Nuclear Energy: The Only Solution
Biofuels are all the rage these days, as illustrated by a particularly silly article that appeared in the New York Times recently. It claimed that homebrew biodiesel could significantly reduce the U.S. demand for imported oil.
There is no way that ethanol from sugar, corn, or biomass is going to make a significant reduction in the U.S. demand for crude oil. Do the numbers:
The U.S. currently consumes 9.286 million barrels per day of gasoline (388.6 million gallons/day). According to the Times article cited above, between 10 and 14 pounds of sugar will be required to make a gallon of ethanol. This means that to replace the current U.S. consumption of gasoline with ethanol, which we will assume for simplicity has the same energy content per gallon as gasoline (actually a gallon of ethanol has about 80 percent the energy content of a gallon of gasoline), then we would need about two million tons of sugar per day, assuming the low end of 10 pounds of sugar per gallon.
The total sugar production of the U.S. is currently about 8 million tons per year; Mexico’s production is slightly less. So we are about a factor of 100 too low in our sugar production. This is an enormous shortfall. Just to meet the 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol per year mandated in the 2005 law has required one-third of the entire U.S. corn crop. In other words, to supply twenty days gasoline consumption, we had to use a third of all our yearly corn production.
Biomass of any type just uses surface area that could be used for other production, like trees for wood. In Brazil, they are now razing the rain forests to supply the biomass. I think the rain forests are far more valuable to humanity as rain forests. Beside the nice trees, there are also the animals that live therein.
The bottom line: solar energy, which is the source of biomass/grain/sugar, is just too diffuse to provide the energy we need for transportation.
The only solution is nuclear energy.
A recent study by Los Alamos National Laboratories shows how to manufacture gasoline from water and CO2 from the air: a nuclear reactor’s energy is used to split the hydrogen and carbon off from the oxygen in water and carbon dioxide, and to combine the two elements to create gasoline.
Los Alamos estimates that with off-the-shelf technology, the price at the pump for nuclear-generated gasoline is $4.60 per gallon, and a $5 billion off-the-shelf reactor/synthetic gasoline complex could supply 18,400 barrels per day. So to provide for current U.S. gasoline needs, we would need 500 reactors and associated complexes — a total cost of 2.5 trillion dollars, slightly more than this year’s federal budget deficit. Los Alamos also argues that modest technological improvements would be expected to halve the capital cost of the reactors and to reduce the gasoline price at the pump to $3.40 per gallon, a bit less than last summer’s U.S. average price for regular. In Europe today, the pump price is between $5.00 to $6.50 per gallon, due to high European gasoline taxes.
We’ve got the capital. Since September 2008, we have spent — completely wasted! — some $4 trillion dollars trying to get out of the financial crisis, twice the capital required.
If we assume that capital is free, apparently the assumption of the Obama administration, then the cost of synthetic gasoline would be $2.20 a gallon — less than today’s pump price.
Furthermore, creating gasoline by using carbon dioxide from the atmosphere would just endlessly recycle the CO2 between our cars and the atmosphere. There would be no net addition of CO2 to the atmosphere. If one believes in anthropogenic global warming — I don’t — the problem is solved!
Oddly, the (certifiably mental) James Hansen agrees. As do I. But the rest of the (certifiably mental) environmental movement doesn’t apparently take climate change as seriously.
OTOH, Making synthetic hydrocarbons from nuke is one of the nuttier ideas out there, however. Frank, if you’re a physicist, I think you see the thermodynamic problem with using a heat generating reactor to generate electricity, in order to make a heat generating fuel, to run an IC engine on. I doubt you could get 10% overall efficiency.
I think we can safely wait this climate catastrophe out for another decade while we perfect some sort of battery or fuel cell system which will be much more suitable for use with electricity.
And FWIW, the hydrogen fanatics think that industrial scale electrolysis is a trivial problem. It isn’t. We don’t know how to do it with reasonable efficiency right now.
I spoke with the the American WInd Energy Association some months ago, with the stimulus monies either in hand or on their way (at the time). All the participating companies were busy, figuring out how to spend the monies without DOING ANYTHING. How do you spend government largess without effort? Do STUDIES . . . WInd power is a technology, labor and money pit at start up and a constant consumer of maintenance time ever after. So one of the first things you need to have is a large technically apt, highly trained workforce to build the robots that run the towers and maintain that same equipment. None of these companies are in any rush to spend monies on human infrastructure. No, far better to spend it on studies that prove it’s value and viability. All of that “viability” is negated when the NIMBY principle is the overriding concern (as in Mass and Cali), so, time for another study. Readers DIgest version? Wind Power ain’t there yet.
