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Fusion-Fission System Burns Hot Radioactive Waste
An anonymous reader writes "A hybrid fission-fusion process has been developed that can be used in some traditional fission reactors to process radioactive waste and reduce the amount of waste produced by 99%. This process uses magnetic bottle techniques developed from fusion research. This seems like the first viable solution to the radioactive waste problem of traditional nuclear reactors. This could be a big breakthrough in the search for environmentally friendly energy sources. Lots of work remains to take the concept to an engineering prototype and then to a production reactor."
If at any point in this process (say you stop it at 50%) the 'waste' is now weapons grade this will never be allowed in the US.
If it's still 'radioactive' you can still get energy from it. You can refine it, clean it up and shove it back through again.
Generations ago we were masters of waste not want not. If you burned candles for light, you collected your drippings, remelted them into new candles. Imagine if the 13 Colonies outlawed this because you could also remelt them into canon wicks... absolute stupidity.
So instead of reusing the waste in further fission, thereby prolonging our fissible materials supply & making energy cheaper, we're just going to be removing the ability for it to perform useful work.
Great.
This should only be used on radioactive waste that has absolutely no more useful applications (so that you don't have to store it).
This assumes they have a magnetic confinement ...What could go wrong?
fusion system already working. Then they add in
a surrounding layer of fission waste.
The Chrysler Patriot Lemans car planned to use
a turbine engine, a flywheel energy storage capacitor, and regnerative braking for a racecar.
Three technologies that had not succeeded on the racetrack... together. It was as successful as you might expect.
There's never going to be an energy source that will be environmentally friendly enough for the people that think nuclear is too dirty now. Should coal and nuclear be replaced with solar, wind and/or wave generation, these same people will begin complaining about the negative effects of removing energy from the environment with those methods, wildlife being killed in wind/wave farms or whatever other impact can be identified.
The fact will always remain that life, regardless of humanity or other life, impacts its environment. If we want to have zero impact for our energy needs, we have to get to zero energy need. The only way to have that is for the entire of humanity to become extinct.
Of course, that won't stop other species from also becoming extinct. It also won't stop the climate from changing. That's all been going on before us and will be long after we're gone.
If it keeps you feeling morally superior, though, keep fighting the fight. We, our planet, our solar system and our little galaxy are pretty insignificant in the whole grand scheme of things. There's nothing to save. It's all going to be destroyed anyway. You're not even going to be able to delay the inevitable.
Have a nice day! :)
This is neat technology, and may some day be practical. But, i don't think that day is coming for 50-100 years.
Here's why : solar is getting cheap very rapidly. Today, you can pick up panels at $2.85 a watt off the shelf. Below $1 a watt, and it will be cheaper to put panels up than it will be to burn coal.
A fusion-fission hybrid system will cost a LOT. According to the wall street journal, nuclear fission plants are already deal-breaker expensive. It would be cheaper per watt to build more wind farms than new fission reactors. http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/05/12/its-the-economics-stupid-nuclear-powers-bogeyman/
Another way to look at it :
To operate a fusion-fission hybrid system, as well as dozens of large gigawatt fission reactors takes a lot of well trained and educated people working round the clock to make all of the technology work. There are very real dangers, and very expensive regulations that have to be followed.
To build more solar panels? You print some more off the reel and slap them on to glass. You park the panels in the desert and leave them alone for 25 years. Maybe a simple robot wipes them off occasionally.
There's no liability, or need for exhaustive quality control. If a panel fails prematurely, you pay a warranty claim.
Inherently, solar is going to always be cheaper for the foreseeable future.
Most corporations diversify, and the smart ones don't waste money maintaining their infrastructure. (Federal bailouts FTW.) If I had oil production revenues, I'd be plowing all my profits into tying up all the alternative energy IP and buying legislation to benefit from the coming switch.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
I've read that article several times before, and it always makes me depressed. How come I can't shake the feeling we'll doom ourselves slowly with petroleum usage rather than attempt a reactor like the article outlines?
.there is enough of everything for everyone.
Amen. That article was a reprint from Dec. 2005, IIRC.
Here a link to a QA session regarding AFR/IFR technology. It irks me to no end that ignorant, short-sighted politicians quashed this technology 15 YEARS AGO, and the greenies have taken that long to get over the "my god, it's nucular!" fearmongering and actually start to embrace it as an environmentally-safe alternative to our current mess.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Forgive my vast amounts of ignorance on the matter, but I thought breeder reactors were a viable way of burning nuclear waste down to nothing. Or is this the same thing? I'm confused.com.
