The Nuclear Power Renaissance

Actual Reality writes "It is ironic to me that much of the same sentiment that thwarted the nuclear power industry back in the 80's is partially responsible for reviving it. Nuclear power is very clean compared to any power source that burns fuel. The US has missed several advancements in nuclear technology. We can only hope that environmental concerns will not again stifle our progress."

Comments

The thing is

[rastoboy29]

We KNOW that converting to nuclear energy would largely solve the global warming problem.  Have a nice gander people, the solution to this seemingly intractible problem is staring us in the face.

No, nuclear isn't perfect.  But in combination with electric cars, the CO2 problem is solved.

Then we just have to worry about the CO2 we've already put in there.

Re:The thing is

[ShieldW0lf]

You stated we are not capable of mega engineering. This is false. We are capable of scaling our energy collection out as far as we need with technology that is over 30 years old, and with that capacity, we can pursue whatever mega engineering projects we want.

Our biggest threats are population control and wasteful use of our non-renewable resources. There's lots of work to do and the means are right there waiting to be applied if we don't use everything up making rubber dog shit in the meantime.

Re:The thing is

[iamlucky13]

The CIA world fact book says 2004 electrical production (not counting transportation energy, etc) was 17.4 trillion kW-hours, so we'd need at least 2 TerraWatts of capacity. A relatively large nuclear reactor produces about a GW of electricity, which translates to 2000 plants. Add in other energy needs currently met by fossil fuels and account for capacity factors and that CalTech professor you reference is probably within an order of magnitude of the actual need.

The problem with that argument is it only demonstrates the scope of our energy needs. It says nothing about the feasibility of nuclear versus other technologies, and ignores the fact that the exact same challenge applies to any energy source. To cover our needs with just coal (currently 25% of the world energy supply and something like half of the electrical supply) would similarly require about 10,000 coal plants. You want to it with wind? You need roughly one million of today's highest capacity wind turbines. Solar? About $20 trillion dollars worth of solar panels near the equator will do it. Hydro? Well...forget about that one. Hydro power options are mostly in use in developed countries.

We'd run out of nuclear fuel in decades (actually, I've been told centuries) if we continued to utilize it as poorly as we currently do. Reprocessing, however, can dramatically increase the available energy from existing fuel and potentially the economics of developing new mines. Not to mention reducing the waste by 90% or so.

Don't forget we're just talking about nuclear fission here. If we can get fusion working commercially, the picture changes.

Anyone who thinks we'll get all our energy from one source in the foreseeable future, however, is out of the loop.

Re:The thing is

[ttfkam]

But, really, the only reason we don't have space based solar power already is because it would devalue fuel and energy and destroy every power structure on earth that relies on it, and that's a tough sell politically. Capitalism relies on scarcity to keep everyone obedient.

That or the fact that no one has ever beamed energy from a satellite to a terrestrial site. Ever. Remember that thing called "an atmosphere?" So we're talking lasers, right? You want to show me where the prototype exists to convert a very-high-powered laser beam to an electricity source? Just one will do. Go on. Show me one example.

Won't sell because of a power conspiracy? Give me a break. If a company could do this already, they'd be launching satellites on a daily basis. Think about it for a moment: you could be the company that supplies most of the world's power while waving the banner of environmental responsibility. But *no one* has even built *a prototype* because of your supposed cabal?

I think your tin foil hat needs to be cleaned; you've been wearing it far too long already.

Re:The thing is

[TheLink]

The military would be interested in satellites that can transfer lots energy from the sun accurately to targets on the ground.

Other countries might object a lot though ;).

This Could Be a Good Thing

[MOBE2001]

The US has missed several advancements in nuclear technology.

Well, this is good because it means that the US has the opportunity to move straight to the latest and safest state of the art nuclear power plant technology.

I happen to quite agree with TFA:

[CaptainPatent]

When I try to explain the benefits of Nuclear power to some of my friends, many come back with the (rather cliché) horror stories of Three Mile Island and of course Chernobyl. What many don't know is the computational power to safely keep a reactor going was generally greater than what was available and the failsafes there were not entirely figured out or developed. We have had many years to develop the technology and as TFA points out:

among the 104 reactors currently online in the United States, none have had any disasters since the infamous Three Mile Island incident in 1979. The technology has vastly improved, the safety measures are in place, it's time to go Nuclear.

Re:I happen to quite agree with TFA:

[PeterM from Berkeley]

Do you realize that the reactor core at Chernobyl was moderated with GRAPHITE? Graphite burns in air. THAT is why the radiation release was so catastropic there. US reactors are all water-moderated, not graphite-moderate, so they are inherently safer and the potential for a radiation release on that scale is much less. FURTHERMORE, Cernobyl didn't have a giant concrete western-style containment vessel over the entire place. And do you realize that US's WORST commercial nuclear accident is estimated to have killed *one* person?

The nuclear waste sites you mention are all, or almost all due to nuclear weapon manufacture, NOT commercial nuclear power.

Nuclear waste IS an issue, but it is much LESS of an issue than the *billions of tons* of toxic ash, and carbon dioxide produced by coal power, which you advocate using (not to mention lesser amounts of other nasty pollutants such as mercury, sulfur and the like--ever heard of acid rain? Toxic mercury fish? Where do you think acid rain comes from?). Further, that coal is often mined using extremely environmentally destructive strip mining.

