IAEA Forms Nuclear Fuel Bank

Kemeno writes "The International Atomic Energy Agency voted on Friday to form a nuclear fuel bank to help developing countries acquire nuclear fuel without having to enrich uranium themselves. Warren Buffet contributed 50 million dollars to a pool of 150 million with contributions from many different countries. The goal of the program is to provide countries with a source of low-grade enriched uranium suitable for fueling reactors but not for creating nuclear weapons."

Comments

This is truly fantasic.

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides, what could possibly go wrong?

give a man a fish

[FuckingNickName]

and you keep him reliant on you for life.

Remember, only the white man is civilised enough to play with dangerous toys.

Re:give a man a fish

[Brett Buck]

So from your sarcastic comment, you believe that it's a good idea for, say, the Somali warlords to have nuclear weapons? Fascinating.

Re:give a man a fish

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a retard.

Re:give a man a fish

[Anonymous Coward]

No I think he is saying "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he will eat for life."
I don't think any current nuclear powered countries would appreciate their fuel supplies controlled and rationed by a central body.

If this is the best way, lead by example and have your fuel supplies controlled by a third party.

Oh.. you don't want to do that? National security issues? I thought so.
It is pretty hard to eat your own dog food.

Re:give a man a fish

[Brett Buck]

I got that part. It was the "only the white man..." part that seemed a little, well, stupid. Of course racist, too, but it was against caucasians so it's OK.

Re:give a man a fish

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why didn't you say that?
Talking about Somali warlords having nuclear weapons is not the same as calling someone a racist.
I call bullshit.

Re:give a man a fish

[Anonymous Coward]

Not mean too much

Buy World Of Warcraft (WOW) Gold

Re:give a man a fish

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, only the white man is civilised enough to play with dangerous toys.

Honestly, yes. When you have nothing, you have nothing to lose. The rich countries have a lot to lose, so we should be in control of weapons this powerful.

Re:give a man a fish

[zoomshorts]

"No I think he is saying "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he will eat for life."

Actually, if you teach a man to fish, he will waste untold hours drinking beer and loafing.
Careful analysis has shown this to be true. I fish.

Re:give a man a fish

[Anonymous Coward]

When US warlords have nuclear weapons and they are the only one on the earth which have used it twice, why not others?

US has started/participated perhaps more than 50 wars in recent history. It is definitely not a responsible country.

Re:give a man a fish

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you really want people like THIS to have nukes?
http://www.cracked.com/article_18850_7-modern-dictators-way-crazier-than-you-thought-possible.html

Re:give a man a fish

[Joce640k]

Do you know who Warren Buffet is or anything about him...?

Re:give a man a fish

[hcdejong]

Not that old saw again. This program would allow countries to run nuclear power plants without having to develop a hugely expensive supporting industry. The same way African countries currently import cars rather than having to develop a car industry from scratch. It's just another way of bootstrapping the economy.

Re:give a man a fish

[Anonymous Coward]

Wish that I had mod points. I would have modded you for the troll that you are. Your comment belies the fact that this is a UN operation and the UN is pretty much ran by non-white people. Just because a rich white man sees value in this, does not make it inheriting bad. In fact, far from it. Iran was trying to run part of their program through something like this with Brazil, Turkey so that they could lie. Now, if a program like this is set up, it will actually help other nations. Yet I have little doubt that trolls like you will still run around trying to destroy what is useful to all nations. Or do you prefer that smaller nations be denied the ability to run nuke plants, while allowing nations, such as Iran, and North Korea to build bombs?

Personally, I am guessing that you want one of those two nations to build those bombs.

Re:give a man a fish

[WindBourne]

While we HAVE participate in multiple wars, please tell us what wars in recent history that US started?

Perhaps we started WWI? Nope. Germany invaded others
Or WWII? Nope. Germany invaded others
Or Korean war? Nope. Communist Korea invaded south.
Or Vietnam? Nope. Communist nam invaded french held nam
Or Desert Storm I? Nope. Iraq invaded Kuwait
Or We started the nightmare in eastern Europe? Nope.
Or Afghanistan? Nope. Afghanistan launched it against the USA when they backed terrorists.
Or Desert Storm II? Well, since technically, there was a on-going war, no. However, I think that is a false. I would have to say that we DID in fact start that.

Of course, on nearly all of the other cases, it was larger nations invading smaller nations and our standing up for them. But, you do not like that. Perhaps you think that Iran should have the right to nuke say the middle east? Perhaps NK has the right to invade or nuke South Korea? Perhaps you feel that Venezuela has the right to tell Columbia and other nations what to do via terrorists so they should be allowed to build nukes?

Re:give a man a fish

[aurispector]

...yes, because all those third world countries have proven themselves to be politically stable enough to handle the responsibility. Just look at that paragon of responsibility - Pakistan. Surely the world is better off now that there is a nuclear armed nation slowly deteriorating into islamic fascism. It will end well. Really.

This kind of comment would be better aimed at ending the various aid and loan schemes developed countries use to buy off the various dictators-of-the-week. Except in that case absolutely nothing of use would occur in said third world countries. Unless you count mass starvation as useful.

Seriously, it's kind of surprising that a nuclear fuel bank as described didn't already exist.

Re:give a man a fish

[HungryHobo]

by that standard nobody has ever started a war ever.

Did Austria-Hungary start world war 1? Nope. the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Serbian nationalist did.
which is of course crap and just an excuse but that's how politics works.
Did the US start the United States occupation of Haiti? Nope. the uppity locals threatened American business interests.
etc etc

there is always an excuse.
Always.
Most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi Arabian not afghani.

Of course, on nearly all of the other cases, it was larger nations invading smaller nations and our standing up for them.

how noble that sounds.
It even sounds reasonable as long as you ignore how many such situations get totally ignored because it's nations the US gets on with doing it.

Re:give a man a fish

[Yvanhoe]

Whoever has nuclear weapons (US, Russia, China, France, Pakistan, India, North Korea and presumably Israel, so not really a "white man club") I think it is a good idea to keep this club as small as possible. Not as a mean to dominate other nations, but because proliferation simply causes problems for which we have no solution. The current solution is not ideal but until we find a good way to prevent a nuke to explode in an inhabited area, fighting to keep the number of nukes low is a good thing to do.

Re:give a man a fish

[mweather]

...yes, because all those third world countries have proven themselves to be politically stable enough to handle the responsibility.

They're every bit as stable as Pakistan is.

Re:give a man a fish

[h4rr4r]

I believe it was more a reference towards imperialism , "The Whiteman's Burden" being fine example of that time.

Re:give a man a fish

[aurispector]

That is precisely my point.

Re:give a man a fish

[Anonymous Coward]

and you keep him reliant on you for life.

If you're smart enough to recognize this, you're smart enough to turn down the fish. Independence / sovereignty is a choice, but you have to catch your own fish, if you want to keep it / them.
Remember, only the lazy and apathetic allow themselves to be herded into corrals of submissive dependence. Use your own solutions, your own resources, your own technology, to solve your own problems.

Re:give a man a fish

[WindBourne]

Odd; Did a nation attack Austria-Hungary or was there a nation that backed those serbs? Because then, yes, that WOULD make them culpable. Oh wait. No. That did NOT happen. It was Austria-Hungary looking for an excuse. However, I do not think that USA was looking to be attacked by AQ AND to have Afghanistan provide them a base from which to attack from. And my guess is that if AQ EVER attacks USA again (or any other NATO nation) FROM pakistan AND pakistan does not turn over these ppl, then I suspect that NATO WILL go into pakistan as well. As to your last comment, well, there are few nations that America does not get along with. Oddly, I think that if somebody attacked Cuba UNPROVOKED, then we might come to their aid. As it is, we are helping vietnam, and yet, just 35 years ago, we lost a war there. Finally, what occupation of Haiti have we done in the last 50 years? After all, we ARE TALKING RECENT HISTORY, not ANCIENT HISTORY. Or are you trying to say our being in haiti today to help them with the earthquake (along with a number of other nations including China and Cuba) is an occupation?

Re:give a man a fish

[Anonymous Coward]

Or creating a common market.

Re:give a man a fish

[mweather]

That we should invade and disarm Pakistan?

IKEA forms nuclear fuel bank

[faulteh]

This has to be the best addition to the IKEA catalog yet! Grab my tape measure, allen key and let's go shopping!

Re:IKEA forms nuclear fuel bank

[CaptainPatent]

I dunno, I think their last addition to the catalog was still better.

Re:IKEA Forms Nuclear Fuel Bank

[Mysund]

Aye, I did that too.
Now, where did i put my glasses?

Re:IKEA Forms Nuclear Fuel Bank

[ratokeshi]

My wife and I laughed for five minutes because when I showed it to her she said, "You thought IKEA is building Nukes didn't you?"

Neat-o.

[Anonymous Coward]

Any new power plants being planned in your country?

Mitigate Proliferation risk?

[ShooterNeo]

Can you poison the fuel used in the rods so that it can't be used in weapons at all without starting the enrichment process over from the beginning? I understand that you need 70-90% U-235 for a weapon and only about 3% to run a reactor. But 3% enriched fuel is a better starting point for making a weapon than raw ore, is it not?

Re:Mitigate Proliferation risk?

[tokul]

3% enriched fuel is a better starting point for making a weapon than raw ore

If you have uranium mines in own country and want to start clandestine manufacture of nuclear weapons, buying nuclear fuel is not better starting point. If you buy nuclear fuel, you show that you have nuclear technology, but you still don't have weapons that enforce MAD or make you nuclear weapon club member. Purchased nuclear fuel is still controlled by nuclear club.

Re:Mitigate Proliferation risk?

[Riddler Sensei]

But I suppose the idea behind this is that if you are building enriching facilities WHILE receiving fuel from this bank, that's suspicious. As opposed to the situation of, "Oh well, they have facilities but they say it's just for fuel but let's get a UN committee to herp a derp a didalee derp....in case it's for weapons".

Re:Mitigate Proliferation risk?

[CaptainPatent]

There's no need to worry about proliferation... Now excuse me...

Come Mr. Bigglesworth

*places pinky to mouth*

Re:Mitigate Proliferation risk?

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

I think you mean fuel dispersion. The 'fuel' is all going to be U-235.

Re:Mitigate Proliferation risk?

[geogob]

If you don't have enrichment capabilities, whether you start at 3% or at 0.1% is pretty much irrelevant. And assuming you could have those enrichment capabilities, using enough 3% enriched material to reach the 70-90% you state for a usable amount of weapon-grate material will required a huge quantity of low-grade fuel. This fuel quantity, most likely way above the consumption of your power plants, will raise red flags before you can do anything with it. Also, I bet someone will notice that not spent fuel rods come out of your reactors...

The risk of someone in a 3rd world county of using this fuel in an enrichment process is ridiculously low. I would be more worried about the possibility to see this fuel disappear due to corruption or lack of proper security and see it end up in dirty bombs.

Enrichment for weapon grade fuel production is way overrated and is more a modern political lever than a real threat.

Re:Mitigate Proliferation risk?

[Mindcontrolled]

Why worry about proliferation? Isn't an armed society supposed to be a polite society? Or does that not extend to nation states, especially nation states apart from the US?

Re:Mitigate Proliferation risk?

[Pseudonym Authority]

Or does that not extend to nation states, especially nation states apart from the US?

Individuals are polite because they are rational: they know that there is only one of them, that they can die, and stockpiling weapons is just a big money sink after a while, as it is not as if they can use them to get more money. The State has a... different view of things. It views weapons as an investment, because when there is no more money, it can, being sovereign, use it to take the money of others (until it is domestically exhausted and the rest of the world is fed up with it's belligerency). Also, if it starts a fight, there is usually no shortage of ants to march into the fire. This makes the surrounding nations worry about The States increasing ambition for power, so they have to start spending, lest they be the ones who fall to The State's new weapons first, especially if they have some strategic resource. Which means... arms race, fuck yeah! What is really nice is when The State can set up a military-industrial complex to maximize the amount of weapons made before the money is exhausted.
tl;dr: More bombs means more arrogance.

Re:Mitigate Proliferation risk?