Either way, it's good to know there are options to hush up them "ZOMGZ NEWKEELER HOLLERCAUST!" crowd that's so vehemently opposed to the cheapest and quickest to implement short- to mid-term solution we have to burning fossil fuels.
Today's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why. -- Hunter S. Thompson
Because the eco lobby does not like it and will scare monger anything to do with it. Grandma thinks that a reactor failing will look like Hiroshima.
Unfortunately people can not get it through there heads that fission/fusion is the only sustainable method of energy generation that can deal the increasing demand. Demand will not decrease, this would mean your children will have a lower standard of living than you.
No sir I dont like it.
The push to go nuclear was nearly dead until Jim Hansen started agitating about global warming. Since then, as this article shows, the nuclear industry has revived. The mercury industry has also revived (thanks to compact fluorescents) and the lead industry has revived (thanks to electric cars). Now if we could only do something to promote asbestos and smoking, the environmental gains from the global warming industry would be complete.
Cheers
JE
On the other hand, this machine would then be converting what they are asserting is hard to deal with transuranic waste to mere irradiated metals - this might be a situation where it really would be better to need to dispose of irradiated reactor parts rather than a smaller mass of worse waste. They are wanting to use this to take just the hard to burn fraction of the waste, and burn that to get rid of it - most of the waste is burning in normal breeder reactors like the ones other countries use and the US doesn't build.
We've had it for decades. It has such a high burnup that spent fuel can be returned directly to the ground, because it is less radioactive than natural uranium ore. The submitter is uninformed, or a luddite moron shilling for the enviro-freaks.
That's great that they may have a way to solve the issue of nuclear waste, but that doesn't solve the main problem which is that you average person is afraid the power plant will blow up and destroy everything around it for hundreds of miles.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for increasing solar, wind, ocean-based, and other 'passive' power systems. But, all the people talking about wind and solar seem to always leave off some important problems - That solar panel which is producing 1kw (or whatever) at noon on a clear sunny day might only be producing 150W on a cloudy day, and nothing at night. That wind turbine which is producing 1kw on a nice windy day might be producing nothing on a stagnant day.
Now, I believe the counterargument to that is the idea that if you have enough wind farms and enough solar panels around the country and around the world, "It's always sunny/windy *somewhere*", but then you have problem of transmitting power from where you can produce it, to the place where it needs to be employed, and until we have high-temperature superconductors, that means we are suffering somewhat significant power losses during transmission. Also, you still need some way to ensure a stable baseline of power - power that you can count on producing a minimum amount, all hours of the day or night, every day of the year. Coal, oil, nuclear, and geothermal offer that - wind and solar really do not - they are spikey.
Finally, have environmentalists considered the impact of the land use necessary to produce electricity on the scale our nation needs using solar and wind? We're talking about putting arrays of turbines and solar panels (or other solar technologies - PhotoVoltaic panels aren't the only solar energy generation systems) on very large areas of land - what affects will that have on birds, insects, animals, native ecologies? How many birds will be hacked to death by wind turbines, or cooked alive by thermal solar systems? Maybe bird migrations will be confused by all the glare from PV panels? I mean, who knows what the impact will be of putting the enormous amounts of land necessary to power our nation to use as wind and solar farms?
Also, have you considered that, while the USA maybe has lots of undeveloped land in sunny deserts that are ideal for solar power, maybe other nations don't have such good conditions for solar power? Where are the UK, France, Germany, etc going to build their solar and wind farms? India? China? I suppose you can probably put lots of solar panels on roofs of buildings , so that does mean that you can use some already developed land as part of your solar farms, but I'm not sure you can get enough panels in place just doing that? Maybe, but I suspect that buildings will not be sufficient alone (I think about it this way - my understanding is that a solar panel on the roof of a typical house, commercial building, or skyscraper cannot provide enough power for that house, building or skyscraper, so it stands to reason that panels on the roof of every building cannot provide enough power for every building).
The fusion will be of lighter nuclei; deuterium or helium probably. They won't be fusing the 'sludge' or anything heavy that; that would take more energy than it would produce (thats why stars stop fusing at iron).