I would like to comment that France has more nuclear power than the USA, but LESS of a problem with nuclear waste. Why is that? It is because we here in the USA are *complete idiots* about safe disposal of waste. It can be done, we're just too stupid to do it! And most of the problem is due to the ignorance and attitude of people like you!

Coal mining, burning, and transport has probably led to the deaths of millions of people. Nuclear power has NOT come CLOSE to such a death toll EVEN INCLUDING NUCLEAR WEAPON USE ON JAPAN.

And you know what? The deaths due to burning coal and other fossil fuels are going to exponentiate once much of the planet becomes refugees due to sea levels rising due to global warming due to carbon dioxide emissions!

I grant you, we SHOULD be using windmills, bicycles, sweaters, walking, transit, hydropower, and solar cells, but advocating the use of *any* carbon-emitting energy source over nuclear power is---your word-- INSANE.

Here's some more supplementary material:

Case Study: The Side Effects of a Coal Plant

A 500 megawatt coal plant produces 3.5 billion kilowatt-hours per year, enough
to power a city of about 140,000 people. It burns 1,430,000 tons of coal, uses
2.2 billion gallons of water and 146,000 tons of limestone.

It also puts out, each year:

10,000 tons of sulfur dioxide. Sulfur dioxide (SOx) is the main cause of
acid rain, which damages forests, lakes and buildings.

10,200 tons of nitrogen oxide. Nitrogen oxide (NOx) is a major cause of
smog, and also a cause of acid rain.

3.7 million tons of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the main
greenhouse gas, and is the leading cause of global warming. There are
no regulations limiting carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S.

500 tons of small particles. Small particulates are a health hazard,
causing lung damage. Particulates smaller than 10 microns are not
regulated, but may be soon.

220 tons of hydrocarbons. Fossil fuels are made of hydrocarbons; when
they don't burn completely, they are released into the air. They are a
cause of smog.

720 tons of carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide (CO) is a poisonous gas
and contributor to global warming.

125,000 tons of ash and 193,000 tons of sludge from the smokestack

Re:I happen to quite agree with TFA:

[Firethorn]

Large quantities of long-lived radioactive isotopes are produced as waste and even after 60 years we still don't have any place to put them.

Don't really need to put them anywhere, actually. A year's worth of radioactive fuel/waste for a gigawatt reactor is about a railcar's worth. Besides, it's still about 95% fuel, so when the price of uranium rises a bit more, we can take our decades old waste that's sitting in above ground casks and recycle it. Separate out the short lived waste isotopes, put the long lived usable fuel isotopes back in the reactor. You use the old stuff because while it's still radioactive, it's much less so than stuff fresh out of the reactor, so it's easier and cheaper to handle.

Result: 20x more power from the same amount of fuel. 5% of the waste needing medium term(much less than a thousand years) storage.

(Washington, South Carolina, Nevada, Tennessee) are contaminated with historical fission wastes that are poorly contained and could contaminate much larger areas as corrosion, wind, and rain allow them to spread.

I've looked at many of these concerns, and I've found pretty much one constant: It's all nuclear weapons production waste, not commercial power waste. Bad on us and our nuclear weapon production program during the cold war. It was dirty as all heck.

Large quantities of commercial fission wastes are stored in temporary facilities at nuclear power stations waiting for a safe long-term storage site to be available.

This is because the feds messed up. By federal law the feds essentially forced the nuclear industry into a contract that has them pay a fee per kwh in exchange for permanent disposal of their waste. The feds haven't solved the problem, so they came up with their own solution - one that'll work for the next hundred or so years actually.

Nuclear wastes don't 'go away' and don't decompose, at least in normal historical timespans.

Yep, like mercury, arsenic, and lead will decompose over time.

They just stay around and accumulate, requiring ever-greater expenditures and effort to contain them. Intentionally planning to produce even more of these wastes than we are already producing is ... insane. Windmills, bicycles, sweaters, walking, transit, oil, coal, gas, hydropower, and solar cells are all much better alternatives.

Let's see: Oil leads to pollution that kills tens of thousands each year, coal power spews more radioactive particles into the air than nuclear power produces, windmills still use concrete and steel in job lots, are only effective in limited areas, solar cells are currently six times as expensive(and require nasty chemicals to produce), and the rest are conservation measures that can be enacted even with nuclear power.

I disagree.

[iknownuttin]

I'm in favor of nuclear power - as long as no-one tries to run it at profit.

As opposed to someone who's working in the non-profit sector who will do anything to make his numbers?

Non-profit is just a tax status. Meaning, there's a restriction to what you can do with the profits: there's nothing restricting you from making as much money or as much profit as you want - you can get rich off of a non-profit.

My wife works for a non-profit and there's plenty of meetings where they are encouraged to cut costs. So, sorry, not making "evil" profits won't make the plant any safer. Neither will having it run by some Government bureaucrat. Do you really want the caliber of person that works at the department of motor vehicles running those plants?

Re:I disagree.

