Oil's energy contribution has declined by about 12% since 1999. The world's economies have also declined by about 12%. (Using conventional metrics, which are time delayed determinations, this will only be seen in hind sight). The massive destruction of asset values now occurring testifies to it happening.
Peak is well behind us, world economies have peaked and will continue to decline.
Joined: Apr 28, 2005 Posts: 3920 Location: West shore Lake Eire, MI, USA
Posted: Mon May 14, 2007 7:02 pm Post subject: Re: Once-through total-use nuclear cycle possible?
Joe0Bloggs wrote:
So, breeders convert more fertile material into fuel than the fuel it consumes, but the reprocessing is expensive. Why is it that the fuel has to be taken out for reprocessing at all?
Mainly two reasons. Firstly at the enrichment concentrations allowed for civilian fuel the rods accumulate enough fission fragment waste over time that the breeding ratio falls below 1:1 and technically at that point they are high burn up converters, not breeders. Secondly if you use the fuel systems as currently used they can only maintain their physical integrity for a few years, as the Uranium/Plutonium/Actinides fission the fragments continue to build up. These chemicals are less dense than the heavy metals they derive from and hence require more space for the same weight of material. Once you have reached a certain pressure the fuel rods start to streatch, warp, or even crack open from internal pressure and gasseous or volitile fission fragments then escape into the primary coolant.
Quote:
Why can't the newly produced fuel be used directly?
Well actually quite a bit of it is used directly, however when the fission fragments accumulate they are like ashes on a fire, they tend to smother out the reaction by absorbing neutrons.
Quote:
Is it possible to design a reactor where fuel rods only have to be put in and taken out once--where the reactor continuously produces fuel from the fertile material and uses it up, until all the fertile material has been converted and all the fuel used up--and the spent fuel rod would be worthless and can be taken directly to disposal without reprocessing?
The short answer is no, provisionally. Instead of using solid fuel rods you can use molten salt as a fuel carrier and constantly seperate out the fission fragments while the reactor keeps running 24/7 except for maintenence periods. A Molton Salt reactor consumes actinide metals and produces heat and fission fragments and is so efficient in its neutron economy it can operate as a breeder with Thorium/Uranium/Plutonium/Actinide in a constantly adjusted ballance. If reactivity starts to fall the operators can just add fuel directly to the fuel flow channels brininging the reactivity back up. If you want more details simply google MSBR and MOSEL (Molten Salt Breeder Reactor and Molten Salt Epithermal Reactor). _________________ Always appeal to a man's enlightened self interest, you can trust him to look out for himself honestly, It's when you appeal to his Honor or the Common Good that he stops paying attention.
As a senior energy adviser in the Clinton administration, I recall attending a briefing by the National Academy of Sciences in 1996 on the feasibility of recycling nuclear fuel. I'd been intrigued by the idea because of its promise to reduce the amount of waste that had to be buried, where it could conceivably seep into drinking water at some point in its multimillion-year-long half-lives.
But then came the Academy's unequivocal conclusion: the idea was supremely impractical. It would cost up to $500 billion in 1996 dollars and take 150 years to accomplish the transmutation of dangerous long-lived radioactive toxins.
...
We are better off by investing in renewable energy and conservation, rather than pouring billions of dollars into the same old limitless energy schemes of our nuclear laboratories.
_________________ "Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box."
-Italian Proverb
As a senior energy adviser in the Clinton administration, I recall attending a briefing by the National Academy of Sciences in 1996 on the feasibility of recycling nuclear fuel. I'd been intrigued by the idea because of its promise to reduce the amount of waste that had to be buried, where it could conceivably seep into drinking water at some point in its multimillion-year-long half-lives.
But then came the Academy's unequivocal conclusion: the idea was supremely impractical. It would cost up to $500 billion in 1996 dollars and take 150 years to accomplish the transmutation of dangerous long-lived radioactive toxins.
...
We are better off by investing in renewable energy and conservation, rather than pouring billions of dollars into the same old limitless energy schemes of our nuclear laboratories.