NUCLEAR POWER all the way!
If Americans are turned lose they can develop things like the TR10 traveling wave reactor. It “eats it own waste” so to speak leaving almost nothing behind and will run for 60 to 200 years, depending, with a fuel change.
See MIT video:
http://www.mit-technology-review.com/video/?vid=266
or the wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_wave_reactor
Producing synfuels, as described by Los Alamos, sans the nuke reactor has been around for decades (think WWII German fuel production, for example).
Actually, one could replace all our electric generating plants with nuclear reactors to produce 100% of our power instead of the 20% they now produce. Since the reactors aren’t “throttled back” during off-peak hours excess power can be used to power the synfuel process. This would make synfuels mostly “free”. One could even build enough plants in Arizona to provide energy to California or another foreign country.
You could build reactors close to things like the oil shale deposits to provide an energy source to recover the oil. Even use “waste” heat as part of the extraction process.
Instead of producing gasoline you can produce nearly any hydrocarbon including hydrogen for that mysterious day in the future when the world goes with a fuel cell hydrogen economy.
What’s interesting about all these proposals is one should not forget that CO2 is needed to grow things for us to eat. Imagine what would happen if the governments sucked all the CO2 out of the atmosphere?
Expect to be seriously villified for your anti-green heresy, sir. The truth is no defense against the Gaia worshippers.
Like Al Gore, they are blatant hypocrites.
see #1. The efficiency question about electrolysis is half the argument. Calvin Ball correctly implies that we don’t have the electrical capacity to do it anyway. We need nuclear power to generate enough electricity for any widely used alternative fuel. Whether you want Hydrogen or just battery power, you can’t get there from wind power.
You don’t get it. The GOAL is to de-industrialize America, at least for non-elites. We don’t HAVE to go with nukes at all. Our betters have determined that we don’t need cars, reliable electricity, potable water, decent education. We’re expendable. Didn’t you get the memo? Now the yagu eaters will keep their lifestyle, while we go back to something more suitable (for the hoi polloi that is). Listening to Prince Charles (certainly a nice British exemplar of the type) spout this stuff is nearly insufferable – the other day he made some statement about people getting by without car. You first Charlie!
Nuclear energy is hardly “the only solution”. It is only a viable “solution” if you are willing to deny the inherent problems with nuclear power generation.
There is plenty of work being done on sustainable energy economies. One has to deliberately ignore the available evidence to conclude that nuclear power is the answer.
Solar, wind, geothermal and hydropower can provide plenty of energy, and improvements in efficiency can reduce power requirements substantially. By comparing nuclear with biofuels, you are ignoring all of the truly sustainable technologies that are available now.
Nuclear power is part of the old paradigm of massive central generation. The future does not lie in these types of projects – micro-scale power generation and improvements in efficiency are a much more intelligent way forward. Nuclear facilities simply are not efficient in the long term.
The particular focus here on motor fuel is also misguided, as improvements in electricity storage are likely to render gasoline obsolete before these nuclear plants would pay back the initial capital investment. Moving to distributed generation of electricity through solar, wind, geothermal and hydropower is the way forward – the continued obsession with nuclear power is a relic of the cold war, and serves no useful purpose.
Peace.
DS
2. don, the funny thing about that is that wind is the most mature of the “renewables”. All the R&D in the world is unlikely to make a significantly better windmill. They may study the optimal locations, and how to get the power from point ‘a’ to point ‘b’, but the windmill itself is what it is.
And before these renewable energy Einsteins get too carried away with their national “smart” grid wet dream, they need to think about EMP. Building up a highly interconnected grid isn’t a really bright idea.
One of the other virtues of nuke is that it would allow us to go in the other direction, and atomize the distribution system, so that one woodpecker pecking on one pole doesn’t shut the whole continent down.
Our current energy problems are a direct cause of political barriers erected by politicians who do not care for their constituents, but instead crave power over them. Self-loathing human-haters in the form of eco-freaks have infiltrated our society and spread their insanity into every corner of life. These crazies want you to believe that perfectly normal variations in the earth’s weather are caused by you, to make you feel guilty enough to allow all sorts of wacky laws that would have gotten you laughed out of the room not too long ago.