[Moridin42]

In the current legal climate, thats true. But then I'm of the opinion that the current legal climate is a mess.

Corporations should be proxies for the owners. But only when the transaction being undertaken would be unfeasible if every individual owner had to personally sign off on the decision. The corporation purchases, sells, negotiates contracts, and whatnot on behalf of the owners. Thats fine. But because we, in the US, treat corporations as fictitious entities, that means they are also permitted to do things as make contributions to political campaigns and lobbies. Something I don't believe they should be permitted to do. At all. If the owners of said corporations want to make such contributions, let them. With their dividends. Would that increase the administrative cost of lobbies? Probably, a little. But those costs would be born by only the individuals who believe in the objectives of the lobby or politician.

As far as externalities goes, stockholders cede most of their decision making rights to the executives of the corporation. If and when those executives make decisions that are illegal or negligent the executives responsible should bear the costs of their decisions. Not the corporation, who will pass the losses on to their end consumers, employees, or stockholders (or some combination of the three). So if some energy exec okays a shoddy nuclear plant design, he should be held responsible. Will his net assets be great enough to cover the damages? Probably not. But you tell me, if you were in such a position and you knew if a failure occured you'd be flat broke and probably pretty unemployable, would you go ahead with shoddy decisions?

Again it isn't the way things are, but I'm of the opinion that the way things are is all sorts of idiotic.

Cost

[Graham Clark]

I don't know in detail about the US situation, but in the UK what killed nuclear power was not environmental concerns but the cost. When the government privatised the nuclear power stations they had to finally admit what had until then been denied - that it was the most expensive form of generation then in widespread use. It's possible this has changed, but the dearth of new builds despite apparent government sympathy leads me to believe that it probably hasn't.

Re:Cost

[merreborn]

it was the most expensive form of generation then in widespread use

According to CBS/60 minutes:

Because nuclear plants emit no greenhouse gases, France has the cleanest air in the industrialized world, and because the price of oil is now around $60 a barrel, it has the lowest electric bills in Europe. In fact, France has so much cheap electricity, it exports it to its European neighbors. French nuclear plants supply power to parts of Germany, Italy and help light the city of London.

...So, the UK is importing nuclear power from France. I think that's a pretty clear indicator that nuclear power is currently fairly competitively priced.

Ban on re-processing

[TheMeuge]

Another concern is the current ban on re-processing in the U.S.

This leads to an increased amount of medium-half-life waste (not to mention waste of energy), which would be converted to much more radioactive short half-life waste by the re-processing. Such waste is more hazardous, but its disposal is less challenging because the necessary term of safe storage is greatly reduced.

I really don't see the big deal. We're ALREADY a nuclear power, and I sincerely doubt that our energy companies are going to be selling plutonium to the highest bidder.

Re:Ban on re-processing

[NeverVotedBush]

About buildinng them as far from population as possible...

You no doubt know that the fallout from Chernobyl circled the globe? That it contaminated neighboring countries fairly heavily?

The problem with nuclear power plants is that they are very radioactive in their cores. There are elements with a wide range of half-lives and if anything happens to disperse them, you get high radiation for a short time, medium radiation for longer, and low radiation for eons.

If anything, I would say put them near centers of population That way, they are guaranteed the kind of scrutiny they deserve - lots of it. A population center with a lot to lose and no way to evacuate in short order in the event of an accident will work very hard to make the plants as safe as they can be.

Putting them away from population centers wastes a lot of energy in the transmission lines and also gives people a false sense of security where they won't press for answers or safety. The Enrico Fermi reactor that melted would have contaminated the whole northeast corridor. Too many don't realize that and think setting them 50 or 100 miles away makes them safe. It doesn't.

Re:Ban on re-processing

[Firethorn]

Putting them away from population centers wastes a lot of energy in the transmission lines and also gives people a false sense of security where they won't press for answers or safety. The Enrico Fermi reactor that melted would have contaminated the whole northeast corridor. Too many don't realize that and think setting them 50 or 100 miles away makes them safe. It doesn't.

This made me think of another point. Any such plant like this creates about 2 units of heat for every unit of electricity.

While you can't get this up to 100% obviously, you can collocate various industries that need heat - such as ethanol plants*. Heck, run steam pipes to various buildings to provide heat. Ammonia refrigeration using heat is a known technology, so it can even provide AC.

Even if you end up selling the heat ridiculously cheap prices - it's currently going up the evaporation cooling tower. Just like how a number of pollution products collected by scrubbers are actually valuable materials.

An ethanol plant getting cheap heat from a nuclear plant for it's processes would help lower the cost of the nuclear power(more money to pay off the building loan quicker) as well as lower the cost for the ethanol(cheaper to produce).

You're getting up to, at minimum, a large town to provide all the workers in the two(or more) plants, as well as all the support workers for them. People like doctors, teachers, waiters, accountants, police, etc...

*Many of which are currently coal or gas fired.

Re:Ban on re-processing

[NeverVotedBush]

Good points. This summer, a number of reactors in various countries had to be throttled back or shut down because of the heat load they were imposing on the rivers they were using to dump their waste heat into.

Use the heat for other things and the amount you have to dump goes down.

