Nuclear Energy - I need to vent/rant

[DRBUZZ0]

Okay, I am posting this mostly as a rant. I'm really getting pissed about all the anti-nuclear crap out there. I'm very pro nuclear energy and I'm in need of spouting off, so here goes.

I hate it when “environmentalists” stomp on everything nuclear. It’s ridiculous, because the reason I like…make that love… nuclear energy is it’s environmental benfiits.



We have a problem: Energy. Actually it's always been a problem, and often the limiting factor in human endeavors. Right now, most of the electricity in the world is being generated by burning fossil fuels. Cars are also powered by fossil fuels, and ideas like electric or hydrogen cars don't help all that much if the energy comes from... burning something.

The problems, obviously are supply, co2 emissions, costs, other environmental problems ect...


Now first of all, lets get a couple of things out of the way.

In regards to wind power, solar power, tidal power and so on.

I'm completely in favor of using renewable natural energy sources where avaliable, but the fact is that it's just not realistic to expect these to be able to do anything more than provide a small portion of total energy needs.

Solar energy is free, but the cells sure aren't. And the fact is that it is never really economical or realistic because of the amount of space needed to generate a given amount of electricity. The energy carried by light over a given area is not that large. It may amount to 80 to 90 watts per square meter, at the most. (that's in a desert, at noon, in the summer). Solar cells are currently about 25% efficient with new designs promising 40%, and due to the nature of light conversion, it's not really a realistic expectation to have better than 50% effecient solar cells.

If you do the math you'll find that most temperate places can expect something on the order of 100-230 kilowatt hours per square meter per year for solar cells, under ideal conditions. That does not count power conversion or battery tending or anything. Considering the amount of power used...well... it just ain't in the cards.

Wind energy is somewhat better, but not all locations are suitable for wind power and of those suited, the real estate required is very large. The maintenance on the turbines is not huge, but it is enough to make it more expensive than most other forms of electricity. Furthermore, it has the habbit of changing based on whims. If you have a coal fired power plant you can turn up the boiler when power is needed. Wind energy, like many other renewable, is based on nature. Thus, if a high demand day happens during a stalled high pressure system... well thats just no good.




And the fact is that we (humanity) needs energy. And lots of it

Energy efficiency and conservation is great, but it can only get you so far. Despite all the efforts toward energy star appliances, efficient lighting, hybrid cars and so on, energy consumption has never gone down. All these efforts have been able to do is reduce the rate at which it has gone up. It’s not realistic at all to expect that conservation could dramatically reduce overall power needs any time soon.

And people will not give up their air conditioners and big screen tv’s. Sorry to break it to everyone, but making the population reduce their standard of living voluntarily for a non-immediate goal doesn’t sell well, and the economic consequences aren’t fun either.


So what do we really need? A reliable, economical, practical, doable source of energy that can produce lots of it in a reasonably small area (as in a power plant).



And right now the only energy source that fits the bill is nuclear energy. We have the fuel, it’s not hard to make. The technology exists. It can be done. It is being done. It may have some shortcomings, but they are not unsolvable problems.


So lets address the two problems that so-called environmentalists like to point to.


First, safety-

Nuclear energy is safe. It’s damn safe. I have no problem living near a plant and I would have no problem working at one. The US has an impeccable record of nuclear safety, with no deaths ever resulting from commercial nuclear energy, no major incidents and the only deaths associated with nuclear energy directly go back to the 1950’s, when reactor design was very hit or miss.

We even have thousands of people living within feet of reactors… in sealed vessels… emerced under thousands of feet of salt water!

”But what about three mile island???” Well I’ll address that with this: Three Mile Island was a disaster… for public relations. And the utility company will need to spend a lot of money cleaning it up… from within the containment dome. Which is containing it!

Nobody died in the incident and safeguards have been instituted since then. Noone was ever in any real danger. Some of the newer designs for reactors are much safer than the ones currently in use. But today, thanks to environmentalists, all the reactors in service are vintage 1960-70’s.

And Chernobyl? A perfect example of why safety systems are necessary. Chernobyl had a graphite-core design which had not been used in the west since the 1940’s, due to the inherent safety problems. There was no containment dome. The reactor was massive and an admittedly flawed design. It was run improperly and the safety systems were manually overridden during a non-standard “turbine rundown test.”

There is no reason why Chernobyle had to happen and such an event is not a concern with modern pressurized water reactors.


Next waste-

Nuclear reactors produce waste. Radioactive waste. This is a problem, but it does not lack solutions. The current trend is toward long-term burial, such as at Yucca mountain.

There are other methods however, which were outlawed during the Carter Administration, due to pressure from “environmental” groups. Despite the lack of US research, they have been developed further elsewhere. These include.


1. Reprocessing – Extracts the usable fuel of both uranium and long-lived plutonium and other heavy elements. This can be reused in reactors and the remaining fission products are much smaller in volume and do not pose as great a long term risk, requiring only 500 years or less to decay to safe levels. While this may sound like a long time, it is far less than the times for standard spent fuel.

2. The use of advanced fast-neutron breeder designs can reduce waste to lower levels which can be disposed of more safely and will be of low radioactivity in 300 years or less. This is a relatively short time, geologically speaking.

3. Photo-neutron transmutation. Without getting too far into this, it basically involves an accelerator which can be used to break down nuclear waste to harmless intert material. The accelerator takes a lot of energy, however the process can also produce energy if the heat produced by the reaction is tapped. A one megawatt accelerator, for example, could produce ten megawatts of usable electricity, through the decay process of short-lived isotopes.


I forget who said it, but one of my favorite quotes was (to paraphrase) that nuclear energy has risks. But they are small, manageable and acceptable risks. Global warming, however, is a totally unacceptable risks.


So what do I propose?




1. A renewed policy for electrical generation with a focus on nuclear energy

2. Standardization and streamlining of reactor design and construction – rather than designing every faculty independently and going through the regulatory, safety and approval processes completely each time, create several standard modular reactor designs. Take into account the newest and most promising technologies, such as sub-critical reactors, thorium breeders, heavy water moderated, liquid metal cooled etc. Create designs. Test them thoroughly and then start building.

Take the example of aircraft. The 747 was first flown in 1969. They still build them, although numerous improvements and modifications have been made to the design. Imagine if each and every aircraft order was designed from the ground up and tested and approved independently. The cost would be enormous.


3. Construction of several large nuclear energy facilities across the country. Each should produce at least a few gigawatts of electiricty. This is because it is much more efficient to have fewer larger facilities than many smaller ones. This way reprocessing and containment technologies can be implemented on site and safety measures can be deployed at fewer sites.

4. Each site should not be a single power plant, but rather have multiple reactors and turbine/generators. This allows for continued operations during refueling or maintenance as well as reduces the severity of a (highly unlikely) accident. Should a breach of some sort occur, the scale will be limited and not effect physically separate units.

5. Disposal of waste based on advanced reprocessing and the use of fast-neutron reactors and accelerator-driven transmutation.


What it boils down to is this: You can go nuclear. You can do it right. And you can achieve a very safe and plentiful energy supply. However, to some degree it’s all or nothing. You can’t build a few plants and not have the proper disposal infrastructure and closed-system reprocessing systems.


Not taking this technology to it’s full potential does not make sense. As research continues toward fusion or other technologies for the future, we need to recognize that we have the technology for clean energy NOW. It’s all been done. It can be done. It should be done.

Wind farms and solar cells are great, and I encourage that they be used wherever they can be. But they just can’t cut it for major electrical needs.


If energy can be generated cleanly, cheaply and in large enough amounts, the possibilities are almost endless. Desalination of massive amounts of water for agriculture or drinking. Treatment of waste. The destruction of nearly any chemical waste by reducing it to the elemental components. Massive heating and cooling. Transportation and manufacturing. Food production in huge greenhouses and under sunlamps.

It’s all possible with enough energy.

 

[vIQleS]

I'm saving this to show to people. (With your permission.)

ETA: I've corrected some spelling mistakes tho...

 

[trvlr2]

Good points.

What always bothers me about the alternatives in energy production/use is that the proponents always forget that the increasing energy use/need is a product of spiraling population growth.

If we are going to live on an energy budget, it would seem to be a little easier if the budget did not have to be split so many different ways.

I will happily submit a list of the populations to be wiped out.

Or, I guess, we could make more use of nukular energy.

 

[jsiv]

I hear you. Several political parties here in Norway want to ban fossil fuel based cars and heating by 2020.. without proposing an alternative.

So many people think it can be done simply with hydro and lots of happy thoughts. Yes, Norway was once self-sufficient using only hydro, but people need to start understanding that nuclear power is the only realistic option in the future, especially if you factor in the huge increase in power requirements if we start using electric cars and heating.

The biggest issue when it comes to nuclear power (and other things, like, say, flying) is that fear is not rational. It doesn't matter if the risk is real or not. Chernobyl was very bad because it showed people that you can have all these technical safeguards in place and still have something go terribly wrong because of human error. That sticks with people, even though nuclear technology has moved on since then.

Also, nuclear power has been so extremely demonized over here ever since Chernobyl (which still affects us to this day and costs us millions) that it's going to take a lot of work to change the public opinion. Especially when you have interest groups like Greenpeace bombarding us with propaganda.

Still, there seems to be some progress. Norway's large reserve of thorium has started to get media attention recently, and is bringing nuclear technology back into public debate. I don't know how realistic thorium reactors are, but at least we would not be held back by the same economic issues that India is if we were to start working on it.

Anyway, I agree.. Nuclear power is definitely what we need right now. Go nuclear now, while at the same time putting money into R&D of other alternative power sources. If any of them turn out to be viable, we can phase out nuclear technology at a later time.

 

[geni]

First, safety-

Nuclear energy is safe. It’s damn safe. I have no problem living near a plant and I would have no problem working at one. The US has an impeccable record of nuclear safety, with no deaths ever resulting from commercial nuclear energy, no major incidents and the only deaths associated with nuclear energy directly go back to the 1950’s, when reactor design was very hit or miss.

False on all three counts.

United Nuclear Corporation suffered the death of an employee in 1964 due to a criticality accident.

We even have thousands of people living within feet of reactors… in sealed vessels… emerced under thousands of feet of salt water!

There have been some close calls with subs.

There is no reason why Chernobyle had to happen and such an event is not a concern with modern pressurized water reactors.

1. Reprocessing – Extracts the usable fuel of both uranium and long-lived plutonium and other heavy elements. This can be reused in reactors and the remaining fission products are much smaller in volume and do not pose as great a long term risk, requiring only 500 years or less to decay to safe levels. While this may sound like a long time, it is far less than the times for standard spent fuel.

Expensive risky (most of the recent incerdents have involved reprocessing) and produces large amounts of weapons grade plutonium.

Reprocessing tends to throw up more technical problems than running a reactor.

3. Photo-neutron transmutation. Without getting too far into this, it basically involves an accelerator which can be used to break down nuclear waste to harmless intert material. The accelerator takes a lot of energy, however the process can also produce energy if the heat produced by the reaction is tapped. A one megawatt accelerator, for example, could produce ten megawatts of usable electricity, through the decay process of short-lived isotopes.

Please provide a citation.

1. A renewed policy for electrical generation with a focus on nuclear energy

2. Standardization and streamlining of reactor design and construction – rather than designing every faculty independently and going through the regulatory, safety and approval processes completely each time, create several standard modular reactor designs. Take into account the newest and most promising technologies, such as sub-critical reactors, thorium breeders, heavy water moderated, liquid metal cooled etc. Create designs. Test them thoroughly and then start building.

Problem is cost. What tends to happen is that every reactor ends up being a test reactor of some type or another.

Standadised ractors have been built. The UK Magnox series for example (which works is pretty safe but has other issues). The saveings are not as big as you would think.

3. Construction of several large nuclear energy facilities across the country. Each should produce at least a few gigawatts of electiricty. This is because it is much more efficient to have fewer larger facilities than many smaller ones.

