Nuclear Energy - I need to vent/rant

[Lonewulf]

I think that has to be the way we go, barring a convenient technological development that changes the energy landscape significantly. We ought to cut down on our CO2 emissions significantly even if it slows global economic growth somewhat, and I don't think nukes are an acceptable solution, so that leaves renewables.

Hm, and I don't think that renewables are an acceptable solution on that wide a scale thanks to economic costs, so for me, that leaves nukes.

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

Sure, but even if we are generous and allow nuclear fission another hundred years of good times at the current rate of use, that's not a long-term solution to our greenhouse gas problem. There just isn't enough high-grade ore to solve the problem, and breeder reactors are a bad idea for proliferation reasons.

I'm not quite as scared over proliferation.

The only way out is to tighten our belts a bit and go with renewables.

In your perception, yes.

We did this before. You made wild claims, when you were challenged on them you got difficult, and then a post or three later you tried to dump the burden of proof on me.

"Wild claims" usually being anything that you happen to disagree with, right?

I have no idea what you mean by "overstated" in concrete terms. Who overstated it, and what did they overstate it to be? I've given you the physics already - nuclear fission waste contains radioactive contents with half-lives in the hundreds of years and hundreds of thousands of years.

Except that one half life does not equal another. Radiation levels tend to differentiate, and the higher a level there is, the less long it tends to actually last.

http://www.freedomforfission.org.uk/sci/decay.html

This has important implications for handling radioactive material. If the isotope is very radioactive, it will of course be dangerous if not shielded properly. However, it will also more quickly disappear. For example, in the case of oxygen-15, the high radioactivity makes it a short term hazard, but after just half an hour, there is less than 2.5% of the original sample left. By contrast, an isotope with a long half-life such as uranium-238, with a half-life of 4.5 billion years, will hang around for ages of the universe, but it will also spend that time being only very weakly radioactive and so not much of a hazard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_Decay#Radioactive_decay_rates

It's true of many things in physics; the higher the energy in something, the faster it tends to bleed itself out. The hotter the sun, the faster it ends up using it's fuel.

If it's not safe now it's not going to be safe in a thousand years. It's not going to leak out and destroy the world or spawn Godzilla, but if you are advocating making more of that stuff you should be advocating a plan to store that waste in such a way that it's not going to hurt anybody in the next few hundred thousand years.

Sure, and I advocate that. I don't think that, with the proper facilities in place, that there will be much waste to handle. As I said before, a lot of a low-level waste (I'm talking about secondary irradiated material, such as gloves, suits, etc.) are overstated in their danger, but not necessarily all of it.

We build a bunker and seal the stuff. Considering that from what I've seen, it's not much to seal, I think that's a-ok.

Yes, even if you could fit all of it on a plane or whatever other factoid is supposed to be reassuring.

If you disagree with what I said involving nuclear waste fitting inside of a plane, do you have anything to contradict that?

I'd also note that that's a very small plot of land to be worried about, even if it was unshielded. If you had to shield it... big deal. Seal it in concrete, and re-fill it every once in a while. I don't see how it's quite impossible.

Figure out a way of making that plane stay up for a few hundred thousand years and I'll feel reassured.

With or without any maintenance?

With or without high energy radiation sources?

 

[DRBUZZ0]

TENS OF MILLENIA AFTER TEH COLLAPSE OF NATIONS! THE HORROR! THE HORROR!

Well if you want to be technical about it... you can look at the components of waste. You have stuff like plutonium and other heavy elements. Those are relatively easy to deal with because you can use those as MOX fuel in a standard reactor or simply put them around a fast neutron core and there ya go, because they'll fission no problem.

Then you have fission products. Of these most are short lived. Wait a few years and they're just about all gone. What you are left with is less than 10% of the fission products produced. Of these you have some with are radioactive enough to be of concern as a real danger. These would be things like Sr-90 or Cs-137. They're radioactive enough to cause a lot of harm because they're short lived enough to be highly radioactive but long lived enough to be beyond the time you would just hang on to the stuff in a spent fuel pool.