Re:Ban on re-processing

[evilviper]

You no doubt know that the fallout from Chernobyl circled the globe? That it contaminated neighboring countries fairly heavily?

...and the only people that died were those in the immediate vicinity.

Just like anything else, distance decreases risk.

A population center with a lot to lose and no way to evacuate in short order in the event of an accident will work very hard to make the plants as safe as they can be.

Work as hard as you want... Nothing in the world is 100% safe, and going out of your way to put extra people in danger is just idiotic.

Maybe it'll be a couple centuries, but sooner or later, there will be an accident.

Putting them away from population centers wastes a lot of energy in the transmission lines

It's not "a lot" of energy, it's a very small amount. And there plenty of progress being made on high temperature superconductors, which might be practical in such circumstances.

and also gives people a false sense of security

No, it's a very real sense of security. It would be even better if it was not just a distance away, but could be put behind a mountain range, or in a deep valley, that will naturally contain any potential fallout.

The Enrico Fermi reactor that melted would have contaminated the whole northeast corridor.

"Contaminated" != killing everyone.

and think setting them 50 or 100 miles away makes them safe. It doesn't.

It certainly makes you safer than being located closer to it. Like any other contaminate, the contamination disperses more the further you are away from where it's released... With a nuclear fallout, 100 miles away could be the difference between "radioactive poisoning" and "3% increased risk of developing cancer".

Troll news?

[Vthornheart]

While I agree it's interesting that *some* environmentalists are rallying around Nuclear power, I think we need to make a few things clear that the poster of this news article seems to have missed.

1) Most environmentalists supporting the Nuclear option do so only because it is the lesser of two evils, the latter of which (Global Warming) was not known of or understood back when the Nuclear Power protests were going on. This isn't ironic, it's evolutionary. It's the scientific process at its finest: new data comes in, and those looking out for the best interests of everyone reevaluate their previous conclusions based on that new data. The two are NOT mutually exclusive.

2) The "We can only hope that environmental concerns will not again, stifle our progress," is a bit more blatent of an example of flamebaiting. The reason that environmental concerns occasionally "stifle our progress" is because it would be foolish for anyone NOT to think of environmental concerns. Would the poster of this article rather that environmental concerns never be taken into account in the case of new technology? It would be like a scientist intentionally ignoring a key variable in a study. You wouldn't tell a clinical group performing studies on a new (for example) vaccine to ignore if the vaccine causes heart attacks just because said vaccine is supposed to cure cancer.

Re:Nuclear Power for Everyone

[Dr. Spork]

I'm one of the people who thinks we urgently need a gigantic program to build nuclear powerplants, and we need it yesterday - but neither I or anyone else I know thinks we should get rid of the other promising technologies. There are responsible ways to use hydro and wind power. Geothermal power is also worth exploring. But none of those can provide the power that we need.

And here's where I fit your caraciture: I do oppose raising energy rates and reducing consuption because it's anti-progressive, or as I prefer to say, regressive. Any extra burdens imposed on the cost of energy are going to disproportionately hurt the poor, and they've had it bad enough. Besides, it's totally unrealistic. Of course we should be doing more to insulate houses, and I strongly support government subsidies for doing that. But in a choice between reducing energy use and not reducing it while taking the risk of global climate catastrophe, Americans (maybe people in general) will choose the latter ten out of ten times. We can get mad about it or we can get realistic about it and provide them with the one clean source of power that we know how to develop on a large scale. Sucks that we'll probably have to bring in French engineers to do it right; we've really lost our technological lead in this industry!

Regarding the spent fuel, there is an obvious answer: Reprocessing. The most radioactive stuff that we bury now are the heavy metals which are actually fissile and could be used to produce more energy. The rest of the waste, if processed correctly, would be less radioactive in 30 years than the ore that was originally mined. So in the long run we'd be reducing the amount of radioactive stuff in the ground.

Amazing

[ShakaUVM]

Amazing -- every time I make this point on Slashdot, I get a swarm of deluded people flaming me. Now that there's an article on it, maybe people will begin to see that if they're really serious about things like Global Warming, switching from Coal to Nuclear power would be the only cost-efficient way to do it. All other sources of non-emitting power cost about ~3x as much per kilowatt. According to the DOE (http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/page/co2_report/co2emiss.pdf) 40% of all CO2 generated in America is produced from electricity generation.

The stupid, stupid environmental prejudice against nuclear power has come back to bite us all on the ass. If we had all nuclear power plants now instead of majority coal plants, we'd have eliminated almost half the CO2 production from our country which is MUCH MUCH more than reductions mandated by agreements like the Kyoto protocols, which specify either minimal cuts (8% for Europe) or capping increases (Australia can go up by 8%).

If you're an environmentalist, you should be for nuclear power. Either shit or get off the pot -- if you just talk about "climate change" and then live in some sordid China Syndrome fear of nuclear power, you're not just an idiot, you're a hypocrite. If you're not an environmentalist, you should also be for nuclear power, since it's cheaper than all the alternative energy sources being pursued right now, and everyone likes low power costs.

Re:Amazing

[FroBugg]

I'd love to see some numbers for this miracle cheapness you're talking about.