[Mindcontrolled]

Excuse me a second, just pissed myself laughing. Individuals are rational? Seriously?

Re:Mitigate Proliferation risk?

[Pseudonym Authority]

Yes, individuals are rational. Groups where every member can't read every other member is where reason and coherency start to break down (usually).

Re:Mitigate Proliferation risk?

[DarkOx]

One thing about a free society is armed or not there is always going to be some level of violence. You just can't get around that unless you are just going to start collaring ever suspicious character and even then you will still have some crime. There are people who just don't think and act like the rest of us and the social factors of society are not going to result in the same behavior in those individuals that most of us exhibit.

When it comes to people caring small arms I think an armed society is a polite society, most of the time. There is going to be the occasional incident; but fewer than if people were not armed.

Nations are different. Firstly the consequences of a single incident are far far greater especially if nuclear weapons are used. In a society of 300,000,000+ while each lost life to due to crime is a tragedy we can tolerate some level of loss and cannot hope to prevent it. When nations fight 1000s die, and many lives beyond theirs are destroyed. This is much less "tolerable" but fortunately the number of countries numbers in the 100s small enough to keep an eye on them especially so the suspicious characters.

Re:Mitigate Proliferation risk?

[Mindcontrolled]

So basically, arms control on individual level is bad, because you can't round up the usual suspects before proven guilty, and arms control on nation level is good, because you can round up the usual suspects before proven guilty?

Re:Mitigate Proliferation risk?

[modecx]

It all boils down to crazy fucking nutjobs. You don't want them to have weapons, because they don't even have a pretense of rationality, which is by the way, the backbone to the utopia in Heinlein's much quoted polite society. In Beyond This Horizon, insanity, along with most other human ailments has all but been weeded out through genetic engineering. It assumes that people perform a cost-benefit analysis of their potential actions, and that is something you might say is markedly lacking amongst insane people.

Hell, you don't even want crazy people to be part of society, so you put them in places called psychiatric hospitals. They can be observed and cared for by professionals, but most importantly, they don't pose a threat to the people outside. North Korea, for example... If a psychiatrist diagnosed the country as a whole, it might read something like "Suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, compounded by aggressive delusions and degenerative megalomania"... We can't put a country into an asylum--but we can disassociate from it, and that is exactly what every other sane country did.

Why worry about proliferation? Would you give a highly-functioning, but criminally insane person the tools and materials to build a weapon, knowing full well that they're likely to do that, and then use it against someone?

Re:Mitigate Proliferation risk?

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the wikipedia article (a line which is cited from a US nuclear research lab), even 20% is weapons-usable. It wouldn't be a very efficient bomb, but it'd be a nuclear bomb. 20% is also the boundary in terms between "low enriched" and "highly enriched" uranium.

If you're going for 90% and starting at 3%, it will take at least 30 kg of input for 1 kg of output. Raw ore is maybe .7% U235, though. If you were starting completely from scratch, 1 kg of high quality bomb stuff is going to take you at least 128 kg of input. In other words, by starting at 3%, you've skipped 3/4 of the work. That's a lot less centrifuge time. There's enough material in a full scale reactor to turn into a few bombs. Sure, once you start doing it, they won't ship you any more, but it's already too late and they can't come take it back without a full scale ground invasion. Action you'd only need to stall against for three or so years, instead of ten years.

Now, three low yield nukes isn't enough to threaten high level doomsday scenarios, but it's enough to wipe out a few million people in third world border wars (more, if you want to consider terrorist scenarios vs the West). It lowers the threshold of nuking down from world war to border conflict. I don't like that.

Re:Mitigate Proliferation risk?

[Synonymous Homonym]

There are people who just don't think and act like the rest of us

You make me curious. How does the rest of you think and act?
I have observed you for a long time, and never found much homogeneity except where forced.
The remainder are a very small and isolated minority.

When it comes to people caring small arms I think an armed society is a polite society, most of the time.

I imagine the difference will be thus:
Unarmed society: "STFU I can't stand your drivel you idiot!"
Armed society: "Kindly put a sock in it, please, I don't want be bothered to pick your brains from the wall."

When nations fight 1000s die, and many lives beyond theirs are destroyed. This is much less "tolerable" but fortunately the number of countries numbers in the 100s small enough to keep an eye on them especially so the suspicious characters.

And that is why wars are mostly a thing of the past, because the other countries keep the occasional culprit who would pick a fight in check and take away their nuclear arms before anyone gets hurt. Right?

Re:Mitigate Proliferation risk?

[spiralx]

It assumes that people perform a cost-benefit analysis of their potential actions, and that is something you might say is markedly lacking amongst insane people.

Actually performing a cost-benefit analysis is something that is probably only done by insane people such as sociopaths. Real people don't operate that way on a day-to-day basis - take a look at behavioural economics for research on how people actually make decisions.

Excellent

[Black Gold Alchemist]

1. get clean energy to people in the developing world.
2. getting rid of people who oppose nuclear power in the developed world.
2. build nuclear plants.
3. synthesising gasoline and diesel fuel with nuclear power.
4. no more CO2!!! profit!

Notice: no ?????? mark step.

Re:Excellent

[LordOfLead]

?????? should be step 0. Nuclear power isn't clean energy, wind, water and solar power are.

Re:Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

ROTFL, your REALLY think that?

Pity all of them have non-trivial environmental impacts (negative, of course).

But hey, dont let reality get in the way of your religion.

Re:Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

Water, in traditional hydroelectric dams, is much more damaging to the environment than nuclear. At least, if you care about fish. Solar has fabrication and location issues. Wind has location issues.

Nuclear is the only universal source that has very low impact on the environment that produces a tremendous amount of energy. You can stick electrodes in a potato and run a clock, but that doesn't make it work on a large scale. Nuclear works large scale, and fills the gap for the immediate future.

Re:Excellent

[Haedrian]

Water might have huge environmental impacts - but wind and solar?

Alright you need a ton of energy to make a photovoltaic cell - but you still get a net energy profit, and its not like we're running low on Silicon or anything...

Still better than radioactive waste...

Re:Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

ROTFL, your REALLY think that?

Pity all of them have non-trivial environmental impacts (negative, of course).

But hey, dont let reality get in the way of your religion.

Even though it gets tiring, the best way to help these people out is education.

Wind Power: Used as less than 2% of our current energy. Creates noise pollution. Kills wildlife. Not reliable in certain world locations. Other than that, "green" (note the quotation marks)
Water Power: Used as about 8% of our current energy. Requires rerouting nature's streams, and in some cases local life (both wild and not). Given plenty of water and gravity, "green".
Solar Power: Used as less than 2% of our current energy. Needs a bunch of nasty stuff like arsenic, chromium, lead to make the panels. Given increases in technology and panel recycling, "green"
Nuclear Power: Used at about 20% of our current energy. Requires nuclear material. High energy to waste ratio. Given good waste storage practices, "green".

When it comes down to it, Water and Nuclear are the top two "green" power sources there. Wind and Solar suck pretty hard. Water and Nuclear technology is here right now. Both are mature, both are proven, both can reduce our supposed greenhouse gas problem.

Wind and solar take up too much space and are still infant technologies. Both have issues with storing energy in off-hour periods. Nuclear plants can nuke 24/7, and the tides will drive hydroelectric dams 24/7.

It's pretty much a no-brainer.

Re:Excellent

[TooMuchToDo]

Nuclear energy is the cleanest *base load power source* currently in existence. The wind doesn't always blow, the sun isn't always shining, and the alternatives are constant hydro (which doesn't lend itself to be put anywhere you want) and coal (which emits more radiation every year than nuclear power plants due to the uranium deposits in the coal that is burned, not to mention the massive amount of CO2 per ton of coal burned). People like you are the problem.

Re:Excellent

[TooMuchToDo]

Radioactive waste is a false argument. Breeder reactors would allow you to use up radioactive "waste" until it reached a point where it could be safely landfilled. Politics is the issue, not technology is the issue with regards to this in the US.

Re:Excellent

[LordOfLead]

Nuclear waste is the problem. Sorry, but there is no I'll-make-all-the-radioactive-waste-magically-vanish pixie that will do that for us.

Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_geological_repository

Re:Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

Please see https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing

Re:Excellent

[nospam007]

If it's so clean, why doesn't the US or any other country have any non-temporary place to stock and guard the ashes for the next 184000 years?

Re:Excellent

[neumayr]

Wind Power: [...]

It's not like mining coal or uranium or creating a water plant's reservoir doesn't kill wildlife. Or that any other form of powerplant doesn't create noise pollution. Sure they don't work everywhere, but that's hardly an argument not to use them where they do.

Water Power: Used as about 8% of our current energy. Requires rerouting nature's streams, and in some cases local life (both wild and not). Given plenty of water and gravity, "green".

The reservoir created when building those dams produce a huge amount of methane, producing more greenhouse gas per MW than modern coal plants. Not green.

Solar Power: Used as less than 2% of our current energy. Needs a bunch of nasty stuff like arsenic, chromium, lead to make the panels. Given increases in technology and panel recycling, "green"

In it's current state, correct. Maybe some further research and development makes it more viable, one can't really tell. There aren't many alternatives though, yet.

Nuclear Power: Used at about 20% of our current energy. Requires nuclear material. High energy to waste ratio. Given good waste storage practices, "green".

Nuclear power is extremely expensive, if you count its impact on the national economy, the infinite cost of storing dangerous waste infinitely, and especially the cost when something does go wrong - which has a probability of non-zero. Huge amounts of money that could be invested in truly sustainable power sources.

It is not a no-brainer. Tidal power plants might work, but I wouldn't exactly call it proven. Traditional river water power plants have the above mentioned drawbacks. Nuclear too.

Re:Excellent

[neumayr]

I don't get why people get so emotional when it comes to power sources, especially nuclear power.
That's no way to get anywhere. Every current power source has issues and drawbacks, but come on, can't really argue with nuclear being the most prohibitively expensive in the long term (storing of nuclear waste for an infinite amount of time), can you?

Re:Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

sigh..worst headline i have read all month (it made me actually READ the news a little)... SSSSSSOOOO!!!!!!! warren buffet (AND ALL OF YOU IDIOTS SUPPORTING NUCLEAR POWER HERE) are part of the nuclear suicide cult, determined to reduce the world to an habitat fit only for cockroaches (at least until their 'agar' runs out).

the fact that people keep on talking about improvING safety mechanisms imply that they are always needing to be improved. and when there is NO ROOM FOR ERROR, (ONE nuclear accident will ruin your whole day and turn your country into a hole: chernobyl killed ussr) the safety needs to be failsafe; and...

WHAT IS THE WORLDS MOST SCARCE AND EVER DWINDLING RESOURCE?
WHAT DO BILLIONS OF PEOPLE DRINK ONCE ALL THE FRESH WATER HAS BEEN TURNED INTO RADIOACTIVE WASTE?
CAN YOU COUNT TO 5 BILLION YEARS?
if you think that an atomic reaction of galactic temperatures (boiling water is the only goal, and we can do so more cleanly and WAAAY more efficiently with solar and solar gets one half a pubic hair's worth the funding of nuclear) that needs (ACREFEET (ANNUALLY) of evermore thereafter (5 BILLION YEARS) unuseable FRESH) water TO COOL ITSELF DOWN in our atmosphere is GOOD for global warming, then you either: WORK for nuclear power; get your TRUST FUND from nuclear power (al gore;) need raw materials for your military industrial complex and dont care HOW dirty you make the world to get it (plutonium;) secretly think you can have a society of 50 on a planet in some sort of flying bubbles after you depopulate the world, or your brain works even WORSE than mine when VAPORIZING 2 grams of HEAVY indica soil grown hydro.....PLEASE, do the world a favor: stop having opinions, one only needs one arse hole.

pax et bonum.

Re:Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

(2 grams of HEAVY soil grown hydro...... DAILY)

Re:Excellent

[TheRaven64]

Nuclear 'waste' is a really misleading name. In most cases, it's classified as waste for political, rather than technical reasons. It can often be reprocessed into fission fuel or used in decay-driven reactors like RTGs or betavoltaics. And that's ignoring things like hospital x-ray machines, which are powered by... nuclear waste. As are the machines that sterilise hospital equipment and drive radiotherapy - you might be surprised at how much nuclear 'waste' ends up in hospitals.

