Slashdot Mirror
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?"
A nuclear disaster would wean the US off a lot of things.... oil, food, water, you name it.
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
And what'll wean us from nuclear power?
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
Privatize it, and let the citizens start deciding.
I'm wrong and so are you.
(d) In whose backyard does the nuclear waste go?
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
With respect to conventional nuclear energy, what many people don't realize is that Uranium is a finite resource which will run out way before oil. Based on what's on this page (this was just a quick google, there probably is better data out there), with 4 million t available and at the rate of 34K t per year, there is only 117 years of Uranium left.
So if it's going to be nuclear energy, it will need to be a process that does not require Uranium.
The president of a country has a fortune invested in oil. Would that country rather:
1. Develop a nuclear energy program;
2. Develop an alternative energy program;
or
3. Relax regulations for pollution control, so that fossil fuel energy can be more conviniently utilized?
While the damage caused by a nuclear catastrophy is much larger than that of a coal or oil burning plant, isn't the day-to-day pollution from a nuclear plant going to be far less than that of other non-renewable energy sources?
Yes, we should be looking to renewable sources, but its just not cost effective right now. Invest in the distance future with renewable research, and invest in the present with nuclear.
About the dumbest thing a person can do with fossil fuels is 'burn' them, whether in a power plant or driving to work.
When you burn them, they're effectively gone.
When they're gone, you can no longer use them to create the materials that, to a large extent, drive the production of goods in this country. Just think of it: Fertilizer, toys, drugs, etc. They are all largely based on petroleum derivatives.
Some can be recycled, which is great.
But if you just burn the petroleum, you lose it forever, and create toxic emissions to boot.
If nuclear power could help stop the petroleum 'burning' I'd be all for it. The problem is safety.
Can nuclear energy ever be truly safe?
---- Richard L. Goerwitz III
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?
We don't use oil as our primary means of generating electricity. We use coal. And then natural gas. Neither of which are big foreign dependencies for us. I guess you're suggesting that we use nuclear energy to break down water for hydrogen power? But the cost of that is more than the cost of gasoline at the current rate. Electric cars, maybe?
As much as some people hate to hear it, we're not fighting in the Middle East because of oil. We're there because we're fighting Islamofascism. Otherwise, we would have used Saddam as an oil-for-food crony the way France and Germany were.
We can wean ourselves off oil better with deisel-electric hybrids, which would give us the same efficiencyt as is projected with fuel cells, and burn vegetable oils as well as (or instead of) petroleum. Vegetable oil powered electric hybrids are actually Solar Powered (think about it.) Which means they're Nuclear Powered. So maybe that's how nuclear weans us off petroleum.
"Wow. Now THAT'S a lot of angry Indians." - Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer
We could also eat fish from our lakes and streams again. Since the methyl mercury being dumped into the atmosphere from the coal plants and other industry has raised the mercury levels in all fresh water fish to high levels.
Fact is, Bush (and Cheney) aren't simply pawns of the oil industry, they ARE the oil industry. Moving away from oil is a conflict of interest for them.
Anyone who thinks that any substantial change in energy policy will happen in the next four years is naive.
The question should be, why do we use sooo much damn energy. I'm all for computers, gadgets, and a variety of power tools, but aren't we just being plain stupid and wasteful? I'm a designer, and the understanding in packaging is, that saving resources upfront (minimal packaging) is much, much more effective than say recycling. Recycling would be absolutely great, if we actually did it, but alas do not do it very effectively.
I ditched my beemer and am walking and such now. Not only is the stress of driving and owning a car that costs way too much to maintain in its glisteney state gone, but I lost ten pounds and save about a thousand a month.
We want it all, but simply cannot have it all. For long anyway.
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"
Yes. But too many people would rather fear-monger the ills of nuclear power than join a rational discussion of how it can be widely implemented in a safe, clean, and effective manner.
Seen any BadMarketing lately?
* can make in USA (no foreign dependence).
= UBB44
* runs in existing diesel engines.
* less toxic than regular diesel, in fact biodegradable.
* creates more demand for US soybean crop.
* no new infrastructure needed, just more diesel engines.
* emissions better in almost also cases than existing diesel emissions.
* can mix in any percentage with existing diesel fuel.
yes i know it would take *a lot* of soy crop to meet the US oil consumption - but check out some of the research on using algae for biodiesel production at a much higher land density.
overall there are a *lot* of pros vs. cons regarding this alternative fuel IMHO.
for more information:
http://www.grassolean.com/
http://www.biodieselnow.com/
http://forums.tdiclub.com/postlist.php?Cat=&Board
The way investors look at it, a natural gas power plant can be installed for half the price, half the time, and can break even in a third of the time any nuclear plant can. We as consumers of electricity have to make a effort to bear the additional cost of cleaner production means.