If you doubt me, look no further than California’s once- fertile valleys that are currently dry, held hostage to the whims of unthinking Washington politicians who’d rather starve the people of the area instead of turn on the water to irrigate crops.
It’s time to start fighting back against this “movement” or we’ll be living in a pre-industrial age again, with all the misery, hardship and death inherent in a world void of the technical advances that have made our lives so rich over the past century.
Here’s how you begin: If a politician says he or she believes in “climate change” or “global warming”, vote against them. Their inability to think for themselves makes them unfit for office.
Just imagine if the giant debt amassed by Bush and now the Obamessiah had been spend toward the building of Nuclear power plants. How many nuclear power plants could have been constructed with 3 trillion dollars?
David S:
You would have more credibility if you would quantify your assertions (how much is “Plenty”? Is that more or less than “a whole lot”?) and if you weren’t rooted in the 1960s. You have obviously not done your homework (even with the hints offered in this article). Today’s reactor designs are quite safe, but even better, thorium reactors offer several advantages:
1. Consume conventional nuclear waste.
2. Passive cooling is fail-safe.
3. Can be “right-sized” to supply neighborhoods.
Battery technology seems to be on the cusp of making the electric car practical. At that point we’re going to have increasing demand for electricity above our current level. Aside from specialty markets like aviation gasoline and jet fuel, the demand for fossil fuels will slowly dry up as the internal combustion powered cars and trucks wear out. Rather than synthetic fuels, we should be focusing on local power generation and battery technology.
The other thing is that environmentalists tend to harbor the delusion that solar power is completely safe. Solar power is only “safe” if you ignore the toxic chemicals produced by building the solar panels. They’re made out of the same stuff as other electronics- silicon and heavy metals. There’s a reason you can’t just throw old TVs into landfills. Nuke plants also last 2-3 times as long as solar panels.
Nuclear energy is not the only solution, industrial hemp needs to be utilized, it is the most versatile source of energy on this planet. Anything you can make from petroleum you can make from hemp, and it burns clean. You can use hemp to make bodies of automobiles, Henry Ford did. You can build a house from hemp, feed and clothe your family with hemp. George Washington and Tom Jefferson were hemp farmers, Ben Franklin printed his newspapers on hemp, The Constitution and Declaration of Independence were written on hemp. If you want to know more read about hemp, it can clean the environment, save our oxygen producing forests, fuel our vehicles, and we can tell the sand eating devils in the Middle East to go to hell, if we utilize industrial hemp. It will grow bountifully in all 50 states. Americas renewable secret weapon, HEMP !!!
“Nuke plants also last 2-3 times as long as solar panels.”
Or longer. The latest aircraft carriers being being will only need to be refueled ONCE in it’s entire service life… That is a HUGE leap forward from the USS Enterprise which had to be refueled every 8 years… Anyone that has their head in the past about nuclear ineffieciencies or safety instantaneously declares themselves to be ignorant. France (I hate to use them as an example) gets the vast majority of their energy from nuclear… No wonder they are standing in front of the UN talking down to the US. I cringe to thing we have fallen behind the French.
Mr. Ball,
The thermodynamic efficiency is only part of the issue. Look at the relative costs of the energy being transformed to see if the plan has merit.
A gallon of gasoline costs say $3. It contains roughly 100,000 BTUs or $30 per million BTUs (mmBTU). Nuclear fuel costs about $0.50 per mmBTU in the reactor. Coal is priced at about $60 per ton delivered to the East while gasoline is about $750 a ton at the pump. In fact, the pure water to supply the hydrogen might be the most expensive part of the variable production costs.
Since uranium, water, and coal are in plentiful supply and liquid hydrocarbons are largely imported, this is a plan I’ve long supported. I’m glad Dr. Tipler and Los Alamos have been able to get this out.
In fact, one of the Materials Science problems of designing a nuclear reactor is that it has a tendency to produce hydrogen gas and hydrides, which corrode the cladding. Read that again- reactor designs consider it a problem that the reactors produce hydrogen under the normal course of operation. Find a way to co-opt the process to extract hydrogen from the reactor, and you have yourself a free hydrogen source.