What does a pollitically motivated anti nuclear rant have to do with reallity? Very little, it gives no facts that can be checked, no figures that can be tested. Just generalities and speculation.
I have respect for http://www.wise-uranium.org/ and related websites because they give you their assumptions and let you test them. I don't agree with some of their conclusions, but I beleive they are sincere.
The pollitical hack you cited above, not so much. _________________ Always appeal to a man's enlightened self interest, you can trust him to look out for himself honestly, It's when you appeal to his Honor or the Common Good that he stops paying attention.
Posted: Mon May 28, 2007 3:11 pm Post subject: Re: Fission FAQ v 1.5
Tanada wrote:
What does a pollitically motivated anti nuclear rant have to do with reallity? Very little, it gives no facts that can be checked, no figures that can be tested. Just generalities and speculation.
As opposed to your Pro Nuclear agenda
Quote:
It would cost up to $500 billion in 1996 dollars and take 150 years to accomplish the transmutation of dangerous long-lived radioactive toxins.
Theres one you could check there are more...
The "reality" is that politics will determine how many nuclear plants are built. Just like many other activities human beings engage in.
So you can pretend that politics does not exist and nuclear is going to provide cheap abundant energy for all based on the numbers. Or in fact you can take a look at reality you know the real world and realize that nuclear and politics plays a major role. _________________ "Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box."
-Italian Proverb
Joined: Apr 28, 2005 Posts: 3920 Location: West shore Lake Eire, MI, USA
Posted: Mon May 28, 2007 8:55 pm Post subject: Re: Fission FAQ v 1.5
Concerned wrote:
Quote:
It would cost up to $500 billion in 1996 dollars and take 150 years to accomplish the transmutation of dangerous long-lived radioactive toxins.
Theres one you could check there are more...
The "reality" is that politics will determine how many nuclear plants are built. Just like many other activities human beings engage in.
So you can pretend that politics does not exist and nuclear is going to provide cheap abundant energy for all based on the numbers. Or in fact you can take a look at reality you know the real world and realize that nuclear and politics plays a major role.
Numbers without context are meaningless. What if you spend a trillion dollars does that make the solution occur in 75 years? Or is money additive to the suppossed solution and with a Trillion dollars everything is sweetness and light in 15 years? Or is 500 Billion the optimum spending rate and 150 years the optimum timetable? What is the rationale for the numbers presented? That is the pollitics that matters, numbers without the context are just numbers that might or might not mean anything.
Physical laws do not bend to pollitics, that is what PO is all about. If you don't understand that I feel very sorry for you. _________________ Always appeal to a man's enlightened self interest, you can trust him to look out for himself honestly, It's when you appeal to his Honor or the Common Good that he stops paying attention.
Posted: Tue May 29, 2007 5:36 am Post subject: Re: Fission FAQ v 1.5
Tanada wrote:
Physical laws do not bend to pollitics, that is what PO is all about. If you don't understand that I feel very sorry for you.
Sure they do.
Say there is a "physical law" that says if you do the calculations right there is enough energy in the uranium of the earths crust and oceans to supply 9billion people with double the energy the USA consumes today for the next 20,000 years.
BUT if the politics don't allow the construction of nuclear facilities then that "physical rule or law" will never be realized.
It will remain hypothetical, which is exactly what much of the discussion on nuclear energy is about. How it can hypothetically solve our energy conundrum.
Or say that it takes more effort to safely dispose of nuclear waste than what can usefully be produced with the energy generated (political/economic decisions) then nuclear is a non starter.
Or say that a country like ummm... France decides to heavily subsidize their nuclear electrical generation capacity (political)...
A physical law is nothing but that. How it is used and implemented comes down to political and economic decisions.
How is the nuclear barrow coming along by the way? Are they still building more coal/gas fired plants around the globe than nuclear? _________________ "Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box."
-Italian Proverb
Posted: Tue May 29, 2007 5:54 am Post subject: Re: Fission FAQ v 1.5
Concerned wrote:
Tanada wrote:
Physical laws do not bend to pollitics, that is what PO is all about. If you don't understand that I feel very sorry for you.
Sure they do.
Say there is a "physical law" that says if you do the calculations right there is enough energy in the uranium of the earths crust and oceans to supply 9billion people with double the energy the USA consumes today for the next 20,000 years.
BUT if the politics don't allow the construction of nuclear facilities then that "physical rule or law" will never be realized.
It will remain hypothetical, which is exactly what much of the discussion on nuclear energy is about. How it can hypothetically solve our energy conundrum.
At some point, when energetic disaster became obvious all NIMBY considerations will go to bin basket and hundreds of nuke plants will be build in haste and according to shabby standards.
Physical laws are likely to put limits on that in another fashion.
Rates of production of fuel, enrichment of it and rates of dealing with waste or rates of production of some critical materials for reactor construction, production of critical spares etc will not allow to run more then so or so reactors concurrently worldwide.
And the maximum number of concurrently operating reactors may be dissapointingly low at "saturation point".
Quote:
Or say that a country like ummm... France decides to heavily subsidize their nuclear electrical generation capacity (political)...
It is really useless to claim that subsidies are making nukes not attractive.
Once electricity price go up (inevitable), you will no longer need those.
Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 2:03 pm Post subject: Re: Fission FAQ v 1.5
EnergyUnlimited wrote:
It is really useless to claim that subsidies are making nukes not attractive.
Once electricity price go up (inevitable), you will no longer need those.
Except it looks like Solar will have it all over nuclear price wise. _________________ "Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box."
-Italian Proverb
Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2007 2:00 am Post subject: Re: Fission FAQ v 1.5
Concerned wrote:
EnergyUnlimited wrote:
It is really useless to claim that subsidies are making nukes not attractive.
Once electricity price go up (inevitable), you will no longer need those.
Except it looks like Solar will have it all over nuclear price wise.
Solar does not work overnight and wind blow at random.
I agree, that you may get solar or wind cheaper than nuclear, but such energy will not always be available.
Nuclear is about the only serious energy source other than FF and hydro, capable to provide baseload supply.
NB. I have great doubts about storing solar heat in form of molten salts, nitrates alike. We could easily run into white elephant project here...lakes of molten nitrates...
No serious installation using it is working now.
And what, if cloudy day follows frosty night?
What about polar regions, or even non-tropical/subtropical regions?
Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2007 5:04 am Post subject: Re: Fission FAQ v 1.5
EnergyUnlimited wrote:
NB. I have great doubts about storing solar heat in form of molten salts, nitrates alike. We could easily run into white elephant project here...lakes of molten nitrates...
No serious installation using it is working now.
The latest big Spanish solar installations are using molten salts, I think. So it can't work that badly.
I agree that solar isn't all the answer, though. My suggestion for the electricity mix of any country would be:
- As much hydro as possible
- Solar, wind and geothermal in the locations where it works well, and as much as possible in those locations
- Complete electricity needs with nuclear, until we find something better... or uranium runs out and we are forced to find something better or do without
- Phase out fossil fuels as quickly as possible
Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2007 2:50 am Post subject: Re: Fission FAQ v 1.5
Nuclear Future?
Dream on nuke advocates...
Quote:
He told his audience that fuel is four to five times the ‘hyped’ cost of nuclear power – between 20 and 25 percent instead of the mere five percent.
Dr. Kim shot down the premature conclusion that utilities would rather pay the high prices instead of going through a costly decommissioning process. He said, “There is no compulsion to immediately decommission – stations can be held in standby or cold shutdown.”
Finally, he took up the matter of ‘utilities not caring about fuel costs.’ He pointed out, “Take $900 million from your company’s annual net profits. See how happy your management is.”
Read this and weep nuke saviours _________________ "Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box."
-Italian Proverb
Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2007 3:21 am Post subject: Re: Fission FAQ v 1.5
Concerned wrote:
Nuclear Future?
Dream on nuke advocates...
Quote:
He told his audience that fuel is four to five times the ‘hyped’ cost of nuclear power – between 20 and 25 percent instead of the mere five percent.
Dr. Kim shot down the premature conclusion that utilities would rather pay the high prices instead of going through a costly decommissioning process. He said, “There is no compulsion to immediately decommission – stations can be held in standby or cold shutdown.”
Finally, he took up the matter of ‘utilities not caring about fuel costs.’ He pointed out, “Take $900 million from your company’s annual net profits. See how happy your management is.”
If there is any long term future of nuclear, it will either be based on thorium cycle or FBR.
Thorium cycle is better bet, as it was demonstrated to work in civilian set up and certain type of reactor already in use can work with it. On the other hand civilian FBR are failures up to date.
There is also 200 times more thorium around, than U235.
Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 12:14 pm Post subject: Re: Fission FAQ v 1.5
Quote:
Is it possible to design a reactor where fuel rods only have to be put in and taken out once--where the reactor continuously produces fuel from the fertile material and uses it up, until all the fertile material has been converted and all the fuel used up--and the spent fuel rod would be worthless and can be taken directly to disposal without reprocessing?
They don't use up all of the potential energy in the fuel, but pebble bed reactors do operate continuously as the pebbles cycle down to the bottom, and are just topped up. They are also modular which should reduce construction costs and interest.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor
CANDU reactors do not need to stop for refuelling either.
Posted: Sun Aug 24, 2008 7:51 pm Post subject: Re: Fission FAQ v 1.0
GoIllini wrote:
Nuclear Safety
Chernobyl had 33 directly attributable deaths (that is, 33 people were killed due to an explosion or radiation exposure), and the U.N's high estimate for total deaths due to cancer as a result of the accident as 5,000. It affected agriculture as far away as Norway, and rendered 20 sq. km of land around the plant site uninhabitable for ~30-50 years.
This doesn't make geopolitical sense. The old Soviet Union would never evacuate a city of 50,000 people for a mere 5,000 deaths. That's not the way the regime operated. CBS News recently reported on a contaminated Russian nuclear weapons testing zone where the average life expectancy has dropped to about 50 years. Great numbers of the Russian population in the area of "Nuclear Lake" have birth defects. The U.S.S.R. ordered no evacuation. Chernobyl must have been a far worse disaster.
I find these U.N. death estimates to be not credible. Perhaps the USSR/Russia, as a member of the UN Security Council, has requested that UN agencies hush up about Chernobyl as a political bargaining chip.
There's a current danger that the new-growth forests in the vicinity of Chernobyl will catch fire someday, releasing huge amounts of long-lived radioactive isotopes into the air again. Plenty of fuel has been building up on the forest floor. I predict that in 50 years the Chernobyl area will still be hazardous to human life.
The City of Hiroshima was what many would call uninhabitable just after the bombing. People lived near the city anyways because it was their home city. Many people died within days. Many had cancer or birth defects much later. Perhaps we need multiple definitions of "uninhabitable". "Will humans multiply faster than they can die of cancer?" is a biological definition of "inhabitable", but it's not the safety definition that I would accept before moving to a contaminated area.
Personally, I would not move to Middletown, PA near TMI unless I knew that I was going to die soon anyways. The area is not what I would consider safe or inhabitable. Non-governmental, independent reports (Mother Jones, Leonard Sternglass) have tagged the city, especially certain blocks in the city, as cancer heaven. Proving any particular thyroid cancer death, like proving that smoking Marlboros caused a particular lung cancer, is impossible. One independent set of statistical estimates put the number of extra cancer deaths from TMI at 50,000. I assume that the nuclear industry will not want to accept this figure.
I also notice that TMI's nuclear fuel officially melted out the side of its concrete reactor containment vessel, then down. We should not be afraid to apply the word "meltdown" if that's what actually happened.
Readers should be aware of vast discrepancies in ideas between the industry's paid ad agency, its loyal supporters, and its critics. Each side is steering viewers to strongly divergent ways of viewing the nuclear safety problem, to frame the debate in a favorable light. Sometimes they quote completely opposite numbers as accepted facts, as if there were no scientific consensus in the world. This makes writing a nuclear FAQ problematic. Good luck, folks!
Posted: Sun Aug 24, 2008 9:56 pm Post subject: Re: Fission FAQ v 1.5
Quote:
This doesn't make geopolitical sense. The old Soviet Union would never evacuate a city of 50,000 people for a mere 5,000 deaths. That's not the way the regime operated. CBS News recently reported on a contaminated Russian nuclear weapons testing zone where the average life expectancy has dropped to about 50 years. Great numbers of the Russian population in the area of "Nuclear Lake" have birth defects. The U.S.S.R. ordered no evacuation. Chernobyl must have been a far worse disaster.
Chernobyl was as bad of a nuclear disaster as you can imagine. You had one of the largest reactors in the world vaporize of tonnes of nuclear fuel with no containment in a region with an iodine deficient population with no stay indoors order. But then you're linking it to some obscure nuclear test site without citations suggesting that this place was so bad that the average life expectancy dropped by decades, and that nuclear testing was directly responsible. Citations would be nice.
Quote:
I find these U.N. death estimates to be not credible. Perhaps the USSR/Russia, as a member of the UN Security Council, has requested that UN agencies hush up about Chernobyl as a political bargaining chip.
Right, international conspiracy is far more plausible...
Quote:
There's a current danger that the new-growth forests in the vicinity of Chernobyl will catch fire someday, releasing huge amounts of long-lived radioactive isotopes into the air again. Plenty of fuel has been building up on the forest floor. I predict that in 50 years the Chernobyl area will still be hazardous to human life.
You think thats bad, try living next to a coal plant where they dump tonnes of uranium and thorium into the air every year as a matter of course. Or even worse, that tobacco farmers are allowed to use phosphate based fertilizers that have high uranium concentrations on them; The several hundred kg of strontium and cesium in the soil around the ruins of Pripyat are far less of a concern than some of the dangers we're faced with every day. Ask one of the survivors of Bhopal.
Quote:
Personally, I would not move to Middletown, PA near TMI unless I knew that I was going to die soon anyways. The area is not what I would consider safe or inhabitable. Non-governmental, independent reports (Mother Jones, Leonard Sternglass) have tagged the city, especially certain blocks in the city, as cancer heaven. Proving any particular thyroid cancer death, like proving that smoking Marlboros caused a particular lung cancer, is impossible. One independent set of statistical estimates put the number of extra cancer deaths from TMI at 50,000. I assume that the nuclear industry will not want to accept this figure.
Well, no. Usually those reports are misapplications of statistics. You can do the same thing by making theoretical links between consumption of herring and high incidence of gay offspring. People are subjected to much higher radiation levels by taking an airplane flight, living next to coal plants, or consuming large numbers of bananas than living near TMI. Hell living anywhere with large granite buildings puts you at higher background radation levels due to excess uranium concentration in granite. Theres a serious crisis of perspective here.
While you're at it you might want to do isotopic separation of all the potasium in your bones to reduce your radiation exposure.
Quote:
I also notice that TMI's nuclear fuel officially melted out the side of its concrete reactor containment vessel, then down. We should not be afraid to apply the word "meltdown" if that's what actually happened.
Everyone refers to the three mile island accident as a meltdown, because thats what it was; However the fuel didn't melt out the side of the containment vessel.
Quote:
Readers should be aware of vast discrepancies in ideas between the industry's paid ad agency, its loyal supporters, and its critics. Each side is steering viewers to strongly divergent ways of viewing the nuclear safety problem, to frame the debate in a favorable light.
As opposed to nuclear critics who dont understand the technology and then just make stuff up?
Nuclear power does have real dangers; These dangers aren't unique to nuclear power, they exist in any large scale engineering technology, and we regularly face dangers that are far more severe daily than the risks of nuclear power accidents occuring, even if they were common. No one even thinks about the polonium-210 stuck to tobacco leaves enough to regulate fertilizer use in the industry.
Here's my proposal for disposing of radioactive hazards: We bury them under the corpses of everyone killed by the hazards of the other industries that we deem acceptable risks.
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