"Spent" fuel is not able to sustain a fission reaction, because the daughter products of what has already fissioned absorb neutrons rather than capture and fission the way that Uranium does. After enough fission events, the neutron absorption becomes a problem and the reaction is no longer self-sustaining.
Remove the "neutron poisons" that make up anywhere from 1% to 5% of the "spent" fuel, and you are left with a whole lot of "unspent" fuel ready to go right back into the reactor. But we don't do this today because of a political decision made in the 1970s that was mostly horseshit then, and complete horseshit now - an argument about nuclear weapons proliferation, where none of the "spent" fuel from nuclear reactors is suitable for weapons production to begin with.
What you see as "spent" fuel, I see as "inefficiently used" fuel that science and engineering already has a solution for.
I'm sure that the mining and enrichment environmental costs (optional btw - there are reactor designs that run on unenriched natural uranium) are far less than taking the top off of a mountain in Eastern Kentucky and burning it.
Now only if there was some other kind of nuclear fuel besides Uranium, which is also more common. And, 80 years is a pretty long time to come up with something better, or start breeding fuel from the already-dug-up depleted uranium sitting around from the arms race. Worst case, that's 80 years of energy production that didn't involve creating fly ash ponds and blowing carbon into the air.
Also, [citation needed]. Don't come in here with some statement of fact that is meant to dismiss someone's argument, without backing it up.
It's not a problem of technology - we have the technology to reprocess the fuel and remove the neutron poisons that prevent further burn. Science and engineering solved that decades ago.
We don't use this technology, because of a problem of politics and fear. It's a problem of emotion, not one of science or engineering. And that problem doesn't get solved nearly as easily or completely.
Good thing there are reactor designs that can use coolants that are not strictly water. Like molten salts, helium gas, lead-bismuth eutectic, etc.
Oh, and they usually run at hotter temperatures, which gives us more heat to do neat things with, like cracking water into hydrogen so we can solve the mobile energy usage problem too.
The thing I can't ever reconcile is that the same people shouting "but SCIENCE!" are the same people that oppose actually building nuclear infrastructure, where the science really IS settled.
If you're such a believer in science, then let's let science and engineering be part of the solution.
You already know this, but you're too busy trolling to be accurate: all isotopes of Plutonium are not equal. Yes, you create Pu-239 in a breeder reactor. And if you aren't looking to create weapons, you leave the thing turned on for an economical amount of time instead of the incredibly short time required for making weapons, and you also get Pu-240 and Pu-241 in ever-increasing concentrations... which makes the material unsuitable for weapons.
But I guess sharing the true nature of what's going on doesn't fit with the narrative of FUD, so continue on.
What you call waste, I call 95% unused fuel. Take out the 5% that makes those 'spent' fuel rods not sustaining a controlled reaction and load them back in.
You now have actual waste, in an unbelievably smaller volume, which is far more radioactive and thus shorter lived. Vitrify it to bring down the aggregate danger level, and store it in a location that will be geologically stable for a few hundred years.
But we aren't doing this today because OMG NUCLEAR. Scientists and engineers solved this problem decades ago - we're waiting for the politicians and fearmongers to catch up.
The reason why people keep harping on "we don't have the fuel for that many nuclear plants" is two-fold:
1. Once a 50-year supply of Uranium was discovered for the current usage levels, they stopped exploration for new deposits. Why search for something that there's already a glut of, and the usage is decreasing? Uranium isn't exactly rare - it's about as common as zinc or tin in the Earth's crust. And, it could be filtered from seawater, though the concentration is very low. In fact, the "world's known reserves" have increased by 25% in the last decade largely coincidentally, as they've found it while looking for other minerals.
2. As other people have pointed out forever, nuclear technology also brings with it the technology to recycle fuel, as well as turn the metric shit-ton of depleted uranium that was mined already for weapons production and commercial fuel enrichment into reactor fuel through 'breeding'. We've already dug up all the fuel we'd need for 100+ years, if we'd get off our collective asses and just use it instead of treating it like something that needs to be buried forever.
The contrapositive of your question: Why are renewable proponents so vehemently opposed to anything but renewables? How about instead of living with the status quo (coal) we start building out *anything* that would get us off of effectively burning mountains and blowing it into the stratosphere?
That means a good mix of wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, and yes, nuclear.
Yeah, that's why when the Nevada PUC killed 'net metering' basically every solar company in the nation exited Nevada? Even with the 30% ITC credit being renewed by Congress? Because it's so cheap? In a state that is completely desert and gets more sun than just about anywhere?
Come on. I love solar power, and want to see it grow as fast as possible, and that's what policies like net metering and the ITC are there for. But let's not lie to ourselves and say that it's cheaper than a big hot thing boiling water to turn a turbine, because it's not. If it was, the utility-scale companies would be building it everywhere instead of big hot things to boil water.
You mean that wireless communications engineers might actually know what the fuck they are doing, and make technical decisions based on the technical merits of the technology? Unpossible.
The Internet of Useless Things doesn't predicate the use of a new lower frequency block in standardized layer-2 wireless communication. This could happen perfectly fine without the discussion of a web-enabled juicer.
Tying the two together, which this article attempts to do, is complete nonsense. The WiFi consortium would have been looking at this for a long time before the current IoT horseshit started to take off.
Re-using the 900Mhz open spectrum is a very good idea, for very good engineering reasons - there are things you can do in 900Mhz that 2.4 and 5.1 Ghz can't at low power levels. And, in no way, is talking about fad consumer electronics that attach to the Internet for no added value whatsoever a reason not to re-use this spectrum that was relegated to garbage cordless landline telephones and the odd pair of pre-Bluetooth wireless headphones.
That's exactly what I was thinking, though I'm still completely screwed by Time Warner's abuse of the CCI 'CopyOnce' flag. However, that's a problem with Time Warner being excessively assholic even when compared to Comcast, and not Linux or this device.
And the big bonus is if a gun was used in a crime and they didn't have a federal tax stamp for their bullets they could be charged with a federal crime.
Because we all know that criminals dutifully pay their taxes, because they are so concerned with the legal consequences. You might just win 'idiot post of the day' with this idea.
This might come as a shock: THEY ARE CRIMINALS AND DON'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT BREAKING LAWS.
Really? Because I'm pretty sure the guns I own today will still function perfectly fine after these so-called smart guns hit the market. I can only hope that some would-be attacker would be using one of these pieces of shit, and it would fail to fire, allowing someone with a tried-and-true Smith and Wesson J-frame to take care of the problem.
As an added bonus, many commercial displays have RS-232 on them as well, for being able to perform remote power management. This might be a feature that comes in handy to the old guard around Slashdot.
I have to agree - I had a 2nd gen AppleTV that I used the hell out of until I did a full DVR build. Due to Amazon Prime video being a pain in the ass, I bought a cheap FireTV stick, and I'm rather impressed at what $35 gets you, considering that a PLEX client is available on it as well. Unless Apple steps their game up a lot farther than some Siri-enabled nonsense, I don't see a return to AppleTV in my future, even with the new downloadable 'app' thing on the new one.
You do realize that the reason Amazon Prime Video isn't on AppleTV is because Amazon doesn't want it on there, right? Amazon didn't create an app to do it, where they do have an app for iPad and iPhone. Netflix has no problem working on AppleTV, nor does Hulu. Why would Apple let those services on, but block Amazon Prime Video?
Also, Amazon is the one not carrying competitors' hardware any more - just go try to buy an AppleTV from Amazon, or the new version of ChromeCast. You won't find them, but the first search result will be a FireTV stick.
But I'm sure that Apple is still the bastard in your mind because they didn't go and write an app for Amazon, cracking the DRM to play the video anyway when Amazon didn't graciously help them.
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"Spent" fuel is not able to sustain a fission reaction, because the daughter products of what has already fissioned absorb neutrons rather than capture and fission the way that Uranium does. After enough fission events, the neutron absorption becomes a problem and the reaction is no longer self-sustaining.
Remove the "neutron poisons" that make up anywhere from 1% to 5% of the "spent" fuel, and you are left with a whole lot of "unspent" fuel ready to go right back into the reactor. But we don't do this today because of a political decision made in the 1970s that was mostly horseshit then, and complete horseshit now - an argument about nuclear weapons proliferation, where none of the "spent" fuel from nuclear reactors is suitable for weapons production to begin with.
What you see as "spent" fuel, I see as "inefficiently used" fuel that science and engineering already has a solution for.
I'm sure that the mining and enrichment environmental costs (optional btw - there are reactor designs that run on unenriched natural uranium) are far less than taking the top off of a mountain in Eastern Kentucky and burning it.
Because that's what we're doing today.
Now only if there was some other kind of nuclear fuel besides Uranium, which is also more common. And, 80 years is a pretty long time to come up with something better, or start breeding fuel from the already-dug-up depleted uranium sitting around from the arms race. Worst case, that's 80 years of energy production that didn't involve creating fly ash ponds and blowing carbon into the air.
Also, [citation needed]. Don't come in here with some statement of fact that is meant to dismiss someone's argument, without backing it up.
This post could be applied to roughly 98% of all Slashdot articles, and be completely on point.
It's not a problem of technology - we have the technology to reprocess the fuel and remove the neutron poisons that prevent further burn. Science and engineering solved that decades ago.
We don't use this technology, because of a problem of politics and fear. It's a problem of emotion, not one of science or engineering. And that problem doesn't get solved nearly as easily or completely.
Good thing there are reactor designs that can use coolants that are not strictly water. Like molten salts, helium gas, lead-bismuth eutectic, etc.
Oh, and they usually run at hotter temperatures, which gives us more heat to do neat things with, like cracking water into hydrogen so we can solve the mobile energy usage problem too.
The thing I can't ever reconcile is that the same people shouting "but SCIENCE!" are the same people that oppose actually building nuclear infrastructure, where the science really IS settled.
If you're such a believer in science, then let's let science and engineering be part of the solution.
You already know this, but you're too busy trolling to be accurate: all isotopes of Plutonium are not equal. Yes, you create Pu-239 in a breeder reactor. And if you aren't looking to create weapons, you leave the thing turned on for an economical amount of time instead of the incredibly short time required for making weapons, and you also get Pu-240 and Pu-241 in ever-increasing concentrations... which makes the material unsuitable for weapons.
But I guess sharing the true nature of what's going on doesn't fit with the narrative of FUD, so continue on.
What you call waste, I call 95% unused fuel. Take out the 5% that makes those 'spent' fuel rods not sustaining a controlled reaction and load them back in.
You now have actual waste, in an unbelievably smaller volume, which is far more radioactive and thus shorter lived. Vitrify it to bring down the aggregate danger level, and store it in a location that will be geologically stable for a few hundred years.
But we aren't doing this today because OMG NUCLEAR. Scientists and engineers solved this problem decades ago - we're waiting for the politicians and fearmongers to catch up.
Re: the fuel supply.
The reason why people keep harping on "we don't have the fuel for that many nuclear plants" is two-fold:
1. Once a 50-year supply of Uranium was discovered for the current usage levels, they stopped exploration for new deposits. Why search for something that there's already a glut of, and the usage is decreasing? Uranium isn't exactly rare - it's about as common as zinc or tin in the Earth's crust. And, it could be filtered from seawater, though the concentration is very low. In fact, the "world's known reserves" have increased by 25% in the last decade largely coincidentally, as they've found it while looking for other minerals.
2. As other people have pointed out forever, nuclear technology also brings with it the technology to recycle fuel, as well as turn the metric shit-ton of depleted uranium that was mined already for weapons production and commercial fuel enrichment into reactor fuel through 'breeding'. We've already dug up all the fuel we'd need for 100+ years, if we'd get off our collective asses and just use it instead of treating it like something that needs to be buried forever.
The contrapositive of your question: Why are renewable proponents so vehemently opposed to anything but renewables? How about instead of living with the status quo (coal) we start building out *anything* that would get us off of effectively burning mountains and blowing it into the stratosphere?
That means a good mix of wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, and yes, nuclear.
When talking about averages, it's perfectly fine if one data point is above or below, because it's an average.
Yeah, that's why when the Nevada PUC killed 'net metering' basically every solar company in the nation exited Nevada? Even with the 30% ITC credit being renewed by Congress? Because it's so cheap? In a state that is completely desert and gets more sun than just about anywhere?
Come on. I love solar power, and want to see it grow as fast as possible, and that's what policies like net metering and the ITC are there for. But let's not lie to ourselves and say that it's cheaper than a big hot thing boiling water to turn a turbine, because it's not. If it was, the utility-scale companies would be building it everywhere instead of big hot things to boil water.
Wait...
You mean that wireless communications engineers might actually know what the fuck they are doing, and make technical decisions based on the technical merits of the technology? Unpossible.
The Internet of Useless Things doesn't predicate the use of a new lower frequency block in standardized layer-2 wireless communication. This could happen perfectly fine without the discussion of a web-enabled juicer.
Tying the two together, which this article attempts to do, is complete nonsense. The WiFi consortium would have been looking at this for a long time before the current IoT horseshit started to take off.
Exactly.
Re-using the 900Mhz open spectrum is a very good idea, for very good engineering reasons - there are things you can do in 900Mhz that 2.4 and 5.1 Ghz can't at low power levels. And, in no way, is talking about fad consumer electronics that attach to the Internet for no added value whatsoever a reason not to re-use this spectrum that was relegated to garbage cordless landline telephones and the odd pair of pre-Bluetooth wireless headphones.
That's exactly what I was thinking, though I'm still completely screwed by Time Warner's abuse of the CCI 'CopyOnce' flag. However, that's a problem with Time Warner being excessively assholic even when compared to Comcast, and not Linux or this device.
Good luck enforcing the second bit, especially inheritance.
Easy problem to solve: just put the stamp on the primer cap!
(Yes, this is humor.)
And the big bonus is if a gun was used in a crime and they didn't have a federal tax stamp for their bullets they could be charged with a federal crime.
Because we all know that criminals dutifully pay their taxes, because they are so concerned with the legal consequences. You might just win 'idiot post of the day' with this idea.
This might come as a shock: THEY ARE CRIMINALS AND DON'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT BREAKING LAWS.
Really? Because I'm pretty sure the guns I own today will still function perfectly fine after these so-called smart guns hit the market. I can only hope that some would-be attacker would be using one of these pieces of shit, and it would fail to fire, allowing someone with a tried-and-true Smith and Wesson J-frame to take care of the problem.
As an added bonus, many commercial displays have RS-232 on them as well, for being able to perform remote power management. This might be a feature that comes in handy to the old guard around Slashdot.
I have to agree - I had a 2nd gen AppleTV that I used the hell out of until I did a full DVR build. Due to Amazon Prime video being a pain in the ass, I bought a cheap FireTV stick, and I'm rather impressed at what $35 gets you, considering that a PLEX client is available on it as well. Unless Apple steps their game up a lot farther than some Siri-enabled nonsense, I don't see a return to AppleTV in my future, even with the new downloadable 'app' thing on the new one.
You do realize that the reason Amazon Prime Video isn't on AppleTV is because Amazon doesn't want it on there, right? Amazon didn't create an app to do it, where they do have an app for iPad and iPhone. Netflix has no problem working on AppleTV, nor does Hulu. Why would Apple let those services on, but block Amazon Prime Video?
Also, Amazon is the one not carrying competitors' hardware any more - just go try to buy an AppleTV from Amazon, or the new version of ChromeCast. You won't find them, but the first search result will be a FireTV stick.
But I'm sure that Apple is still the bastard in your mind because they didn't go and write an app for Amazon, cracking the DRM to play the video anyway when Amazon didn't graciously help them.
I have a Blu-Ray player that can stream video from Blockbuster.
Yeah, glad they spent the engineering time on that.