The entire concept of radioactive waste is flawed - if it's radioactive enough to be dangerous, then it's radioactive enough to be useful. The only waste is in burying it in the ground instead of using it.

Re:Excellent

[MachineShedFred]

Political NIMBY-ism. See: Yucca Mountain.

(Yucca Mountain would be made obsolete if we would reprocess the "waste" and load it back into the reactor, btw.)

Re:Excellent

[MachineShedFred]

Or, instead of storing a material that is 99% fuel and 1% neutron poison, you remove the 1% and recycle the 99%.

It's called nuclear fuel reprocessing, and it's being stopped by antiquated "anti-proliferation" concerns.

Re:Excellent

[LordOfLead]

If it's so useful, then why are people still burying it underground? Why not dig out the waste we already buried? If it's such a great stuff, I can think of a few nations who'd be happy to send you some tons of highly-radioactive material they don't want.

On the other hand (not that I change my opinion), I always thought that probably the most clever way to get rid of nuclear waste permanently would be to put it on a rocket and shoot it into the sun. Would that work?

Re:Excellent

[neumayr]

Proliferation concerns are antiquated?

Re:Excellent

[prefec2]

Ah yes breeder reactors. Nice theory. However, they are not working. And the test reactors in this field still produced a lot of radioactive waste. The point is, there is a lot of money in nuclear power, while there is not so much money for the big companies in renewable energy.

Re:Excellent

[prefec2]

The sun is definitely shining every day. Maybe not in your garden, but some miles away. You could easily generate enough energy in North Africa to power the whole world and definitely Europe and Africa. And the wind is blowing every day. you can see that when you look at those fabulous weather maps. These big cycling thingies are constantly moving which indicates wind. There might not be wind in your garden every day, but I can tell you that there was no day the past 15 years where there were no wind at the complete coast around the North Sea.

On the other hand nuclear power is not clean and it is not save. And it is expensive. And a real problem when a state fails. Oh wait. Western countries never fail. I forgot that. We will exist forever or at least the next 100 000 years or so.

Re:Excellent

[Mashiki]

Yeah better let Canada, Japan and S.Korea know. Because we use both 'dangerous' fuel in our reactors, and use use breeder reactors for other things. In fact in Canada we still use breeder reactors to make ~90% of the worlds nuclear isotopes, including those for nuclear medicine.

Re:Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

Wind causes low frequency noise that causes psychological problems to everyone and everything around it....

Re:Excellent

[qazsedcft]

The energy required would probably be higher than what you could get out of the nuclear fuel. Remember: shooting something into the Sun doesn't cost zero energy. The Earth's orbital speed is about 30 km/s and there's no atmosphere to loose that velocity.

Re:Excellent

[careysub]

Radioactive waste is a false argument. Breeder reactors would allow you to use up radioactive "waste" until it reached a point where it could be safely landfilled....

You're right it is a false argument, but for an entirely different reason.

The current method of storing spent fuel - in 10 ton concrete casks on the surface (currently co-located with the power reactor) - is inexpensive and entirely adequate for the foreseeable future. There is no need to remove the fuel from the casks.

Breeder reactors still produce high level waste and thus do not fix any waste problems. An even more serious problem - no one has ever successfully operated one.

Re:Excellent

[Synonymous Homonym]

1. get clean energy to people in the developing world.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/12/02/1431211/Sahara-Solar-To-Power-Half-the-World-By-2050

2. getting rid of people who oppose nuclear power in the developed world.

That is one big ?????? step.

2. build nuclear plants.

Done. Profit.

3. synthesising gasoline and diesel fuel with nuclear power.

I think you mean "without nuclear fuel":
http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/07/16/2027230/Novel-Algae-Fuel-Farming-Method-Gets-Big-Backing
http://slashdot.org/story/09/07/27/1747237/Company-Claims-Potential-Magnification-In-Bio-Fuel-Production

4. no more CO2!!! profit!

By which I hope you mean fossil CO2.

Re:Excellent

[Muad'Dave]

Yes, given that the reprocessing methods proposed do not ever have useful isotopes for weapons available:

But there is plutonium in IFRs, along with other fissionable isotopes. Seems to me that a proliferator could take some of that and make a bomb.

Some people do say that, but they're wrong, according to expert bomb designers at Livermore National Laboratory. They looked at the problem in detail, and concluded that plutonium-bearing material taken from anywhere in the IFR cycle was so ornery, because of inherent heat, radioactivity and spontaneous neutrons, that making a bomb with it without chemical separation of the plutonium would be essentially impossible - far, far harder than using today's reactor-grade plutonium.

This is a bad idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

Used correctly nuclear power is a clean energy source. The problem is used correctly nuclear power is not a cheap energy source. As nuclear power plants cut corners they find creative ways to ruin the environment. To me it seems like the developing world would be those most likely to cut corners to save cost, and ignore the health of themselves and the environment.

Nuclear weapons == influence on world stage?

[Anonymous Coward]

God forbid additional nations develop nuclear weapons: more countries would need to be taken seriously.

We may even need to increase the permanent members of the security council.
(That is how you acquire membership, isn't it?)

Re:Nuclear weapons == influence on world stage?

[Totenglocke]

It's not about "needing to be taken seriously". The problem is that we know that nuclear war would royally fuck up the entire planet and kill most people - so countries that are batshit crazy (like Iran) that can't be trusted not to just start nuking every one who they don't like don't start a nuclear war and kill the entire human race.

Re:Nuclear weapons == influence on world stage?

[Mindcontrolled]

And how exactly would a country like Iran "kill the entire human race"? At best, they'd get one bomb on target and be pounded into dust afterwards. The real point is - one single bomb would protect them from the USA bringing them "freedom". Can't have that, can we? Thought you are about "promoting liberty", by your sig? Doesn't that extend to Iran running its own nuclear program? Ah, I get it, it is "liberty for the privileged to shit on everyone else". Nothing to see there, just another libtard. Move along.

Re:Nuclear weapons == influence on world stage?

[Totenglocke]

Not when Iran has openly said that they'd use nuclear weapons to start a war (they launch a nuke, the US, China, Russia, etc launch nukes to retaliate, etc). Freedom comes with responsibility. Iran has admitted to being irresponsible. You don't have the freedom to kill others for shits and giggles.

Re:Nuclear weapons == influence on world stage?

[Mindcontrolled]

When again as Iran started a war? How many wars have the US started for purely geopolitical reasons? How many batshit crazy dictatorships have the US propped up, because they were "their bastards"? Don't get me wrong, in my opinion, no one should have nuclear arms, but if you start selectively banning nations from it, you gotta have some kind of standard. And by none of mine, the US would qualify.

Re:Nuclear weapons == influence on world stage?

[Totenglocke]

You're not going to get the countries that have them to give them up - however, the ones that do have them have shown to be responsible enough not to start a nuclear war. You won't get an argument from me about the US getting into lots of pointless wars, but the wars that the US gets into aren't "lets eradicate a country / race / religion off the map" - which is very different from the type of wars these third world dictatorships talk about waging if they get nuclear weapons.

I'd be just fine with them having nuclear weapons as a deterrent if they showed themselves to be responsible enough not to START a nuclear war (retaliation is another story).

Re:Nuclear weapons == influence on world stage?

[Mindcontrolled]

Guess we can agree on that then. Sorry for going all out in the first post - I am in a particularly cranky mood today :P

Re:Nuclear weapons == influence on world stage?

[santax]

So if Iran is batshit crazy, how do you call a country that is so goddamn retarded to have used 2 on big cities?

Re:Nuclear weapons == influence on world stage?

[wmac]

Whose more crazy?

a) a country which has never attacked any other country in recent history i.e. 200 years.

b) a country which has started/participated in almost 50 wars, has done coup in at least 10 countries and has used 2 atomic bombs?

Re:Nuclear weapons == influence on world stage?

[wmac]

You want to prove your point by using lies. When Iran openly said that?

Re:Nuclear weapons == influence on world stage?

[Anonymous Coward]

It was during a war you idiot. And the japs were attacking us, why should have our American soldiers died while beach heading japan, when it was safer for OUR people to just glass them? The duty of a nation to protect its own people must be before its duties to protect the people of other nations. You don't like it in our country, the United States of America, then you can GTFO, no one is going to miss you.

Re:Nuclear weapons == influence on world stage?

[Anonymous Coward]

It for the holy war you idiot. And the infidels were attacking us, why should have out Islamist soldiers died while beach heading Isreal, when it was safer for OUR people to just glass them? The duty of a nation to protect its own people must be before its duties to protect the people of other nation. You don't like it in our contry, the Islamic Republic of Iran, then you can GTFO, no one is going to miss you.

Re:Nuclear weapons == influence on world stage?

[Anonymous Coward]

While i agree that B is sick and should not be trusted with any weapons. A is no longer peaceful and should not be trusted with weapons since 1979, thank to B's intervention.

Re:Nuclear weapons == influence on world stage?

[Anonymous Coward]

When have the Iranians "openly" stated that they will use nuclear weapons?
Could you be more specific please?
This puzzles me, because I remember their Great Ayatollah saying that nuclear weapons are "unislamic".

Re:Nuclear weapons == influence on world stage?

[shutdown -p now]

That is how you acquire membership, isn't it?

No, it's not. UNSC permanent members are the five major WW2 Allied powers. When the Council was first formed, of all its members, only US had nuclear weapons.

The same five countries also happen to be the only five "nuclear weapon states" under the non-proliferation treaty, but that is so only because they already had nukes by the time the treaty came into power. All other countries which possess nuclear weapons are not members of the treaty.

prerequisites

[r00t]

government solidly in control

government elected by people

people lack severe ethnic/religion/language/race bias

not about to get blitzkreiged by a neighbor

Re:prerequisites

[Mindcontrolled]

So, the question remains. You oppose giving unstable states weapons of war - do you oppose giving unstable persons handguns? The logic is the same.

Re:prerequisites

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/content/41/17/6.short?rss=1&ssource=mfc

Re:prerequisites

[r00t]

Yeah, and shotguns and steak knives and crowbars...

The most stable people should get subsidized handguns, then taxed if they refuse to carry them.

"most stable" means:

good credit, married 7 years or more, no history of violence or substance abuse by anybody in the household, holds a driver license, etc.

Re:prerequisites

[Anonymous Coward]

Even a *mass* shooting does less damage than a nuclear bomb.

Uh wait...

[Haedrian]

So instead of supporting that poor countries get stuff like photovoltaics - which are modular, can be upgraded and are pretty much portable and 'place anywhere' (and clean!) - we're encouraging them to use something that involves transporting radioactive materials to what is essentially a very expensive environment-ruining nuclear-timebomb which they will need to pay for, build enough power infrastructure - roads for getting the enriched uranium in, and places to dump the very dangerous waste.

They should just give them free photovoltaics - you can just set a mini-plant in any of the villages, and you don't need expensive infrastructure either - nor a backup-plan when shoddy maintenance causes a meltdown.

What are these people smoking?

Re:Uh wait...

[quokkaZ]

What are you smoking?

Many developing countries have grids where the lights go out on a regular basis because of a the lack of baseload generation capacity. They are in desperate need of baseload (coal, nuclear, gas or hydro) to stabilize their grids and meet demand. You cannot do this with PV - period. Nuclear is the least environmentally damaging option and the lowest cost low emission technology.

Notably Vietnam and Bangladesh have recently signed agreements with Russia to build two VVER nuclear power plants in each country. Vietnam looks to be about to conclude a contract with Japan for two more reactors.

Re:Uh wait...

[Mindcontrolled]

While PV won't provide baseload, solar thermal can and will - particularly in tropical/subtropical regions with highly predictable sunshine.

Re:Uh wait...

[JSBiff]

Nice to see the fine slashdot tradition of making bold, unsupported statements, declared as absolute truth, is still alive and well.

