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10% of US Energy Derived From Old Soviet Nukes
Nrbelex writes "The New York Times reports that about 10 percent of electricity generated in the United States comes from fuel from dismantled nuclear bombs, mostly Russian. 'It's a great, easy source' of fuel, said Marina V. Alekseyenkova, an analyst at Renaissance Bank and an expert in the Russian nuclear industry that has profited from the arrangement since the end of the cold war. But if more diluted weapons-grade uranium isn't secured soon, the pipeline could run dry, with ramifications for consumers, as well as some American utilities and their Russian suppliers.'"
... oh my goodness, I can't bring myself to do it. Go on without me! For great justice!
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Nuclear weapon powers USA!
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
So the solution to the energy problems we face, is to stockpile more nukes so we can use them for fuel when they get past their "best used by" date?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
before we run out of uranium!!
For about 10 percent of electricity in the United States, it's fuel from dismantled nuclear bombs, INCLUDING Russian ones.
10% from all not all from Russia . Dammit it is the first sentence.
Think of all the countries they could have incinerated with those nukes!
... if we'd use common sense and recycle the fuel, as many other nuclear nations already do. The whole terrorist argument against this was bogus from the start. Recycle the damn fuel, and you can reuse 93 percent of it.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Right up until now I thought US foreign policy was extremely poor. I feel I must apologise for thinking that, in fact US foreign policy is an act of unparalleled genius! North Korea is being largely ignored by the US as is Iran, not because they are not dangerous (they are) but you are simply employing them to gather enough nulear armaments together that you will later use to generate power, whilst silmutaneously reducing your dependency on fossil fuel and also creating world stabalisation. Outstanding work, forward thinking and downright cunning. I salute you!
Highly enriched nuclear bomb materials are like the old surface oil wells, or gold nuggets lying in the Australian desert, way too easy to pass up. Doesn't mean there aren't stupendous reserves yet to be mined.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
If anything we should increase the amount of energy created by using nuclear fuel in this country. Every form of 'green' power has some kind of drawback that makes it less than ideal, hyrdo affects fish, solar requires nasty chemicals, geothermal is accused of causing earthquakes, wind power kills birds and so on. Point being if we're going to have widespread energy production it needs to be done on a feasible basis that responds to economy of scale. I'd love to have solar panels for my house (and will probably have them within a couple years), but that doesn't mean where I live is a good location for building solar power plants.
The biggest obstacle keeping us from using the greenest energy source we have is the pushback from groups like greenpeace. Ever notice that greenpeace never actually does research or other work to make the world a greener place? The research they do is politically motivated and centered around preventing others from doing things they are politically intolerant of. When's the last time you read a press release from greenpeace about a new technological development they made? If groups such as greenpeace were actually serious about the environment they would be all over themselves in doing everything they could in order to increase the use of nuclear energy.
The fact that the government feels it had to keep this story below the radar in the first place shows how much damage these groups have done to nuclear power. It's time for greenpeace to stand up, do the right thing, and make amends for decades of harm to the environment they have caused. They are no better than some of the old factories that dumped chemicals into rivers.
Electricity is just one part of our energy supply, but by no means all of it. Far too often the terms energy and electricity get used as if they are interchangeable, when they are not. The summary is correct, the title is not. 10% of our electricity is not the same as 10% of out total energy.
The only difference between an offensive missile and a non-offensive missle is the orbit.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
There were nukes built by Soviets. And there were nukes built for delivery to Soviets. (Intercontinental ballistic missiles: When it absolutely, positively has to be there in twenty minutes.) Whether most of that material would belong to Soviets or Americans depends on who launched first.
I don't know about Russia, but the US military frequently uses it's old launch vehicles (or at least the engines) for suborbital weapons tests and satellite launches. For example, the Minotaur series of rockets by Orbital Sciences use old Minuteman and Peacekeeper engines. I'm sure there are many other examples.
Dnepr_rocket reuses SS-18 Satan.
"Reprocessing can last us for a time but it requires more infrastructure and time to put in place."
The various estimates I've seen indicate that Reprocessing can last us a *very long* time (hundreds of years, possibly thousands of years). In the meantime, we should be working on solar (both terrestrial and space), wind, etc, and Fusion. Once we can make the leap to fusion, we don't really need any more Uranium (or only relatively small quantities) - fusion just needs water, and most countries on Earth have access to large supplies of water (of course, there are some land-locked semi-arid nations without access to much water, but you don't even really need *much* water for fusion, just some). The water doesn't even need to be fresh water, I believe - places like Israel, Palestine, Southern California, where fresh water is in short supply, still have access to lots of salt water from the Mediterranean (or other Seas/Oceans, for other countries in similar situations).
