UK's Chief Scientist Backs Nuclear Power Revival

Timbotronic writes "The UK government's chief scientific adviser has sent his clearest signal that Britain will need to revive its nuclear power industry in the face of a looming energy crisis and the threat of global warming. In an interview with the Guardian, Sir David King said there were economic as well as environmental reasons for a new generation of reactors." From the article: "His remarks come in the build-up to international talks in Montreal on how to address the threat of climate change when the Kyoto protocol expires in 2012. He denied suggestions - sparked by comments from Mr Blair that he was changing his mind on whether international treaties were the best way to tackle global warming - that Britain was moving closer to the stance of the US, which has refused to back Kyoto-style emission reductions."

Comments

Nuclear Power

[Cowclops]

I personally don't see a problem with this. What with modern technology, it seems like we should be able to build nuclear power plants much safer and more efficient than anything in the past. The threat of the radioactive biproducts is an issue, but it is a much less immediate (and, in the long term anyway, less of an actual threat) than dumping tons of smog in the air until we're out of coal and oil.

Re:Nuclear Power

[CastrTroy]

Which brings up a question that's been on my mind. How much nuclear fuel is on earth. If we replaced all the fossil fuels we use, with nuclear fuel, how long would our supplies last? And how much nuclear waste would be created as a result? If nuclear fuel just replaces fossil fuels, and ends up creating the same problems in another 100 years, then we really should be thinking of a solution that works out better in the long term. Like wind, geothermal, and other types of clean, renewable, energy.

Re:Nuclear Power

[aaronl]

Power in the future isn't going to be wind, geothermal, etc, because it doesn't produce enough power. Obviously, the more we can get that way the better, but they are highly inefficient, and require specific placement. That means you have a limited amount that you can put online.

We have a very large amount of uranium ore around, but it isn't easy to get. The process of creating fuel from it is also complicated. Our best bet is to use fission while we refine the passive generation (solar, hydro, etc) and research fusion. If we figure fusion out, then we don't have to worry about the other forms, though solar is a good idea to continue researching.

Re:Nuclear Power

[Phanatic1a]

How much nuclear fuel is on earth. If we replaced all the fossil fuels we use, with nuclear fuel, how long would our supplies last?

There's about 50 years of uranium reserves right now, a bit over 2 million tons.

Reserves are ores that are economically exploitable. In other words, reserves increase when you find a less expensive way to get the ore, or when the price of ore rises. If the price of ore goes up by 50%, we more than double our reserves to 5 million tons. If it goes up much more than that, oceanic reserves come into play, and there are 4.5 *billion* tons in the oceans.

Now, that's talking about U235 burned in a PWR. There are other things you can do which vastly increase reserves. There are reactor designs that can breed U238 into U235. That presents a proliferation concern, but you can also just burn U238 in a CANDU reactor or other design. You can breed thorium into U233 and burn that.

And the thing is that nuclear fuel is so much more energy-dense than chemical fuel. Coal has an energy content of about 24 MJ per kilogram, assuming perfect conversion to electricity, and I think good coal plants with top-of-the-line turbines and boilers and everything can get up to about 70% overall thermal efficiency, but hell, let's say 90%. Figures I found for the US in 1982 indicate that all the nuclear power plants in the US consumed 540 tons of fuel and produced 1.1E12 kilowatt-hours of electricity, which means *after* all those efficiency losses (PWRs are less thermally efficient because you've got to transfer heat across coolant loops), we were getting 8 million megajoules per kilogram of fuel.

8 million megajoules per kilogram, versus 21.6 megajoules per kilogram. What that means is that your *fuel* cost can rise significantly, but your cost per kilowatt-hour at your meter will see only a very small rise.

So to sum up, there's a hella lot of nuclear fuel available.