You are not factoring transmission losses.

This way reprocessing and containment technologies can be implemented on site and safety measures can be deployed at fewer sites.

You really don't want to be runing more than maybe 2 reprocessing facilities total. One per site is unessacery duplication.

What it boils down to is this: You can go nuclear. You can do it right. And you can achieve a very safe and plentiful energy supply. However, to some degree it’s all or nothing. You can’t build a few plants and not have the proper disposal infrastructure and closed-system reprocessing systems.


Not taking this technology to it’s full potential does not make sense. As research continues toward fusion or other technologies for the future, we need to recognize that we have the technology for clean energy NOW. It’s all been done. It can be done. It should be done.

Problem is uranium stocks are not exactly brillantly high.

Yeah it's posible france and japan do it but uranium availibilty is a problem. You can get round that with fast breeder reactors but even france and japan have had serious problems getting the things to work without breaking down in rather alaming ways.

 

[Wavicle]

I agree with everything you said except this:

Noone was ever in any real danger.

Had the operators continued to fail to realize that the root cause of the incident was a loss of coolant accident, the entire core might well have melted at which point the housing may not have been sufficient to contain it.

Fortunately it was realized and the radiation was contained. And the incident has been studied, we have learned from it, and today I think between TMI and Chernobyl we know that the most important thing is to maintain the integrity of the core.

Honestly I think the radical environmentalists just want to go back to living "in harmony with nature." You know: 30 year average lifespan; People regularly being killed by wild animals; Women regularly dying in childbirth; 70% infant mortality... Harmonious!

 

[Wavicle]

There have been some close calls with subs.

True. Have there been closer or even worse calls with diesel or coal burning ocean vessels?

Expensive risky (most of the recent incerdents have involved reprocessing)

Off the top of my head I can think of two incidents in the last 10 years at a cost of two lives. Neither resulted in a loss of containment of nuclear fuel. How many people have died as a direct result of mining coal, even though we have way more experience mining coal than reprocessing nuclear fuel?

and produces large amounts of weapons grade plutonium.

Please provide a citation. To my knowledge reprocessing is the same process as creating weapons grade plutonium, but the expense to get that enriched is prohibitive. Also unnecessary; you don't need it that pure.

Reprocessing tends to throw up more technical problems than running a reactor.

Please provide a citation.

Problem is uranium stocks are not exactly brillantly high.

Yes they are.. Come on, there is more extractable uranium just dissolved in seawater than we will use in the next 100 years.

 

[DRBUZZ0]

False on all three counts.

United Nuclear Corporation suffered the death of an employee in 1964 due to a criticality accident.

Not a civillian power generation accident. It was military weaponry assembly

There have been some close calls with subs.

Two nuclear subs have been lost. Neither was due to reactor failure. The Thresher would be the closest. The navy concluded that the loss was primarily due to a flaw in the design of the ballast tanks.

Many more close calls have happend on deisel-electrics.

[/quote]

Expensive risky (most of the recent incerdents have involved reprocessing) and produces large amounts of weapons grade plutonium.

Reprocessing tends to throw up more technical problems than running a reactor.

Reprocessing can be used to make nuclear weapons. A bleach factory can also make mustard gas. Gasoline can be turned into napalm

Please provide a citation.

http://www.spiritofmaat.com/archive/feb2/nuclear.htm

http://sec.edgar-online.com/2002/09...phttp://www.ewire.com/display.cfm/Wire_ID/848

There was an extensive article about transmutation experiments at Oak Ridge published in a magazine a while back. I will try to find it.

Problem is cost. What tends to happen is that every reactor ends up being a test reactor of some type or another.

Standadised ractors have been built. The UK Magnox series for example (which works is pretty safe but has other issues). The saveings are not as big as you would think.

Standardization is only a small part of the issue. There have been many prototype reactors built which showed great promise for power generation. And yet no new reactors in the US have been built in 30 years. There's no point in designing things that aren't going to be built.

You are not factoring transmission losses.