"to what is essentially a very expensive environment-ruining nuclear-timebomb"

Oh, really? Please, do, provide some actual *science and engineering* based source for this assertion. Before you trot out the old "Chernobyl", do note that *nobody*, except *nobody* is building any plants that are similar to the Chernobyl design, and that modern designs have multiple layers of safety in their designs that Chernobyl lacked. If Nuclear Reactors are so dangerous, so environment ruining, such ticking timebombs, how come in 60 years of nuclear plant operation, Chernobyl is the *one and only* accident which released any significant radioactive material into the environment? Modern plant designs are very safe, and even in the very unlikely event of a meltdown accident, are extremely unlikely to release any significant radioactivity into the environment.

Unlike you, I'll provide a source for my assertions: Ted Rockwell's Nuclear Facts Report. Now, that report is very long, but it's also well supported with bibliography references to many sources, including peer-reviewed studies by professional engineers and scientists.

You might bring up Three Mile Island, or Davis-Besse. Three Mile Island was unfortunate, but was only a disaster for the investors who payed for it. It got worse than it should have, but even in that situation, only a very small amount of slightly radioactive (very slightly) steam was released from the plant, but no other radioactive materials or radiation was released. TMI had an actual meltdown, and it wasn't an environmental or public safety disaster.

In the meantime, the nuclear plants being built now have been built with better safety designs than older generation II plants - a TMI type incident, although we can't call it completely impossible, is much more unlikely than it was with the TMI design. The Nuclear Industry has spent many Billions of dollars on R&D to design new, safer plants, and shepherd those new designs through strict regulatory oversight bodies like the NRC to get them approved.

I truly don't believe those new power plants are at all "environment-ruining nuclear-timebombs".

About the waste - the truth is, we should be recycling the spent fuel. The only proper, responsible final 'disposal' for spent nuclear fuel is to seperate out the short lived 'true waste' products from the rest of the fuel, and keep re-using the fuel until it's all converted to short lived waste. We *have* the technology to turn our current nuclear waste, which is radioactive for 100,000+ years into short-lived waste which essentially becomes non-radioactive after about 200 years - I think we *can* safely store the waste for 200 years, but I've never heard anyone who thought we could really store it for 100k+ years.

Sometime, try googling for "Integral Fast Reactor" - it's a fascinating read.

Finally, on your comment, "They should just give them free photovoltaics - you can just set a mini-plant in any of the villages". Really, do you really think a few PV panels in a village is going to provide enough power? For what? Each household can run one or two LED or CFL lights? What if that village needs power for running a water treatment plant, or a desalination plant? What if they want to have businesses and small industry which need enough power to run machinery, commercial refrigeration units, etc? What if the villagers want heat, hot water, and electric stoves in their homes, instead of burning wood or coal for those needs? You think a few PV panels in town and on the roof will provide enough power for all that? What about the big cities? Even the most undeveloped countries usually have at least a Capital city, if not a few others? What about future growth? That small village, as it gets access to clean water and power, might start to

Re:Uh wait...

[JSBiff]

And what do you do during the evening, night, and early morning when there's no or too little sunlight? Oh, right, you burn natural gas. I suppose that's not the worst outcome in the world. I suppose it's better to burn natural gas part of the time, than to burn coal all of the time.

I suppose you could also supplement solar with wind - sun doesn't shine at night, but the wind often blows, so you might be able, with the combination, to get enough power, but it will be expensive power with current technology. Nuclear, even though the plants are expensive (but getting cheaper, at least outside the U.S. and Europe), just provides *so much* power that when you break it down to a per-unit-energy basis, it's actually the least-expensive alternative.

Re:Uh wait...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I truly don't believe those new power plants are at all "environment-ruining nuclear-timebombs".

I'm as big a proponent of IFR technology as anyone, but it is head-in-the-sand thinking to expect that waste from this program is going to be recycled any better than we've done for the last 30 years. Practically nobody is doing it today, ain't no way third world countries are going to be the ones that start doing it even half right.

Re:Uh wait...

[Mindcontrolled]

Molten salt solarthermal has enough storage capacity for night load, if it gets close, supplement with pumped storage, if it gets even closer, yes, supplement with natural gas. What the hell is it with this rabid ideological opposition to solar? Do you think it is somehow unamerican or something?

Re:Uh wait...

[quokkaZ]

Solar thermal may be cheaper than PV but is still a lot more expensive than nuclear. The Arithmetic adds up to Nuclear

I'm not aware that there is any solar thermal plant in existence that has anything like the 90% capacity factor of nuclear. Andasol 1 and 2 in Spain as I understand it have 7 hours of storage. The most likely scenario for solar thermal is that it is backed up by gas in the immediate future.

Re:Uh wait...

[Mindcontrolled]

Don't get me wrong - I am not exactly arguing against nuclear here. We will need a mix of sources anyway. I am just wondering, why there is this hate against solar.

On the topic of Andasol - Andasol 1 is the first large scale salt storage system now - I'd consider that still experimental. And there is growth potential in my opinion. No doubt that with the current implemented tech, you need gas backup, but that is not a fundamental point against the technology.

Re:Uh wait...

[JSBiff]

Err, perhaps I wasn't clear. I agree that Fast Reactor technology is going to start in more developed places - China and India, I believe, already have plans to build some, here in the U.S. GE-Hitachi recently announced they have reached an agreement with the DoE to build a prototype PRISM plant (PRISM is the commercialized version of IFR, from what I understand).

When I made the statement, "I truly don't believe those new power plants are at all 'environment-ruining nuclear-timebombs'", I wasn't referring to IFR or other "Gen IV" reactors - I was talking about the Gen III plants being proposed for these small developing nations - things like the ABWR, EBWR, AP-1xxx, EPR, etc.

Re:Uh wait...

[JSBiff]

I'm not radily ideologically opposed to solar power. I just think that *right now*, the economics of it currently don't make sense. Also, Solar generally needs very large land-use (although, I think I've seen somewhere that you can do things like graze livestock on land with solar panels (or mirrors in the case of solar thermal), if you raise the panels/mirrors up high enough. People like to make the claim that nuclear is 'too expensive', but on a per-unit basis, the figures I've seen show solar to be 2-3x more expensive than nuclear.

Re:Uh wait...

[Mindcontrolled]

Yeah, that might very well be. But keep in mind that at the moment you are comparing a decades-old nuclear technology to a quite experimental solar one. Just comparing the costs 1:1 is not a realistic picture. I am not saying that you can provide all our electricity needs by solar, but I think it should be part of the mix. Especially with projects like Desertec coming up. Nuclear is just another part of the mix - I am not opposing that. All these discussions, however, seem to end up in a nuclear vs. solar standoff, which is, frankly, bullshit.

Re:Uh wait...

[DrKnark]

Not to mention that since these countries will be using fuel from an international pool, there is no reason why that fuel can't be used in Gen IV reactors located in other countries. Sweden for example has sent some "spent" fuel to France for use in the Phenix reactors (I forget which one of the two).

Re:Uh wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree - my uncle helped design the first generation nuclear power plants, now I agree that a lot was to be said for the lack of safety concerns, (which couldn't have been thought of at that time - in the 50's) even back then the waste fuel was not as big a deal as these nuclear noobs would have everyone believe. and with the current methods of recycling the used fuel, is almost completely environmentally friendly - try that with fossil fuel, or wind (affects wildlife) or hydro (millions of sq kms and even important archeological sites are now underwater) or solar (vast resources used in production of solar cells with relatively little power/cost of production) - everyone is brainwashed so badly! wake up world!

Re:Uh wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

France is building a fast reactor to re-burn waste, they passed a law saying they have to start by 2020 i think.
Also i see no reason why if fuel is delivered to once through reactors in developing countries it couldn't be collected and reused in fast reactors in developed countries. In fact are there not concepts for ship borne electricity generators that would facilitate the transport?

Re:Uh wait...

[JSBiff]

For what it's worth, I agree - I think the economics of solar *will* improve over time (I also think the economics of nuclear will improve over time). I also think that there are places in this world, like that Sahara project you mention, and places like Texas, Arizona, NV, CA, etc. where solar makes sense (once the tech is cheap enough). I also often see solar proponents making sort of ridiculous suggestions - like, for example, I live in the Great State of Ohio. As far as I know, the economics of solar don't really make sense for places like Ohio, but because of government "incentives" (read, "subsidies"), there are solar farms popping up around Ohio. We'll see if long term those actually make sense, but my understanding of the economics of solar energy leads me to believe it'll just end up being unreliable, expensive power and largely a waste of taxpayer money.

Re:Uh wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

TMI predated the standard HAZOP (HAZard and OPerability) studies which are pretty much the corner stone of any industrial plant design these days. It's not some completely unimaginable failure mode either and would have been shown by even the least knowledgeable HAZOP team. High Flow through the loop would have identified the PORV as a failure mode straight away. Recommendation would likely have been a flow meter and an alarm.

Back when these plants were built the cost of instrumentation and control made up a large chunk of the budget. They are now trivial to the point where the major problem is not that the operators can't see what's going on, but rather too much information and in the case of an upset a flurry of alarms.

30 years ago we didn't have personal computers. Why do the readers of slashdot of all the people in the world assume that industry technology hasn't changed? GP is an idiot.

Re:Uh wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

There's the cost of potential events of securing reactors, waste disposal sites, etc. for the period of time needed, the cost of potential and likely accidents (Chernobyl wasn't exactly cheap) , the cost of transporting nuclear fuel, and the potential damage by terrorism, military attacks, or military use of the infrastructure.

Tell me that now and in the future, all these nations who would like to solve their energy problems will not cut any corners and run the safest possible nuclear operations, well aware that any larger event will cost the world hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars, and even themselves a lot of money...

the risk is high

[r00t]

Once you have reactor grade fuel, you can create plutonium. That only requires an easy chemical separation, so you won't be needing centrifuges.

Re:the risk is high

[Iskender]

Once you have reactor grade fuel, you can create plutonium. That only requires an easy chemical separation, so you won't be needing centrifuges.

I don't know if this is the case, but I'll assume it's true. Luckily plutonium is tricky: there are several isotopes in it all the time, and no one separates them. Some of the isotopes want to do things that stop the runaway nuclear reaction.

So uranium is ridiculously hard to enrich and plutonium is ridiculously hard to explode. We're very lucky this happens to be the case. North Korea's first nuclear test is widely regarded to have fizzled because they couldn't handle plutonium properly, for instance. It's doable (I seem to remember NK getting it right the second time) but it requires lots of money, which North Korea for instance only has because the rulers only concentrate on their own power.

Re:the risk is high

[MachineShedFred]

The problem with Pu is that only the 239 isotope is suitable for weapons, and if you have too much 240 or 241 (more than about 3%) then it isn't stable enough to fission when you want it to. Pu-240 and -241 spontaneously fission, leaving daughter products that absorb your neutrons.

Isotopic separation isn't done with Plutonium because the atomic weights of the isotopes are too similar. Cascading centrifuges won't get the job done, and chemical separation won't get the job done.

In order to create Pu-239 for weapons purposes, you have to use a ridiculously short fuel cycle in a specially configured reactor - it's quite obvious to the inspectors that will undoubtedly be required to be present should you sign contracts with the IAEA to get this fuel.

Re:the risk is high

[willy_me]

Problem is that when the used fuel is not returned, no new fuel is delivered. So overall, it can be safe.

Re:the risk is high

[careysub]

The problem with Pu is that only the 239 isotope is suitable for weapons, and if you have too much 240 or 241 (more than about 3%) then it isn't stable enough to fission when you want it to. Pu-240 and -241 spontaneously fission, leaving daughter products that absorb your neutrons.

Isotopic separation isn't done with Plutonium because the atomic weights of the isotopes are too similar. Cascading centrifuges won't get the job done, and chemical separation won't get the job done.

In order to create Pu-239 for weapons purposes, you have to use a ridiculously short fuel cycle in a specially configured reactor - it's quite obvious to the inspectors that will undoubtedly be required to be present should you sign contracts with the IAEA to get this fuel.

Remarkably - not a single statement in the above post is correct.

There are reasons why nations with large nuclear weapons programs prefer low burn-up plutonium but nuclear weapons can be made from high-burn-up power reactor plutonium, it is simply more complex to do so, and the weapons themselves are need shielding in storage to keep soldiers from exceeding occupational safety limits. A nation only with fuel grade plutonium can still develop adn make weapons with it.