Those have a half life of about 30 years (IIRC it's 30 for Cs-137 and 28 for Sr-90... I may have those mixed up though). Anyways... you use the 10/1000 rule of thumb (which is really 1024) and you find that in 300 years you have less then .1 percent of them remaining. Working out the concentrations you'll end up finding out that the amount which remains in the glassified waste is enough to make it about as radiotoxic as numerous naturally occuring minerals with uranium and/or thorium.

The other things are the really long-lived fission products like I-129. These end up being about as radioactive as natural stuff so if they're well contained in synthetic rock or something similar you end up being not really more dangerous than natural stuff.

In other words, if you put the remaining fission biporducts in a stable form, you have to account for it not coming out of suspension, making its way to the surface and being eaten in the time span of a 300 years or so. After that it's no more harmful than many rocks. And even before that it's not that much more harmful than many rocks. 300 years is not really a long period of time in the geological sense.

The are other ways of dealing with it as well. The Russians demonstrated that long-lived byproducts have a high enough high energy neutron cross section that if the fuel is burned in a fast neutron reactor then they will be signifficantly reduced, possibly to almost zero.

Sr-90, Cs-137 and a few others (Pm-145, Cs-135) are considered generally to not be worth the effort to try to use neutron bombardment on them. They have a low absorbtion cross section. You *could* destroy them if you were willing to accept low effeciency and a need for lots of high energy neutrons. But generally the fact that these are significantly reduced in less than a century is considered reason enough not to go to all the unnecessary effort of trying to transmutate them.

Then again, in the 1990's there was a process that could treat the fuel entirely and without processing using a high energy accelerator. It would induce neutron release by gamma bombardment of the material. It also could produce surplus energy by prompt decay and effectively no waste. The only problem is that because the energy has to be so high it has a low chance of striking an atom unless you have a lot of them. By concequence, such a plant would need to be large and process a lot of spent fuel at a time to get energy back and do it effeciently. As such you'd need to build one that would burn several tons of the stuff at once and you need to rotate it though. Thus, you'd be looking at a couple billion dollars for a plant that could destroy 1/3 of the US spent fuel in a period of ten years while producing a theoretical surplus of about 750 megawatts in electricity. Apparently it's just too much money for something never demonstrated full scale and also the permiting would be a nightmate... so intrest died a long time ago.

 

[Schneibster]

I think that has to be the way we go, barring a convenient technological development that changes the energy landscape significantly. We ought to cut down on our CO2 emissions significantly even if it slows global economic growth somewhat, and I don't think nukes are an acceptable solution, so that leaves renewables.

You don't think nuclear energy is an acceptable solution because of
1. the waste problem
2. the supposed difficulty of obtaining fuel
Do you have any other reasons?

The only way out is to tighten our belts a bit and go with renewables.

"A bit?" Have you been reading the same thread I have? There isn't any "a bit" if all we do is renewables. It's "a lot," and about a billion people starve to death. This has been repeated, and not refuted. Either you read and respond to what other people write, or you're just spewing some ideological position that has nothing to do with reality. What do you think all those people in the middle of India and China are going to eat, and what do you think the people running those countries, which have nuclear weapons at their disposal, are going to do with they start to starve?

We did this before. You made wild claims, when you were challenged on them you got difficult, and then a post or three later you tried to dump the burden of proof on me.

That wasn't what I saw. What I saw was, you didn't have any answers to his claims, and you started logic chopping and reasserting the same thing you already had, despite the fact it had been refuted.

I have no idea what you mean by "overstated" in concrete terms. Who overstated it, and what did they overstate it to be? I've given you the physics already - nuclear fission waste contains radioactive contents with half-lives in the hundreds of years and hundreds of thousands of years. If it's not safe now it's not going to be safe in a thousand years.

Something that lasts twice as long is half as "hot." Something that lasts ten times as long is only a tenth as "hot." What physics were you talking about, again? I guess I'm not clear on where you got physics that claims that something that has a ten thousand year half-life is as dangerous as something with a hundred year half-life, or even a thousandth as dangerous.