Nuclear power plants cost ridiculous amounts to construct and operate. Lifetime cost per kwh, including amortized construction, fuel, maintenance, etc, for nuclear is approximately double that of a fossil fuel plant (coal or natural gas).

If you want to address non-polluting sources of power: Hydro is actually cheaper than anything else we're using, but it's already maxed out in much of the developed world. Wind has seen tremendous growth in the last fifteen years or so, and is actually cheaper than nuclear. Solar still has a ways to go, but right now it's only about double the prices of nuclear per kwh. Geothermal has great potential, but I don't know what the costs are right now.

This doesn't even begin to address the waste disposal problem. Every nuclear plant in the country has decades worth of waste piling up on site because we never figured out a place to put it.

Re:Amazing

[dbIII]

Nuclear power would be the only cost-efficient way to do it.

Cost effective and nuclear power do not belong in the same sentance unless you subscribe to the idea that the Brits, Russians etc are stupid and you have a high enough clearance level to know the US costs and know they are far less than anyone expected.

Intersting to see the little bullying insults for anyone that dares to take a different opinion to one only based on conjecture. Nuclear power should be argued on it's own merits and not on perceived personality defects of it's detractors.

Please do not state a guess or perhaps even outright lie passed on to you third hand as a fact. Every now and again on this site I ask a nuclear troll "what is the name of this cheap plant you talk of?" and have never received an answer to that question.

Re:Amazing

[Zoxed]

> if they're really serious about things like Global Warming, switching from Coal to Nuclear power would be the only cost-efficient way to do it.

Do you (or anyone) have any links to a complete life-cycle costing of nuclear power ? I mean everything; including the waste disposal (or storage for n thousand years, and including accident insurance (ie not subsidized/underwritten by the govt ?) I keep hearing it is cheaper, but see little evidence ?

And ditto for a full environmental analysis, not just plant side CO2, but including the mining of the uranium, and the impact of the long term storage facilities etc.

(FWIW my main answer to energy problems would be tackle the depend side with improved efficiency.)

Re:Clean nuclear waste

[Dr. Spork]

If you think spent nuclear fuel is clean, why not make useful consumer goods out of it?

Umm... we do. Don't you have a smoke detector?

Is fission not considered "burning fuel"?

[Medievalist]

Nuclear power is very clean compared to any power source that burns fuel. If you are going to toss around inexact language like "is very clean" I don't think you can afford to be picky about what it means to "burn fuel".

As Nikky Telsa said in 1915, "No matter what we attempt to do, no matter to what fields we turn our efforts, we are dependent on power. We have to evolve means of obtaining energy from stores which are forever inexhaustible, to perfect methods which do not imply consumption and waste of any material whatever. If we use fuel to get our power, we are living on our capital and exhausting it rapidly. This method is barbarous and wantonly wasteful and will have to be stopped in the interest of coming generations."

If it uses up a limited resource, it's "burning fuel", at least metaphorically, and therefore lame. Screw that. Let's figure out how to tap into the vast power represented by the titanic spinning mass we live on, or the even more titanic mass that shines in our skies, instead of perpetuating the cycle of digging stuff up stuff until it we use it all up. Those experiments with dangling wires from the shuttle are a step in the right direction.

Re:Nah, fuck off

[ShakaUVM]

he waste remains deadly for hundreds of thousands of years.

Guess how radioactive something is with a half-life of 100,000 years? Answer: Not very.

I'd really wish there was like a prerequisite of high school physics before people were allowed to start talking about the energy issue in America.

Re:bleh

[m4cph1sto]

You gotta be kidding me. We don't use nuclear because it would hurt the oil industry? First off, there's a difference between oil, which runs our cars, and coal, which runs our power plants, which you don't seem to grasp. Second and more importantly, the real reason we don't have much nuclear power in the US is because for decades "environmentalists" have been waging a misguided war against nuclear power. These activists eroded public support for nuclear energy, and their lobbyists got our politicians to impose such stringent roadblocks and regulations that it became impossible for any company to even think about building in a new nuclear power plant in the US. Thanks to their ignorance and short-sightedness, these activists contributed in a major way to the problem of global warming, which they now say will be the doom of us all. And what makes it even more ironic is that the activists are still at it today. Sure nuclear is not perfect. But the safety issue was settled long ago. So the only downside is waste disposal, and the technology to process nuclear waste is advancing rapidly. And anyway, the stuff comes out of the ground, so we just have to put it back there, and make sure it stays there. All this talk about nuclear waste being a terrible hazard and environmental concern for the "next 10,000 years" is ridiculous. Some time in the next 500 years we'll figure out an even better way to handle, or use, nuclear waste, and it'll become a null issue (unless global warming kills us all by then of course).

My Retracted Solution to Nuclear Waste.

[Glasswire]

Back in the early 80s, I thought I had the ideal solution to plutonium waste. There was only a few tons of it on earth - let's pack it up, put it in a booster stage which would be launched from the space shuttle in near earth orbit and, after a few months of slow travel would fall into the Sun where it would totally negligible. Do it every ten years or so - no waste problem. Space shuttles at that point, seemed like a damned reliable method.