Re:Nuclear Power

[fredmosby]

It depends on what kind of process is used to make power. Most reactors use U235, and there's only enough of that in the current uranium mines to last 50 years. If a plutonium process were used (turning the U238 into plutonium) the same amount of uranium could power the world for around 1000 years. There's also about three times as much thorium, which can be turned into U233 to produce power.

So that's around 4000 years mining the uranium and thorium that is economical to extract at todays prices. With higher uranium costs more could be extracted.

Re:Nuclear Power

[pfdietz]

Yeah, we periodically hear of the big breakthrough that will reduce the cost of PV cells. This has been happening for decades, but PV sales are still overwhelmingly conventional silicon (and may be getting more expensive now that PV production has exhausted the surplus Si byproduct feed from fabs.) So don't be credulous about the latest claim; judging by history it will very likely go nowhere.

Nuclear has gotten a lot of money from the government, but then nuclear has provided a lot in return to the government, like bombs and nuclear propulsion for warships and subs.

Uranium is quite a bit more abundant than is often depicted; remember that at today's U price the cost of the natural uranium itself is a very small part of the cost of nuclear energy, so its price could go up a lot without significant impact. When and if that happens, we can build powerplants with improved breeding to extend the resource even more.

If you can dispute that, please provide a reference for your pesonal residential grid electric supplier you use -a URL is fine- and what the contract terms are

This is the Chicago are; we're supplied by ComEd. Residential rates are 8.75 cents/kWh (plus a fixed service fee of $7.13/month). There are also taxes, IIRC, but I don't remember what they are.

According to this page, PV electricity is still about 30 cents/kWh in the sunniest locations. Chicago is far from the sunniest location; let's say 50 cents/kWh here. So solar is not competitive with grid power for my by about a factor of five.

Re:Nuclear Power

[kesuki]

thank goodness i know how to build a solar cooker, to use the same solar cooker to create ice at night time, and know how to create fire from wood for heat, how to convert virtually any vegatable oil into biodiesel, know how to build a simple electric generator, know how to build a windmill, that turns said genenrator, and know how to build batteries from mason jars, lead, a strong acid and purified water, how to distill and purify water, and/or strong alchohol, basic first aid medicine, etc etc...

and most important of all, i know how to hide from the crazy sob who doesn't know how to do any of that and who would gladly try and kill me for all that i had in a post apocyliptic world. Still I would have to agree, people seem to be seeking the 'short sighted' solutions of fossil/non renewable fuels, when 2/3rds of the earth's surface is already covered in water, and could sustain enough algae 'energy' belts to convert about a thousand times our 'current' global energy reserves every year from solar energy into renewable natural oils... that when burned provided the carbon dioxide needed by the floating tracts of algae.

What's worse of all, is that we spend triple what it would cost to build an infrastructure of 'algea' belts in a year to provide all our 'renewable' energy needs in just trying to find and exploit new 'non-renewable' energy resources.

Why? in part because the economies of scale required to 'bring' the cost of algea farming down to 'reasonable prices' would virtually require completely replacing coal electric production, and oil refining combined. but it's also because 'energy' companies are run by fools who don't 'get' it. maybe con agra will 'get' it someday, and develop practical algea farming so they can crush the fools behind fossil fuel exploitation.. seriously 'growing' the entire world's energy supply is probabbly the biggest possible market anyone could 'dream' of creating and most of the technology has been developed, but they're scattered like a jigsaw puzzle now.. no one has put them together to bring a fully realistic method of 'growing' all the enegry the world needs.

Re:Nuclear Power

[zerus]

I'm guessing you don't mean breeding U238 into U235. The breeding reaction with uranium, that I'm assuming you meant, is where the neutron is absorbed in the U238 which makes U239 which will beta decay into Np239 which beta decays into fissile Pu239 and then upwards with each subsequently absorbed neutron. There is no way to breed U235 effectively and in great abundance. You could have a high energy neutron that knocks a neutron out of U236, but the cross section for that is on the order of nanobarns whereas the XS of first chance fission has resonances near that of the total absorption XS, so it's not too likely. You can run a thorium cycle which can produce U233 which is also fissile, but has many reprocessing steps to remove the U233 from the thorium if that's the desired fuel type, and if reprocessing is the desired route, then breeding U238 into plutonium and reprocessing the fuel into a high burn up MOX would work best. I don't quite agree with your number of 50 years of nuclear fuel either. It's more like 150 years with the gen4 reactors that have the better flux profiles and can utilize high burnup fuelsmore effectively than the modified current versions. That fuel will last even longer once reprocessing becomes economically viable. Technology-wise we can reprocess spent fuel with very little loss of burnable fuel, with Cogema's diamex or JAERI's DIDPA solvent extraction processes that can get 99.97% of U, Pu, and minor actinides with very little contamination by some of the more annoying fission products. In short, you're right, there is a whole helluva lot of nuclear fuel available for many generations

Re:Nuclear Power

[WindBourne]

Power in the future isn't going to be wind, geothermal, etc, because it doesn't produce enough power.

Even though I am a fan of nukes, I have to say that is patently false. In fact, just read some of the earlier articles here to find out that wind alone can put out more than double what we use (That is total energy, not electricity), let alone the other alternative energy (solar, geo, wave, etc).

In fact, you will find a number of companies who are creating wind energy plants all over the world and then selling the energy. More importantly, they are making LOTS of profit at it.

The real issue is how to deal with varying power. Instead of focusing on power generation, we should focus on how to store it. Right now, Colorado is testing conversion of electricity to H2 and then use the H2 to drive an internal combustion engine to drive a generator (how inefficient can you get). The one nice advantage of researching storage is that it will allow a mixture of alternative a nukes to generate electricty/other energy that is stored close to the site of usage.

Re:right....

[AuMatar]

Radioactive waste can be contained. A trick we haven't figured out with air pollution yet.

Let's go for it!

[wheelbarrow]

Nuclear power generation is safer and less polluting than burning fossil fuels to generate power. The new pebble bed reactors offer a significant safety improvement over the old fuel rod design that is in older plants lile Three Mile Island. It's time to use the brains we have and provide the safe and cheap power that nuclear fission can offer.

Re:right....

[eweu]

Have you ever been to Nevada? I'm pretty sure that's why God made it.

The public's general reaction...

[ddx Christ]

Is akin to a situation where someone tells you to lift a supposedly cold glass, but it's actually boiling. That's what initially happened with nuclear fission. Now that same person is asking us to pick it up again, but can we be sure it's inherently safe to do so and we won't receive 3rd degree burns? I'm not saying this is my point of view, but what I usually encounter when talking to others.

A bad reputation is very difficult to eliminate. Whereas a good reputation is ruined by one bad action, the same cannot be said for the converse. Nuclear power has clear advantages as well as disadvantages; technology has improved. But if we can't deal with mercury, toxic chemicals, and other pollutants, what are we going to do with nuclear waste? If we have a plan and are ready, then go ahead, but we should still look for alternatives and improvements.

Re:Well which is it?

[aaronl]

The US certainly does burn oil in quite a few generation plants. There are statistics for it all over the 'net.

To quote PG&E "Most electricity in the U.S. is generated using coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear energy, or hydropower. Some production is done with alternative fuels like geothermal energy, wind power, biomass, solar energy, or fuel cells."

To quote the DOE: "Coal was the fuel used to generate the largest share (50.8 percent) of electricity in 2003 1,974 billion kilowatthours(kWh). This is over one and a half times the annual electricity consumption of all U.S. households (1,273 billion kWh). Natural gas was used to generate 650 billion kWh (16.7 percent), and petroleum accounted for 119 billion kWh (3.1 percent)." They also list nuclear as accounting for 19.75% (764 billion killowatthours). The remaining 9.65% was mostly hydro (7.14%).

The problem with nuclear power...

[mattotoole]

The problem with nuclear power is that the nuclear industry is so enmeshed with top secret military programs that no one knows what its costs really are. They say it's cheap, but to what degree is it being subsidized? We'll never know. Also, nuclear power further encourages an overly centralized power grid, with too few, too-large power plants. For both national security and efficency, we should be moving toward a more distributed model. Smaller plants require less investment too, so they can be added/upgraded more easily as technology improves. I'm for millions of solar roofs; microturbines and fuel cells with co-generation; and everyone's meter able to run backwards.

Re:Solve the War on Terrorism.

[ProudClod]

Hate to be a pedant, but Venezuela's not a dictatorship.

There's certainly a lot of domestic opposition to Chavez, but there's a lot of domestic opposition to Bush too - the fact remains that both were democratically elected by the people.

Re:Other environmental effects.

[m50d]

What about the enrichment though? What about all the noxious chemicals involved in separating the fissile isotopes from the 99+% useless U-238?

You can centrifuge so you don't really need any chemicals, and so little fuel is needed to get a given amount of energy that the amounts used are miniscule compared to what would be used digging up the same amount of coal/oil/etc.

What about the huge piles of toxic and somewhat radioactive U-238 that you get at the end?

Ever seen a slag heap? The amount of waste is again going to be miniscule compared to what you'd produce getting the coal or oil needed to get the same amount of energy, the radiation danger is a tiny fraction of what you get from the radon you'll release mining coal. The toxicity is overstated, it's not really any worse than lead - yes it's not something you'd want to be too near, but neither are the much larger piles of stuff used for mining and oil-drilling.

My concerns

[Y-Crate]

I have no problem with nuclear power, modern plants are safe and quite useful.

However, I do not exactly trust the upper management of such facilities to always do the right thing, after years of shoddy practices by some owner/operators. In the past, I've encountered many stories of rather remarkable safety oversights and downright irresponsible decisions that have made certain reactors unnecessarily dangerous. Sure we have the NRC, but history has shown that they are not always on the ball...or quite far from it.

As with virtually every major reactor incident that has ever occurred, the human element is the potential problem, not the technology.

So fellow nuclear power supporters, please understand when some of us have genuine concerns about construction of new plants, and please do not lump us all in the "OMG ATOMS!!!!" category. In fact, fellow environmentalists here in Florida are only asking for a large exclusion zone around a new plant that is being considered. Obviously, they are going to get the zone for a variety of reasons, theirs being that it makes a fantastic nature preserve.

Coal power much more radioactive than nuclear

[LPetrazickis]

A nuclear plants worst case scenario...

It's physically impossible for a pebble-bed reactor to meltdown. It does not have cooling rods. It does not have heavy water.

Cleaner? Coal and gas give off Carbon oxides and other nasties. Yes this is a problem.

Coal also gives off quite a lot of radioactivity, and it's going straight into the atmosphere. In 1982, US coal power plants released 800 tons of radioactive uranium and 2000 tons of radioactive thorium burnt straight out of coal directly into the atmosphere. Nuclear power plants, as a rule, don't do that. We need to shut down every damn coal plant as soon as humanly possible.

Other coal nasties include sulphur dioxide, the thingie that reacts with water in clouds to drop a lovely rain of sulphuric acid on our heads. Yay!

Oil and coal are obviously bad. Natural gas releases a fair bit of carbon dioxide, and it will run out sooner rather than later if we keep building more plants. Hydroelectric power drowns whole ecosystems. A pretty giant lake where there was no pretty giant lake before is very environmentally unfriendly.

Look, I support solar and wind power. I would support a proposal to make rooftop solar power panels mandated by law for all buildings. Windfarms are a good idea, even if they seem to be evoking silly NIMBYism out of some people. But we need nuclear power in the triptych, at least until we get fusion figured out.