 

[Lonewulf]

You don't think nuclear energy is an acceptable solution because of
1. the waste problem
2. the supposed difficulty of obtaining fuel
Do you have any other reasons?

Don't forget nuclear weapon proliferation.

"A bit?" Have you been reading the same thread I have? There isn't any "a bit" if all we do is renewables. It's "a lot," and about a billion people starve to death. This has been repeated, and not refuted. Either you read and respond to what other people write, or you're just spewing some ideological position that has nothing to do with reality. What do you think all those people in the middle of India and China are going to eat, and what do you think the people running those countries, which have nuclear weapons at their disposal, are going to do with they start to starve?

That wasn't what I saw. What I saw was, you didn't have any answers to his claims, and you started logic chopping and reasserting the same thing you already had, despite the fact it had been refuted.

Something that lasts twice as long is half as "hot." Something that lasts ten times as long is only a tenth as "hot." What physics were you talking about, again? I guess I'm not clear on where you got physics that claims that something that has a ten thousand year half-life is as dangerous as something with a hundred year half-life, or even a thousandth as dangerous.

Thank you, Schneibster. As always, very articulate. You said pretty much what I was trying to say.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

You don't think nuclear energy is an acceptable solution because of
1. the waste problem
2. the supposed difficulty of obtaining fuel
Do you have any other reasons?

A third is that for nations who do not already have an established nuclear industry, creating one from scratch requires an enormous investment. For nations with an established nuclear industry it's "just" those two.

"A bit?" Have you been reading the same thread I have? There isn't any "a bit" if all we do is renewables. It's "a lot," and about a billion people starve to death. This has been repeated, and not refuted.

Possibly that is because it's too silly a claim to address seriously, no matter how often it is repeated?

Either you read and respond to what other people write, or you're just spewing some ideological position that has nothing to do with reality. What do you think all those people in the middle of India and China are going to eat, and what do you think the people running those countries, which have nuclear weapons at their disposal, are going to do with they start to starve?

We could feed them Chicken Little. I think that would solve two problems at once.

That wasn't what I saw. What I saw was, you didn't have any answers to his claims, and you started logic chopping and reasserting the same thing you already had, despite the fact it had been refuted.

You are welcome to your own opinion. I see no basis in reality for it, but I can't stop you holding it.

Something that lasts twice as long is half as "hot." Something that lasts ten times as long is only a tenth as "hot." What physics were you talking about, again? I guess I'm not clear on where you got physics that claims that something that has a ten thousand year half-life is as dangerous as something with a hundred year half-life, or even a thousandth as dangerous.

I guess I'm not clear on who said that it was. Perchance it is a straw man?

Schneibster, exactly what do you think is dangerous about a stockpile of used fuel rods containing U-234? I'm getting the impression that you and Lonewulf don't actually have any clear idea about the matter beyond the vague and cosy impression that the danger is mostly imaginary.

 

[Lonewulf]

"A bit?" Have you been reading the same thread I have? There isn't any "a bit" if all we do is renewables. It's "a lot," and about a billion people starve to death. This has been repeated, and not refuted.

Possibly that is because it's too silly a claim to address seriously, no matter how often it is repeated?

I'm not quite sure why it's such a "silly" claim. Even the most conservative estimates per kw/h of electric energy for solar puts it at a much higher price than nuclear estimates.

Perhaps you could explain for us dunces that haven't had a chance for you to grace us with your eminent wisdom?

 

[DRBUZZ0]

You don't think nuclear energy is an acceptable solution because of
1. the waste problem

There is indeed a problem with the waste because the plant operators are required to store it and then it has to be reprocessed, sealed and buried or otherwise delt with.

It's significantly easier when dealing with coal. Then you don't need to have waste storage. You simply belch the filth into the atmosphere and then it gets disposed of into the ocean and the lungs of the population...

Also theres that toxic fly ash. But you can just throw that wherever...

