Fission in a Box

Jim Howard writes: "The The World and I magazine has an article suggesting the following interesting possibility: 'Advances in South Africa and the Netherlands suggest that small-scale fission machines could become safe, reliable, and inexpensive sources of electricity and heat for ships, factories, and perhaps single-family homes.' Well worth a look, if only for the review of nuclear power basics." Don't hold your breath, because technical obstacles aren't the main ones. But it's a nice overview of the science behind small reactors.

Comments

Re:Spent fuel MUST BE stored on site. No appeals.

[Christopher Thomas]

2-3% of it will always be "in the transportation tube" rolling down local railways, interstates, and highways. And if one of these trains derails? Or truck jack-knifes?

Then the heavily-armoured barrels get their paint scuffed.

I don't trust nuclear waste barrels to last a hundred thousand years, but I do trust them to survive anything short of a point-blank strike from heavy artillery.

If you *do* fire heavy artillery at point-blank range into a nuclear waste barrel, you'll get a clould of glass shrapnel - the safest transportable form of nuclear waste puts waste oxides into glass, where they stay (glass is quite durable and resistant to chemical attack). Scrape up the first foot of soil for a quarter of a mile around, put that in barrels, and sent it to the waste dump along with everything else. No additional contamination.

In summary, I don't think that accidents during transport are a concern. I'd be more worried about deliberate theft, and the risk of that can be made no worse than it already is with waste stored at power plants.

Also, storing waste at the plants is not a viable long-term solution, as they aren't in earthquake-free regions isolated from the water table. One good disaster, and *all* of the plant's waste goes into the environment.

Dealing with spent fuel.

[Christopher Thomas]

They don't have to be buried. Extract the plutonium and use it up in a reactor designed for it. Put the other stuff in the business end of a nuclear accelerator, or park it on the edge of a fission reactor, and make it break down sooner than by waiting for natural decay.

The problem with any scheme that involves chemical reprocessing - which used to be widespread - is that you get a lot of minor mishaps occuring, which exposes workers and the nearby environment to small amounts of Really Nasty Stuff (tm).

If I understand correctly, worker health liabilities were why plutonium reprocessing plants were abandoned, but in general, it's just plain safer to seal up the waste in very sturdy containers and drop them in the continental sheild.

As far as transmuting the waste is concerned, there are problems. If you stick waste next to a large neutron source (like a reactor), it will be transmuted. Continuously. This has the good effect of transmuting long-lived radioactive isotopes into shorter-lived ones, and the bad effect of transmuting non-radioactive decay products into radioactive isotopes. This won't magically make the waste non-radioactive (well, after a few centuries of this, it might all end up as the four stable lead isotopes, but don't hold your breath).

In summary, while burying the waste in mine shafts is an imperfect solution, it's one of the best ones that we currently have. We can always dig it up later if we find a really good way to dispose of it.

Re:"Too cheap to meter"

[cybercuzco]

Granted, i dont see homes being powered by their own nuclear power plants anytime soon. Your statements about waste however, are incorrect. There is a solution to the nuclear waste problem, burn it. I dont mean with fire, i mean in a reactor. so called nuclear "waste" is waste because it can no longer be used by a conventional nuclear pwer plant. There are power plant designs that would use fuel rods until all of the fissionable material is used. Look on google for the Advanced Liquid Metal reactor. Fuel is recycled until all the uranium and plutonium has fissioned into lesser elements, some with half lives of days, rather than millions of years. The main obstacle to this technology is of course pollitical.

How we got here

[Zeinfeld]

Somewhere along the line I picked up a degree in Nuclear Physics. It is somewhat bogus since the research I did was in particle physics, the behavior of atoms being pretty well known experimentally these days.

The big problem for nuclear power is that the Nuclear power industry has lied and lied and lied. It is no wonder that the public don't trust nuclear power, they would be morons if they did.

The only reason Chernobyl went up and Three Mile Island did not is luck. Both reactors were designed using inadequate computing power. Chernobyl went critical because there was a region of positive feedback in the operation cycle that was not uncovered using the two dimensional simulation techniques used in both the USSR and the US at the time.

If the west was so smart in its nuclear power strategy Three Mile Island would never have been choosen as a site with Manhattan right next door.

The problem today is that having lied about the costs, the safety and the military use of byproducts the civil nuclear industry is going to have a hard time being trusted even if it is proposing an entirely different technology.

Pebble bed and Heavy Water designs are both intrinsically safe technologies that will 'fail safe' in case of failure. Unfortunately the nuclear industry claimed that the intrinsically unstable and dangerous AGR and light water designs were 'fail safe'.

The backers of pebble bed have a point. However having been lied to the public is entirely rational in not trusting the experts again. The idiot in the Whitehouse is certainly not someone I would trust to ensure that safety standards were enforced. The administration has reneged on pledges to not drill off the coast of Florida and to implement C02 emissions caps, arsenic in drinking water is OK. And that is the crew to be trusted to regulate nuclear power?

We may need to start using Nuclear Power in the future, however I think we can wait another four years for a President who is not in the pocket of the energy companies before we let that genie out of the bottle again.

Re:How we got here

[metis]

Thank you for calling me a hypocrite, I always appreciate a frank exchange of ideas. In return, please accept my calling you an idiot. Now that we're done with the testosterone effect, let's get down to business.

because you know that if your viewpoint makes it into law, the vast majority of the cost will be borne by others (who may or may not agree with you)

Externality is defined as cost born by those who are not parties to the transaction. If you think having other people pay for your pleasure is bad, than you should want externalities to be internalized in the cost. Yet you seem to want that others pay for your pleasure and you're pissed because others pass laws that make you pay for your pleasure.