Then the Challenger disaster happened. My first thought, after the lives of the crew, was to thank god nobody implemented the solar waste proposal. I'm not sure if a few tons of plutonium distributed into a cloud by the explosion at that altitude would have wiped out life on earth as we know it, but I'm sure the consequences would not have been good.

Glad to be wrong.

Re:My Retracted Solution to Nuclear Waste.

[Jerf]

I'm not sure if a few tons of plutonium distributed into a cloud by the explosion at that altitude would have wiped out life on earth as we know it,

Oh, for fuck's sake, it's radioactive material, not a RAVENING DEMON OUT TO CONSUME YOUR VERY SOUL.

Guess what? There's already orders of magnitude more plutonium in the world, distributed naturally. Along with Uranium! And Radon! And radioactive carbon! And an endless stream of cosmic rays!

If we'd tone down the mindless fear of OMG Radiation!, and treat the subject rationally, we may well not have the problems we do now, having switched to nuclear power a couple of decades ago. But no, people who's education on the topic of radioactivity comes from 1960s B monster movies continue to dominate the discussion.

You know what the most likely outcome of a shuttle explosion is? A whole lot of hand wrining, a whole lot of scare mongering, and... well... not a hell of a lot much else, since most likely it ends up in deep ocean, which doesn't have as much life as you'd think (mostly around the shelves), where it would promptly sink to the bottom, what with it being a dense metal and all. Even the volatiles wouldn't be that big a deal, though you wouldn't know it from the press coverage. Any ol' oil spill is way worse, it happens in a way worse location.

Now, that's the likely outcome. If it exploded soon enough, something might actually manage to land in Florida itself. It's still probably not the best idea. But it's not going to wipe out life on Earth. That's just mindless scaremongering. It's not anywhere near that easy with any real materials; only OMG Radiation!!1! can cause that sort of damage, and that only exists in the aforementioned movies.

Re:Nuclear Power for Everyone

[thermopile]

While your attempt to shield the poor from rising costs of energy is laudable, I submit that basic economics says it won't happen that way. The only way nuclear is going to gain a strong foothold in the market is if the price of coal goes up. Currently, the production of power from coal is about 4 cents per kilowatt-hour. The production of nuclear, including and amortizing the cost of construction over the next 10 years, is approximately twice that. Coal is not going to get more expensive until cap-and-trade economics (or just a flat-out CO2 tax) are introduced into the market. (The aforementioned numbers are based on speeches given two days ago by John Sununu at the American Nuclear Society's winter meeting, a man for whom I have a lot more respect now that I've heard him speak. Did anyone else know he has a PhD in MechE from MIT?)

Secondly, reprocessing. The US's main focus for reprocessing is wrapped up in the Bush Administration's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP). This is a freaking scam, and the National Academy of Sciences backs me up. Basically, the types of reactors envisioned require materials science that just isn't there yet, requires funding that just isn't there yet, and requires an infrastructure that Just Isn't There Yet.

The solution is to turn Yucca Mountain into a medium-term repository. Bury it, safely, for 100 to 200 years, let the exceptionally hot stuff decay away, and I'm pretty darned sure civilization will be able to find some use for the energy stored in there in 100 years. But until then, let the technology mature. The commercial industry (and, by extension, every person in the U.S. who pays for electricity) has been paying into the Yucca fund for too long not to see any return on that investment.

Oh, one more snarky comment. Please provide support via links for your assertions; it's not hard. I would like to see evidence that after 30 years, the spent fuel coming out of a burner like envisioned for GNEP is actually less radioactive than the original ore.

Question: How plentiful is Uranium?

[maillemaker]

How plentiful is Uranium for nuclear power? Will we find ourselves in the same dire straits tomorrow seeking vanishing uranium deposits? What is the situation?

Molten Salt Reactors

[mosb1000]

Reprocessing is expensive mainly due to the labor involved in reprocessing it. Spent fuel must be cut apart and chemically treated in a clean room environment. Removing the tans-uranic elements from spent fuel is not complicated from a chemistry standpoint, but handling spent nuclear fuel is always expensive.

One potential solution is molten salt reactors, which do not use fuel elements but rather use molten uranium salts. Since there are no fuel elements, fuel from the reactor can be chemically treated without a lot of handling. It may even be possible to continuously process the fuel while it's still in the reactor (though this has never been done). Doing this could completely solve the problem of long-term nuclear waste. The only waste produced by such a reactor would be depleted uranium and fission products. Of course, the fission products would need to be safely stored for 300 years before they were safe, but that's a lot better than the trans-uranics that we have to deal with now.

Molten salt reactors also have advantages when it comes to fail safe design. Since they don't have fuel elements or control rods, there is nothing in the reactor core which can break or wear out and cause a melt down to occur. In the case of emergencies, the reactor can be drained into sub-critical containment vessels.

designed for what now?

[DreadSpoon]

Yeah, the containers would be designed to not leak in an explosion... just like the Challenger was designed not to explode and kill its crew.

Re:Nuclear Power for Everyone

[NeverVotedBush]

However, natural gas (mostly methane, CH4) has the highest hydrogen to carbon ratio of any fossil fuel. That makes it produce less CO2 per unit energy than any fossil fuel.