Mr. Myth Buster,
Hydrogen is produced in a light water reactor by the radiation breaking down water into its component parts – hydrogen and oxygen. these gases are dissolved in the water and are indeed a material corrosion problem in boiling water reactors. In pressurized water reactors, hydrogen is ADDED to the water to eat up all the oxygen.
The nuclear gasoline model requires higher temperatures than light water reactors can produce and helium gas-cooled reactors will be required.
The current best choice system would use the very high temperature helium gas to drive a chemical system using sulfuric acid to make hydrogen gas from water which is then reacted with the carbon in coal. A more direct process might yet be developed.
Has ANYBODY done a study on the costs/benefits of various alternative fuels other than nuclear? Or is it just too political to get a straight answer from anyone?
Somewhere, somehow, someone MUST have done reliable research into this. If anybody knows any links, please let us know.
ie:
1. cost of infrastructure
2. cost of fuel (in standardized gallons, btus, or whatever–comparing apples to apples)
3. benefit/detriment in terms of COMPLETE cost of end product in ecological concerns.
One more thing:
It just seems like everyone is talking out of their a** until we can sit down and look at these numbers.
16. Whitehall, dude. Ever heard of Fischer-Tropsch?
If you’re going to use coal, it’s a lot cheaper than this process, and it’s old tech. The Nazis used it, and South Africans are using it right now.
You also ignored what I said about electrolyzers. They’re not as efficient as your chemistry book says.
19. Keith, fine, but every proponent of alternatives that I’ve seen always leave out capital amortization and O&M. Those are the killers. The energy source itself is a minor part of the cost of the final delivered energy, so making it free (as in wind or solar) doesn’t save that much overall.
I mean, fish are free. You just have to catch them, and clean them and freeze them, and bring them home. But other than that, they’re free. So why are they so expensive in the stores?
Dang !
Wind Power is the real solution.
Instead of burning gasoline …. equip all vehicles with SAILS.
For times with no wind, use pedals,just like the “cars” for 4 yr olds.
Mr. Ball – DUDE,
I know well of SASOL’s efforts in South Africa in coal-to-liquids production using a modified F-T process. It does seem to waste a lot of coal in the process but I’ll let the economics speak for themselves.
I agree completely on capital costs being a large fixed cost in any scheme to replace petroleum, including petroleum extraction itself.
What we need now is some hard engineering to explore what I think is a very promising possible process, using nuclear to drive water+coal reactions.
Right now we can all agree that we are caught in the devil/s bargain. Oil, like smoking, once are true friends, are now the cause of a national and international cancer.
We in the west, all of us, can work to defeat this evil. And defeat it once and for all, we must.
Nuclear
Wind
Solar
Thermal
Agriculture
Government incentives
People Power
These…MUST.. all be pursued like never before so that we can defeat our common enemy and retake the global initiative for the next generation. Or we shall condemn them to the same ….DREADFUL..fate.
24. Whitehall
Agree that using nuke as a process heat source makes a lot of thermodynamic sense. I’ve also seen proposals to use nuke power to make process heat to extract shale oil. That also makes a lot of sense. Use the nuke when you need a steady and powerful source of power in a fixed remote location. Use the hydrocarbons when you need a mobile source of energy.
What also doesn’t make any sense is using hydrocarbons, especially oil, for building heating. And yet, these policy knuckleheads aren’t talking about the most obvious places to cut HC usage.
@12. Jack Okie:
You would have more credibility if you would quantify your assertions (how much is “Plenty”? Is that more or less than “a whole lot”?) and if you weren’t rooted in the 1960s.
“Plenty” would be enough to make nuclear power obsolete/redundant. I assure you, I am not rooted in the 1960s.
You have obviously not done your homework (even with the hints offered in this article).
Really? Is that why you haven’t refuted anything I said? Because I am happy to shoot your little trial balloon down.
Today’s reactor designs are quite safe, but even better, thorium reactors offer several advantages:
You would have more credibility if you would quantify your assertions (how safe is “quite”? Is that more or less than “very”?) and if you weren’t shilling for a pointless waste of resources that also happens to endanger human health and welfare.
1. Consume conventional nuclear waste.
I have a better idea. Don’t produce conventional nuclear waste.