If you really want to talk green power, stop thinking nuclear and solar and think WIND. Wind power could provide the USA with more electricity than it currently needs if it is installed properly. The problem? again, wind electricity at the moment is a couple cents more per kWh than natural gas and coal. Are you willing to add the money on your bill each month? I am. Ever wonder why california has more wind turbine farms than any other area, even though they have one of the lowest wind potential west of the missippi? Because people are starting to want cleaner power, even at a cost.
Did you know a single 750 kw turbine can provent as much CO2 emmision as a 500 acre forest can absorbe annually?
Did you know, at the current death rate due to living in proximity to a coal plant, for every 33 wind turbines installed, we save a life. thats one less person who will die from lung related problems caused from emmisions. Coal plants are esimated to cause the death of over 35,000 americans a year.
If we want to get off the oily road we are one, we must make an effort and bear the cost of doing so. It is the only way this will ever work. And it can work. Look at europe, note germany's emmisions over the past 15 years and how they have dropped to next to nill. Ohio alone now produces more NOx emmisions than germany does per year. think about that.
Without question the green party and it's movement are the largest impediment to nuclear energy out there. It's a power trip really, one that has no scientific weight. Now the good news is that some of the greens are starting to realize that their opposition to nuclear power had everything to do with politics and nothing to do with science, and are starting to renew the calls to look at nuclear power.
From pebble bed techniques to better designs, there is no reason we cant build nuclear power plants that can provide widespread clean energy for the masses. Really, if groups like greenpeace were serious about the environment, they would be spending money on research for safe ways to store and process nuclear waste, not fighting it at every turn.
The second problem is stationary energy, that is electricity and natural gas. We have enough coal to generate electricity for many decades. In most cases, electricity can be substituted for natural gas The only constraint on coal is global warming. Nuclear can help here. I will not get into the debate of safety etc.
If we are really "stealing" oil, then why does the price of gas continue to climb? I just love those leftists that claim the war in Iraq is for oil. Been to the pump lately?
--- witty signature
1) What will we do with the waste?
It should be reused for fuel. This allows a reactor to get more energy out of less nuclear material, resulting in both reduced cost and waste. The only reason why the US doesn't do this, is the concern over terrorists or spies obtaining bomb-grade materials.
2) Do we have enough fissionable fuel to accomplish this?
The estimates are that we'd have a ~100 year supply of Uranium if all power was switched to nuclear power today. This figure does not take reprocessing and non-uranium fission into account.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
yes i know it would take *a lot* of soy crop to meet the US oil consumption
That's why we need "Lipodiesel"-- when you climb into your SUV, you plug a little hose into a couple stents in your thighs and belly, and it gives you liposuction treatment while you drive, sending the fat into your engine to propel the vehicle. This would solve both the oil problem and the fat problem plaguing the united states, would mean that lazyass drivers wouldn't have to exercise, and could not only eat all the french fries they wanted, they would need to in order to fuel the vehicle. You just stop at the McDonalds drive-thru to fill up.
1) We can recycle the nuclear waste we have. Yes, it is possible. What we essentially do is re-enrich and purify it. The problem with this is that it is that it is the same process used to create weapons grade material. I think that is the only reason why it is not done. If we start refining the waste, the amount of toxic material left over shrinks rapidly to less than 1% of the volume.
2) Nuclear power supplies about 20% of the total power generated in the US. There is a lot of uranium and plutonium in the world. We have enough in order to supply it. Epsecially if we start re-enrichment of the waste.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Personally, I think that we need to start getting a more balanced policy. That would include not only nukes, but more alternative as well as money to research on energy storage. Sadly, over the last few years, the US admin cut a lot of alternative research and has invested in oil all the way.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The cost of building nuclear power plants greatly exceeds that of fossil-fuel plants due to the safety measures required. When I researched this for a physics paper in college, building a nuclear plant cost about 3x as much as an oil plant. That cost is often left out of analyses that claim nuclear energy is cost effective compared to fossil fuels.
If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out? - Will Rogers
Joe Public doesn't have to benefit from the theft, oh not at all. Oil Corps get to steal oil (or to be honest, buy it really really cheap) then sell it onto the public at huge markups!
Big Profits! Big Bonuses! Happy Wall Street! Happy Oil Company Directors! Sad car driver, sad environmentalist, sad poor original owner of said oil.
IAASE (I am a safety engineer).