Plutonium can be isotopically enriched, in fact since you simply removing impurities, rather than trying to extract weapon fuel present in trace amounts in natural sources (the usual case), it is actually much easier. Ony 4 kg of feedstock is needed for processing to make one bomb if plutonium is being isotopically purified vs 3000 kg of natural uranium for a U-235 weapon. Electromagnetic separation would be the method of choice, but gas centrifuges can be adapted to this.

Re:the risk is high

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in your control rods, absorbing your neutrons...

Re:the risk is high

[careysub]

Well this proves the questionable value of the "troll" marking - I'm actually a recognized expert on this subject and everything I have said here can be verified.

Check out Carson Mark's (former head of the Theoretical Division of Los Alamos) treatise on exactly this topic "Reactor-Grade Plutonium's Explosive Properties": www.nci.org/NEW/NT/rgpu-mark-90.pdf.

If Mr. Buffet really wants to change the world...

[SteveMurphy]

...and leave a legacy that will improve life in smaller countries, he should champion the development of cheap, abundant, safe nuclear power in the form of the Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactor (LFTR). Thorium is far more abundant than Uranium and the plants are potentially much smaller and cheaper.

Most horrible

[Kim0]

If they are not able to enrich uranium themselves, then they are certainly not able to take care of the spent fuel, which is much harder.

The idea of renting out whole self contained reactors is better, because they can be returned intact.

Re:Most horrible

[theNAM666]

You got a spare 200 kiloton CONTAINED reactor to rent?

Re:Most horrible

[apavel]

Since when reactor power measured in tonns?

Re:Most horrible

[theNAM666]

Power? Weight!

P.S. We will gladly test your spare reactor if you ship it for free and guarantee return freight if we don't like it.

If I were a country

[Anonymous Coward]

If I were a country in this current world I wouldn't want to depend on this pool of fuel. Other groups would have too much power over me, I'd rather be independent. Maybe if this was a Star Trek type world, with people being good at heart things would be different.

Hilarity.

[Anonymous Coward]

Water is clean? I guess if you don't count the destruction of ecosystems due to the need to divert and dam(n) rivers.

Wind? Solar? If you're splitting hairs and calling nuclear unclean, then I'm going to split hairs right back: Come up with a magical process, especially for solar, that doesn't involve horrible chemicals and the pollution they cause, did you? Nice. Where do I send my check to invest?

Re:Hilarity.

[TheRaven64]

Water power doesn't just mean hydroelectric, it also includes wave and tidal power. These have very low environmental impact, although getting large amounts of energy out of them is pretty hard.

http://www.jordaner.com

[Anonymous Coward]

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Nuclear waepons

[santax]

So the only country that was filthy and retarded enough to use not one, but even two... is telling others that they can't have those same weapons? Sjee, I wonder why.

Re:Nuclear waepons

[quokkaZ]

For a perspective on the role of nuclear weapons in US foreign policy see here: Empire and Nuclear Weapons

In addition to using nuclear weapons, the US has also threatened to use nuclear weapons on more occasions than all other nations combined.

Re:Nuclear waepons

[astar]

A basic reason nuke plants put out a lot of radioactive waste is the the rational solution of reprocessing the waste is very actively discouraged. Even the development of the tech has been discouraged. And the reason is fear of nuclear proliferation because most of the current fuel cycles produce plutonium. Hmm, this issue is also why we do not have a lot of breeder reactors and people complain there is not enough fuel to support nuclear energy. It happens that now a lot of countries existentially need nuclear energy and countries like India are actively developing "novel" fuel cycles, some of which provide new avenues to do nuke weapons.

A bit of history is relevant. When I was a kid, the national policy was to have in the US over a thousand nuclear power plants ... by what is now yesterday. This is say a trillion watts output. I would wish we had the trillion watts... yesterday. Instead, the world is in a big time malthusian terminal crisis unnecessarily and as a result of policy decision like not building nuclear power plants. Now if you are a sovereign nation and as all would agree have the sovereign right under established international law to build nuclear power plants and domestic fuel capabilities, do you really *want* to forgo a domestic fuel capability? This is over and beyond the general defects of not developing in-nation tech capability on *any* tech. Colonial American was not supposed to have any tech either. Do you really *want* to say nations cannot develop tech? I cannot think of a tech that is *legally* prohibited. You might say "biological warfare" or "poison gas weapons" in addition to "nuclear weapons", but you are really not paying attention to the details.

Re:Nuclear waepons

[Anonymous Coward]

santax (1541065)
quokkaZ (1780340)

^^^^ Look everybody! Real, live idiots!

Re:Nuclear waepons

[TCPhotography]

In addition to using nuclear weapons, the US has also threatened to use nuclear weapons on more occasions than all other nations combined.

That's because the US has
1. Had them for longer
2. Had more of them than other people for a a significant period of time (The US arsenal was larger than the Soviet one up into the 70's)
2A. Has enough of them to ensure a reliable deterrent even in the event of a first strike removing most of the devices from the arsenal (this is why NEW START is bad - it gets force levels low enough that ABM [which isn't and shouldn't go away] and a first strike can eliminate the threat of a counter attack).
3. For over a decade had a policy of using conventional forces as a tripwire for the nuclear forces (see the development of nuclear artillery and the Pentomic Division).

Re:Nuclear waepons

[Creepy Crawler]

I say have the US military run the reactors.

Have them exempt from standard safety and architectural laws per state, and devise a foolproof reactor plan that is to be copied everywhere in the US. These reactors will then be run by the US Military (I suggest Navy due to excess of nuke carriers). People in the Navy have the requisite knowledge to maintain and repair these type of reactors. We know that for-profit businesses cut and crimp where they should not, as BP did with skipping required safety protocols.

And gee, if the Military is running the reactors, they also have security covered as well. They can legally have flakkers, SAMs, and heavily armed personnel. "What, you have an airplane? I have firey death for you."

As per the "OMG THEY WILL MAKES MORE NUKES!!!" You have not just 1 reactor, but a series of them. Output of #1 goes in as input to #2. And you keep going for about 5 jumps until you get "glowing lead". Milk that fissionable product for all of its energy.

Re:Nuclear waepons

[astar]

This is to me an interesting and novel idea. Maybe a new function of the Army Corp of Engineers?

As far as navy nuclear reactors, as far as we know, they have a 50+ year perfect safety record?

Or try this if you do not favor simple military solutions. Have a paramilitary civilian operator corp and the trick is that they must have all their families living on site. :>-) And also maybe the nuke regulatory people and their politicians and their families, and maybe.. all the congress critters. :>-) Oh, akll all the construction people up to include the board of directors of the construction firm.

Re:Nuclear waepons

[Tacvek]

You realize that the proper way to use nuclear fuel is have a breeding reactor where the waste is reprocessed on-site, with everything still burnable (the vast majority) separated from the true waste, and fed back in.

The design I am most familar with is the IFR, which was intended to e built into say the side of a mountain. Once the reactor is started, no fuel ever enters or leaves the facility. The design would have burned a wide range of fuels, including waste from previous generation reactors.

The actual wastes not fed back in were intended to be be either extremely long half-life waste (277,000 to 15 million years), which would actually be less radioactive than uranium ore, or much shorter half-life waste (~5-90 years).

The result: the mixture would decay to the radiation levels found in raw ore in only 200 years, rather than the tens of thousands of years of most currently operating reactors.

Although the IFR project was abandoned by the US government, GE-Hitachi is actively developing a version of it, albeit one that requires off-site storage of the final waste (but only for 200 years).

Also some other modern reactor designs share many of the important characteristics of the IFR.

Borat

[theNAM666]

Hello Nuclear Fuel Bank? My name Borat. I want make withdrawal, benefit my nation Tajikistan.

Re:Borat

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear.... I'm scared ,but I need

Re:Borat

[el3mentary]

Borat's from Kazakhstan, Tajikstan is a completely different country.

Paywall

[Anonymous Coward]

Here are a couple of alternatives to the paywall story:

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9JSK4HO0.htm

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2010-12/04/c_13634288.htm

http://www.google.com/search?q=iaea+nuclear+bank

Asimov's Foundation

[ensignyu]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism_(Foundation)

The Foundation presents nuclear (atomic) power as a religion, allowing their uncivilized neighbors access to the technology without understanding how it worked. Maintenance is done through ritual and ceremonies.

The original story was published in 1942.

The comments might be different if...

[Anonymous Coward]

You watched the movie "Countdown to zero".

kthxbye

IKEA Forms Nuclear Fuel Bank

[shanec]

Did anyone else read this as "IKEA Forms Nuclear Fuel Bank?"

My first thought was, "Man, those stores really do have everything!"

Well sure

[Sycraft-fu]

So long as the Chinese are now white.

And the Indians.

Of course those are just the two major non "white man" countries with nuclear weapons. Other countries have nuclear power, but not weapons. Brazil and Taiwan to name two.

The thing is it would be nice to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of crazies and unstable countries. Nuclear weapons aren't dangerous, and even can help prevent war, but only when they are in the hands of people who are loathe to use them. So long as they act as nothing but deterrents, they are fine. Not saying we might not be better off without them, but when they play only a deterrence role there's no problem.

Nuclear power, on the other hand, is something good for everyone. Modern reactors are very safe. It is a good way to cheaply supply a lot of energy, and a society needs energy to improve quality of life. Poor countries face many challenges, but energy is one of them and nuclear energy could really help out.

This creates a problem though. If they can turn the energy tools in to weapons, well then you can end up having nuclear arms in the hands of people who would use them out of spite, ignorance, etc. If you don't believe that have a look at the Vice Travel Guide to Liberia. We are talking about places where soldiers sacrificed children and ate their hearts.

Thus you can see while getting them nuclear power would be nice, countries want to make sure they don't get nuclear weapons with it.

I don't particularly mind the US or China having nuclear weapons. I really can't see either ever using them capriciously. I would mind Liberia or Congo having them because all it takes is whatever warlord gets them having an attack of the crazies and a lot of people are going to die.

Re:Well sure

[nospam007]

'Modern reactors are very safe. '

Insurance companies don't believe that for some reason.

Re:Well sure

[PeterBrett]

'Modern reactors are very safe. '

Insurance companies don't believe that for some reason.

Well, yes. They can make more money that way.

Re:Well sure

[DerekLyons]

Of course those are just the two major non "white man" countries with nuclear weapons. Other countries have nuclear power, but not weapons. Brazil and Taiwan to name two.

And Brazil had a nuclear weapons program and gave it up. Then there's Pakistan, decidedly non white... and North Korea too.
 
So the OP is decidedly ignorant of the nuclear geography of the world, or just ignorant period.

Re:Well sure

[craklyn]

According to the World Nuclear Association:

All nuclear reactors, at least in the west, are insured. Not only so, they are a sought-after risk because of their high engineering and operational standards. Beyond the cover for individual plants there are national and international pooling arrangements for comprehensive cover.

Perhaps the World Nuclear Association has some bias or they're refering to something different than you are. It's hard to evaluate that since you don't include a source, though.

Re:Well sure

[khallow]

Insurance companies don't believe that for some reason.

It's not what they believe. It's what they don't know and the size of the don't knows. Some of them are physical (like the infamous "meltdown") and some of them are political (like being liable to pay out to a zillion people for a radiation leak that couldn't hurt one person).

Re:Well sure

[neumayr]

Nuclear weapons aren't dangerous, and even can help prevent war, but only when they are in the hands of people who are loathe to use them. So long as they act as nothing but deterrents, they are fine. Not saying we might not be better off without them, but when they play only a deterrence role there's no problem.

They're harmless as long as they're just lying around, sure. But there has to be a system in place for their use, wouldn't be much of a deterrent otherwise. And those systems cannot be perfect, there will be and have been grave errors of judgement, occasions where a nuclear strike was way too likely for anybody's comfort level. Things happen, people make errors, and wielding that much destructive force the probability for errors needs to be zero. And it isn't.

Nuclear power, on the other hand, is something good for everyone. Modern reactors are very safe. It is a good way to cheaply supply a lot of energy, and a society needs energy to improve quality of life.