2. the supposed difficulty of obtaining fuel

Do we honestly need to start the fuel thing again? If the mines currently in operation stayed in operation then we have at least 30 years of uranium. Throw in reprocessing and you double that. Throw in opening new mines in known deposits and you increase that ten fold. Throw in thorium breeding and you increase it about 300 fold.

Yes, at the rate we are going we do not have enough uranium in KNOWN deposits to last more than a few million years.... we will need to think of something by then...

Something that lasts twice as long is half as "hot." Something that lasts ten times as long is only a tenth as "hot." What physics were you talking about, again? I guess I'm not clear on where you got physics that claims that something that has a ten thousand year half-life is as dangerous as something with a hundred year half-life, or even a thousandth as dangerous.

Correct. For example I-129 which has a half life of 16.7 million years and a fission yeild of 0.6% is so low in radioactivity it's not always even accounted for in terms of radioactive waste products. It is considerably less dangerous than potassium-40 which occurs in nature at about the same concentration in potassium mineral deposits as i-129 does in nuclear waste.


As far as renewables... Texas has built more windmills in the last ten years than any other state in the US and it's wind program is the second largest of any government entity behind denmark. They are also building coal plants. Simply put, they cannot build windmills fast enough to keep up with demand, let alone begin to replace other power sources.

Denmark is only country that has had any success with wind power as a baseload source. That's partially because they import power from a larger grid and also because they have unusually good conditions for it (large coast line and strong sustained offshore winds)...

In germany they are trying to shut down all the reactors in the next 20 years due to the dogma of the parties in power. They have not made such a commitment to coal plants.

This is one thing I don't get: It's almost unfathomable how truely filthy and absolutely destructive coal is in every stage of the process of mining and burning. It's nearly pure carbon with a sulphur and heavy metals thrown in. It's difficult to imaging anything more filthy. Even "clean coal" is only scrubbed of some of the substances. No reduction in co2 at all. You get three tons of co2 for roughly one ton of coal burned.

If they want to shut down reactors they should still make coal a priority. ONLY after every coal plant has been replaced with a renewable source should doing the same with nuclear plants even become an option. Making the priority "We will shut down the nuclear plants by conservation and renewable sources. Then down the road we'll try to reduce coal too" that's idiotic. The damage from coal is indisputable.

It's not surprising. Germany has a history of electing dogmatic parties which blame all the problems on some scape goat. Yes yes "The nukes have come to the fatherland and are polluting the purity of our beloved country. We must expel the nukes. We will isolate and concentrate the nukes and then we will be able to move forward for a future of purity of Germany. HAIL SOLAR!"

If I were France, a country with ample electricity, I would be terrified right now.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

I'm not quite sure why it's such a "silly" claim. Even the most conservative estimates per kw/h of electric energy for solar puts it at a much higher price than nuclear estimates.

Perhaps you could explain for us dunces that haven't had a chance for you to grace us with your eminent wisdom?

Suppose for the sake of argument I agreed that even the most conservative estimates per kw/h of electric energy for solar puts it at a much higher price than nuclear estimates.

How do you get from there to reasonable certainty that any attempted transition to mostly renewable energy sources will lead inevitably to a billion deaths and nuclear war? It's not my job to disprove this ridiculous bit of divination, it's your job or Schneibster's to prove it.

I'm really getting the feeling I'm dealing with a religious movement here, with nuclear power as the shining light of global salvation, and famine and nuclear war awaiting as the hell for sinners who do not build the appropriate number of fast breeder temples. If you can't see that this apocalyptic mythology is silly at first glance, and you honestly have to ask someone to explain to you why it's silly, then I don't think I'm dealing with a position you were reasoned in to. As they say, you can't reason someone out of a position they were not reasoned in to in the first place.

 

[Lonewulf]

I'm really getting the feeling I'm dealing with a religious movement here, with nuclear power as the shining light of global salvation, and famine and nuclear war awaiting as the hell for sinners who do not build the appropriate number of fast breeder temples.

Ditto the "solar power" converters with nuclear waste and war being the hell for those that don't accept the salvation of newables.