The fusion of the lighter nuclei will produce a lot of neutrons, their idea being to bombard the 'sludge' with neutrons to cause its nuclei to destabilise and fiss apart. Its kinda win-win really: the fusion reaction won't be terribly efficient, and on its own would probably produce only about as much energy as it takes to sustain it, but the fissing of the heavy nuclei will release a bunch more.
Hmm, I wasn't aware that Ford had made it an indefinite suspension. I had thought he made the initial decision to suspend and that Carter then made it a permanent suspension. So I guess we can blame both of them.
Still, I'd beg the question: How does suspending reprocessing in our own country help to combat proliferation? That's like saying "OMG, India has developed the lightbulb! We must stop developing them ourselves to prevent them from obtaining this dangerous technology"
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I lived in the same township as Three Mile Island for about 10 years. Also, my National Guard unit was tasked with providing an additional security presence in the months following 9/11. Anyone who wants to say anything about the horrible environmental impact of nuclear energy need only visit the southern 2 miles of the island (don't actually try to visit...you'll get arrested and possibly shot a bunch). It is as off-limits and protected as the rest of the facility, and is covered in wildlife, including more deer than I have seen anywhere else in my life. It's a nice area, plenty of good farm land, and not a single three eyed fish to be found. Be gone with your fear fueled rhetoric against nuclear power. I'll take one in my back yard before a fossil fuel plant any day.
-=Bang Bang=-
Our culture's scientific illiteracy isn't just a fun joke any more... It's almost literally putting a gun to our heads.
History will recognize this--if they haven't become scared of books by then.
Weed is natural and they hate that. I don't think the 'average' person has a pattern, they are just idiots.
Courtesy of the media brainwashing the public. People are spoon fed lies by the media. They are told to fear doctors for they are fallible, have alternate agendas and are just plain instruments of "big pharmaceutical". Yet at the same time they preach alternative medicine, spirit-healing, homeopathy, chi energies and other "alternative medicine" to the public, as if they are miracle cures that somehow all scientists and doctors have missed so far after so many years of study. Most fall for this kind of thing, just like they fall for the propaganda advocating against nuclear energy.
Logical and scientific thought is being spit on by the "average joe". Yet at the same time, "average joe" loves to watch tv, have a cell phone and enjoy dental work.
People used to trust and respect doctors. Now they all read medicine websites and think they know better than their doctors.
Fortunately, soon enough, the Baby Boomers, the generation who both fought against nuclear power and have proven time and time again to be happy to fuck over their children and grandchildren so they can indulge in the present, will all either be senile or dead. Then, we can stop banking on some tech riding in on a white horse to save us all and talk about a real solution to our energy needs.
Can it? I mean, really, with all the safety features in nuclear power plants, are they even capable of "blowing up" or is it all just hogwash?
The only things that have went wrong with nuclear power plants have been meltdowns. There's only been, what, three or four meltdowns ever out of some 400 plants in the world? Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and one or two others that I can't quite remember.
That represents a roughly 1% failure rate. Yes, it contiminates the area. Some people get cancer and some people die. Chernobyl was due to poor engineering and incompetence of staff. Three Mile Island was basically a freak accident partially due to poor engineering - one reactor had a *partial* meltdown while the other was shut down for refueling, and the system couldn't vent the heat as it started to melt down.
Consider all of the people who have died over the years from nuclear accidents compared to the people who have died or been displaced from coal fires and coal mine cave-ins. Let's not forget the wars fought over oil and the international hair-pulling over natural gas.
Nuclear is a finite resource but it's wildly more efficient and reactor designs get safer every day.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Culinarily, the deer which cross the river in the fall to raid farmer's corn fields taste no different than deer shot 200 miles away. TMI is not Chernobyl, and the events are wholly different. To use the stand-by car analogy; Chernobyl was a Pinto (Kablooie!), where TMI was a town car with an engine that overheated and needed to be shut down.
-=Bang Bang=-
Instead of calling it "fly ash," we need to start calling it "carbon fallout"
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
The majority of nuclear plants that have been canceled over the past 20 years have been canceled not because of environmentalist pressure, but simply because the ROI wasn't there. Yes, and the ROI wasn't there because of all the extra cost and delays put in place... by the anti-nuclear lobby. Why is it the Europeans seem to be able to do this but in the US the ROI isn't there?