Nuclear energy is not cheap. A large part of its costs are paid for by taxes and don't directly show up on the power bill, so it appears cheap. It puts a large burden on a nation's economy, lots of money that could be better spent on researching viable alternatives imho.
Also, the current "solution" of nuclear waste disposal has a price tag of infinity, as the disposal sites have to be monitored and maintained for an infinite amount of time.

The security concerns for nuclear weapons also apply to nuclear plants, making the reactors, no matter how safe, not safe enough. The cost of something going wrong cannot be overestimated.

Re:Well sure

[DrKnark]

This creates a problem though. If they can turn the energy tools in to weapons, well then you can end up having nuclear arms in the hands of people who would use them out of spite, ignorance, etc

These countries will be subject to stringent control through the IAEA safeguards program. Which means this: any hint of an enrichment facility being constructed, and the country is completely cut off from any outside help, be it nuclear physics education or uranium trading etc.

An enrichment facility capable of producing anything remotely usable for weapons is a hell of a lot harder to build than a facility used for creating nuclear fuel. The whole point of this is to keep these countries from building enrichment facilities at all.

Re:Well sure

[TheRaven64]

The problem with insuring a nuclear reactor is that, if it does fail, the cost is going to be so huge that it would immediately bankrupt pretty much any insurance company. This means that the policy ends up needing to be underwritten, typically by several different underwriters. Setting up this kind of policy is hard for any but the largest insurers, but because the risk is so low it's then very profitable.

Compare this with insuring a house, for example. It's significantly more likely that there will be a claim, but the claim is likely to be relatively small - small enough that you can cover it from the policy payments from other customers.

Re:Well sure

[DarkOx]

Its kinda like flood insurance. Its often not that the risk of an insurable event is high but if something did happen the potential costs could be be so very very high. I am almost a little surprised these things get private insurance given the governments policy on flood insurance.

Also just because these new reactors won't meltdown does not mean a major dispersal of radioactive materials can't happen. Imagine if a freak F5 tornado hits the facility dead on! An insurer could be paying medial and clean up expenses for decades; amounting to untold billions.

Re:Well sure

[WindBourne]

Nah; That OP is not ignorant. Just a total racists asshole.

Re:Well sure

[budgenator]

Then you get a Katrina. Sorry but I still vote for the Thorium fuel cycle, much more difficult to react so it's much less likely to run-away on you, and much more proliferation resistance.

Re:Well sure

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing is it would be nice to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of crazies and unstable countries.

You ever hear the joke, "People are really crazy!... Oh,... not you and me,... them."

Re:Well sure

[Anonymous Coward]

"Run away"? You do realize that ALL commercial reactors in the United States are negative-feedback designs, right? If you turn the reactor on full-blast, then walk away, the reaction will slowly die off over the next few days without human intervention. We don't even have the potential for a Chernobyl here. The only positive-feedback reactors are smaller research reactors owned by the government or some universities.

Re:Well sure

[h4rr4r]

Considering a reactor containment dome can take a direct hit from an A380, fully loaded, it can probably shake off a tornado. Those big towers you see are only for cooling, the reactor is under a giant concrete dome.

Re:Well sure

[theNAM666]

WRONG.

Yes, you *can* insure a reactor. Why not? (And what government would allow the operation of such a facility, without insurance?)

Insurance is just spread risk. Offer insurance to 2,000 reactors and 50,000 similiar-risk projects; charge the appropriate amount, with profit and risk-weighting, and you'll be fine.

Thank you for playing the Slashdot "offer a silly opinion and see how many fools mod it up" game, however.

Re:Well sure

[TheRaven64]

Are you sure that you are replying to the correct post, because nothing other than the 'WRONG' at the start of your post contradicts anything that I said...

Re:Well sure

[mangu]

The problem with insuring a nuclear reactor is that, if it does fail, the cost is going to be so huge that it would immediately bankrupt pretty much any insurance company.

Oh, really? Then I have the solution for your problems. Spreading risks is what insurance companies know how to do.

Re:Well sure

[TheRaven64]

Yes, that's exactly what I said in the sentence immediately after the one that you quoted...

Re:Well sure

[FishTankX]

You missed Pakistan. ;)

Re:Well sure

[Tweenk]

The problem with insuring a nuclear reactor is that, if it does fail, the cost is going to be so huge that it would immediately bankrupt pretty much any insurance company.

This is what old, extremely pessimistic reactor accident consequence studies say - for example, they assume that LWR reactor core material can be dispersed as fine dust over a large area, even though there is no known physical process which could do that. The upcoming SOARCA study from the NRC will hopefully be more in line with reality.

"Sjee, I wonder why."

[JSBiff]

Perhaps, it's because, the more nations get nuclear weapons, the more likely that an incident will happen which escalates into the end of the world? Everyone on Earth should be worried about nuclear proliferation, not just the U.S. I don't want to debate whether the U.S. was right or wrong to use nuclear weapons to end WWII, because as a rule, I generally like to not take responsibility for the decisions of past generations, or to re-fight old wars. But, as a practical note, I will say this - when only one country, which only used nuclear weapons in a very bad situation, there was no chance for M.A.D. of pretty much all life on Earth. We live in a different world today. Potentially, anyone like N. Korea or Iran could start the war which truly ends all wars (along with 99% of life on the planet).

As for the U.S., we've been reducing our stockpiles. Many of us would love to see a nuclear-weapons free world, but from a practical standpoint, that's probably not going to happen. I would, at least, like to see as little additional weapons being built as possible.

Finally, if someone has to have nuclear weapons, I'd rather see them in the hands of countries which seem like they are run by people who are rational *enough* that they probably won't try to start the nuclear world war (yea, sometimes politics in the U.S. can be a bit irrational, but I don't think *anyone* in the U.S. really wants to see us use nuclear weapons ever again if we don't absolutely have to). I truly worry that Iran with Nuclear Weapons will use them (or at least the threat of them) aggressively instead of defensively - e.g. invade their neighbors and threaten nuclear reprisal if any allies try to come to the defensive aid of the neighboring State.

Re:"Sjee, I wonder why."

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who thinks that ANY country has reduced their nuclear weapons stockpiles is dreaming.

Good for consumer bad for banks

[masterwit]

When there is deflation, this is good for the consumer as he or she gets more product per dollar. When there is inflation the opposite is true.

Since we know nuclear fuel has a half-life, the currency these banks base their loans upon is deflating... While this is a bad thing for the bank, with a well supported backing this can only be good for the consumer!

A deflating currency is a great investment, even if only in the short term. And regardless of the demand, it naturally will deflate!

Half-life economics, brilliant!

Irrational Environmental Regulations

[mangu]

The problem is used correctly nuclear power is not a cheap energy source. As nuclear power plants cut corners they find creative ways to ruin the environment

The problem is that the cost of nuclear power is inflated by the regulations that the anti-nuclear lobby imposed upon everybody as a very effective form of sabotaging the nuclear power industry.

Different from all other power systems, you cannot find examples of how the nuclear power plants have ruined the environment by "cutting corners". What they are doing is storing nuclear waste "temporarily" but in a highly secure way at the power station plants, instead of moving them to the non-existent "permanent" waste storage facilities.

The reason why permanent storage facilities do not exist is only because politicians have never agreed on where those facilities should be located and how they would be constructed. each time some proposal comes up it's immediately shot down by the anti-nuclear lobby.

The anti-nuclear lobby is financed by the taxes we, the citizens, pay. There are NGOs all over the world that get tax-exempt status because they are officially "pro-environment" organizations. Perhaps Wikileaks should tell us how much those NGO directors get in salaries (or do you remotely believe that everybody who works for those organizations is a volunteer?)

Re:Irrational Environmental Regulations

[neumayr]

They have put of deciding on a permanent storage facility because they know:

1. It's very hard to tell how stable a location will be over the time required for nuclear waste storage
2. It would be very, very expensive. No politician would like that on their term, that would be political suicide

Nuclear plant operators pay only a fraction of the cost that nuclear energy actually costs, leaving the rest for the tax payers to pay. Storing the waste alone is infinitely expensive due to the infinite time and cost of storing it, and a sustainable price tag for nuclear energy would thus be € infite/kWh.

Re:Irrational Environmental Regulations

[robbak]

The only reason we don't have permanent nuclear waste repositories is every time they identify another perfect site, it get NIMBYd to death by local (where local = < 5000 km) uninformed 'interest groups'.

As for the 'very long term' thing: we only have to be really worried is the time it takes for the highly radioactive isotopes to decay. People seem to forget that you can have 'highly radioactive' short-half-life, short lived radioactive substances, or you can have long lived, long-half-life, low grade radioactive substances. You cannot have long-half-life highly-radioactive substances - the two are mutually exclusive.

Re:Irrational Environmental Regulations

[Kiuas]

The reason why permanent storage facilities do not exist is only because politicians have never agreed on where those facilities should be located and how they would be constructed. each time some proposal comes up it's immediately shot down by the anti-nuclear lobby.

Although you're right that no permanent waste repositories have yet been completed, one is currently being built. The Onkalo waste repository is being consturcted right here in Finland, and its one of those things that I'm especially proud as a Finn. Granted it is relatively small (designed to contain only all of our nuclear waste, and we're a small country by any comparison) but still, it's a project that gives a lot of important information and shows that permanent waste disposal sites are possible. The location should be choosen carefully, but that's a decission in which people should trust geologists and other scienticst more than politicians.

For those fellow /.'ers that are interested about these kinds of thigs: there's an interesting documentary about Onkalo (which is finnish for "a pit/cave") - and the challenges of selecting and building such a repository - called Into eternity directed by the danish director Michael Madsen. While I might not agree with everything that's said in the film, it's a documentary with exceptional cinematography and it perfectly illustrates how much time, effort and planning has to be put into projects this big.

Re:Irrational Environmental Regulations

[Anonymous Coward]

The ill-informed interest groups happen to have data about the effects of, say, living near a nuclear power plant. Of course they're paranoid. Granted, it's not conclusive data, but noone seems to be interested in making a truly independent study. At least all studies I ever heard of were somehow affiliated with either the pro or contra nuclear groups.

Concerning the rate of decay - I don't know about that stuff. You're saying highly radioactive substances have a short half-life, which makes sense, intuitively. On the other hand, it seems to conflict with common assumptions, and it seems also with Wikipedia's Radioactive Waste article. Can you explain that conflict?

Re:Irrational Environmental Regulations

[mangu]

You're saying highly radioactive substances have a short half-life, which makes sense, intuitively. On the other hand, it seems to conflict with common assumptions,

Welcome to marketing!

That's exactly how lobbying works, use common assumptions to reinforce what you are trying to sell, forget about science and the truth.

About the Wikipedia article on nuclear waste, it seemed pretty balanced as I read it. Care to point out what conflicts you found? It says there that high level radioactive waste has a short life and that "It is a common misconception that nuclear waste has to be stored in a cave after its 20-year decommissioning process"

Re:Irrational Environmental Regulations

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not true. There is no save location for nuclear wast on earth. But for the sake of argument. Lets assume there exists save storage. You cannot replace the 70% of fossil fuels with nuclear power, this would mean to increase the number of nuclear plants in any country by 10 times. And the resource Uranium, which can last right now for ca. 200 years will logically be depleted in 20 years.

And don't tell me that there is a fast breeding reactor technology available. It isn't. It is not save and it is not working. Fission reactors are also still a myth when it comes to applicable technology.

So I would propose to use a technology where you do not need guards at every waste side, where you do not need anti aircraft installations close to those plants as counter measures for terrorist attacks, where the production of energy is more decentralized which makes it as a whole more stable (this is by the way a proven fact).

Nuclear power is not sustainable and therefore a move in the wrong direction.

And what happens when a country with nuclear material is going to fail. What then? What when Pakistan falls over or China or Iran? Or what happens when in the next crisis the US is not capable to compensate? Or Russia? Nuclear waste is dangerous. And it stays that way even if you contain it in glass or put it under ground. However, the threat of a windmill or a solar panel is definitely smaller.

And BTW when nuclear energy is so save and clean, why are nuclear power plant owners freed of the burden to buy an insurance for their plants? This is surely not the fact because there is never happening anything (see Harrisburg, Chernobyl, ...).