Simple imaginary scenario. Generating electricity causes soot which causes cancer. When you pay for the electricity at cost, someone else's health subsidizes your extra-large refrigerator. You think that is moral, but that passing a law that would force electricity companies to pay for that externality, and raise the price you pay, is an immoral forcing yourself on others. And to think you called me a hyp... no let us not go there.

So what is to be done? Let's find a hispanic neighborhood where the people are to lowdown to complain, they will get the cancer and you will get your extra refrigerator on the cheap. Right? And if they do complain they are communists, right?

Now, my definition of green is based on a simple notion of utility. If you want your extra refrigerator, you should pay someone to agree to a higher risk of cancer. That is the fair market price of electricity. At that price, when you buy electricity, the total utility increases and the market allocates resources efficiently. When you exclude externalities, the total utility of a transaction may be negative, which simply means that the market becomes extremely inefficient in allocating resources.

I'm living in California...the reason for the so-called electricity crisis is none other than hypocrisy.

If you read the papers you know that there are more reasons offered for the power crisis in California than Californian residents. So let's eschew simplifications. A complex event has many causes, think of a car accident. If you are the police, you will accuse the drunken driver. If you are in charge of road signs, you will point out the the stop sign was hidden by a tree. If you are Ralf Nader you will point out that the car manufacturer tried to save a few bucks on the brakes. Each view has a point, but each is governed by a perspective on what improvements are more salient.

Those who oppose the construction of generation facilities should have their power turned off first.

Your explanation, that the crisis results from strict regulation, has problems with the fact that municipalities that did not deregulate are in much better shape today, which suggests that deregulation had something to do with it.

Your solution is to punish hypocritical consumers that want power but resist power generating facilities. Lo and behold, I suggested something similar, but based on the market. I want those who create more demand to pay to those who resist the building of power plants until they agree to host them. It may be the same people, or it may be other people, what does it matter?

If Joe San-Diego doesn't want a powerplant in his backyard, I assume that is because it disturbs him to some degree. If you want a powerplant in his backyard, I suggest you offer Joe enough to get him to change his mind. As you raise your offer, Joe, or someone else, will eventually accept, because the utility of the payment will be greater for them then the disutility of having a powerplant in their backyard. Electricity prices will be higher, but they will reflect exactly the disutility of generating it. You may still have your extra-large refrigerator, or the price might convince you invest in a more efficient model. That is what markets are for.

Re:Riiiiiight.

[cybercuzco]

Did you know that the sun is made of hydrogen, the same explosive fuel that downed the hindenburg? Not only that, but the sun is a gian nuclear furnace, where hydrogen is turned into helium, at a temperature of MILLIONS of degrees! The sun puts out 10^23 watts of RADIATION every second! Do you really want something so dangerous powering our homes and schools, places where our CHILDREN could be? I say down with solar power. The last thing we need is RADIATION collectors on every roof. Think of it, actually collecting RADIATION in your own home. Personally I prefer safe, clean COAL power. We must not embrace new technologies solely because they are new, but rather because they improve our quality of life. Coal power has been doing that for over a century.

You down with Entropy?

[doorbot.com]

Yeah, you know me!

Do people seem to forget that there is entropy in this universe? All production of electricity causes some form of energy loss. Thus the obvious problem of efficiency.

Nuclear power is very efficient, and does not pollute much. Sure, the pollutants are highly toxic, but there is a smaller proportion of it, than to coal power (as an example). I'd rather have nuclear than coal. Coal pollutes the atmosphere and is far worse than nuclear power, as is oil, and other fossil-fuel based power sources.

Water power is clean but all of the prime locations have been used... thus further plants would be on less effective/efficient sites and end up being very expensive ways of ruining the surrounding ecosystem.

Solar and wind power are not constant enough yet to be relied upon as a sole source of electricity. In addition, these technologies cannot be used universally, some locations will see a benefit while most will not be economical.

Tidal power is effective, but cannot be implemented everywhere (and I mean every oceanside town here). The local topography needs to be just right for tidal power to be economical.

Fusion power is not economical yet either, although there are projects in the works.

So that leaves us with dams and nuclear power (fission) as our clean energy sources...

The problem with nuclear power is that the public is uneducated about the safeness of the power production process. In the US and Europe, nuclear power is extremely safe because it is highly regulated. Safety measures are considered, then will be increased beyond the engineers' original specifications. Chernobyl was as bad as it was because Russia couldn't afford to build a safe plant... they followed the motto "good enough for government work."

Righter than you know

[localroger]

Fission power is what fuels the hydrogen bomb,

This is for all the folks who told you fusion powers the hydrogen bomb:

The H-bomb uses a fission trigger which supplies about 10% of its energy output. The prompt gamma rays from this blast are used to compress and trigger the secondary stage; this must occur before the mechanical blast rips the secondary apart.

The secondary contains a stick of fission fuel surrounded by fusion fuel surrounded by a thick, depleted Uranium tamper. When the assembly is compressed the stick of fission fuel fissions, providing neutrons which...

...split the lithium-6 in the fusion fuel into tritium, which fuses with the deuterium in a fusion reaction which yields about 10% of the bomb's output. We are now up to 20% output.

Finally, the incredibly huge mass of neutrons generated by the fusion reaction induce fission in the depleted Uranium tamper, yielding about 80% of the bomb's energy. Now we have an explosion. And 90% of the energy comes from fission, not fusion.

The mantra about H-bombs being "clean" is just one of the many lies told by the nuclear industry to make itself look more useful than it really is. Richard Rhodes' books The Making of the Atomic Bomb and Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb have many more details about how the current situation came about.