Nuclear Energy - I need to vent/rant

[RecoveringYuppy]

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?

No, use it as fuel. I just pointed out that this stuff can bred in to usable fuel. And it doesn't even require what you currently might think of as a breeder reactor to do it. U-234 can be bred in to U-235 in a thermal reactor.

 

[luddite]

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.

Yes, I quoted the Energy Watch Group, which suggested that even with very steep uranium prices, we are likely to peak no later than 2035. National Resources Canada is, if anything, more pessimistic.

I'm not going to make any conclusions here about just how long the uranium will last, but I wouldn't want to base an energy strategy on optimistic assumptions of fuel availability. Nor would I want to base it on optimistic assumptions about when fusion will come to save us.

 

[luddite]

No, use it as fuel. I just pointed out that this stuff can bred in to usable fuel. And it doesn't even require what you currently might think of as a breeder reactor to do it. U-234 can be bred in to U-235 in a thermal reactor.

Okay, I'm getting beyond the scope of my knowledge here. It's my understanding that France already has a great deal of reprocessed fuel that is rather more of a problem than a solution, given that there's no commercially viable place to use it.

 

[Ziggurat]

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.

We don't need to.

Consider copper, for example. That's something I've worked with myself a bit. The natural stable isotopes are Cu63 and Cu65. The primary radioisotopes are therefore Cu64 and Cu66. Those have half-lives of around 13 hours and 5 minutes, respectively. Take the longer-lived of the two: with that short a half-life, activity decays by about a factor of roughly 8,000 in one week. Wait one year, and you're down by a factor of 4*10²⁰⁷. Which means that even if you activated all the copper in the world to Cu64 (and I'm including every copper atom on earth, not just what mankind has access to), there wouldn't be a single radioactive copper atom left after one year. And its decay products (Ni64 or Zn64) are stable.

If you expose copper to a neutron flux, you can make it radioactive. But it's a short term problem. The idea that we're in trouble because we don't know how to store low-level waste for millenia comes from a misunderstanding of what low-level waste is.

 

[luddite]

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.

Interesting. We've been up and down with the economic costs. There are plenty of sources that put nuclear electricity as very high. When it compares favorably to renewables it's almost always because they're comparing it to solar baseload, which I've never heard anyone advocate. Nuclear power seemed to have no takers in the US until the recent legislation trying to make it more attractive, and it's not clear how many takers there are even with this legislation.

What is clear is that wind turbines are being erected in the US, even though wind power gets much lower subsidies than nuclear:

http://www.awea.org/pubs/factsheets/Subsidy.pdf

You get even more bang for the buck with conservation/efficiency.

So if economics is your main concern, I look forward to seeing you promoting renewables soon

 

[robinson]

I was watching the News today. From the reporting on alternative fuels and energy sources being covered, it is clear that there is now money to made in alternatives.

Nuclear power plants are not profitable, which is the real reason they are not being constructed as we speak.

 

[Hindmost]

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.

It still doesn't make sense. How does not building breeder plants in the US and other nuclear powers stop countries like Iran from building a weapons production reactor? Iran and any other country is not going to change their plans based on what the US builds. If the US were to build breeders, it would take uranium away from the rest of the world. Unless you believe, terrorists are going to be stealing high level waste, non-proliferation is not based on what we build.

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.



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.

the 40-50 years is the minimum based on a once through cycle. With reprocessing, the time is greatly extended.

I agree that fusion is a pipe-dream right now...however, that doesn't mean it won't work in the future. If we achieve a breakthrough, then it will be power for a long time.

glenn

 

[DRBUZZ0]

I was watching the News today. From the reporting on alternative fuels and energy sources being covered, it is clear that there is now money to made in alternatives.

Nuclear power plants are not profitable, which is the real reason they are not being constructed as we speak.

Nuclear plants are not profitable but you can make a profit selling solar energy? well.. no you can't do that... wind? I suppose if you happen to have a LOT of land on a plateau on a wind-swept area.

Although there tends to be profit in most anything the government pumps money into.