You can't produce a lot of megawatts with solar and wind in a single location without using up a ginormous amount of space. That space isn't magically appearing out of nowhere. Something is being displaced, be it a forest, a field, or some sort of human usage. Nuclear power is relatively compact by comparison. In many cases, the choice is between either compact or nothing.

Re:Not-In-My-Backyard Syndrome

[HanzoSpam]

Modern reactors are far safer than their more temperamental counterparts of the 70s and 80s (Chernobyl? Three Mile Island?).

It's ridiculous to even mention Chernobyl and Three Mile Island in the same breath. What people seem to ignore is that the reactor at TMI functioned exactly as designed in the event of a meltdown - it shut itself down. I'd also point out that Three Mile Island is still in operation. Only one reactor was affected. The rest of the facility has been humming along quite nicely ever since.

Three Mile Island isn't an example of how dangerous nuclear technology is, it's an example of how safe it is.

as far as I know, it's easily doable...

[shummer_mc]

There is a reactor designed called an advanced breeder reactor. It's as close to an energy machine as I've ever seen... This type of reactor uses U238, which we (the US) are currently storing as waste (at huge expense). As a by-product of the consumption of this fuel it creates plutonium (the downside), as well as enough fuel to 'seed' another reactor (breeding, in a sense). This reactor was slated to be built, but due to the weapons-grade plutonium by-product, it was deemed unsafe and discontinued. According to people that I know (I used to work at the Idaho National Lab-- a cornerstone of US nuclear reactor design and development) there is enough U238 in storage-- as waste-- that we would could provide the energy needs for the US for several hundred years.

So, to answer one question, there's plenty of fuel. This is just the tip of the iceberg, as far as I'm concerned. This technology has been known for 30 years. There are bound to be technological leaps and bounds in the science of nuclear energy, but collectively we're afraid to try. As evidence of our collective fear, I point to the, IMO, over-zealous regulation/legislation, which makes it impossibly expensive to investigate making nuclear power *more* safe (I believe that it's safer/healthier than coal now).

Okay, having said that... there is a problem with our ability to improve our nuclear technology. That problem is the last 30 years-- where nothing was done in the field (due to FUD). In those 30 years the leading minds have forgottem and gotten old and sometimes have left the US in favor of work in more reasonable countries. In essence, I'm not sure that we have the expertise any longer. It will be expensive and difficult to get the US nuclear programs working again. I only guess that the UK is the same.

Is it worth it for the US, or any country? Yes. I think so. However, you've got an oil industry crony in the W.H. and trillions of lobby dollars spent by US energy corps and, according to many, the old KGB and other foreign govs, which have instilled a real fear about nuclear energy (according to the stories the old USSR didn't want us to develop *infinite* energy to feed our economy).

There is currently an initiative to build what they call the Gen 4 reactor. There has been some discussion as to which design to try. 'Pebble Bed' was discussed, but there are cooling issues to overcome (I can't speak intelligently on that... I wrote the software which tracked the nuclear waste-- IANANE). El Presidente seems enamored with hydrogen reactors, last I heard. My bets on whether we actually do it are placed on 'no.' The current project is woefully under-funded and crazily mis-managed.

Regarding waste... I know a bit about what is stored as waste... Mainly, it's PPE (personal protective equipment-- rubber gloves and the like) and junk. Anytime something even remotely (and I mean REMOTELY) connected with nuclear fuel, or waste, or contamination is discarded it becomes waste. The VAST majority (99%) of waste isn't nasty. Quite a lot can be permanently disposed of in a safe manner, but people start to freak out (FUD again). The other 1% can be stored until we figure out a cost-effective manner to send it to the sun. Right now, we store it all, and that contributes to more FUD.

I probably sound a bit like a fanboy... maybe I am. There IS an energy crisis. Renewables are nowhere near (at least as far as I know) ready to produce the amount of energy that nuclear does/can; it has been operationally tested worldwide.

Solving the political problems... That's another matter.