 

Re:Irrational Environmental Regulations

[neumayr]

I admit, I didn't read that far. There's a lot of information in there that I lack the time to research right now.
What I was referring to was the second paragraph:

[..]the waste needs to be isolated for a period of time until it no longer poses a hazard. [..] or thousands of years for high-level wastes from nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons reprocessing

The line you quoted doesn't have any quotations associated with it. Maybe it is clear by all the information preceding it, I don't know.

What I do know is that at least in my country, neither side of the argument cares a lot for facts. The pro-nuclear side downplays the risks in face of hardly a year going by without some reactor having to shut down due to supposedly harmless technical problems, while going on about nuclear power having no CO2 emissions. Never did they try to educate on some 20 or so year period after which the waste becomes relatively harmless. Why not?
Of course, the contra-nuclear side is no better, using people's emotions for their cause and acting holier-than-thou. All in all, neither side has any compelling arguments, neither side uses facts. I trust neither, and when you tell me there is such an argument that makes sense and would put the advantage on the pro-nuclear side, I have to wonder why it's not being used.

Re:Irrational Environmental Regulations

[mangu]

The pro-nuclear side downplays the risks in face of hardly a year going by without some reactor having to shut down due to supposedly harmless technical problems, while going on about nuclear power having no CO2 emissions.

I used to work at a power company that had a couple of nuclear plants.

Every time they had to shut down a nuclear plant for some reason it was front page news. Yet the other couple of dozen or so hydro power plants we operated were shut down routinely for a number of reasons, and the press never took care to mention that.

In the end, the nuclear plants were the most reliable, by very far, in the whole system.

Re:Irrational Environmental Regulations

[rdnetto]

Different from all other power systems, you cannot find examples of how the nuclear power plants have ruined the environment by "cutting corners".

IIRC, Chernobyl was caused by precisely that - cutting corners.
That said, any modern reactor is going to be far safer than the Chernobyl design.

Re:Irrational Environmental Regulations

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason why permanent storage facilities do not exist is only because politicians have never agreed on where those facilities should be located and how they would be constructed. each time some proposal comes up it's immediately shot down by the anti-nuclear lobby.

Take the capitalist approach, try to buy an area large enough that any possible leak or attack on the storage facility will remain in itself, and run transports security along the entire route plus on the facility itself. See how cheap that is.
 
  All other things are just offloading the costs to the residents of the area.

Oh and the nuclear power plants, like any other company that has the potential to cause massive damage in excess of the ability to pay out of its own purse, should have to be insured to the extent of the maximum damage possible. Sure, I think we might need to take the potential risk for our lives, but obviously the financial risk needs to be carried by the operator of the nuclear power plant and its insurance. Likewise the cost for disposal and storage - for some reason, that ALWAYS ends up being paid by governments... and that makes no sense.
 

Fuel cost

[hcdejong]

TFA implies that nuclear fuel costs ~ $2 million/ton. And that 80 tons is needed 'to refuel one reactor'. Both seem awfully high to me. I always thought a reactor contained a few tons of Uranium at most.

CANDU

[Kaeso]

If they opted for heavy water reactor types like the CANDU then they wouldn't need to enrich uranium in the first place. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU

end of the world?

[astar]

As best I can tell, given the 99% kill everything figure, you are assuming a nuclear war would extinct homo sap sap? I think not. I figure there are some astronomical stuff that can do us, but doing ourselves? Not quite yet.

End of the world stuff is popular with some now and I think the rhetoric should be avoided.. But for most people, say a 2 billion to 6 billion die off (over the next couple centuries) will *look* like the end of the world. But this is more a lack of tech then too much tech, or some sort of nuclear spasm. Hah, people say that when you are dying, it looks like the end of the world. :-) I suppose "saving the world" from the great unwashed dictatorships or whatever is sort of a popular idea, but I am not sure that "the world" is the sort of thing that you "save". But I could buy off on saving Western Civilization. :-)

Re:end of the world?

[JSBiff]

I've always heard that a major nuclear war, while it wouldn't kill off everything directly in the nuclear blasts, would kick up so much dust and ash that it would create a 'nuclear winter', with lack of sunlight killing off most of the plant life, with most of the animal life (including humans) dieing of radiation sickness and subsequent starvation. I suppose no one knows for sure, but I for one would rather not test the hypothesis on ourselves, to see who's right.

Re:end of the world?

[astar]

The nuclear winter concept is such that you might think there is an ideological motivation involved in its popularization. But there was an experiment done, sort of an experiment.

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

I happen to know about this concept because some idiot on slashdot was looking at the BP oil spill and talking about it as a possible human extinction event with a vague reference to collapsing volcanos. So I poked around.

None of this says a nuclear spasm would not ruin everyone's day... hmm .. maybe for 3k years, but it is quite possible that a transitory nuclear winter does not imply a human extinction event...near, but that is a different concept.

Most of the humans dying from radiation sickness? I figure that is sort of a nutso concept and is passed around because "radiation" is yet another created boogie man. I do not know of any studies pro or con on this, but I am a little bit old and had some involvement with civil defense in the early 60's?. I live in a part of the country that in that time, given expected targeting and wind patterns, would not get a lot of radiation. Well, if you did not die from more mundane causes, then maybe eventually you would die of "radiation", but this would end up as sort of a "chronic" illness for a lot of people.

I have noticed that a lot of what people think, including me, is garbage, so I am not sure that "always heard" is a very reliable approach to stuff. Maybe in a different society ...

Re:end of the world?

[JSBiff]

Well, in mentioning radiation sickness, I was including that because, you'd probably have millions die immediately in the cities from the direct, immediate consequences of the nuclear blast, then over the next few weeks, you'd get people in outskirts near the cities but not close enough to the centers to be killed by the blast itself, die from radiation (this happened in Japan after the bombings there - of course, not everyone near the cities died from radiation, but many certainly did).

But, I think long term, the real big killers, which would kill billions of people would be disease (I think health/sanitation conditions would deteriorate very quickly in the months after a large scale nuclear exchange), human violence (people getting desperate may turn to desperate measures to try to survive), and of course, eventually starvation. I agree that radiation wouldn't be the major killer, but it would have an effect in areas close enough to where the bombs fell.

Even if mankind isn't made completely extinct, I would still view such an event as 'the end of the world', metaphorically speaking, wouldn't you? It's sure something I wish to avoid at all costs.

Re:end of the world?

[astar]

I see nothing to object to in most of your assertions. And I figure most any metaphor is fair dealing, especially if everyone knows it is a metaphor. But ... avoid nuclear war at all costs ...

Somewhere I made the assertion that we are in the terminal phase of a mathusian process. Part of the way we have gotten here is through the concept of avoiding a nuclear war at all costs. Now it is really quite reasonable to say that we are getting health/sanitation, violence, and starvation right now from this sort of malthusian causation. And you do not have to look overseas for this.

As I said somewhere, I am an old guy and I remember the cuban missile crisis. There was an interesting psych op part of that... for instance, I remember walking out my house on a clear hot day and musing that a big sub-orbital blast would simply fry me on the sidewalk, along with everyone else in a 1000 mile radius, with no warning for anyone.

Okay, avoid at all cost... should JFK have rolled on the missiles?

Now it may be true that it is correct at this time to avoid actual species extinction at all cost. But if I may be permitted to do a little analogy, is it true you are going to personally avoid dying at all cost?

And if you are going to avoid our species extinction at all cost, I think it likely that you would have to claim to have a very good grasp of future events and their causality. Otherwise, you would try really hard to avoid accepting lesser evil choices in the present.

Fun playing with you.

Dependency continues

[Anonymous Coward]

Trade dependency of oil to dependency or uranium.
Everyone needs energy.

"So you don't allow our $POLITICALLY_MOTIVATED_GOAL. OK, no uranium for you then."

Stuxnet

[Anonymous Coward]

Suddenly the reasons for the stuxnet worm become clear... Money.

What are these people smoking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hundred dollar notes.

Seriously: I can see the big horses at Siemens, General Electric & Co rubbing their hands (or is that hooves?) at the contracts coming from Third World.

Those big companies just *love* Big Tech, that's what they are apt at.

The crazy people have the bomb

[dbIII]

The thing is it would be nice to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of crazies and unstable countries

You are a few years too late. North Korea already has nukes for one, Iran is close, Egypt have has been working on it for years, and in Israel it's getting close to having a crazy fascist get the keys to the nuclear bombs let alone Pakistan and a few former Soviet republics.
A country even more batshit crazy than warlords in Africa already has the bomb. Just last week they shelled South Korea to extort more aid money. Cannibalism (like your anecdote above) is reported there as well.
As for the dirt cheap safe reactors - theoretically they could exist but they don't yet. I don't know why people always talk about untried technologies that only exist on paper as "modern reactors". Of course they are safe, you can't get anything safer than something that doesn't exist. I say build prototypes and test them out, but suggest laying off the bullshit about how perfect untried things are.

Re:The crazy people have the bomb

[Anonymous Coward]

'm actually less worried about North Korea than most African countries. The reason being that North Korea realizes that it would be obliterated by its neighbors if it ever got to the threshold of using nukes. In Africa, neighboring nations have gotten away with ethnic cleansing without intervention and so might have a realistic chance of not facing massive retaliation. Pakistan similarly can't really risk usage (at least against the logical foe) without triggering WWIII. Even if that were not the case, I'd rather have 5 nut jobs with nukes than 50.

Re:The crazy people have the bomb

[Anonymous Coward]

The AP1000 exists. On paper. And in the real world.

Re:The crazy people have the bomb

[dbIII]

The reason being that North Korea realizes that it would be obliterated by its neighbors if it ever got to the threshold of using nukes.

Don't you mean a month or two or six after it leaves a smoking crater where Tokyo or Seoul used to be? Sure, it wouldn't take long before we could bomb the crap out of people that are almost living in ruins as it is, but that won't do much except make some people happy about revenge. Actually invading the place would be difficult even if was via China.

Re:The crazy people have the bomb

[dbIII]

Safe maybe, but it's not what anybody would call cheap yet. I'm not saying we won't get there, just that the people who suggest that it is all a done deal without more R&D and prototypes are bullshitting. Pebble bed is another contender and an Indian thorium reactor design but it's still early days.

Long dead argument

[dbIII]

Breeders were an expensive and pointless dead end as shown many times in the 1970s because it is incredibly difficult to handle the highly radioactive materials with a short half-life produced. Those that wanted to pretend it was not a failure renamed such promising new and unrelated technologies as accelerated thorium reactors to "breeder" to save face.
Give up on the old shit that was shown to be shit and learn about something from the last quarter century instead. You've just been conned by Westinghouse or similar that want to fleece the taxpayer by selling some ancient failed experimental designs they still have on the books.

Re:Long dead argument

[Anonymous Coward]

He should have left out "breeder reactors" and just left it at "reprocessing of spent fuel," which is quite viable (even practiced). It does, however, raise costs.

Re:Long dead argument

[MachineShedFred]

Clearly what's true in the 1970s is still true today. I mean, it's a good thing all of us have extra rooms in our houses to hold computers so that we can access this website. Otherwise the Commies might invade!

Re:Long dead argument

[MachineShedFred]

Now only if we could monetize the cost of having useable fuel sitting around for hundreds of thousands of years in order to compare the cost of reprocessing...

Re:Long dead argument

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a nuclear engineer, and I can assure you that Westinghouse has virtually no interest in pursuing the ongoing, active research in fast reactor development. They build large light-water reactors for utilities. Metallurgy has come a long way since the 1970s -- what was once too expensive to contemplate is on its way toward economic viability.

This is, incidentally the same argument that solar PV folks make in order to justify continued R&D. You may dismiss it as BS for that reason alone, but you'd be foolish to do so. For solar and for fast reactors.

Re:Long dead argument

[jfanning]

I would rather listen to these people than some random commenter or on Slashdot.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=smarter-use-of-nuclear-waste

http://energyfromthorium.com/

Re:Long dead argument

[The_mad_linguist]

So, how about those French people. Defying the laws of physics and all that.

It already is rationed

[WindBourne]

By the market place. For example, America imports most of our power plant level uranium, even though we have the supplies and ability to make it here.
Likewise, most of all of EU nations import it since they do not have any.
So, the facts destroy your arguments.