2. Passive cooling is fail-safe.
Of course, that doesn’t change the fact that radioactive materials will need to be mined, processed, transported, stored, safeguarded and disposed of using secure methods that exist only in the imagination. Not to mention the possibility of sabotage – anything fail safe or idiot proof is deemed so only until a better idiot comes along.
3. Can be “right-sized” to supply neighborhoods.
You really think people want nuclear reactors in their neighborhoods? Or do you just mean “poor” neighborhoods? Nobody wants nuclear power on their block. Wind and solar are safe, require no dangerous radioactive substances, and are fueled by the sun directly, rather than through the circuitous energy life cycle of nuclear fissile material. There is no reason to spend the massive resources on nuclear facilities that would be required, when distributed generation at the truly local scale is now practical and increasingly affordable.
This is the figurative last gasp of the nuclear industry, which cannot complete for cleanliness, sustainability and safety over the long term. Without the paranoia of the cold war to drive the nuclear industry, there is no traction for nuclear power in the USA. Americans want clean technology, not thousands of thorium reactors in our neighborhoods.
Peace.
DS
Frank:
Thank you for your article.
I think it is important to bring awareness to the issue that electricity is very difficult to store in large quantities. Ironically, as you discuss in your article, one research goal should be to try to convert electricity into hydrocarbon fuels, because hydrocarbons are a very dense and efficient source of energy. Batteries are not a very efficient store of electricity (in terms of mass) and they tend to degrade over time.
So, when we collectively get over the liberal’s latest carbon craze, we might really start to research the best way to produce hydrocarbon fuels. With the assistance of nuclear and solar energy, atmospheric hydrocarbons might be a source of future hydrocarbon fuels — and if we could use atmospheric carbons (e.g. CO2) we should be able to achieve a sort of atmospheric carbon ‘homeostasis’ anyways. After all, fossil fuels are simply atmospheric hydrocarbons that were organically fixed by plants years ago, so it’s not like the planet hasn’t been through this before…
David – #27,
I can answer one of your points with a quantifiable number. The standard for nuclear power reactor safety is that the chance of a reactor experiencing significant (>5%) core damage (cladding failure) is 10E-6 per reactor year.
That’s still a long, long way probablistically from killing a neighbor, given concurrent failures of mitigating features and containment isolation.
Good enough for me!
“Nobody wants nuclear power on their block.”
How many sailors are sleeping right next to a nuclear plant? I love hearing people saying “no nukes in my backyard” Yet as they are vacationing in beautiful San Diego, about a dozen plants are located just across the bay… Or in Washington, or Virginia or anyplace else the Navy is berthed.
“that doesn’t change the fact that radioactive materials will need to be mined, processed,”
I guess you hadnt heard of a FBR reactor? It produces more fuel….
24,000 years and half of the Plutonium is still there. Who will be guarding the spent fuel?
In the meantime, our total energy consumption represents less than 0.1% of the solar energy that reaches the Earth every day. Why look elsewhere?
Someone doesn’t know the difference between fissile and radioactive.
“In the meantime, our total energy consumption represents less than 0.1% of the solar energy that reaches the Earth every day. Why look elsewhere?”
An analogy: The oceans have 4.0*10^20 Kg of gold, much more than what has been extracted from earth since the beginning of civilization: 1.3*10^8 Kg. So why are we not all running to the beach and extract that gold? Because the gold in ocean water is very dilute and all ocean life will be poisoned in the extraction process.
Similarly with diffuse sources of energy such as solar and wind. The large number of solar panels and wind turbines needed will bring about much greater ecological disturbance than nuclear energy. Mining engineering have made great strides and extraction of radioactive elements from low-grade ores will become commercially feasible soon.
“In the meantime, our total energy consumption represents less than 0.1% of the solar energy that reaches the Earth every day. Why look elsewhere?”
Actually… your 0.1% is a bit off…
Yeah, lets cover the entire state of Arizona in Solar panels… that would be a great look. Why don’t you start with your house? Do it on your own dime and see what it costs?… Without the government subsidy (since that is my money… hands off!) If your so in favor of it, do it… oh… you want to force OTHERs to do it…
Solar energy is costly and very localized…. try putting panels on your house in Seattle and see how much energy you get out of them. Or any other place where the cloud cover is consistent… no worries right? Just pipe in the power right? Oppps Longer transmission lines leads to even less efficiencies… since half of all the electricity that leaves the power plant is lost in transmission..