This is not a very good way to frame this question, because nothing is truly safe. It's not truly safe to drive to work in the morning, for example, because there's a relatively high risk that you'll be killed in an auto accident. But it's not truly safe to lie in bed either, because you could get hit by a meteorite, or more likely, suffer from health problems related to lack of exercise. Nothing is "truly safe".
A better question to ask: is the expected net cost/benefit operating nuclear plants better or worse than the expected value cost/benefit from operating conventional plants? The risks of nuclear energy include improper waste disposal and radiation release due to nuclear plant malfunctions. The risks of conventional energy include global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions, increased illness due to other pollutant emissions, economic harm due to trade deficits with oil producing countries, and possibly, terrorist attacks funded by oil revenues.
The risks involved in waste disposal and plant malfunction can be mitigated - think vitrification of waste and fail-safe reactor designs. Some of the risks of conventional plants can also be mitigated - think carbon sequestration, higher efficiency plants, and increased domestic production of oil. These mitigation measures also have costs, both economic and other. The question is which option produces the required quantity of energy at the lost cost in economic and environmental terms. Safety is one of the costs.
Sean
Talking about nuclear energy is all fine and good when it comes to the electrical needs of our citizenry here in the US but what about the millions of cars on the road? Don't these suck up more oil than the power companies? We won't "eliminate" - the word used in the story - our dependence on foreign energy until we find a way to reliably power the vehicles that make our way of life possible.
I'm Swedish but I have moved to Texas. I love most of this great state. But environmental responsibility is not one of its virtues.
One example is individually wrapped cheese. Why is that necessary?
Nobody in Sweden has ever seen an individually wrapped piece of cheese. And we have survived just fine, eating cheese on a daily basis. We have large blocks of cheese and a special "cheese grater" to serve the same purpose.
This is just one example, but everywhere I look, I see wasteful use of resources.
Oooh, and don't get me started on those who commute to work in a Hummer or a Ford F250.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
My concern is America's dependence on oil. Scientists from all over the world say we have less than 60 years of oil left on the planet... Then what?
This reminds me of an episode of Futurama where New York shot all their garbage out into space in the early 21st century, saying "It'll return, but not in my lifetime, so it's not my problem." It returned in early year 3000. After shooting a rocket into space to "bounce" the garbage rocket into space again, Dr. Farnsworth exclaimed that it wouldn't return in his lifetime, so it wasn't his problem anymore. Sense a theme?
We (America) should immediately invest in clean energy sources like wind and solar. The prices of these sources are now extremely competitive with oil or coal burning sources. The sun and wind aren't going away any time soon.
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
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?
Even though I'm a Bush-voting Republican (and proud of it!) and think the French are mainly cheese-eating surrender monkeys, I'll give France one thing: they have the best nuclear power program in the world.
Unlike the US which went with several designs for nuclear reactors, none of which was quite like the other, the French bought the design for Pressurized Water Reactors from Westinghouse in the US and built 56 reactors, all of the same design and all using interchangable parts and systems. That way problems in one reactor can be fixed systemwide using the same techniques.
France gets over 75% of their power from cheap nuclear energy. Electric power in France from nuclear sources is about 3 Euro cents/kWh, which is very competitive and less than half of the US average cost for electricity.
France reprocesses used nuclear fuel to create new fuel and maximize efficiency. That produces less waste and increases overall efficiency. The French also found that it's psychologically better to say that waste is being "stocked" rather than disposed of.
I don't give France credit for much, but the way in which the French have run their nuclear program is a model for the rest of the world. France is far less dependent on foreign energy for power than most countries, and their costs are lower - and there has not been a major nuclear accident in France since the program began.
If we did something similar with more efficient breeder reactors, we could reduce pollution, reduce energy costs, and reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
Besides, we can't let the French beat us, can we?
regarding your 500% territoy && lots of research point:
h tml)
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
You still end up with waste. See: thermodinamics
1. That's "thermodynamics".
2. There's nothing in thermodynamics that precludes a 100% conversion into energetic particles. For example, antimatter achieves this without violating any physical laws.
3. The amount of waste would be a small percentage of the starting amount. So for every *ton* of fuel (that's one HELL of a lot of energy!), you'd end up with a few dozen kilograms of stuff left. Of the remaining "waste", a large portion of it would be stable materials.
100years a long time but it's still finite. If it took 30 years to do a transiton you would only have 30 years before you would need to do the next one.
1. You're making an assumption based on time, not quantity. I said that we'd have 100 years if ALL power was switched over today. If it takes a transition (which it will), you'll have an extended life time.
2, You ignored my point about reprocessing and other fission methods. Reprocessing fuel leads to MORE energy than was originally extracted from the Uranium, and fission plants can be built from materials such as Thorium and Radium.
3. Nuclear materials can be replenished from elsewhere in the solar system. It is the only fuel we currently use of which this is true.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
- "How much energy is required to replace our fossil fuel consumption?
- Depends on the definition of "fossil fuel consumption". It would take around 200 GW plus losses to replace the US consumption of petroleum-based motor fuel, according to my analysis. (Yes, I know, the EIA has broken the important links. Worse, they've split the data which used to be on one page over several.)
- What are the initial costs of the program, and just how cheap could the electricity be?
- The problem comes in two parts, generating the power from nuclear and then transforming it to something which can be put aboard a vehicle. As a quick BOTE calculation, if you need 250 GW of generation at $1110/KW, that's $275 billion dollars. The most efficient way of getting it aboard vehicles is to use batteries. Add 20 KWH of batteries for 100 million vehicles at $100/KWH and I get an additional $200 billion. Over ten years that would be about $50 billion per year.
- How expensive would it be for our industries to convert?
- Industries which need oil as a chemical feedstock would be largely impractical to convert to non-fossil, though non-petroleum is much easier. Industries which simply consume electricity would require no conversion. Industries which use process heat would pay a lot more if they used electricity instead, or perhaps less if they were close to a nuclear plant and could get spent steam.
- How expensive for home and auto conversions?
- It's not going to be practical to convert most cars; they will be replaced. Neither are you going to convert a home to nuclear. Converting to electric is cheap, converting natural gas appliances to hydrogen would also be cheap if it could be made safe enough (which I doubt). Cost of energy would be much higher; it would be cheaper to re-insulate, change building codes and use e.g. solar water heaters.
- How much of this cost should be picked up by the government?
- Do you mean paid out of increased taxes or added to the deficit? (The question betrays stupidity.)
- Bottom line: is nuclear power cheaper than our current oil-driven middle-east policy, with all of its blowback?
- When we could do it for $100 billion/year or less over 10 years? Absolutely.
Your questions are easy. We could easily set up a bunch of thorium-breeder reactors and start them with our surplus fissionables from decommissioned nuclear weapons, and the fission products (the real "nuclear waste") needs to be isolated for only a few thousand years, save for a few troublesome isotopes. It's not our chemists and engineers who have trouble with this, it's the politicians and activists.Sustainability and energy independence essay
Sustainability and energy independence essay
Actually, it's not the same process, just a similar process. A fuel-reprocessing reactor will produce a mixture of Pu239, Pu240, Pu241, and Pu242. Weapons-grade plutonium is pure Pu239. If you don't have pure Pu239, your bomb won't work. No one has ever successfully separated Pu239 from a mix with Pu240-242. This is what makes president Carter's ban on breeder reactors in 1977 so baffling. Here's a man who's a nuclear engineer who bans breeder reactors because terrorists might get ahold of the plutonium and make a bomb, even though he should know that refining the Pu239 from the mix is impossible.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
No, you get about a ton of waste fuel from a ton of fuel. The mass->energy conversion is a tiny fraction of the fuel's mass. And once the U or P atoms are split, the daughters can't be split again.
And then you have the problem that the neutron flux inside the reactor makes _everything_ radioactive. And _everything_ in the fuel processing cycle becomes radioactive.
All that radioactive stuff is waste. It must be stored carefully, for long periods of time. And noone has a solution that works both politically, geologically, and medically.
"(d) We don't even know how the hell to deal with the solid waste we're producing from nuclear plants now, let alone if we ramped it up."
Dealing with radwaste is simple. Just take a big hole in the ground, cover and seal it thoroughly, and start filling it with radwaste. THEN add a low-temperature-difference power generation system, like OTEC. Remember all those thousands of years they claim you have to keep radwaste sequestered? It's actually lots less; after about 600 years, the radiation diminishes to the normal background level. Anyway, such a waste pile would give us MORE POWER for all those years, AND because people will need to maintain the power plant, people will always be there to warn others of the danger.
Boiling water reactors are designed to deliberately produce plutonium in the normal course of operation. Plutonium can be easily refined from spent fuel rods.
You cannot make gun-type (hiroshima) bombs with plutonium: you can only make them out of uranium, the isotopes of which are rather hard to separate out. Implosion-type bombs (trinity, nagasaki and pretty much all the rest) can be made from plutonium, and the excess polonium found in spent fuel rods make the use of initiators irrelevant.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating
1. Doable: We've had a widespread nuclear program running the entire US submarine fleet for somelike like 50 years with nary a hitch. They dispose of their spent fuel correctly and I know several people that have worked on these boats and they are fine, healthy people. The oldest is around 52 and he is in perfect health.