Re:It already is rationed

[h4rr4r]

No that is economically rationed, rather than rationed by one central body.

Makes me so sad...

[Anonymous Coward]

Poor, poor nuclear industry, hobbled by those rabid environmentalists. Crocodile's tears and all that.

Fact is that they got (and still get!) a huge financial boost military complex.

Abyssal plains

[mangu]

It's very hard to tell how stable a location will be over the time required for nuclear waste storage

How about the bottom of the ocean? There are vast regions of the abyssal plains that have been unchanged for a billion years or more.

Send a robot to bury 20 cm diameter x 2 meter long cylinders of vitrified waste under a 100 m layer of mud under a 5000 m of ocean, and come tell me about a scenario where that situation could be changed to harm the environment.

Re:Abyssal plains

[neumayr]

Last I heard the abyssal plains aren't very well explored. Yet we can say they haven't changed in billions of years?
Okay, let's say that is true - what are the costs of such an undertaking? What you describe has, to my knowledge, never been done. It sounds like an enormous undertaking, with a price tag that should be added to the price of nuclear power. Do you think that would still allow for competitive prices on the free market?

Why do we have to keep investing in this technology, that might currently be the only way to meet energy demands, but isn't viable as a long term solution? (risks in operating the plants, finite uranium deposits, price to the national economy)

Re:Abyssal plains

[mangu]

Last I heard the abyssal plains aren't very well explored. Yet we can say they haven't changed in billions of years?

What we know is that plate techtoncis tells us that some areas in the bottom of the oceans have never had any significant geologic forces acting upon them for more than a billion of years.

what are the costs of such an undertaking? What you describe has, to my knowledge, never been done

We have done enough equivalent tasks that we know what it would cost. Robots have been exploring sunken ships, like the Titanic, for decades, it's a routine task by now.

Not to mention all the robots that have been sent to fix the problems in sunken oil platforms, of course, but I suppose that mentioning this would associate getting rid of nuclear waste with the ecologic catastrophe that's our current search for gasoline, right?

Re:Abyssal plains

[neumayr]

Plate techtonics explain what happened reasonably well. That it's regarded to be a complete enough theory to bet the planet's water supply on is new to me.
We have done tasks equivalent to burying a few hundred tons of radioactive waste in 5000m depth, with no acceptable margin of error? This is not exploring the Titanic, sorry.

To be clear, I do not condone continuing to rely on our limited supply of non-renewable resources like uranium ;-P

Re:Abyssal plains

[mangu]

We have done tasks equivalent to burying a few hundred tons of radioactive waste in 5000m depth, with no acceptable margin of error? This is not exploring the Titanic, sorry.

You are, obviously, not an engineer. Sorry.

The engineering challenge in sending a robot to do tasks at 5000 meters depth do not depend on details of what those tasks entail. The robot being there and doing what it's told to do is enough.

I do not condone continuing to rely on our limited supply of non-renewable resources like uranium

Then you should probably consider dropping dead as the best option.

Our supply of radioactive materials is certainly finite, and it will sometime come to an end like solar power will, but it will last a humongous amount of time more than petroleum will.

Wrong Direction

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of selling them nuclear fuels, we should give them technologies for renewable energy. Honestly nuclear power plants are a dead end. All methods for recycling and storing the waste safely are just ideas of concepts, and they do not work. And even if they would work there is only a limited space for storage. And then it is still dangerous. And on top of it classic nuclear fuels are a limited resource too. So why use a technology which has so many unsolved problems, instead of using one where we have working solutions at hand. True the big energy companies will loose market share. But hey, what do I care?
 

Hrm well....

[Anonymous Coward]

Taiwan has been building nuclear missiles for years actually. They're deathly afraid of China.

As for South America, I can't see why they'd really need them.

Japan's constitution specifically restricts them from using their military offensively, so they wouldn't have a reason to build them.

North Korea has built a bomb successfully, and they're working on perfecting their rocket technology. China really needs to talk them down and get them to relax, it's bad for business really.

And, Iran is currently working on enriching, which they always claim is for peaceful reasons but then they go and say stuff publically like, "Israel will be blown away in the coming winds of destruction along with anyone who helps them." And, crazy shit like that, so it's hard to take their "peaceful" talk seriously.

All I can say is, can't we all just get along? :-(

There's so many cool TV shows, movies and video games I'll miss out on otherwise.

Re:If Mr. Buffet really wants to change the world.

[prefec2]

He should finance renewable energy. Why give developing countries a legacy technology which produces so much more legacy (and no it does not matter if these are 100 Castors (100t each) per year or only 20. What I cannot understand is how people can be fan of a so much disputed technology which has definitely its problems. Also it cannot be the solution for our total energy needs.

There are cheaper saver and better working alternatives. Just lets use them.

The main point (I think)

[endymon]

While the arguments that this system can (and probably) will create economic dependency on the pre-refined uranium supply are indeed valid. I think the major push of this is to take the wind out of the sails of countries like iran that "claim" to be developing this technology for energy purposes. If we offer them a dirt cheap way (research free) to attain nuclear power, but not weapons then suddenly their arguments loose a lot of traction. They can still argue that they want the tech for themselves so that the dependence issue isn't there, but when the research costs involved keep adding up, it looks more and more attractive. So long as the regulated pool of uranium cannot be simply withheld as a further method of sanctions everything is good. As a side note, anything encouraging nuclear power is a step towards reducing carbon emissions especially in the developing world where its growing rapidly.

Re:If Mr. Buffet really wants to change the world.

[SteveMurphy]

I agree that we should push forward on all fronts with renewable energy. But Thorium-based LFTR reactors solve most of the problems with nuclear energy, including the two biggest bug bears of them all: nuclear waste and safety. There is practically no waste in LFTR and the fuel is fantastically plentiful compared to Uranium. There are huge Thorium deposits right now. And LFTR reactors are virtually melt-down proof from the get-go. Where uranium reactors "want" to blow up by default, LFTR reactors are amazingly safe. Watch the link and the other Google Tech Day presentations. LFTR reactors have already been tested and they WORK. The military is responsible for taking us down the dead end of using Uranium for power just because it can be used in weapons. LFTR is better technology and can't be used to make bombs. Thorium CAN be the solution for our total energy needs for the foreseeable future, and will be a great adjunct to renewable energy when something like solar finally emerges. You can build lots of solar cells with safe, cheap, clean LFTR power, and then who cares if solar isn't quite as efficient. It can be used in locations that need it most right away.

I read the subject quick and...

[Anonymous Coward]

... for a moment I thought it said IKEA Forms Nuclear Fuel Bank.

Glow in the dark swedish meatballs!

...and?

[Sycraft-fu]

All that is is an argument that maybe North Korea needs to be attacked. You do NOT want to say "Well one crazy country got them so fuck it, let's just give them out to the entire world!"

Who knows? Maybe something like this could help stop that. While there's no doubt NK wanted nukes, it came as part of the energy project. So, provide people with the energy in a way they can't use it to make nukes, maybe they aren't able to try. That's the whole point here.

Just because there is a problem doesn't mean you should throw up your hands and say "Screw it, there's a problem so let's just make it much worse."

Re:...and?

[dbIII]

A lot of "energy projects" are really weapons programs. For instance a bit over ten years ago I had a student that was an engineer at Indonesia's tiny little "power generation" reactor that puts nothing on the grid. That reactor was of course run entirely by the military. There are a lot of similar "energy projects" around the world slowly following in the footsteps of the South African and Israeli projects that apparently resulted in nuclear weapons.

Short attention span

[dbIII]

Did you even read the second sentence about accelerated thorium? Both articles you link to deal with that and similar technologies instead of the fast breeders the above poster was talking about.

Re:Short attention span

[jfanning]

My point was that fuel reprocessing wasn't a waste of time.

I thought you were meaning that reprocessing was a failure. The grandparent was just confused about the name of the technologies.

Re:Short attention span

[dbIII]

Confused about a lot of things because reprocessing even in a perfect world would only get the really hot stuff anyway. For other things there is stuff like mixing it into synrock and putting it somewhere geologically stable ("safely landfilled" I suppose).
Pretending nuclear waste doesn't exist is really counterproductive bullshit that halts progress (eg. synrock was ready but poorly funded two decades ago) in finding ways to get some extra use out of it and safely storing the rest. An adult conversation goes along the lines of "what can we do with the bad stuff", while a childish conversation goes "the adults make sure there is no bad stuff". There is very rarely anything resembling an adult conversation about civilian nuclear power here either about the advantages or disadvantages.
Pretending nuclear waste doesn't exist is a bedtime story while talking about getting a decent percentage of the hot stuff back into use in some new reactor designs is not. Comments like mine above are to drag people away from the bedtime story and think about how the world can be a better place instead of thinking it would be perfect if there wasn't some fairytale monster called Carter or something.
Back to your comment, currently used reprocessing techniques are an expensive failure which is why it is only done now on a low volume experimental scale. What I'm talking about and what you linked to isn't being done on any scale yet - it's hard for them to be funded while idiots pretend that the failures of the past were a success and an endpoint instead of part of a learning curve to get decent results.

Re:Short attention span

[TooMuchToDo]

Pretending that the first world can survive without a base load power supply that is more environmentally friendly than coal is counterproductive bullshit that halts progress. I'd much rather live with the consequences of having to store used nuclear waste instead of burning off the numerous toxins in each ton of coal.

Even if my post regarding breeder reactors was incorrect, reprocessing spent fuel with $CURRENT_NUCLEAR_TECHNOLOGY is still a valid method of handling the fuel.

Continue to complain about nuclear, it'll still be used because there are so few options for base load with current technology.

Re:Short attention span

[dbIII]

Pretending that the first world can survive without a base load power supply that is more environmentally friendly than coal is counterproductive bullshit that halts progress

Now where did I say anything that is remotely on the same planet as that statement?
Next, you are talking about a failed relic of the 1960s and not "$CURRENT_NUCLEAR_TECHNOLOGY". More modern technologies are less fussy about fuel and could even use the expired fuel rods from old reactors without the difficulties of reprocessing. I suggest you look at the newer thorium designs (or even the old molten salt reactor experiment of the 1950s) for examples. It's interesting and exciting stuff that may come close to delivering the "too cheap to meter" dream. If you are going to advocate civilian nuclear power then at least find out about the things that give it an advantage which will make you will sound far more credible and get people to take you seriously.
Anyway, a bit of background material for you. Plutionium fast breeders were designed in the 1960s to solve several probems:
1/ Rich deposits of Uranium were rare and the percentage of useful isotopes of Uranium was low. This is no longer a problem due to both the discovery of a lot more Uranium deposits and newer reactor designs being a lot less fussy for fuel.
/2 Plutonium for the French nuclear weapons program. They no longer need that and the USA military never needed that since they have other ways to get the material.
3/ Energy independance. That is why Japan built theirs in case of a prolonged blockade by China or similar problems. This is the only reason to build a plutonium fast breeder that is still valid, but once again, if they did it today they would use something else.
4/ "Burning" high grade waste. This didn't work in the French reactors but it did in the 1950s molten salt reactor (which was not a plutonium fast breeder). There is a thorium based reactor under construction in India that looks as if it is going to be able to do this quite well.

You have been misled

[dbIII]

What I'm talking about is mostly based on the problems the French civilian nuclear program encountered with their two fast breeders.
To put things simply handling radioactive materials that are far more active than normal fuel is incredibly difficult and expensive and they tend to make other things that are in close proximity to them for long periods of time radioactive as well (that's what strong neutron sources do). Then many of the materials (eg. Uranium) are very strong, hard and have high melting points so it's bloody hard to crunch up the material and separate the stuff you want from the stuff you don't. That's the stuff the French learned from experience.
So while all this was going on other people thought of ways to do it without all that handling. That's where we come to ideas such as some of the thorium designs - eg. having a pool of molten radioactive material and you throw bits of old uranium fuel rod or expired weapon materials in to get more use out of them.
Fast breeders were a complete dead end and things have moved in other directions since then, possibly even before the fast breeder advocates here that read some propaganda from the 1970s were born.