Dave, our favorite Luddite.
Last gasp of nuclear? You really are a dope, you know that? We’ve yet to ever truly develop 1/10th the capacity nuclear could produce. You honestly see a nation that consumes the 1000s of gigawatts that America does operating from windmills, solar power panels, and geothermal plants? If you do, your a waste of space. Go live in a cave, prove to us just how noble you really are!
Thorium powered Reactors are the future, they were the first reactors built, but since Thorium cannot produce weapons grade materials it was dropped.
Thorium burns at higher temps than plutonium, so it can incinerate the stockpiles of radioactive waste. The waste from Thorium is easier to deal with, there are many reasons to use Thorium as fuel instead of present alternatives.
I guess a lot of people still don’t understand about “energy quality.” Warm bath water has energy compared to ambient but a big hot tub full of hot water still couldn’t light a light bulb. For that one needs high quality energy like electricity.
What’s important is the energy DIFFERENCE – that’s how one makes power which is what you buy from your electric company.
So sun light is about, at most, about twice ambient – that’s how the earth stays warm at night. A photon of blue sunlight is about 4 electron volts. The fission of a uranium-235 atom releases about 200 MILLION electron volts.
You want power? Split atoms.
There is no way that ethanol from sugar, corn, or biomass is going to make a significant reduction in the U.S. demand for crude oil. Do the numbers:
As one who has been involved in the ethanol industry, quite a few years ago, I can say that the above is a true statement. Ethanol production is still a net calorie looser. In other words, it takes more calories to make a gallon of ethanol that can be extracted from the gallon of ethanol. On top of that, ethanol has less calories per gallon available than either gasoline of diesel so adding ethanol to gasoline reduces miles per gallon.
Nuclear, wind and solar are the way to go along with better battery technology.
Not true. U-233 made from Th (which is the actual fissile material used in the Th cycle; Th itself isn’t fissile) isn’t quite as good as U-235, but it most certainly can make a bomb.
Th has some other interesting properties that may make it a good choice for the next generation of reactors, but right now, we don’t know how to do it, though the Indians are seriously working on it.
If we’d have kept the nuclear industry viable, instead of going jihad on it 40 years ago, we’d probably be doing Th right now.
Mr. Bell,
I’ll second your corrections – U-233 is indeed fissile and is the fuel produced in thorium reactors.
India has shown a lot of interest in the thorium fuel cycle because they have very large deposits of thorium ores. I’m not so impressed since the economics of uranium are still much cheaper. However, in the longer run, the Earth’s crust has four times the thorium as it has uranium – and uranium is more plentiful than lead.
Also, the first reactors built were NOT thorium-fueled. No thorium isotope is by itself fissile and a thorium fuel cycle requires an initial driver load of U-235 and/or Pu.
BTW, did you know that the Americium-242 in your bedroom’s smoke detector is also fissile? Of course, a bare sphere critical mass is 80 kg which is about the world’s total inventory.
I’m not a nuclelar physicist but I did stay at a Holiday Inn once. Years ago, when the concept of Electromagnetic Launch Systems was first being discussed, someone came up with the idea that nuclear waste could be safely and economically launched into space to be burned up by the sun. Setting aside the emotional resistance of the environmental movement to anything modern, couldn’t that be a part of the solution to the question of what to do with whatever radioactive residue must be disposed of?
27. Today’s nuclear plants are sabotage-proof. The fail-safe mechanisms rely on the properties of the materials themselves, not some clever safety mechanism, and that is something that a saboteur cannot override. You couldn’t cause a meltdown if you were trying.
27. You’re dead wrong if you think solar is safe (by your standard). Mass production of solar panels leaves behind large amounts of toxic waste. FAIL!
31. Funny thing about Plutonium- it’s fissile, let’s burn it! Tossing out plutonium makes as much sense as tossing out gasoline as a byproduct of making kerosene.
39. True, U-233 can make a nuclear bomb, any long lived isotope that can go fast supercritical (that’s all fissile isotopes, plus Np-237) can. However, U-233 is too hot to handle compared to natural Uranium ore once it’s been down blended with U-238. It would be safer and easier to build a bomb from fresh uranium ore than to enrich down blended U-233 to weapons grade.
