Hi all, I used to hate nuclear power and be very frightened of it. Now I'm an 'Eco-modernist' and quite happy to consider nuclear power providing maybe 2/3rds of our power, because it doesn't seem possible to move from a power system that is mostly ON (coal) to mostly OFF (wind & solar). Here are the 10 things I've learned about nuclear power that help me to accept it as quite necessary, cheap enough, and safe enough. Please let me know what you think. 1. EROEI / Energy Profit. Nuclear power is the only system that can provide a high Energy Returned over Energy Invested, given the sheer amount of energy it will take to build all the storage! http://bravenewclimate.com/2014/08/22/catch-22-of-energy-storage/ Most EROEI studies into wind and solar ignore the storage problem! Go ahead and look into it. Check the EROEI studies of wind and solar. If we're moving into a mostly wind and solar world, surely a wind and solar system would be required to produce enough power to build all the batteries and energy storage that system requires? But read the papers! Where are the energy costs for storage for a system that is only on a third of the time? Where are the energy cost measurements for winter, when there's far less sunlight? How much storage is required, and forget financial cost, how much *energy* is it going to cost to build storage for an energy system that is *mostly* off!? If we include the *energy* cost of all the batteries required, the sheer energy required to build all those batteries in the first place eats into the EROEI of wind (around 30?) and the EROEI of solar PV (around 7?) till wind is only 3 and solar PV's struggling to break even! Today's nukes have an EROEI of 75, and that includes moving millions of tons of rock to get to the uranium. Tomorrow's nukes won't need to do that, because they'll eat the nuclear waste which could bless them with an EROEI in the high hundreds, some say even over a thousand! Our civilisation requires an ERoEI of at least 12. So given this is a fundamental limit to the energy profit of renewables, what are we to do? Live like the Amish? As Dr James Hansen said: "Can renewable energies provide all of society’s energy needs in the foreseeable future? It is conceivable in a few places, such as New Zealand and Norway. But suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy." http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/08/05/hansen-energy-kool-aid/ Fortunately, despite all the energy cost of mining and refining uranium into fuel rods, nuclear power has an ERoEI of 75! It returns 75 times the energy it took to mine uranium, refine it and process the fuel into fuel rods and build a huge reactor with a large concrete containment dome. That's an ERoEI of 75 verses solar PV's 1, wind's 3, and solar thermal's at 9. 2. BREEDER REACTORS can FISSION NUCLEAR WASTE But it gets better. Today's LWR's (Light Water Reactors) have this high EROEI despite the huge amount of diesel energy used in mining and refining uranium. What if we could take the spent fuel rods from these old water reactors and fission that waste away to virtually nothing? What if nuclear waste was not a *problem* to store for 100,000 years, but was instead an miraculous energy *solution* hiding in plain sight? Breeder reactors can 'eat' nuclear waste. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Current-and-Future-Generation/Fast-Neutron-Reactors/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast-neutron_reactor#Advantages Breeders are a largely unheard of nuclear technology that is actually quite old. Despite many documentaries decrying the problem of trying to store nuclear waste for 100,000 years, and the billions wasted researching America’s Yucca mountain to that end, we simply don’t have to store nuclear waste that long. We would be stupid to try. It would be like digging up our best oil, refining it into the best jet-fuel, and then burying it again. ‘Fast’ breeder reactors eat nuclear waste! “A generation of "fast" nuclear reactors could consume Britain's radioactive waste stockpile as fuel, providing enough low-carbon electricity to power the country for more than 500 years, according to figures confirmed by the chief scientific adviser to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc).” http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/feb/02/nuclear-reactors-consume-radioactive-waste Five centuries of electricity! Today’s ‘spent fuel rods’ are a $30 TRILLION dollar resource! https://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/nuclear-posters/ (Apparently America has enough to run her for 1000 years, and other nations have their own stockpiles of nuclear waste and warheads that can be burned away in breeders). Not only that, but because breeder reactors don’t have to include the energy cost of mining and refining uranium ore because they are burning nuclear waste, their EROEI’s are fantastically high! (Possibly from several hundreds to maybe over a thousand!) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast-neutron_reactor The longer lived wastes are transuranium actinides, which basically means stuff heavier than uranium. We burn those actinides. They become broken atoms called 'fission products' which are are buzzing around so 'hot' that they burn themselves back to safe levels in 300 years. 3. ARE THESE REAL? They’re not only *real* but are actually a fairly old idea. The first nuclear engineers would be shocked we have not built out a fleet of breeder reactors to burn nuclear waste, multiplying our nuclear fuel by a factor of 60! There are both very old and very new breeder reactors. Breeder reactors are real, and we have 400 reactor years experience. (Reactors multiplied by the years they operate). http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Current-and-Future-Generation/Fast-Neutron-Reactors/ THE EBR2 — Experimental Breeder Reactor 2 (1965 - 1995: the American program Clinton finally closed). This is the world’s only real INTEGRAL Fast Reactor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_II#Integral_Fast_Reactor The old Soviet BN-350 (1964–1992) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-350_reactor The Russian BN-600 still works. Japan paid a billion for technical specs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-600_reactor The Russian BN 800 is brand new! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-800_reactor From the news on the Russian BN 800! "Fuel for breeder reactors could even be made from nuclear waste, which from an ecological point of view is a priceless advantage…..Humankind has already produced so much nuclear waste that it would take decades, if not hundreds of years to process and recycle it. " http://rt.com/news/188332-mox-nuclear-fuel-production/ INDIA have a program that’s admittedly had all sorts of delays, but should be opening soon. Give them a break — they haven’t had a prototype like the American EBR2, and are jumping straight in the deep end with a full scaled 500MW reactor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototype_Fast_Breeder_Reactor The French had the massive 1200MW reactor the Superphenix which worked perfectly until ignorant anti-nuke campaigners closed it down! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superphénix#Closure The Chinese have a test fast reactor operating right now! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Experimental_Fast_Reactor THORIUM BREEDERS China is also *very* serious about my *favourite* breeder reactor, the LFTR (pronounced ‘Lifter’ = Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor) - China’s thorium project was launched as a high priority by princeling Jiang Mianheng, son of former leader Jiang Zemin, in 2013 - 140 PHD scientists and $350 million, so far. - 750 staff by 2015 but could be more - Opens the floodgates for a massive, worldwide nuclear comeback once people understand how safe and reliable LFTR’s are http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor#Chinese_thorium_MSR_project Thorium wastes are fairly long lived, but IFR’s eat those wastes down to the 300 year lifetime. Climatologist Dr James Hansen supports these reactors: get the free book by his friend Tom Blees here. http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/index.php/prescription-for-the-planet 4. IF THEY’RE REAL, WHY HAVEN’T I HEARD ABOUT THEM? First ask yourself how often you talk about energy systems at parties, and how many of your friends actually know anything about nuclear engineering. That’s why you haven’t heard about it! People just don’t know. Second, Breeder reactors are real, but sadly in America were made illegal under President Clinton. He misunderstood the word ‘plutonium’ and did not understand that Integral Fast Reactors can bypass the bomb phase by breeding up an isotope of plutonium that cannot be used for weapons, but can burn away in the reactor. As the Wiki says: “With the election of President Bill Clinton in 1992, and the appointment of Hazel O'Leary as the Secretary of Energy, there was pressure from the top to cancel the IFR. Sen. John Kerry (D, MA) and O'Leary led the opposition to the reactor, arguing that it would be a threat to non-proliferation efforts, and that it was a continuation of the Clinch River Breeder Reactor Project that had been canceled by Congress.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor Also see: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interviews/till.html 5. MORE BOMBS? Banning nuclear power because of nuclear weapons is like locking the gate after the horse has bolted. The majority of CO2 emitting nations *already* have nuclear weapons. The reality is more power means *less* weapons. Old nuclear weapons are expensive to maintain. Lots of breeder reactors would create a market to buy old warheads and burn them, converting them into fantastic amounts of energy. Indeed, ‘burner’ reactors have already burned old Soviet warheads sold to America for 20 years. This burned bomb grade material worth 16,000 bombs to provide 10% of American electricity! That’s equivalent to powering the whole of Australia for 20 years on old Soviet bombs! Safe, clean nuclear power provides a market for burning warheads. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatons_to_Megawatts_Program 6. FINAL WASTE PRODUCT After breeding, the final *real* waste product is so 'hot' it burns itself out in 300 years. The Romans have built pedestrian bridges that are still in use 2000 years later! This is not a pedestrian bridge, but a concrete bunker in geologically stable land. Easy. http://energyfromthorium.com/2014/07/03/10-cool-things-nuclear-waste/ Also remember that it is not a *lot* of waste, only about one golf-ball sized lump per human lifetime. Australia’s waste from a (hypothetical) population of 25 million people over 70 years would only be about 25 million golf balls. Even if we coat each golf ball in about 6cm of synrock for safety, we could fit all Australia's actual nuclear waste in an Olympic Swimming pool 20m deep. It's not a lot. We also have to bury old decommissioned reactor pieces, but it really is manageable. Experts advise that each state would have their own nuclear energy park: heavily secure, far from population centres, and with their own nuclear waste pit. Nuclear fuel would go in and *never* come out. It would be buried in deep concrete pits under layers of concrete. After 300 years that pit would be sealed over and become a new carpark or warehouse or whatever. It's only 300 years. It’s just not a problem! 7. COST? How much does it cost to build a car? It depends: are we talking about a one-of-a-kind Bentley, or an off the production line Hyundai? Today's water reactors are more like the one-of-a-kind Bentley. The high water pressure demands a rare steel foundry that can cast a reactor core out of a single enormous piece of steel. A water reactor core looks like a fat silo 15 cm thick and a couple of stories high, complete with round portholes to pump water in and out. It’s expensive, hard to do, and only a few foundry’s in the world can do it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressurized_water_reactor However, this has not stopped the Chinese. They have the economies of scale to mass produce even these single-cast vessel flanges. They’re getting serious about Generation IV reactors that eat nuclear waste, and want to mass produce waste-eating water reactors, cheaper than coal, in just 8 years! http://nextbigfuture.com/2014/06/china-seriously-looking-at.html We could do the same. The French already did, and have had decades of affordable carbon neutral electricity. But efforts are underway to make nuclear power even cheaper than this! When we replace a water cooling with either sodium or fluoride, we don't have to use high pressure reactors. Sodium cooled Integral Fast Reactors and fluoride cooled Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors both work fine at normal room pressures. That means the reactor vessels can be broken down into parts, mass produced, and assembled on a production line. Now imagine that instead of that huge single cast reactor core, manufacturing a nuclear power plant is more like building a Boeing jet. Robert Hargraves estimates nuclear factories where a 100MW LFTR comes of the line every day for just $200 million. Ten of these would equal a gigawatt of power at $2 billion dollars, cheaper than coal! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayIyiVua8cY 8. SPEED France went to 75% nuclear in about 11 years. The rest of their grid is hydro. In other words, there’s nothing hypothetical here. History shows that we can shut down coal fired electricity in just over a decade. 9. SAFETY: Chernobyl and Fukushima are names we wouldn’t even know if today’s Gen3.5 and tomorrow’s Gen4 reactors had been there instead. LFTR’s *cannot* ‘melt down’ as it is *already* a liquid. - All current water reactors require power to cool. LFTR’s use a *lack* of power to trigger a cooling event. - The LFTR requires power to keep the liquid salt nuclear fuel in the reactor core, the only place that has moderators (that make the reaction possible) - In a power failure, the fan stops blowing cool gas across the drain pipe. The intense heat from the reactor core melts the frozen salt in the drain pipe, and the liquid fuel drains out of the reactor core into a passive drain tank where it *cannot* react, and it quickly cools into a solid. (Salt becomes a solid at hundreds of degrees!) It’s trapped, cannot react, and will only continue to cool. IFR’s are also fantastically safe, and have a unique reactor core that cannot ‘melt down’ because even though it is a solid, it is specially designed to expand if the core overheats. This moves the pellets apart and the neutrons leak out, shutting down the reaction. Whatever else is going on with all other cooling systems, the IFR core is the last line of defence and cannot melt down. Even Homer Simpson couldn’t break these! 10. INTERNATIONAL CO-OPERATION GUARANTEED The UN, or some other international body, could run a nuclear-fuel bank. Membership and access to the fuel would depend on compliance with all the rules: 24 hour video monitoring, regular inspections, good behaviour, etc. Other international sanctions and disciplinary matters would be determined on a case by case basis if nations defied the rules.
