Until Rossi turns his device over to a few independent university labs for testing I’m not betting he’s got the answer.

Remember, a lot of people were convinced that Uri Gellher was bending spoons with his mind until someone made the trick public.

You can fool some of the people some of the time even if they have good credentials….

There’s no damn sarcasm in my post.

America is falling behind.  We’re in danger of no longer being Number One.

First the Ruskies and now that little Japanese island have shown us up with their impressive reactor meltdowns.  We took a shot at it and didn’t ruin any large tracts of land with our puny little Three Mile Island meltdown. 

Shame is upon us.

We need a great big meltdown to regain pride in our great land.  And the best way to get the disaster we need is to push our tired old reactors and to push them hard. 

Run them long after they’re held together by rust and hope. 

Crank up the output until something really important busts.

That’s how we return America to the top of the heap.

God Bless America….

The major wear items on thermal plants(coal,gas,nuclear) tend to  be related to how many thermal(on/off) cycles. 

Just like how often many service items on your car need to be inspected/replaced depends on whether the car is being used as a taxi, or towing or predominately highway cruising.

Obviously, with 30 years of data on how a specific nuclear plant was used judgements as to what the appropriate service and replacement rates should be  based on ‘actual’ operating experience rather then anticipated.

“”It’s beyond the wit of mankind to identify all challenges to a
nuclear plant,” said John Large, a former researcher for the British
atomic energy agency who runs a consulting company in London
specializing in nuclear safety.

A case in point involved three uprated reactors in Illinois.

In 2002, both reactors at the Quad Cities Nuclear Plant were
restarted after having their capacity boosted by 17.8 percent. Pipes
began to shake, and cracks formed in a steam separator, which removes
moisture from the steam before it enters the turbines. In one case, a
9-by-6-inch metal chunk broke off and disappeared.

Similar problems were discovered at the Dresden Nuclear Power Plant,
about 60 miles southwest of Chicago, which had undergone a 17 percent
uprate.

Broken parts were replaced, but the problem continued. Exelon Corp., which owns the plants, and the NRC were mystified.

“The greatest concern is loose parts that you can’t find,” John
Sieber, a nuclear engineer on the NRC advisory committee, said during a
2004 meeting. “Are they in the bottom of the reactor vessel? … Is it
floating around where it can damage internal parts of the core?”

Push those puppies.  Let’s see where the limit really is….

And just to satisfy our curiosity a bit sooner how about we up the output on these old corroded plants?  We could reach bang-dome even quicker and thus learn what the limit really is.

Oh, wait, we’ve already done that.  We’ve uprated a number of reactors, as much as 20% more than their designed output.  That ought to give us the “thermal cycles and other wear related data” we need…

“In an uprated reactor, more neutrons bombard the core, increasing
stress on its steel shell. Core temperatures are higher, lengthening the
time to cool it during a shutdown. Water and steam flow at higher
pressures, increasing corrosion of pipes, valves and other parts.

“This trend is, in principle, detrimental to the stability
characteristics of the reactor, inasmuch as it increases the probability
of instability events and increases the severity of such events, if
they were to occur,” the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, which
is mandated by Congress to advise the NRC, has warned.”

http://ns.gazettenet.com/2011/04/28/us-nuclear-plants-push-output

Wish there was a law that required nuclear fan-boys to live next door to our oldest, most ready to fail reactors….