Anything else has more C-C bonds and so cannot have as high of a ratio.

Disclaimer: I don't have my chemistry books handy or could make sure the above is compltely true. If I remember correctly, it is. YMMV...

Re:Nuclear Power for Everyone

[MillionthMonkey]

Yeah, no CO2 output, and there's an infinite supply of it, thank goodness!

There is a technological solution to everything. Just feed that CO2 to photosynthetic methane-generating bacteria and then sequester the methane by pumping it deep underground where it won't bother anybody.

It's been done.

[Grendel Drago]

The Integral Fast Reactor produces a comparatively small amount of waste (the designers guess estimate than a ton per gigawatt of power per year), and the waste itself is no more radioactive than uranium ore after about two hundred years (as opposed to thousands or millions of years).

After the project was nearly ready for production, it was torpedoed largely by John Kerry and Hazel O'Leary. This wasn't a partisan thing; two of the biggest backers were Richard Durbin and Carol Moseley Braun. It's one of the biggest wallbangers in political history that I can think of. I am at a loss as to why anyone is considering building a reactor on any other design.

It doesn't have to.

[Grendel Drago]

There are designs which don't produce long-lived waste. Our lovely government just happened to can the project before it was completed.

Deaths: Coal vs. nuclear weapons & nuclear pow

[FleaPlus]

Here's an interesting factoid: In the U.S. alone, pollution from coal power plants kills over 30,000 people each year. Of course, this is just a fraction of the worldwide number, and a fraction of those suffering health ailments from coal pollution. If you look at air pollution in general, the WHO estimates 2.4 million annual deaths worldwide.

This means that every few years (or less), more people die from coal than have died in the entire history of nuclear weapons and accidents, including Hiroshima (140,000), Nagasaki (80,000), and Chernobyl (4,000, although this has been argued about).

Re:Question: How plentiful is Uranium?

[8tim8]

How plentiful is Uranium for nuclear power?

This link is a pretty good read for that information. Current price of uranium is nowhere near the historic inflation-adjusted high ($75/pound versus $145/pound). However, the author gives some very good information on why the price will be skyrocketing soon:

-there's a gap between production and consumption that's currently being closed by using stockpiles, i.e. old Russian nukes. Once those are used up, that gap opens up again.
-there are many nuclear power plants coming online in the next decade or so. 28 are currently under construction, over 100 more in the next decade.
-at current rates of demand, we'll need 900 new nuclear plants by 2050 to keep up.

In short, it's plentiful now, but it won't be soon.

Re:Nuclear Power for Everyone

[djradon]

Yes, you're right about the ratio, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_vehicle#Energy_content.

simply, it's the ratio of carbon atoms to hydrogen atoms:

methane- CH4 = 1:4 = .25
ethane -C2H6 = 1:3 = .33
propane-C3H8 = 3:8 = .38
butane -C4H10= 2:5 = .40

Methane has the lowest amount of carbon per mole.

But no matter how you slice it, all hydrocarbon combustion creates CO2.

IMHO, If we need to, as a civilization, we can survive on solar power using existing technologies if we reduce our consumption to more modest levels.

Re:Alternative Enegies First - Not Nuclear

[JWW]

The reason Nuclear is the answer is that it works.....now. Wind is the only thing you mention that really works reasonably well, but still has the problem of not being constantly available to generate power. We don't have enough land for all the solar arrays that would be needed, plus the sun doesn't always shine.

Nuclear is a good option, the technology has gotten much much better over the past 30 years.

Re:Fine

[Anonymous Coward]

sure.
http://pdf.aiaa.org/preview/CDReadyMJPC2003_775/PV2003_4431.pdf

Capital Cost of Nuclear Is Highest Part

[sonofabeach]

"...So, the UK is importing nuclear power from France. I think that's a pretty clear indicator that nuclear power is currently fairly competitively priced."

Not necessarily. People say, "let the market determine whether nuclear is cost-effective." The market in the U.S. already did decide, and it said it was not cost-effective. That's why no new plants have been built since 1974. The only reason we're building them now is because the government is heavily subsidizing it. (And, need I add, this says nothing of the cost of waste disposal which is another problem altogether...)

The biggest cost of nuclear is the up-front capital cost of construction and working with government regulation and oversight. Therefore once you have the plants built, it is in the owner's best interest to utilize them to their maximum potential. This doesn't mean that new nuclear power is competitively priced, however.

You will hear the nuclear industry (as well as the U.S. government) touting a 1.8/kWh figure as the cost of nuclear energy, but this figure only refers to the operating costs of nuclear and DOESN'T include the capital cost of building a nuclear reactor itself (which is the biggest part), nor does it include the cost of decommissioning a reactor when it is finally retired. This also says nothing of the fact that uranium prices have more than tripled in the last few years. If we're not going to include capital construction costs when describing the cost of nuclear energy, then why should we use a different standard for measuring energy costs for other technology such as windmills? Wind suddenly become extremely cheap (less than 1/kWh to maintain) if you exclude the capital construction cost.