41. Great idea, but wholly unnecessary. Reprocessed waste could simply be placed into concrete casks and buried in a special landfill. Later, once the radioactivity is down to safe levels, these landfills can be mined for the various stable daughters of fission products, which include some rare elements with industrial uses. We could even chemically separate stable isotopes from the waste before burying it, as a biproduct of the reprocessing. As an example, we could extract roughly an ounce of silver from every ton of spent fuel. It’s not much, but it’s a biproduct worth obtaining (the real goal is to recover transuranics to make new fuel from, but extracting precious metals makes a good side business).
40. Smoke detectors contain Am-241, not 242, and Am-241 is not fissile. Am-242 wouldn’t make a good smoke detector battery because it has a half-life of 16 hours, verses Am-241 whose half-life is 433 years.
Something I wrote a few months ago…reposted with slight editing.
First, I’m not a big believer in AGW. So far, it seems that they couldn’t reliably predict the sun rising in the east.
That said, if we were all serious about becoming both energy independent and carbon neutral, I don’t see this as being all that difficult with nukes. This is 90% engineering and investment and 10% science.
(1) slowly convert domestic transportation fleet to use nat gas, while continuing to use liquid petrol fuels, too.
(2) continue extracting fossil nat gas
(3) expand nat gas infrastructure
(4) expand domestic electric production via (primarily) nuclear plants (but wind turbines, solar, geo / moholes – all are welcome)
(5) begin synthesizing nat gas from C02 and H20 feed stocks
(6) begin incentives to wean off liquid petrol
…and some day, replace the internal combustion fleet with fuel cell vehicles running off of nat gas or methanol (possibly H2).
With the exception of urban mass transportation (i.e. light rail, etc.) using the electric grid for transportation seems like a bad idea.
(Vehicle power plants (internal combustion or fuel cell) that can use free oxygen will likely have a significant savings in mass over energy storage means like batteries, etc.)
#42
Sorry, as a nuclear engineer with over 30 years experience in design and operation of nuclear power plants, I will not and can not make the claim that modern plants are “sabotage proof.”
It is difficult, yes, but not impossible.
#44
Check this for the critical mass of AM-242:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americium-242
After checking, you are correct that smoke detectors contain AM-241, not AM-242 as I noted.
Whale oil is a renewable resource.
Alright, so if the reactor isn’t completely sabotage proof, it still means terrorists would have to actually get onto the sight. Brute force won’t work. Furthermore, the way they’re designed should mean that the worst thing a saboteur can do is ruin a reactor, not cause a core breach resulting in nuclear fallout.
As usual,plenty of ignorant and narrow-minded extremists when it comes to the politics of energy.What is wrong with being BOTH pro-nuclear and pro-solar?
Radical right-wing extremist conservatives falsely assert that solar is exotic,when in fact it’s the oldest,most conventional energy source (ignorance by Ronald Reagan not withstanding).Centuries before the birth of Christ,the anchient Greeks were already touting passive solar as the most efficient way to heat a house.You can find plenty of solar hot water collectors for sale in an old Farmer’s Almanac catalog from way back in the 1900′s.There’s nothing new under the sun.Opposition to solar is purely political……not a technology problem.
Conversely,opposition to nuclear power by ignorant radical left-wing extremists of the Jane Fonda and Greenpeace type is purely political as well.They are making a big rant about a non-existent nuclear waste problem that never really existed in the first place……a self-fullfilling problem and prophecy of their own making.They already knew how to immobilize nuclear waste in borosilicate glass decades ago.Ignorant obstructionists like themselves are the only problem……move out of the way and let more knowledgeable,sensible and rational people take care of it……just that plain and simple.
Claims that we can’t use more hydrogen and biomass is also too unduly closed-minded and pessimistic.Way back during the 1980′s,an inventor had already discovered a breakthrough for more efficient electrolysis of water molecules,but his idea has been largely forgotten.More biomass can be efficiently produced if it is hydrogenated with more hydrogen added to it.Nuclear power can assist in making biofuel production more economic.Nobody wants a fully electric car due to limited driving range.The answer to this problem is to have hybrid cars……electricity from nuclear,solar,and etc. for short local trips……nuclear-assisted production of biofuels for longer trips.Nuclear power and renewable fuels do not necessarily have to be at odds with each other.To the contrary,nuclear power can assist in making biofuels.
Know nukes!