World Nuclear University Launched

nuke-alwin writes "The first meeting of the 'academic council' of the newly-launched World Nuclear University (WNU) was held in the UK last week. The mission of the WNU is to strengthen the international community of people and institutions to guide and further develop nuclear power and many other nuclear applications (in agriculture, medicine, environmental protection). As workers in the nuclear industry are aging, organisations have started Young Generation Networks such as the YGN of the British Nuclear Energy Society. The WNU is a further recognition that the nuclear industry needs to educate a new generation of workers, so that nuclear power can continue to provide electricity without the production of greenhouse gases."

Comments

Re:Nuclear Power is the future

[gpinzone]

The DOE promised that they'd have a solution for waste instead of stockpiling it at the reactors. Still years after the deadline and nothing yet.

Re:Nuclear Power is the future

[Anspen]

You're hardly "at the mercy of nature" with solar and tidal power. The movements of Sun, earth and moon tend to be somewhat predictable. Even windpower is fairly consistent over longer periods of time.

Furthermore I'd hesitate to call nuclear energy 'clean'. It maybe so at the actual power station site, but the production of the fuel rods (digging up and enriching uranium) and the actual power station both require a lot of clean-up.

Finnally being confident that a solution will be found seems a rather dangerous approach to waste material that will remain highly dangerous for hundreds or thousands of years.

Re:Nuclear Power is the future

[Odin's Raven]

...and you get emission-free,

Folks, pay no attention to the radioactive waste. Nothing to see here.

clean

We repeat: Pay no attention to the radioactive waste. Move along...

power. There is the issue of disposing nuclear waste,

Folks...errr...we might need to slightly modify our previous "emission-free, clean" statements. The statements are still true, but for a slightly smaller value of "true" than we'd used originally.

but I'm confident that issue will also be dealt with as technology advances.

All right folks, we'll level with you. There are a few by-products that are created by our nuclear power plants, and they're what you might describe as "incredibly hazardous". But remember, a watermelon can also be very hazardous if you try to swallow it whole. Just want to keep things in perspective here.

However, the good news is that these clean, non-emissive, watermelon-like by-products will be around for thousands of years, so there's ample time to study them, and we're sure that technology will someday be able to deal with them. Until that time arrives, we'll just be...ummm...well, kind of shoving it in a hole in the ground.

Here, look at the monkey. Look at the silly monkey!

Re:Nuclear Power is the future

[Dashing Leech]

>> While solar, wind and tidal power look very attractive, they suffer from the problem of being at the mercy of nature.

>I think the biggest problem with these technologies is that they take up very large areas.

There are a variety of problems associated with so-called "clean" energy sources. Unpredictability and size are certainly two. Another problem is that they often aren't environmentally friendly. Most people are aware of the damage caused by hydro-electric dams, but similar effects come from all natural sources. Tidal power obviously affects currents and erosion. Even solar and wind power on large scale will affect weather patterns and climate in addition to the effects of their sheer size.

Basically, you can't just extract energy from the environment (technically, move it, since it isn't being destroyed) without affecting the natural sinks for that energy. True, fossil fuels and nuclear add to the net energy (since they were stored in the ground), so perhaps they are worse in that sense. There's really no solution that doesn't cause some harm.

A few thoughts on nuclear power

[acaird]