What killed nuclear in the U.S. was regulatory cost. That changed with President Bush's 2005 Energy Policy Act included several billion dollars of incentives to the nuclear industry, for instance guaranteeing that for the first six new nuclear plants constructed, the U.S. government will pay for any cost overruns (up to $2 billion). This means it's a no-brainer for the nuclear industry - they get paid even if the same kinds of regulatory delays that killed previous plants creep up for these new plants. In addition there are huge tax credits for the first eight years of operation.

IMHO, we don't have to worry about nuclear reactor safety at all. Operationally they are very safe (even Three Mile Island basically operated as it was supposed to during a meltdown). What is less clear is whether nuclear is economically feasible, and whether we have a viable solution for storing waste. Currently the solution is to store them on-site at the reactors themselves.

Re:Nuclear Power for Everyone

[lwiniarski]

Jimmy Carter studied to be a nuclear engineer while in the Navy. So he probably knew better than any other
politician what the risks were.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_carter

Breeder reactors _are_ a proliferation concern. You clearly don't know what you are talking about.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Reprocessing

Separating isotopes _IS_ possible...Maybe difficult, but not impossible. Fuel reprocessing is done
to make this purposely more difficult.

And it's easy to look back with 30 years of hindsight and criticize, but it was an intelligent decision at
the time, and might still be today. Breeder reactors have proven to be better, but I'll bet it wasn't
so obvious 30 years ago. And the proliferation issue still hasn't gone away.

Re:Nuclear Power for Everyone

[anagama]

IMHO, If we need to, as a civilization, we can survive on solar power using existing technologies if we reduce our consumption to more modest levels.

I have a pottery studio/kiln out in the county a little ways. When I first built it, I had no power of any kind, so I took to charging up a deep-cycle 12v marine battery at home and then carting it out there. With an inverter and a CFL, I'd get 12 hours of power or so. The battery weighs a ton (subjectively) and it was a pain, but also nice to be able to work in the evening. I would also run some other things off it on occasion. Anyway, I realized that even small amounts of electricity represent HUGE amounts of work -- and carrying that battery back and forth was actually the least of the "work" it took to get that bit of light.

We had a big windstorm a few days ago and power was out at the studio (I know have juice there) for the last day and a half. I used to love it when the power went out -- the world became quiet and I was forced to do quiet things I don't do enough of -- read, think, sleep. Now all I hear is the distant sound of generators running (note me -- others).

As a society, we have become so affluent (or debt ridden) that we are unwilling to give up electricity even for a few hours. We can't do without even for a few moments but it comes at a very high price which will be paid eventually. Anyway, back to your point, I suspect most people wouldn't be willing to reduce their energy usage enough. Even if you got 2kw per day out of the sun, that's only 20 hours for one 100 watt bulb. If you have a computer, fridge, 6 lights, and TV on, you could be hitting near 1000 watts per hour (depending on efficiency of course).

Even me -- I realize how work intensive electricity is, and I try to make sure to make efficient use of it by minimizing my use -- still, it would be very hard to limit myself to 2kw per day, which is what I'd get with 10 hours of sun (good luck in Dec) and $1350. Maybe there are better deals out there. I know for sure all those people firing up their generators sure won't survive on 2kw.

Re:Nuclear Power for Everyone

[Z34107]

why sequester the methane when you can turn around and burn it again?

Because it's a joke. Natural Gas = Methane. Parent is suggesting that we burn natural gas, convert the CO2 back into natural gas, and then pump it back underground.

Now mods have to take away the parent's "funny" modifier, because I explained the joke, therefore killing it.

Re:Nuclear Power for Everyone

[Bruce Dawson]

He didn't say using current solar generators, he said using current solar technology. Obviously we'd have to build some more solar plants to generate significantly more power. But good job knocking down the straw-man. It won't be getting up again.

Re:Nuclear Power for Everyone

[walt-sjc]

There is NIMBYism with solar too. Someone nearby put up some panels in his yard and the neighbors sued claiming it destroyed their views. Now they may not WIN, but it will be expensive to defend against.

The problem is exactly what the first-post person was modded down for saying. Nobody wants ANY power generation of any type near them, yet they all want cheap power. You can't have both. All the alternative energy plans have environmentalists fighting them for various reasons - so we still burn coal, and lots of it. Give me nuke plants (modern breeder types), wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal. I want cheap power so we can do desalination and run electric cars. Kill the CO2 emissions so my great-grandchildren have a nice planet to live on...

Re:Nuclear Power for Everyone

[Ash Vince]

Give me nuke plants (modern breeder types) No, don't. Chernobyl was a type of Fast Breeder Nuclear reactor. They are not any safer than traditional nuclear power plants, they are just cheaper.

For a safe design go and look up "Pebble Bed Nuclear Reactor". These have the capability to become a much safer design but they are still on the drawing board.

For a decent article discussing the various types of reactor currently in use look here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reactor_technology

It seems to suggest that Pressurised Water Reactors are the safest design.

Re:Nuclear Power for Everyone

[cheater512]

Nuclear reactors are very safe. The dangerous part is us.

Chernobyl: The idiots turned off the pumps.
Three Mile: The idiots went cheap with the sensors.

A well funded plant with competent people running it is very safe.
The environmental FUD has ensured that modern reactors have both.