Electricity can be transmitted hundreds of miles efficiently, especially with some of the new DC high voltage systems. There's no reason that a (relatively) small number of plants could supply a large portion of demand. For example, the North East of the US might require eight or so, combined with existing hydroelectric and other power sources and a few standby gas-fired plants for high demand times.

You really don't want to be runing more than maybe 2 reprocessing facilities total. One per site is unessacery duplication

that depends on what kind of reprocessing you are doing. There are new methods utilizing high flux fast neutron reactors which allow for minimal reprocessing of fuel by electro catalytic reactions. Transmutation and other systems may not require any chemical reprocessing.

Problem is uranium stocks are not exactly brillantly high.

if I remember correctly, the US alone has a few hundred metric tons of highly enriched uranium and plutonium from retired or retiring nuclear weapons. Given that reactors do not generally use HEU, just that could last a long time. There are sizable uranium and thorium reserves around the world. Reprocessing can also reduce the need.

Yeah it's posible france and japan do it but uranium availibilty is a problem. You can get round that with fast breeder reactors but even france and japan have had serious problems getting the things to work without breaking down in rather alaming ways.

There's a lot that could be learned from France and Japan. Of course, their systems can be improved on. Their safety record is very good and they've made some good advances recently

 

[DRBUZZ0]

My problem with the "environmental" movement is basically this:

Man is currently (mostly) dependent on chemical reactions for energy. We are hitting the wall with them and they are failing to produce the amounts of energy needed.

Nuclear energy is the next order of magnitude higher. You are actually dealing with mass being converted to energy, in terms of the binding energy of particles. There can be no greater energy density than that, with the possible exception of anti-mater, which could be lumped under the nuclear umbrella as is. The amount of energy in a nuclear bond is (if I remember correctly) something like 9000 times that which can be stored in chemical bonds.

By nuclear, I am not just talking about conventional nuclear power. Nuclear decay, nuclear fission, photofission, phototransmutation, fusion... These are all reactions that can yeild vast amounts of energy. Although effective fusion has proven a challenge, many other fission-based or hybrid systems can and do produce vast amounts of energy.

If you are going to oppose all things nuclear simply because you don't like "nuclear" stuff, then you are effectively blocking humanity's progress to harnessing the next energy medium. Humans have gone from human power to animal power to combustion and mechanical to electrical and beyond.

When you watch Star Trek or some other series set in the future, you notice how the tricorders don't run out of juice? Or how the Enterprise is not constantly stopping for refuling? That is because of nuclear energy. There's no other way such power would be conceivable.

Right now there are ways of packing enough energy into a small package to make submarines with nearly unlimited endurance, requiring refueling only every couple of decades or to allow for space probes to continue transmitting years after they leave the solar system.

There are a lot of exciting possibilities, with transmutation, fusion, direct energy conversion and other technologies avaliable now and on the horizon.

Imagine if a group had managed to spread so much fear of boiler explosions that James Watt was forbidden from developing steam-based engines. We would probably still be on horses today.

 

[Slimething]

Imagine if a group had managed to spread so much fear of boiler explosions that James Watt was forbidden from developing steam-based engines. We would probably still be on horses today.

I have quite a few more complaints against the modern environmentalist movement but I don't want to derail your thread. Your point is informed and well stated and I agree wholeheartedly.

Don't forget, though, that the neo-Luddite movement is not confined to environmentalists. After all, the Luddites themselves were mainly a group of workers concerned only for their jobs, not a worthier cause like environmental preservation. The religious have also tried to stop technological progress so many times that it would be farcical for anyone to deny it. (My favorite instance involves the lightning rod.)

Anyway, excellent post and thread.

 

[fsol]

Now first of all, lets get a couple of things out of the way.

In regards to wind power, solar power, tidal power and so on.

I'm completely in favor of using renewable natural energy sources where avaliable, but the fact is that it's just not realistic to expect these to be able to do anything more than provide a small portion of total energy needs.

It is no where near a fact that that is the case.

