South Africa aims to be global supplier of HTR fuel | Hacker News Reader

South Africa aims to be global supplier of HTR fuel

world-nuclear-news.org

11 pointsPaulHoule18 comments

South Africa has had more than 10 years of rotating power cuts (loadshedding) as it cannot even produce enough energy for itself. Yes it has one nuclear power plant on its last legs, but it has failed to even plan to build any new ones.

So this whole 'we are the best in Africa and need to help out our neighbours' take is kind of ironic.

> She said that while South Africa has 93% access to electricity, there are 600 million people on the African continent that do not, and South Africa believes that "if we are to eradicate poverty, unemployment, and inequality in Africa, we need to get rid of energy poverty and guarantee energy security".

South Africa also built its own nuclear power plant. We are capable of doing advanced things, just like anyone else.

It was built 1976 to 1984. Given the extensive emigration of educated people since, does SA still retain enough people locally to be able to accomplish similar feats?

you were capable. now the nation has been looted and a shithole remains. internet comments aside in your heart of hearts you and everyone else knows im right.

A nation in that condition can overcome. And what else is worth doing?

The challenge I see isn't that they can't mine uranium and make HTR fuel, but more that there is not much of a market for it at the moment. But the concept is still under development

https://www.modernpowersystems.com/features/featurewhatever-...

and they have a dual reactor powerplant running in China

https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/China-s-demonstratio...

I am a little skeptical about the pebbles because of the problems they had in Germany

https://inis.iaea.org/search/search.aspx?orig_q=RN:39099096

which I'd summarize as "in the helium environment the pebbles experience friction that causes significant fuel damage" China and X-Energy seem to think they can solve it but it is also possible to develop prismatic fuel elements that won't slide past each other but will need disassembling the pile at refueling time.

> So this whole 'we are the best in Africa and need to help out our neighbours' take is kind of ironic.

I don't know if they are the best in Africa, but they are near the top. Which is a sad take on how bad the world has looted and still is looting Africa. Who is looting has changed over the years of course, but there are still major players both external and internal looting the countries to their own benefit.

Africa is being looted by its leaders who sell their country's resources for chicken change to foreign companies (instead of directing those resources to develop their homeland).

The kleptocrats in charge keep pointing at foreigners to distract the population from their corruption and incompetence, and many of the populace, unfortunately, buy into the crap they're fed...they still troop out to vote for the same corrupt thieves in charge.

P.S: I'm Nigerian.

Who is 'looting' Africa?

There are many different countries and many different actors looting.

Iran, Russia, United Arab Emirates, China, France and the US are country level actors that I know of. I have no doubt there are more. Some of them try to keep the interests of Africa in mind, some are straight up looting (if you make money from a mine but use your profits to improve the area is that looting - this is a complex topic that depends on details)

Many countries are run by a dictator (often their top military general) who run the country for their own gain. Sometimes these dictators are natives who grew up as elite in the country, but none care about the people. Even where the country is a democracy, often the leaders are using corruption to ensure they win elections and then they run the country for their own gain not the people.

Note that I didn't put companies in the list. While there are companies involved, they are all hiding between a country in some way and if you reform the country they are powerless.

You should look into the south DRC situation, i think you're missing a few state actors, as well as private actors.

There are more than 80 countries in africa. I cannot follow them all. I have no doubt there are more.

The DRC is living a quasi-civil war for the last 25 years or so, following Rwanda's genocide. It did calm down in the 2000s, almost managed to stop but then smartphone happened, and they have open air mines of the stuff we use for touchscreens, and the mineral is used to pay for weapons and salaries. Jihadists tactics in the Sahel are inspired from the DRC civil war one (rape and genital mutilation as terror weapons, random executions).

Wasn't Zuma involved in a ton of scandals and bribery (allegations(?))

Last I read up on South Africa, the ANC's extremely dominant position means there's pseudo-one-party rule, with all the usual downsides that entails. Politicians are not beholden to the electorate as much as to the party itself, because the party controls who's up for what election.

The US/UK political parties are also pretty nauseating sometimes, but they and the free(r) press are hyper-aggressive at keeping everyone honest (to the point they make mountains out of mole-hills/grains of sand)

See

https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/triso-particles-most-robu...

and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-temperature_gas-cooled_re...

running at high temperatures mean you could use the heat to run a chemical factory and could possibly make hydrogen thermally (though it does involve sulfuric acid at 850 °C which will eat most reaction vessels) or possibly fit a gas turbine powerset which, together with compact heat exchangers, could possibly get capital cost under the LWR:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-cycle_gas_turbine

Higher temperatures could even improve the efficiency and reduce the cost of a steam turbine.

HTR = High Temperature Reactor

Since neither the article nor the headline define it.

That is mostly likly the HTGR (gas cooled) or VHTR (very high temperature but still gas cooled) but people are talking about using Triso fuel with other coolants like

https://www.usnc.com/fluoride-salt-cooled-reactor/

i don't think sodium runs hot enough to really benefit from Triso fuels but maybe some other metal (lead?) would work.

This is putting the car before the horse.

If South Africa wants to enjoy a nuclear renaissance, it needs to look at whoever was successful lately in building nuclear power plants and draw conclusions. The United Arab Emirates started building 4 such plants 12 years ago, and last month they hooked the last to grid. Each generates 1.3 GW of electricity. Turkey started building 4 plants in 2018 and the first will be hooked to the grid in the coming months, the last being scheduled for 2026. Each of these plants delivers 1.2 GWe. Pakistan started building two 1 GWe plants in 2015, and hooked them in 2021 and 2022.

All these examples have one thing in common: pressurized water reactors. This is the most widespread design worldwide. One could say it's also a boring design, HTR (high temperature reactor) is so much sexier. But boring is good. In the nuclear energy space, you want boring.

Given how severely the last two coal plants were botched at every step of the way I doubt it.

Slightly more optimistic about the safari 1 reactor replacement project though. Which btw produces around 10% of the worlds medical isotopes so would be good to get a replacement sorted

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