If you can't see that this apocalyptic mythology is silly at first glance, and you honestly have to ask someone to explain to you why it's silly, then I don't think I'm dealing with a position you were reasoned in to. As they say, you can't reason someone out of a position they were not reasoned in to in the first place

Just out of curiosity:

Do you believe that money comes out of thin air? Real question.

Who would fund all of this renewable energy in all of these countries?

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Ditto the "solar power" converters with nuclear waste and war being the hell for those that don't accept the salvation of newables.

The difference, I think, being that we know nuclear waste will actually be the result of nuclear power, and we know what nuclear waste does (or I do anyway, I'm waiting for you and Schneibster to step up on that point). Similarly nuclear proliferation has been a slow-burning problem for some time now and the assumption that it would accelerate if more nations had breeder reactors is based on historical experience.

Whereas the claim that the sky would fall if we tried to move to renewables appears to have come from a crystal ball resembling someone's backside.

Just out of curiosity:

Do you believe that money comes out of thin air? Real question.

Who would fund all of this renewable energy in all of these countries?

The same people who fund vast armies, wars, space shuttles, bridges, roads, the Olympic games, dams, and all the other expensive things we can and do get up to nowadays.

A transition to renewable energy supplies would be something we spend money on, certainly. It would not, in your amusing turn of phrase, come out of thin air.

Now I have been nice and I have answered your questions. Will you now stop avoidng mine?

What is the basis for fixing the belief that a transition to renewables will cause a billion or so deaths? What do you think is dangerous about a stockpile of used fuel rods containing U-234?

 

[Lonewulf]

The billion or so deaths really wasn't my claim, so I'll let Schneibster handle that. However, as to the stockpile of used fuel rods containing U-234, I'm not really sure what you're looking for here.

U-234 is an Alpha emitter, which means that it emits mainly alpha waves. I could go into technical specifics here, but that's really not my MO. The main danger with alpha waves is if it's ingested; they aren't powerful enough even to penetrate the surface of your skin. If left in the open around where you're growing some crops, that's a bad thing. But I don't quite see any evidence that they are particularly hard to seal.

Because they are heavy and charged, alpha particles tend to have a very short mean free path, and therefore lose their kinetic energy within a short distance of their source. This can result in several MeV being deposited in a relatively small area. If they penetrate live tissue, this can cause significant cellular damage. Generally, external alpha radiation is not harmful because alpha particles are completely absorbed by a few centimeters of air. Even touching an alpha source is usually not harmful; the thin layer of dead skin cells in the outermost layer of the skin will absorb them. However, if a substance radiating alpha particles is ingested, inhaled by, injected into, or introduced through the skin (shrapnel, corrosive chemicals) into an organism it may result in a high dose to that area.

Radon is a naturally occurring, radioactive gas found in soil, rock, and sometimes groundwater. When radon gas is inhaled, some of the radon particles stick to the inner lining of the lung. The particles that remain continue to decay over time, emitting alpha particles which may damage cells in the lung tissue.[2]. The death of Marie Curie at age 66 from leukemia was likely caused by prolonged exposure to high doses of ionizing radiation. Curie worked extensively with Radium, which decays into Radon[3], along with other radioactive materials that emit beta and gamma rays. Shrapnel deposited in the body from depleted uranium poses another such internal risk of alpha particle radiation dose.

The 2006 assassination of Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko is thought to have been caused by poisoning with Polonium-210, an alpha emitter.

Yeah, it's not perfectly safe, but not insurmountably difficult to store. I don't see how it's much more dangerous than heavy metals or mercury.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_radiation

Americium-241 is used in smoke detectors. The alpha particles ionize air between a small gap, leading to a small current that can be easily interrupted by smoke particles.

Careful, you got radiation in your smoke detectors!

 

[DRBUZZ0]

I still have not gotten a satisfactory answer to the problem of poop from banana eaters destroying the hopes and dreams of the children of tomorrow. Bananas and substitute salt are both absolutely intolerable and only marginally better than Brazil nuts. If you eat these your poo needs to be put in lead canisters and shot into space. Even if you do not, these items need to be put into lead canisters and shot into space off of the orbital plane.