Solar energy is free, but the cells sure aren't. And the fact is that it is never really economical or realistic because of the amount of space needed to generate a given amount of electricity. The energy carried by light over a given area is not that large. It may amount to 80 to 90 watts per square meter, at the most. (that's in a desert, at noon, in the summer). Solar cells are currently about 25% efficient with new designs promising 40%, and due to the nature of light conversion, it's not really a realistic expectation to have better than 50% effecient solar cells.

If you do the math you'll find that most temperate places can expect something on the order of 100-230 kilowatt hours per square meter per year for solar cells, under ideal conditions. That does not count power conversion or battery tending or anything. Considering the amount of power used...well... it just ain't in the cards.

Average irradiation peaks at about 300W/m2 in north-east Africa.

Your conversion efficiencies seem fairly optimisitc. When companies announce efficienicies of 40% they aren't talking about practical technology. They are usualy small scale test cells, that when scaled up lose performance. I think the world record for a reasonable sized silicon cell is about 20%. Typical commercially available silicon cells are about 15% if you are lucky. A lot of it depends on the installation and the ambient conditions. As irradiation goes up, the cell performance goes up, but as irradiation goes up the cell temperature often goes up and an increase in temperature decreases cell perfomance. A cell that may get you close to 15% in a desert somewhere would only get you 8 or 9% in the UK.

They are stupidly expensive, but that isn't to say that they aren't cost effective for some applications.

Wind energy is somewhat better, but not all locations are suitable for wind power and of those suited, the real estate required is very large. The maintenance on the turbines is not huge, but it is enough to make it more expensive than most other forms of electricity. Furthermore, it has the habbit of changing based on whims. If you have a coal fired power plant you can turn up the boiler when power is needed. Wind energy, like many other renewable, is based on nature. Thus, if a high demand day happens during a stalled high pressure system... well thats just no good.

The major cost for windfarms is the capital cost. The maintainence costs aren't really that significant in comparson. Certainly, the pay back time on the initial expenditure is probably the major factor on the cost of wind energy.

The "its windy somewhere all the time" idea actually does work out quite well. The more windfarms you have the less variation in the output from your wind portfolio you see. A study in West Denmark shows that variation in output over time is actually fairly small (Denmark generates about 20% of its energy needs from wind and plan to increase that to 50% by 2030). You will always need some reserve plant, and I wouldn't advocate an all wind grid, but the picture isn't as dark as you make it out to be.

And the fact is that we (humanity) needs energy. And lots of it

Energy efficiency and conservation is great, but it can only get you so far. Despite all the efforts toward energy star appliances, efficient lighting, hybrid cars and so on, energy consumption has never gone down. All these efforts have been able to do is reduce the rate at which it has gone up. It’s not realistic at all to expect that conservation could dramatically reduce overall power needs any time soon.

And people will not give up their air conditioners and big screen tv’s. Sorry to break it to everyone, but making the population reduce their standard of living voluntarily for a non-immediate goal doesn’t sell well, and the economic consequences aren’t fun either.

You don't have to lose your big screen tv or air-con to improve your energy efficiency. The economic consequences of doing nothing will be greater. But I know you don't advocate doing nothing.

So what do we really need? A reliable, economical, practical, doable source of energy that can produce lots of it in a reasonably small area (as in a power plant).

So nuclear...Personally I think we need a combination of all of the above really and I am far from convinced that we actually need nuclear power. The 2003 Energy white paper in the UK certainly makes the case that in the UK at least it is not necessary. But I realise that that is not a universal.

Nuclear power is fairly rubbish when it comes to dealing with the varying demands of energy use just because of the economics. They are fairly expensive to build, so you want to run them at full capacity for as long as possible to make your money back. This means they are pretty ideal for providing the base load, but as soon as you start running below capacity you don't make as much money. I really don't think there is a quick cure-all, you need different types of generation to deal with the different types of demand, we may even be better off by leaving behind the grid system we have now and moving towards a smaller scale distributed generation model, thoguh we might then lose the benefit of aggregation.