Heck, once we've unlocked fusion, you could potentially create Fusion-powered desalination plants that could solve the fresh water crises in lots of places like that - instead of using the energy to create electricity, use it to desalinate ocean water; or maybe do both simultaneously (could you create an efficient electric plant, I wonder, which uses the heat energy to boil off water from salt water, generating fresh steam, run the fresh steam through your electric turbines, condense the steam into fresh water, and pump that fresh water out of the electric plant into a water treatment plant for clorination, softening, etc)?
Do you count the cost of the original coke can when the aluminum is recycled and resold and then made into a new coke can in an infinite loop until you say we shouldn't recycle because now that coke can costs $20,000 or do you simply count the cost of the aluminum the recyclers sells you versus the cost the freshly mined/processed aluminum?
The New York Times reports that about 10 percent of electricity generated in the United States comes from fuel from dismantled nuclear bombs, mostly Russian.
Wow, that Bono really has a global impact!
#DeleteChrome
The power from old Russian nukes we use today does not offset the loss of energy we still suffer from as a result of the Cold War-era tapping of our precious bodily fluids!
In economic terms, that's a sunk or opportunity cost. Those trillions have been paid. Whether we decide to use the material or knowledge or not doesn't change the amount of money put in, and the incremental cost of actually using that is all that we should continue to worry about.
If we can take all those trillions and turn them into something good, why not do it? Ignoring the inherent benefit of breeder reactor, or fuel recycling, what do you think should be done with all that material? Bury it in the ground because it's bad? Or maybe spend it and offset the amount of radiation we're introducing into the atmosphere (from coal)?
I want to see every coal plant in the world shut down and recycled. I think a combination of nuclear, solar (photovoltaic and thermal) and wind can do the job just as well, while costing the same or even less.
http://www.google.com/finance?q=TSE:UF.UN
Just buy a few hundred shares of UF.UN and you make money if the price of the stuff goes up. And you can tell chicks that you own uranium!
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Quietly engaging in what? Buying up all of our debt so that our government can continue to spend like crazy? Fixing their currency to ours so that their goods are even cheaper for US consumers? Spending 100-150 billion dollars per year on defense while the US spends something on the order of $1 trillion per year (includes general military budget + wars)?
Call me crazy, but I don't think this is a new cold war. And even if it were, the US (and others) has the capability of killing every last man, woman, and child on the planet with nuclear weapons. I'm more concerned with local gangs than with China.
SSC
But what about all that helium? Won't that cause global warming or cooling or some other disastrous consequence for humanity?
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Isn't it better to have all that energy released gradually, instead of all at once? :)
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The problem is that you can't recycle nuclear fuel. There are always residual byproducts that last for long and have a potential to pollute eveything around them.
Well that's funny. France has recycled their fuel for years, and Japan is following suit.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Actually, I have in the past wondered the same thing, so I tried to see if I could find an answer. I don't really know for sure, but from what I could find, it seems like the answer is:
1) Helium is pretty inert, and basically won't react with any other elements to form any dangerous compounds (I think, not entirely sure about this, but that seems to be the answer)
2) Helium, apparently, won't generally hurt organic life (again, because it is so inert), although, of course, large quantities in a confined space could suffocate you.
But,
3) Helium naturally rises to the very top of the atmosphere, where there is apparently a naturally occuring layer of helium, and the helium layer up there has, from what I can tell, no adverse effects like global warming, and that helium gradually leaches off into space anyhow.
And finally, and possibly most importantly,
4) Fusion power is expected to consume very small quantities of hydrogen, and produce very small quantities of helium. I found the following bit on the ITER.org website:
So, even if there are hundreds of these around the world, eventually, it sounds like combined, they'd only maybe exhaust a ton or two of helium every year? I might be wrong, but I bet much more Helium is released from other sources - I've seen it mentioned that helium is naturally released all the time from the Earth's crust due to decay of something, maybe radon(?), and it sounds like the balloon and flowers industry releases many times the amount of Helium every year than would be released by fusion plants. ;-)
it's going to be 30 years before there viable breeder reactor producing power. It's going to take 50+ years before there's a possibility of a viable fusion reactor.
There are significant engineering problems with both now.
We had a working 40MW IFR reactor in the early 90's.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Dismantle a nuclear bomb, and you can light a city for a year. Drop a nuclear bomb...
Not only is there a bunch of helium in the upper atmosphere, helium's mass means that most helium molecules end up achieving escape velocity and just leave the atmosphere completely. There were some 'omgs running out of helium' articles a bit ago on slashdot.