1. how odd is it that as I'm typing this "Dr. Strangelove" just started on TCM...
2. I vaguely recall learning that some incredibly large fraction of the cost of a nuclear power plant (and thus what the utility charges) is legal fees getting it built, and that is why no new plants have been built in the last 20 or so years
3. Yes, nuclear plants produce very dangerous byproducts. However, you know right where they are - in those little metal tubes. Contrast with coal/natural gas/oil plants. Much of the waste from those plants is, well, sort of everywhere. If the non-nuclear power plants had the same emissions standards (even if it was just the same radiation emmission standards) as nuclear power plants, electricity would be fantastically expensive.
4. Nuclear waste can be stored and processed and transported safely. It's done every day. I've seen it. Why isn't it re-processed? Again, the legal fees in defending the construction of a plant make it cheaper to leave it at the plants.
5. Nuclear plants in the U.S (and Europe and Asia) cannot blow up like Chernobyl. In two sentences: When Chernobyl (and like reactors, known as RBMKs) get hot, the reaction rate increases, then they get hotter, then the reaction rate increase, then they get hotter, until the structure can't take it. Non-RBMK's (all of the reactors in US, Europe, Asia, etc.) have a negative coefficient of reactivity; when they get hot the reaction slows. This is a property of physics, not of any external controls.
6. Interesting that there is a "shortage" of nuclear workers. Of the 10 people in my undergraduate nuclear engineering class (U. of Michigan, 1989-93), 4 are in IT-related fields, 1 is in the nuclear Navy, 1 is doing brain cancer treatment research (nuclear medicine), 1 is managing hotels, and I've lost track of the other three. It's tough to find work as an entry-level nuclear engineer, even if you want it.
7. Personally, I believe nuclear power is the lesser evil of coal, oil, and natural gas.
8. Construction of solar panels generates all sorts of nasty waste, and panels, by definition, make shade where there used to be sun - for all of the interest in solar power these two facts are often overlooked. Perhaps we just don't like the desert ecosystem. :) Panels on building, if they can be constructed with minimum environmental damage, are a good idea, but just can't produce enough power at those sizes to matter too much.
9. Wind and tide power have promise; nice mechanical systems with (hopefully) manageable environmental impacts.
10. Hydro-electric pretty much defines negative environmental impact.
11. Geothermal is great. In Iceland.

A. Caird
B.S. Nuc. Eng. 1993 U. of Michigan
M.S. Nuc. Eng. 1996 U. of Michigan
(but I've never worked as a nuclear engineer; IT jobs are available in nearly every city in the world, computational reactor design jobs are not)

Take it for what it's worth.

Re:Nuclear Power is the future

[Listen Up]

Technically, speaking as someone who is currently working as an engineer in the energy/utility field, there are two fundamental problems with people talking without knowledge of what they are talking about.

1) Yes, you are at the mercy of nature. Let's get some facts straight for the mis-information givers. To begin with, the two largest problems facing solar power is that for one, the farther you are away from the equator, the less solar power you can produce. Most of the US in not on the Equator. Secondly, solar power production is directly related cloud cover, among other factors. Building a solar powered facility in Wisconsin, where I live, never pays off. At night, you need energy storage, and that is a whole other issue. Some states it may work, but 90% of the rest of the US...it doesn't.

2) Now, wind power does not take up large amounts of space. What you don't understand is that the actual footprint of a wind turbine is only around 100-150 square feet. A wind turbine is generally 50-100 meters tall. The taller the wind turbine, the more power it can produce (on flat land like Iowa, Nebraska, etc.) Wind turbines are always built based on worse case scenario wind shear conditions at a design height. Wind turbines do not speed up or slow down, since the generator has a naturally occuring electrical braking action (think Eddy Current braking) and is built to worse case scenario wind shear conditions for minimum operation. The real problem, at least in Iowa where I have done utility studies for the IDNR (Iowa Department of Natural Resources) is that a lot of birds get killed flying to into these huge wind turbine farms and animal activities/tree huggers try to get them shut down. Apparently, the tree huggers want their cake and eat it too. Idiots.

For a great example of wind power helping out on a massive scale is look at Denmark. They are currently working on converting 90% of their entire COUNTRY to using solely wind power. How are they doing this? Simple. They are building large wind farms far out into the ocean and using constant ocean winds to power the wind turbines. Is it working? YES. Here is an internet link to check this out for yourselves

http://www.windpower.org/en/core.htm

Now, the idea has been presented in the United States by several MAJOR utility companies in recent years. The response they have gotten? "We don't want hundreds of wind turbines blocking our view of the ocean."

You want renewable energy? You change the piss poor, "I only care about me and my pretty ocean view and my pretty birdies, but SAVE THE EARTH and give me FREE CLEAN POWER" Of course, only the US seems to care about points #1 and #2.

PS-According to a multi-year study in Denmark on their ocean wind turbine farm and birds? Guess what, after a couple of years, the birds learned to fly around the wind turbine farm. Gee, figure that.