But nuclear does seem to work well in France. 80% of electricity generation comes from nuclear power and they do use them to follow the varying demand with hydro making up the difference. So it can be done that way. They don't really have a workable plan with regards to the waste either though.

Another issue with nuclear power that people seem to forget is that uranium is a finite resource. If demand goes up the price will also go up. And it will run out one day too.

 

[geni]

Not a civillian power generation accident. It was military weaponry assembly

No. I'm not aware of any criticality accidents directly involveing weapon assembly. Slotin would be closest but that was in 1946.

No the acident involved a facility which reprocessed for recovery highly enriched uranium in scrap material from fuel element production:

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/radevents/1964USA1.html

Rather simular to the Tokai acident.

Two nuclear subs have been lost.

I assume you mean US ones.

Reprocessing can be used to make nuclear weapons. A bleach factory can also make mustard gas. Gasoline can be turned into napalm

Generaly not as lethal as nukes.

http://www.spiritofmaat.com/archive/feb2/nuclear.htm

I do not trust science by pressrelease.

http://sec.edgar-online.com/2002/09...phttp://www.ewire.com/display.cfm/Wire_ID/848

404 error.

Standardization is only a small part of the issue. There have been many prototype reactors built which showed great promise for power generation. And yet no new reactors in the US have been built in 30 years. There's no point in designing things that aren't going to be built.

No secret that the US gov runs makework programs in order to hang onto a pool of nuclear scientists. Reactor design may well be covered.

Otherwise Japan China and India all have ongoing reasearch programs.

Electricity can be transmitted hundreds of miles efficiently, especially with some of the new DC high voltage systems. There's no reason that a (relatively) small number of plants could supply a large portion of demand. For example, the North East of the US might require eight or so, combined with existing hydroelectric and other power sources and a few standby gas-fired plants for high demand times.

While approach might make sense for the UK size of the US makes it less practical.

that depends on what kind of reprocessing you are doing. There are new methods utilizing high flux fast neutron reactors which allow for minimal reprocessing of fuel by electro catalytic reactions. Transmutation and other systems may not require any chemical reprocessing.

I'm shall we say sceptical. Reactor rods are not that hard to ship around. High level waste is. Generaly it is best to store the stuff in as fewer places as posible. As a result you want as few reprocessing facities as posible sitting right next to your long term storage.

if I remember correctly, the US alone has a few hundred metric tons of highly enriched uranium and plutonium from retired or retiring nuclear weapons. Given that reactors do not generally use HEU, just that could last a long time.

Reactors have been burning old russian (and south african) material for some time. Stocks are running low. Milling HEU down to the level where it can be used in reactors takes a fair wack of energy.

There are sizable uranium and thorium reserves around the world.

about 20 years worth is the world switches to nuclear burn.

There's a lot that could be learned from France and Japan. Of course, their systems can be improved on. Their safety record is very good and they've made some good advances recently

Japan killed a couple of workers in 1999 (reprocessing). France has backed away from fast breeder reactors.

I don't know about the politics in the US but France has little choice but to build a new generation of reactors. The UK probably will not sure about germany.

 

[geni]

My problem with the "environmental" movement is basically this:

Man is currently (mostly) dependent on chemical reactions for energy. We are hitting the wall with them and they are failing to produce the amounts of energy needed.

Coal burn could keep going for over a century.

Nuclear energy is the next order of magnitude higher. You are actually dealing with mass being converted to energy, in terms of the binding energy of particles. There can be no greater energy density than that, with the possible exception of anti-mater, which could be lumped under the nuclear umbrella as is.

No it could not.

When you watch Star Trek or some other series set in the future, you notice how the tricorders don't run out of juice?

That is the least of their wounders. There would be various ways to supply the likely required power levels without resorting to nuclear energy.

Or how the Enterprise is not constantly stopping for refuling? That is because of nuclear energy. There's no other way such power would be conceivable.

There are others. In fact the amount of energy required likely means that the Enterprise does not use nuclear power.

