China’s advanced nuclear RandD program, I was witnessing a new nuclear technology being born. Through the virtual reactor snaked an intricate system of pipes carrying the fluid that makes this system special: a molten salt that cools the reactor and carries heat to drive a turbine and make electricity. At least in theory, this type of reactor can’t suffer the kind of catastrophic failure that happened at Chernobyl and Fukushima, making unnecessary the expensive and redundant safety systems that have driven up the cost of conventional reactors. What’s more, the new plants should produce little waste and might even eat up existing nuclear waste. They could run on uranium, which powers 99 percent of the nuclear power plants in the world, or they could eventually run on thorium, which is cleaner and more abundant. The ultimate goal of the Shanghai Institute: to build a molten-salt reactor that could replace the 1970s-era technology in today’s nuclear power plants and help wean China off the coal that fouls the air of Shanghai and Beijing, ushering in an era of cheap, abundant, zero-carbon energy. Over the next two decades China hopes to build the world’s largest nuclear power industry. Plans include as many as 30 new conventional nuclear plants (in addition to the 34 reactors operating today) as well as a variety of next-generation reactors, including thorium molten-salt reactors, high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (which, like molten-salt reactors, are both highly efficient and inherently safe), and sodium-cooled fast reactors (which can consume spent fuel from conventional reactors to make electricity). Chinese planners want not only to dramatically expand the country’s domestic nuclear capacity but also to become the world’s leading supplier of nuclear reactors and components, a prospect that many Western observers find alarming.

EntryDate

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+2016-11-14 05:08:27.971

Judge

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+x

Opponent

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+x

ParentRound

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+9

Round

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+1

Team

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+Sunset bhat Neg

Title

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+SO - MSR CP

Tournament

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+St Marks