Centrifuge May Be Superseded by Laser Enrichment

An anonymous reader writes "Australian scientists have discovered, after a decade of tests, a new way to enrich uranium for use in power plants." From the article: "There are at present only two methods for sifting uranium atoms, or isotopes, to create the right mix. One, called diffusion, involves forcing uranium through filters. Being lighter, U-235 passes through more easily and is thus separated from its heavier counterpart. The second method, widely adopted in the 1970s, uses centrifuges to spin the heavier and lighter atoms apart. Both, said Dr Goldsworthy, are 'very crude. You have to repeat the process over and over,' consuming enormous amounts of electricity. The spinning method requires 'thousands and thousands of centrifuges'."

Comments

True cost of nuclear...?

[itsdapead]

So does anybody have a figure for how much energy is used, how much CO2 is produced and how much other waste is produced in order to generate a kW/h of nuclear power?

Objective answers - rather than pro-nukular or anti-nuclear spin - preferred (some hope!)

Re:Centrifuges

[BenBenBen]

The manner in which Mossad tricked the US into attacking Libya was described in detail by former Mossad case worker Victor Ostrovsky in "The Other Side of Deception," the second of two revealing books he wrote after he left Israel's foreign intelligence service. The story began in February 1986, when Israel sent a team of navy commandos in miniature submarines into Tripoli to land and install a "Trojan," a six-foot-long communications device, in the top floor of a five-story apartment building. The device, only seven inches in diameter, was capable of receiving messages broadcast by Mossad's LAP (LohAma Psicologit-psychological warfare or disinformation section) on one frequency and automatically relaying the broadcasts on a different frequency used by the Libyan government.

The commandos activated the Trojan and left it in the care of a lone Mossad agent in Tripoli who had leased the apartment and who had met them at the beach in a rented van. "By the end of March, the Americans were already intercepting messages broadcast by the Trojan," Ostrovsky writes.

"Using the Trojan, the Mossad tried to make it appear that a long series of terrorist orders were being transmitted to various Libyan embassies around the world," Ostrovsky continues. As the Mossad had hoped, the transmissions were deciphered by the Americans and construed as ample proof that the Libyans were active sponsors of terrorism. What's more, the Americans pointed out, Mossad reports confirmed it. "The French and the Spanish, though, were not buying into the new stream of information. To them it seemed suspicious that suddenly, out of the blue, the Libyans, who had been extremely careful in the past, would start advertising their future actions. The French and the Spanish were right. The information was bogus."

Ostrovsky wrote: "Operation Trojan was one of the Mossad's greatest successes. It brought about the airstrike on Libya that President Reagan had promised -- a strike that had three important consequences. First, it derailed a deal for the release of the American hostages in Lebanon, thus preserving the Hezbollah as the No. 1 enemy in the eyes of the West. Second, it sent a message to the entire Arab world, telling them exactly where the United States stood regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict. Third, it boosted the Mossad's image, since it was they who, by ingenious sleight of hand, had prodded the United States to [bomb Libya]"

To blame the US intelligence services for the Iraq war is to believe that Rumsfeld and Cheney didn't want to go to war, that they felt they had to because of the intelligence. The truth is that they made sure that Bush and others only got intelligence that suppprted their pre-determined outcome of 'regime change', no matter how poorly sourced it was.

It's your typical Republican MO - break an agency, then point at it and say "look, it's broken! Abolish it all!". See also; FEMA.

Re:Centrifuges

[BenBenBen]

how much people believe that Iran has 'only' 50 centrifuges(we've been wrong before!)

Umm, you mean about Iraq? You do realise that we were "wrong" on purpose, and totally the other way - mobile biological labs turned out to be weather balloon inflating equipment, fertilizer factories were labelled as anthrax factories and the weapons located "around baghdad and tikrit, north, east, west and south somewhat" (to quote Von Rumsfeld).. didn't exist.

Plus, it would have been a lot easier to keep track of what equipment Iran was buying if Dick Cheney hadn't knowingly outed a covert CIA agent tasked with Iranian counterproliferation as political retribution against her husband.

Sand + glass + electricity

[JumpingBull]

And you have the potential for electrolysis.
Process heat comes from the Sun, still the best fusion reactor going.
Electrolytic by-products are:

• oxygen
• silicon
• a glassy slag concentrating mineral impurities to higher grade ore

Now if the reaction can be combined with some hydrogen injection to make water and ease the total (electrical) energy required you get a nice sustainable technology. Water, also.

Solar cells are made from the silicon, formed into parabolic mirrors that focus the IR band to the smelting pot. Interference coating the cells is easy with the free nothing called a vacuum

Electricity from the power cells drives the electrolysis and runs the station power.

With all that silicon, I'm betting that some composition can make silicon into something more ductile.
Cheap building material would be nice...