 

[Cuddles]

There's a lot that could be learned from France and Japan. Of course, their systems can be improved on. Their safety record is very good and they've made some good advances recently

If by "good" you mean "absolutely terrible", then I agree.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16422102.800-getting-critical.html
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2859-japans-nuclear-safety-dangerously-weak.html
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18324600.500-fresh-nuke-accident-in-japan.html

You're right that there is a lot that could be learned from Japan. How not to do it.

 

[Crossbow]

Until there is a viable method for the proper disposal of nuclear waste, then I continue to have problems with nuclear energy.

By the way, the 'Enterprise' of Star Trek used anti-matter as a power source, not nuclear power.

 

[fsol]

Until there is a viable method for the proper disposal of nuclear waste, then I continue to have problems with nuclear energy.

This is (or perhaps was, I must get round to reading their latest proclamation) the UK Governments stance.

 

[MortFurd]

Seen on a bumper sticker in Germany:
"Atomkraft Gegnern ueberwintern im Dunkeln mit kaltem Hintern."
Translation:
"Nuclear power opponents spend the winter in the dark with a cold backside."

Germany has been planning on scrapping their nuclear power plants. The environmental groups managed to get enough popularity behind the idea to actually get the gov. to go along with it.

With the concerns over CO2 and global warming, they are starting to back pedal.

As there were no plans to build new reactors, they are going to have to keep old, outdated ones on line longer to cover the time until newer, safer reactors can be built to help reduce CO2 emissions and bridge the gap until alternative energy sources can pick up the slack.

 

[DRBUZZ0]

Coal burn could keep going for over a century.



No it could not.

There's no point in debating whether or not anti-protons and positrons count as a field of nuclear physics. I would say they do. In any case. That's beyond any capabities we'd have now

That is the least of their wounders. There would be various ways to supply the likely required power levels without resorting to nuclear energy.



There are others. In fact the amount of energy required likely means that the Enterprise does not use nuclear power.

That's rhetorical. What power method is used in a scifi series is not really relevant. But there is simply no way to equal the energy density of a nuclear reaction with any chemical means. You can't. End of story. Nor could it be done with a low-resistance flywheel, a lot of capacitors. No.

You break down atoms you get tons of energy. Simple as that.

 

[DRBUZZ0]

No. I'm not aware of any criticality accidents directly involveing weapon assembly. Slotin would be closest but that was in 1946.

No the acident involved a facility which reprocessed for recovery highly enriched uranium in scrap material from fuel element production:

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/radevents/1964USA1.html

Rather simular to the Tokai acident.

Okay, so there have been deaths in the nuclear energy industry? There are also deaths in just about every decent sized industry. Far less though than in other power-generating industries

I assume you mean US ones.

There's no point in including Soviet nuclear programs if you want to talk about how a reactor can be safe. The Soviets blatently disregarded even the most basic rules of safety and reliability. If nothing else, it shows why one must be careful with the technology

Generaly not as lethal as nukes.

I do not trust science by pressrelease.

That was one press release I found on google last night. I can try to find some better articles. However, the science is perfectly sound. The binding energy of a given isotope varies and with 8mev+ gamma rays it becomes possible to break down almost any heavy element. Elements past the atomic mass of about 57 will yeild energy when broken down and will be likley to result in very short lived products.

It has been demonstrated. It's basic nuclear chemistry

 

[Cuddles]

There's no point in debating whether or not anti-protons and positrons count as a field of nuclear physics. I would say they do. In any case. That's beyond any capabities we'd have now.

Nuclear refers to things in the nucleus of atoms. Anti-matter is not in the nucleus of atoms, therefore it is not nuclear physics. Your opinion is not relevant, this is a basic fact of definition.

In addition, anti-matter is to nuclear energy what nuclear is to chemical energy. Just as you get more energy from nuclear bonds than chemical ones, you get far more energy from the actual mass of particles than you get from bonds between them. In any case, anti-matter cannot be used to generat energy. There is no anti-matter naturally on Earth. Anti-matter could be used as energy storage, like hydrogen fuel cells, but it can never be used for generation because you need energy to produce it in the first place. There is no logical reason to group anti-matter with nuclear energy.