The fact that we will be poluting outer space with out bananas is regreatable but what else can we do? We'll just have to hope that they don't ruin the hopes and dreams of any alien species.

The problem is those damn cosmic rays keep creating more potassium-40 along with other evil poisons like carbon 14. What we need to do is build a shield around the world. We should build it out of lead... and asbestos too... and maybe some dioxin ontop of that... to block out these cosmic rays to help eliminate the evil isotopes from the world.

 

[Hindmost]

My understanding is that nuclear fission results in the least CO2 emissions per kW-hr, assuming its fuel comes from uranium deposits just like the ones we are mining now, which will be good for several more decades at current rates of use. After that we will have to start using less rich sites to get uranium, and the rate of CO2 emission starts going way up.

If we indulged Dr Buzzo's fantasy of nuclear reactors dotting the landscape, we'd be getting into the poorer deposits in a matter of one or two decades and at that point the major appeal of nuclear fission just vanishes.

The rate of CO2 emission will increase, but not go way up. The amount of uranium ore that is needed to fuel plants is just not that big--especially when compared to other sources of energy.

http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/ This is an MIT study that is very comprehensive on the overall subject.

Nuke that straw man until it glows.

The proliferation risk comes from many nations who do not currently have nuclear weapons having a nice fat breeder reactor, and having to worry about what everybody else is doing with their breeder reactors. Every nation that has gone nuclear since the nuclear non-proliferation treaties were signed did so by running a civilian nuclear program and building nukes under the table, and if you give every second country breeder reactors it's just going to happen some more.

Yes, it's also conceivable that as a result of many more nations having a nuclear stockpile that one or more nukes could go astray and end up in the hands of terrorist groups, which is the scenario you seem to be worried about. I think it's a remote risk, but it's not going to make the world any safer to have more countries with nuclear weapons.

The nuclear choices are simple fission reactors, which the world does not have enough uranium to supply in the long term if we build too many more, or breeder reactors which are a recipe for further nuclear proliferation. Those are pretty unappealing choices to my mind. Whereas renewables might cost more, but they'll work for as long as the world keeps turning and you can't start a nuclear war with them.

You indicated you were worried about nuclear proliferation if we built 1000 breeders...this is significantly different from what you posted here. Since we already have nuclear weapons and a fair amount of Pu, the point is moot unless you expect terrorists to be stealing our fuel after it comes out of a reactor. If breeders are built in the US and other nations with nuclear weapons, it won't have any effect on other nations starting up their own program with the possible exception of using up the uranium before other nations get their hands on it...so, my arguement is not a strawman.

The MIT study indicates there is sufficient uranium to fuel reactors and increase capacity for the next 40-50 years. That should be enough to get fusion going.

glenn

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

Spent fission reactor fuel contains U-234 (half-life 246000 years), Pu-238 (half-life 88 years then it turns into the aforementioned U-234) and Am-241 (half-life 432 years). Make a big pile of that stuff and it will be a serious health hazard for longer than any human political system has ever endured, by at least a couple of orders of magnitude.

But none of those isotopes needs to be considered waste do they? They may not be the focus of current breeder technology but they are viable candidates for breeder cylces aren't they? I would think you could even build a reactor based on Am-241 as it's fuel source.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

The billion or so deaths really wasn't my claim, so I'll let Schneibster handle that. However, as to the stockpile of used fuel rods containing U-234, I'm not really sure what you're looking for here.

U-234 is an Alpha emitter, which means that it emits mainly alpha waves. I could go into technical specifics here, but that's really not my MO. The main danger with alpha waves is if it's ingested; they aren't powerful enough even to penetrate the surface of your skin. If left in the open around where you're growing some crops, that's a bad thing. But I don't quite see any evidence that they are particularly hard to seal.

Yeah, it's not perfectly safe, but not insurmountably difficult to store. I don't see how it's much more dangerous than heavy metals or mercury.

Okay, I think it's pretty clear where you're coming from. I doubt Schneibster will do any better so I'll stop that line of questioning and just explain what's going on.