The nuclear plant not far from me was bought for a rather substansial amount of money not long ago (I think more than a billion) because once the plant is built and up and running it pretty much rakes it in. Also the new owner will pay for decommissioning of the older reactor on site.

But then again if you want to take profit some good filthy coal is always a good way to go.

But there are guys in ohio making a profit selling oil coming from a single well on the property which only pulls up a few hundred gallons per week, as that's all that reserve can support. Profit? Sure. Amounts to a hill of beans in terms of national energy sources? Not so much.

 

[DRBUZZ0]

Okay, I'm getting beyond the scope of my knowledge here. It's my understanding that France already has a great deal of reprocessed fuel that is rather more of a problem than a solution, given that there's no commercially viable place to use it.

U-234 can just be left in. You don't really need to seperate it. It has a very large thermal neutron cross section. That means that in reactor fuel for just a standard normal light water reactor it will quickly convert into U-235. Reprocessed uranium from a normal uranium reactor actually has LESS than is found in natural uranium because it converts into U-235 that easily.

 

[luddite]

Iran and any other country is not going to change their plans based on what the US builds.

Whereas I suspect that what the US builds will profoundly influence other countries. If the west sets the example for renewable power and develops the technologies to make it cheap and effective, that's what will be in demand. If we manage to make our appliances more efficient and streamline our industrial processes to reduce energy demand, then those ideas will be adopted around the world. If instead, we focus on a massive nuclear energy fix...

 

[Hindmost]

I was watching the News today. From the reporting on alternative fuels and energy sources being covered, it is clear that there is now money to made in alternatives.

Nuclear power plants are not profitable, which is the real reason they are not being constructed as we speak.

Nuclear plants are being built in Korea, Taiwan, China, France, etc.. They are profitable or they wouldn't be built.

http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-59/iss-2/p19.html

glenn

 

[luddite]

Nuclear plants are being built in Korea, Taiwan, China, France, etc.. They are profitable or they wouldn't be built.

Are any of these built by private investors? Do they take on all risks and costs? I don't know, just asking.

 

[Hindmost]

Are any of these built by private investors? Do they take on all risks and costs? I don't know, just asking.

I don't know either as I don't know the structure of utilities in most other countries. IN the US, the utilities will ahve to privately finance the plants, however the recent energy bill guarantees subsidies for the first 6000 MW of capacity--which I felt is needed to restart the industry.

In Korea, since the utility is partially owned by the government and the risk is by the goverment. However, since many of the components are made outside korea, the government has to finance much of the plant external...it has raised the foreign debt of korea in recent years. The natural resources in Korea are very limited. The feel nuclear power is needed for national security. And I agree with them. I am sure Japan feels the same way.

glenn

 

[luddite]

I've just read a Greenpeace claim that no reactor has ever been commissioned in a competitive market. Wind has. I don't know why people think renewables are so expensive.

 

[Hindmost]

I've just read a Greenpeace claim that no reactor has ever been commissioned in a competitive market. Wind has. I don't know why people think renewables are so expensive.

Typical greenpeace mis-direction. As far as I know, there are no competitive markets in electric power. In the US, they were regulated monopolies and competition has only started with the production side--and it is not working out in most places.

I don't know what greenpeace means by wind being commisioned in a competitive market, but in the US, wind power has only been constructed with subsidies and tax breaks as it still expensive power.

glenn

 

[luddite]

Glenn, what is your assessment of the link that showed 2006 subsidies for wind dwarfed by nuclear subsidies?

 

[mhaze]

I was watching the News today. From the reporting on alternative fuels and energy sources being covered, it is clear that there is now money to made in alternatives.

Nuclear power plants are not profitable, which is the real reason they are not being constructed as we speak.

Clearly that explains why we are breaking ground now in Texas for 2 new reactors and have 2 more under permit request process.

 

[robinson]

The price tag to develop NRG's reactors will be US$6 billion to US$7 billion -- costs that the company said it could afford only with the incentives provided by the federal government in 2005.

http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/44498/story.htm

As of 2005, there were more than 53,000 tons of nuclear waste in the country from nuclear power plants and another 22,000 canisters of waste from military activities, according to the U.S. Energy Department. By 2035, this amount is expected to more than double — and that does not account for new reactors.

Currently, there is no long-term solution to the problem. Some countries reprocess the waste to use again, but that makes the material highly radioactive, which is a security concern that has hampered reprocessing in this country.

As it is, the waste is stored at nuclear plant sites in either large pools or 20-foot-tall steel and lead containers. The South Texas and Comanche projects alone have more than 1,500 tons of spent nuclear fuel stored on site.

http://www.nukeworker.com/news/faci...Texas+Project+Nuclear+Power+Plant+location:TX

NRG Energy and South Texas Project Nuclear Operating Co. plan to build the reactors at their facility near Bay City, Texas, which already houses two similarly sized reactors.

"We have chosen an NRC-certified and an operationally proven technology," noted NRG President and CEO David W. Crane. "We expect to build these facilities on time and on budget."

The application is the first to use a new NRC process to speed up issuance of a construction and operating license. NRC has already approved the design and the site; the company expects to receive a license within 42 months, begin construction in 2010, and be operating by 2014. It expects the facilities to cost $6 billion.

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/85/i40/8540notw3.html

I have to agree with the person who claimed it is cheaper to conserve than to build more power plants. Wind power would be far cheaper, and faster to develop than Nuclear. And it doesn't leave any nasty waste problems for the future.

Hmm... I wonder ... let me check.

 

[Lonewulf]

Actually, Schneibster has consistently shown more research and knowledge in these topics than I currently have.

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.

Strawman.

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.

Strawman.

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

Apparently, you don't, because you just made another strawman. I never said that all caution is ill-informed gibbering.

I am hereby convinced that you are not interested in honest debate, Kevin_Lowe. As such, I will not waste my time further.

As of 2005, there were more than 53,000 tons of nuclear waste in the country from nuclear power plants and another 22,000 canisters of waste from military activities, according to the U.S. Energy Department. By 2035, this amount is expected to more than double — and that does not account for new reactors.

Currently, there is no long-term solution to the problem. Some countries reprocess the waste to use again, but that makes the material highly radioactive, which is a security concern that has hampered reprocessing in this country.

As it is, the waste is stored at nuclear plant sites in either large pools or 20-foot-tall steel and lead containers. The South Texas and Comanche projects alone have more than 1,500 tons of spent nuclear fuel stored on site.

http://www.nukeworker.com/news/faci...Texas+Project+Nuclear+Power+Plant+location:TX

The "waste" here can be re-used, though.

So "this does not account for new reactors" is definitely true (there are reactor designs that can reprocess spent fuel).

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

It still doesn't make sense. How does not building breeder plants in the US and other nuclear powers stop countries like Iran from building a weapons production reactor? Iran and any other country is not going to change their plans based on what the US builds. If the US were to build breeders, it would take uranium away from the rest of the world. Unless you believe, terrorists are going to be stealing high level waste, non-proliferation is not based on what we build.

I'm not sure how many times I can rephrase this without just repeating myself.

We have non-proliferation treaties in place to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. The problem with these treaties is that given a civilian nuclear program it is possible to covertly run a weapons programme, as India, Pakistan and Israel demonstrated. Breeder reactors make the process much easier.

If as a planet we end up using breeder reactors to supply our power needs, we are going to inevitably end up with breeeder reactors in countries that we do not want developing nuclear weapons. What else do you expect them to do, put up solar panels?

the 40-50 years is the minimum based on a once through cycle. With reprocessing, the time is greatly extended.

I agree that fusion is a pipe-dream right now...however, that doesn't mean it won't work in the future. If we achieve a breakthrough, then it will be power for a long time.

As I said earlier, if you get to have an amazing breakthrough in fusion just when you need it to rescue the world as the uranium runs out, then I get to have an amazing breakthrough in solar panels or something, and Dr Buzzo gets Luke Skywalker to shoot nuclear waste into the sun.