Salman mousse is good for you! Eat lots! Have some more. And when the Cali Kool-Aid, from Fukushima gets here, wash the sucker down.
Save the BS. You have one reason for switching your stance on nuke and that is you are a true believer in the global warming cult.
I had to explain to most everyone in my college conservation club why solar and wind would never power the world despite what they have heard. It was a slow process and some of them still refuse to believe facts but many did come around and ended up supporting nuclear power.
Nuclear power is the only feasible non-fossil fuel power source that can meet the needs of humanity, at least currently. We're stupid to not be using it, because once we start and money is getting invested into nuclear power infrastructure and innovation, the technology will get even better. I fully admit I could be wrong here, but increasing the use and research into reactors might allow us to use other less toxic materials instead of uranium or plutonium. Or materials that create less of hazardous byproduct. If someone knows why that wouldn't be true, please respond and fill me in.
Uranium and plutonium aren't any more toxic than any other heavy metals. They are, however, radioactive, and that's what should be viewed with caution. The radioactivity of a material is inversely proportional to its half-life. Isotopes with long half-lives ( like U-238 ) are very slightly radioactive, and they stay around for a very long time (billions of years). Highly radioactive isotopes have very short half-lives but they disintigrate so rapidly they don't pose much of a threat. It's the stuff in between that's the biggest issue: stuff with half-lives of 30 to 1000 years or so. Some of those difficult isotopes are "fission products". When a big atom (uranium, plutonim, or thorium) splits, it releases a lot of energy and the two fragments of the split big atom become the nuclei of two smaller atoms. Usually these two daughter atoms are unstable (i.e., radioactive) and it takes some time for them to decay. With current light-water reactors, the fuel rods are removed after a few years of operation, leaving the fission products trapped in the spent fuel. But there are liquid-salt reactors that have been designed that leave the fuel in the reactor indefinitely. This not only allows the fission products to decay normally, it also allows them to absorb neutrons, which turns them into different isotopes with shorter half-lives. Essentially, reactors like this "burn" their own waste.
The future is Thorium 332 molten salt reactors. These things put of almost no radiation, so they are much safer to nearby areas, and unlike other forms of thorium, 332 does not produce weapons grade uranium as part of the fusion process.
Tricky's CIA did Allende, to set us up, for 911. He also made the decision, to go with breeder-reactors, so we gots da nukes, and plenty of them. We're gonna all die, in North America, way before this dilemma puts any hot-salts, online, OK? Hadj and ninjas are gonna, with the poison AND the fire AND the nukes, and you won't get past, with your inaction.
I don't think any single source of energy is the answer to anything. I think we need to generate power as close to the consumers as possible. I think we need to utilize every energy alternative as it applies to the consumer and the environment. If we maximize hydroelectric, geothermal, wind, wave, and solar perhaps this powers most of the nation. I don't personally have an issue with coal-fired energy as long as we scrub the bad pollution from their emissions...it's cheap, readily available, and can fill an energy void until other sources take over. This leaves nuclear power to fill the remaining energy void. Solar for example does not need to provide 100% of the required energy for a home or facility. But if all applicable buildings generated solar energy, even if it only provides 50% of the energy required, this reduces coal-fired energy needs. The same applies to wind power and both wind and solar can be designed into public power facilities like solar and wind farms. We have ocean and lake waves all of which can produce power, and yes they can't power a steel factory, but like solar and wind they can supplement the energy requirements and reduce the need for coal-fired power. I don't know if the US has tapped all geothermal sources to generate power but if not this should be maximized. Lastly, hydroelectric power can be greatly expanded. With drought conditions and water shortages IMO the US needs 1000's more reservoirs and water needs to be transported via pipeline and canal across the nation, all of which will generate hydroelectric power.