First things first. Atom for atom long-lived isotopes like U-234 are not as dangerous as short-lived ones in and of themselves, you and Schneibster were right that far. The fault in your analyis is that you conclude from this that since atom-for-atom U-234 is less dangerous than something else, then it follows that the amount of U-234 in spent fuel rods is safe. You are missing the other side of the coin, which is that if you have enough U-234 atoms in one place to be a danger it will continue to be a danger for an extraordinarily long time.

The other assumption you seem to be making is that once an atom of U-234 or another dangerous isotope decays, poof, it's gone. That is not how it works. If the result of radioactive decay is another radioactive element then you can get a second decay event, and a third, and so on down the line until the decay chain reaches a stable isotope. U-234 becomes thorium 230 becomes radium 226 becomes radon 222 by a chain of alpha emissions, each product having a shorter half-life than its parent. So it's not just a matter of keeping U-234 in a box until it goes poof, because its decay chain leads to radioactive radon gas. Plus the other unstable isotopes in the fuel rods are also doing their own individual slide down the periodic table.

Lastly, you seem to be assuming that we can just stick something in a vault and it will be held harmless for hundreds of thousands of years without ever getting in the atmosphere or the water supply, and that strikes me as a failry crazy assumption. We've never developed the technology to build something to last like that, because we have never needed it. Handwaving this issue away is in my mind an immoral way of foisting the bill for today's air conditioning onto our descendants in the form of radioactive waste.

Careful, you got radiation in your smoke detectors!

Yes, yes, all caution regarding radiation is ill-informed gibbering. We get it.

 

[luddite]

Kevin, thank you for your measured and thoughtful responses. All hell is breaking loose here. I don't even know where to begin.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

You indicated you were worried about nuclear proliferation if we built 1000 breeders...this is significantly different from what you posted here. Since we already have nuclear weapons and a fair amount of Pu, the point is moot unless you expect terrorists to be stealing our fuel after it comes out of a reactor. If breeders are built in the US and other nations with nuclear weapons, it won't have any effect on other nations starting up their own program with the possible exception of using up the uranium before other nations get their hands on it...so, my arguement is not a strawman.

I thought I was very clear.

If nations outside the nuclear weapons club have breeder reactors, they can develop their own covert nuclear weapons programme comparatively easily, and this is how nuclear proliferation has always happened in the real world.

The MIT study indicates there is sufficient uranium to fuel reactors and increase capacity for the next 40-50 years. That should be enough to get fusion going.

It's an old joke that nuclear fusion is fifty years away, and it always will be. As I said earlier, I've never heard a credible proposal for getting electricity out of a fusion reaction, and we don't even have the reaction going yet.

Banking on fusion to ride in and save us in fifty years time just as the uranium is running out once and for all is not an idea I am comfortable with. Unless something genuinely new and exiting comes along in the way of fusion power, we'll have to go to renewables or breeders when your forty to fifty years are up anyway.

But none of those isotopes needs to be considered waste do they? They may not be the focus of current breeder technology but they are viable candidates for breeder cylces aren't they? I would think you could even build a reactor based on Am-241 as it's fuel source.

My concern with breeder reactors is that they are a road to nuclear proliferation and no sane person wants that.

It's worth paying a lot, and I mean a lot, for renewable energy sources if the alternative is every unstable third-world nation needing a breeder reactor to keep the lights on.

 

[mhaze]

Originally Posted by mhaze
I disagree with your stated facts and conclusion on CO2 (but have no interest in derailing the thread and will not discuss the matter here) and want to make a very important associated point.

While we may disagree on global warming, I think we nearly agree on the points you raise here.
​

Originally Posted by mhaze
If in pursuing the goal of lowering CO2 emissions the US economy and/or that of major European nations saw gross national product nosedive, that will likely starve 10% of the world population.

I suspect you are an optimist. It could be considerably more, perhaps as much as 20%.

Originally Posted by mhaze
Serious side effects.

