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NPR Story on the Future of Nuclear Power
deeptrace writes "The Living on Earth show on NPR recently had a segment on the future of Nuclear Energy. The nearly hour long show is available as an mp3 and in transcript form. It talks about hot fusion, cold fusion, and Pebble Bed Reactors. It provides a well balanced and informative overview of progress towards their use for future nuclear power generation. Most interestingly, they talk with Dr. Pamela Boss and Dr. Stanislaw Szpak at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego. Dr. Szpak says of their cold fusion experiments: 'We have 100 percent reproducible results'."
But how many times are you going to put the gun to your head and pull the trigger? It seems we've already hit that live round a couple of times. TMI and Chernobyl certianly come to mind.
Well, right now we are sitting in a car with the engine running and the garage door closed. I think we are better off with the revolver.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Let's just kick this "clean" nuclear energy out the window. Nuclear plants produce some of the most toxic substances known to man. (Plutonium comes to mind).
Nuclear power plants keep their waste in shielded rooms deep inside the plant, which are then sealed up and stored so the waste doesn't get released. Coal plants, however, release more radioactive waste into the atmosphere. Coal contains traces of uranium, and as it burns, we get uranium dust in the air. Nuclear power doesn't have this problem. So, let's just kick this "clean" fossil fuel energy out the window. And unless you have a way to use hydro, solar, or wind power to produce as much energy as either fossil fuel or nuclear, we're left with this choice: store our radioactive waste deep underground, release clean steam; or burn massive quantities of coal, release tons of dirty smoke and radioactive particles in the air.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
I don't think that they are proposing that you re-use the heat. Power generators like to have steam go from ~900F to ~500F, to imporve efficiency. Everything after that is waste, which they dump out of the cooling tower. If the power plant is nearby some homes & offices, you could capture that heat and pipe it to where it's needed, but that would require more heat exchangers, etc. I'm not sure the economics would work.
For the desalination or hydrogen cracking, I believe they are talking about that being the *primary application* of the reactor. In a place where you need power, you use the heat to make electricity. In a place where you need water, you use it to desalinate. In a place where you need hydrogen, you use it to crack water.
Electricity is great for running stationary objects like buildings, but not so good at vehicles. A storable fuel is better for that.
Consider some seaside urban area that is outgrowing its supply of fresh water. Since these reactors are modular, you could install one reactor to make electricity, one to make water and one to make hydrogen for the cars. The power, water and hydrogen distribution grids are all in place and benefit from economies of scael, and you can share the administrative/training/regulatory overhead of running the reactors.
Need even more power/water/H2? Install another module.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
The amount of excess heat is usually about a few Watts per square centimeter of palladium electrode.
During some experiments this excess heat is believed to achieve much higher value:
One event described here which is not described in the technical literature is an extraordinary 10-day long heat-after-death incident that occurred in 1991. News of this appeared in the popular press, but a formal description was never published in a scientific paper.
Mizuno says this is because he does not have carefully established calorimetric data to prove the event occurred, but I think he does not need it. The cell went out of control. Mizuno cooled it over 10 days by placing it in a large bucket of water. During this period, more than 37 liters of water evaporated from the bucket, which means the cell produced more than 84 megajoules of energy during this period alone, and 114 megajoules during the entire experiment. The only active material in the cell was 100 grams of palladium. It produced 27 times more energy than an equivalent mass of the best chemical fuel, gasoline, can produce. I think the 36 liters of evaporated water constitute better scientific evidence than the most carefully calibrated high precision instrument could produce. This is first-principle proof of heat.
A bucket left by itself for 10 days in a university laboratory will not lose any measurable level of water to evaporation. First principle experiments are not fashionable. Many scientists nowadays will not look at a simple experiment in which 36 liters of water evaporate, but high tech instruments and computers are not used. They will dismiss this as "anecdotal evidence."
It is a terrible shame that Mizuno did not call in a dozen other scientists to see and feel the hot cell. I would have set up a 24-hour vigil with graduate students and video cameras to observe the cell and measure the evaporated water carefully. This is one of history's heartbreaking lost opportunities. News of this event, properly documented and attested to by many people, might have convinced thousands of scientists worldwide that cold fusion is real. This might have been one of the most effective scientific demonstrations in history. Unfortunately, it occurred during an extended national holiday, and Mizuno decided to disconnect the cell from the recording equipment and hide it in his laboratory. He placed it behind a steel sheet because he was afraid it might explode. He told me he was not anxious to have the cell certified by many other people because he thought that he would soon replicate the effect in another experiment. Alas, in the seven years since, neither he nor any other scientist has ever seen such dramatic, inarguable proof of massive excess energy.
Here is a chronology of the heat-after-death event:
Total evaporation equals: