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Could Nuclear Power Wean the U.S. From Oil?
bblackfrog asks: "Is a Federal nuclear energy program viable? That is, can the USA eliminate our economic dependence on crude oil with a large scale federal program to build and maintain enough nuclear power plants to replace our current oil-based energy needs? The obvious political hurdles are (a) the left opposes nuclear energy, (b) the right opposes federalizing energy, and (c) the oil companies and Saudis wield a lot of clout. This makes a federal nuclear energy program far fetched I admit, however I'm more interested in the economics. Slashdot has covered advances in nuclear power technology. China's doing it." (Read more, below.)
"How much energy is required to replace our fossil fuel consumption? What are the initial costs of the program, and just how cheap could the electricity be? How expensive would it be for our industries to convert? How expensive for home and auto conversions? How much of this cost should be picked up by the government? Bottom line: is nuclear power cheaper than our current oil-driven middle-east policy, with all of its blowback?"
In the US. But in Europe and Japan they use Nuclear power extensively. Even though they have much more to lose in the event of a disaster due to the population density. I'm I the only one that wonders about this?
2) Do we have enough fissionable fuel to accomplish this?
I know #1 is a problem, I honestly don't know the answer to #2. Either way, these need to be addressed *before* we build more reactors.
Real programmers use "copy con program.exe"
i think you are wrong about biodiesel - it is a net energy gain:
http://www.mda.state.mn.us/ethanol/balance.html
notice there:
gasoline 19% *loss*
diesel 15% *loss*
biodiesel 220% ***gain***
got any better evidence?
And that's where it starts. There are now techniques, called transmutation, which can transform nuclear waste products with halflives in the hundreds of thousands of years into materials with halflives of a thousand years. When you do this on a mass-scale, that means you only have to contain that waste for a thousand years. And that is not only doable, but we currently already have the technology to contain this material for a thousand years.
This effectively means that nuclear waste is no longer a problem (after everything is scaled for mass-use, which of course takes some years to ramp up to).
So we're left with catastrophic nuclear power plant failure. This is something which even in current nuclear reactors is unlikely. The only reason Chernobyl happened is becuase they where stupid: to test one safety feature, they
But even then you can make the case that stupid or not, it did happen. Which is utterly true...and leads us to the next generation of reactors (which the FPP links to). These new reactors are idiotproof. The cannot meltdown. It is physically impossible due to the integrated design: if the cooling shuts down, the nuclear reaction stops. And not because someone presses a button to do so, but because the shape/design of the reactor makes it so: no cooling, no reaction. In about the same way that roller-coaster brakes work: no electricity means the brakes have to engage; look up these auto-engaging brakes to see how designs based on these kinds of physical safeguards can work.
If you don't beleive me, well, everything is google-able. Not only that, but top-environmentalists make the same case: the greenest form of energy is nuclear. Even the most hardcore eco-nut is coming 'round to this view.
And if you're only info to the contrary is that 'Greenpeace is against it'...let me tell you something: Greenpeace does some good stuff. But only because they're lucky once in a while (remember Brent-Spar?). Fact of the matter is that Greenpeace is a PR-firm. They do not employ scientists as a matter of course. In the Netherlands, they only have 5 acedemics working for them. Only one of those has a degree in the sciences...and that one is in Aerospace. At the time they came 'round to my university and told us, a class of freshman Applied Physics students, that Greenpeace didn't have a place for us unless it was as activist. GreenPeace only has one laboratory in the entire world...and they rent that one, including the labbies (not even scientists, 'just' the guys who do a soil sample analysis using the checklist) to do their work. They do not do their own research, they do not employ people who know anything about what they're protesting against: GreenPeace is a reactionary PR-firm, which just happens to do some stuff which is worthwhile.
So my point is listen to the scientists: the physicists, the environmental scientists and the material scientists. They'll give you the correct data, including error-margins and safety estimations.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
regarding your 500% territoy && lots of research point:
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel
specifically: (note the Algae number)
Different plants produce usable oil at different rates. Some studies have shown the following annual production:
* Soybean: 40 to 50 US gal/acre (40 to 50 m/km)
* Mustard: 140 US gal/acre (130 m/km)
* Rapeseed: 110 to 145 US gal/acre (100 to 140 m/km)
* Palm oil: 650 US gal/acre (610 m/km) [2] (http://www.journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.
* Algae: 10,000 to 20,000 US gal/acre (10,000 to 20,000 m/km)
this guy computes you could cover US oil needs with 10,000 square miles of alage producing biodiesel:
http://www.green-trust.org/biodiesel.htm
Joking aside the Bush administration and Republican control of Congress does in fact completely determine the economics of this.
/. I was skeptical though people made a pretty good case that it can be put into glass or ceramic bricks that would be long term inert. The only thing you need to be careful about is that you don't let it accidentally achieve a critical mass or overheat. Then the only down side is trucking large quantities of high level waste from the plants to Yucca mountain.
In particular you have zero chance of federalizing energy production, nuclear or otherwise. The Republicans use the term socialism for this and that is a dirty word in their dictionary.
If you were going to pursue this in the current political climate you would have to do it by giving giant interest free loans, tax breaks etc. to giant energy corporations like GE/Westinghouse to do it for you. Basically what this means is our tax dollars are used to capitalize it and absorb most of the risk, the corporations rake in all the profits, assuming you could profitably build a nuclear power plant today. If you are lucky they might eventually pay back the loans unless Bush/Cheney give them a wink and a nudge and just lets them keep it.
Assuming you are willing to go for tax payers giving huge subsidies to giant corporations to do this then you would have to delve in to the Machiavellian maneuvering that would happen between various forces in the Bush administration, big coal, big oil and big nuke corporations. If you were to try it its certainly possible big coal and big oil would win since it would completely threaten their cash flow. Its anybody's guess if big nuke companies could win this fight or if you could convince big coal and oil companies to jump in nukes by giving them giant buckets of free tax dollars. You just have to follow TV ads to see the coal lobby is engaged in a massive campaign to convince everyone coal can be made clean and power America forever. It can be made cleaner with work and money but last I heard there was no way to get read of the massive carbon dioxide output and that translates straight in to Greenhouse effect.
I haven't hear much about it lately but the Bush administration did have a big initiative to develop Hydrogen powered cars in a state of the union a year or two ago. It would be interesting if it actually went anywhere or it was a sham and didn't have a snowballs chance in hell of threatening big oils monopoly on transportation fuel.
A hurdle is old reactor designs have become prohibitively expensive thanks to the environmental and safety hurdles. Most places don't want them in their back yard since Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.
You can argue that there are safer, newer more economical designs now, at least the people advocating them say they are, but that remains to be proven.
Someone will start screaming pebble bed reactors at this point. Well maybe pebble bed reactors are safer but its not a certainty. Their key risk is they have large quantities of graphite in them. If you recall Chernobyl was the disaster it was partially thanks to graphite because in the event of an accident and enough heat graphite burns furiously. The pebbles have ceramic shielding to prevent the graphite from burning but there is a suspicion that manufacturing defects or mishandling might compromise the shielding and open up the chance a pebble would burn and explode. If it did it could damage the pebbles around it and start a non nuclear chain reaction.
Of course, you would also have to actually bring on line a viable place to dump all the waste. Maybe Yucca mountain is it, maybe it isn't. Last time we debated this on
And of course in the age or perpetual terrorism, nuclear power plants and high level waste are tempting targets.
@de_machina