Yep, we sure agree on that.​

I'm pulling 10% out of the air and trying for a conservative number, but one could definitely be alarmist on this issue and not get it wrong. It's important to not look at the present, but the way things are moving internationally - we are headed toward "the world is flat". In a sense, what nuclear power does is isolate the power backbone of a city (or nation) from that interconnected, single world economy.

The stabilizing aspects of baseload nuclear in a large variety of bad international situations has perhaps not been discussed.

Whether it might be

• a serious flu pandemic
• bioterrorism or unintential biological agent relese
• blocking of essential waterways through which supertankers must run
• an asteroid strike
• various forms of war
• terrorism causing economic nosedive for major nations,
• (previously mentioned) economic nosedive caused by misguided (or possibly, correctly guided) attempts at CO2 emission reduction

Nuclear baseload power has a stabilizing and calming influence. A city might continue to operate, hospitals and emergency services would exist, etc. Trade, transport, shipping lanes and working currency exchange rates are not a prerequisite for the switch to be turned on and kept on to the powerplant.

Add to that the possibility of plug in hybrids, and advanced battery vehicles such as using the A123 cells, powered off of nuclear backbone.

Beneficial social aspects of nuclear baseload are highly significant.

 

[luddite]

Lonewulf, let's for starters begin with your assertion that alpha emitters are no problem because all you have to do is avoid eating from contaminated soils.

My mind is reeling. That's all you have to do?

Some of these are persistent isotopes. They leach into water and spread the contamination. They are difficult to contain. And they are very damaging once in the body. Which is why a lot of the objections to nuclear power from the medical professions actually focus on the alpha radiation.

U234 has a half-life of 245,000 years. So over a period more than 100 times longer than the time since the Romans, we will only have to worry about half of it. And then, as Kevin says, it breaks down into other unstable isotopes.

All we have to do is build a containment vessel? That lasts millenia? Is that all?

And then there's the assertion about how little waste there is, how it can all fit into a shoebox. (Sorry, I know I'm exaggerating your statement). But these assertions always refer to spent fuel. From what I understand, the volume of "low level waste" coming out of a nuclear plant is much higher. It tends not to get careful treatment even now, so it's hard to imagine we would be able to track it for centuries, never mind millenia.

My knowledge about radiation is limited, but what little I know is concerning. It's an important goal to figure out how to deal with the waste we have, which we've done a very shoddy job of. We've left tailings behind, we've misplaced radioactive waste, we've improperly accounted for the potential damage. So before we embark on any nuclear expansion, I'd like to see a cleanup of the current situation. The cavalier attitude about how radiation is nothing to worry about does not inspire confidence.

 

[luddite]

I'm pulling 10% out of the air and trying for a conservative number, but one could definitely be alarmist on this issue and not get it wrong. It's important to not look at the present, but the way things are moving internationally - we are headed toward "the world is flat". In a sense, what nuclear power does is isolate the power backbone of a city (or nation) from that interconnected, single world economy.

The stabilizing aspects of baseload nuclear in a large variety of bad international situations has perhaps not been discussed.

Whether it might be

• a serious flu pandemic
• bioterrorism or unintential biological agent relese
• blocking of essential waterways through which supertankers must run
• an asteroid strike
• various forms of war
• terrorism causing economic nosedive for major nations,
• (previously mentioned) economic nosedive caused by misguided (or possibly, correctly guided) attempts at CO2 emission reduction

Nuclear baseload power has a stabilizing and calming influence. A city might continue to operate, hospitals and emergency services would exist, etc. Trade, transport, shipping lanes and working currency exchange rates are not a prerequisite for the switch to be turned on and kept on to the powerplant.

Add to that the possibility of plug in hybrids, and advanced battery vehicles such as using the A123 cells, powered off of nuclear backbone.

Beneficial social aspects of nuclear baseload are highly significant.

In my experience in Ontario during the blackout, our dependence on nuclear power rather contributed to than lessened the problems. I find your confidence especially peculiar as regards terrorism. It's a lot more difficult for terrorists to strike 10,000 windmills than a few choice power plants. And if the power plants are nuclear fueled, the potential results are far more deadly.