2. Renewable, Recyclable and Long Lasting: Proof that nuclear energy could last a good long time. Using breeder reactors you generate more nuclear fuel by using plutonium etc. This means we have a nearly inexaustible supply. One of the problems is that Jimmy Carter (ironically a submariner himself) signed the law that forbids us in the US from using recycled nuclear fuels. This means that if it's used once it becomes hi-level waste Thats insane and it generate mre radioactive waste. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
3. Safe: By designing the damn thing right in the first place you prevent meltdown accidents from happening. How? Install a pebble bed reactor. The nuclear fuels are engineered into glass spheres designed so that they can only react with a certain amount of volume of neighboring spheres. They can never meltdown because it's physically impossible. When they are spent, you simply recycle the spheres until 99.9% of the fuel is gone. Then you bury them.
4. Rational: For a pittance of what it costs to police the planet, slaughter innocent civilians by the 10's of thousands and just generally create bad PR you could set up a series of pebble bed reactors across the US which would generate electricity for homes/businesses and hydrogen to be used in hydrides to power cars and/or power cells. Any wastes that are created are used until they are almost used up. Anything left is buried safely. Small contingents of special forces could protect these installations against terrorists and theft. Multiple independent safety auditors and inspects keep track of fuel, procedures and any contamination. You could overdo this entire design 10 times over and still not have spent what it took to just deploy our troops to Iraq.
No, it's not completely safe, but very little in this world is. It keeps the pollution in one place where it can be controlled, checked and inspected instead of spreading it through the air for us to breath etc. How many people die a year from lung diseases brought on by hydrocarbon pollution. How much vegetation dies because of acid rain.
When I see trainloads full of coal heading for St. Louis's power plant I just shake my head.
When the left gets off it's religious crusade against Nuclear energy we might have a chance. Until then they are the best friends the Bushs ever had.
I'm all for saving the environment. Let's start with the stuff we are being forced to breath.
Somebody do the calculations.
That's right, the only option that everyone agreed on was:
They're adundant (check the animal shelters), cheap (they're just giving the things away) and renewable ("breeder reactor" = 2 cats in a box with some catnip and a Barry White CD). It just goes to show that, with a little ingenuity, we can solve even the worst crises.
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
not mentioned before in this thread so I'll do it.
Per capita the US uses more than 12000 KWh per year, Japan ~7500 and Germany ~6000 (source) ). Same for oil: US per capita: 68 gallons, Japan: 42, Germany 33 (source: source). So we're comparing the three of the whealthiest and industrialized nations on Earth and one uses more than two times the energy. There's not a single reason for this depite the fact that the US wastes energy like noone else on this planet.
When atke into account that less than half of the US energy comes from Oil and that a not that small part comes from domestic sources, I guesstimate that by saving less than a third of the current energy usage the USA could become completly independent from foreign oil. And you would still use more energy than Japan for example.
This goal is reachable rather easy as you can see in Japan or Germany.
Sell your SUV, buy a Volkswagen/Audi TDI (will use less than half of your energy). Switch off your AC when you leave or when you don't need it. Change to energy saving light bulbs (will use less than 15% of your original energy usage). Throw away your old fridge and buy an energy saving new one (will use less than half of your old). Etc. pp.
It's doable. It's easy.
Bye egghat.
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
Well, the US just decommissions reactors once they've used up the pressure vessel. The pressure vessel (which holds the core) is removed, put into a big huge steel casing, and trucked across the country to INEL, Hanford, or Nevada. The spent fuel rods are kept on-site in water pools for long periods of time (20-30 years). The rest of the radioactive byproducts are shipped to some burial sites or, again, to Hanford, Nevada, INEL, depending.
You would think that such a huge chunk of high-strength steel would be impervious, but the neutron radiation does weaken all the parts over time.
Getting weapons-grade materials from a fast breeder reactor is not the best (or only) source. The former Soviet Union seems to hold a lot of weapons-grade plutonium in a usable form. Wouldn't it be better to secure that?
Bomb makers get rid of this problem by very short irradiation of a depleted uranium element; if the Pu-239 is not allowed to build up it cannot be transmuted. On the other hand, building up fuel is the purpose of a power-producing breeder reactor.
An excellent summary with a table of typical isotopic compositions for weapons-grade Pu and spent reactor fuel is here. It was the first hit I got with the search string "PWR fuel plutonium isotopes" in Google; what's your excuse?
Sustainability and energy independence essay