Nuclear Energy is Making a Comeback

As engineers, we need to support nuclear as part of a diversified approach to power generation where each prime source should account for no more than 20% of a regions power.

We need also to worry about the rate of production of Coal power stations in China and India, without the necessary pollution controls and CO₂ reinjection or conversion.

Hello Hugh:

This is not an issue that belongs ONLY to engineers. My question to you is: "why 20% per type of power generation?" Nuclear IS the answer to the power problem! Don't bother doling out percentages for hydro-electric or coal or tidal or wind. Those allotments can be self determining and will get the share that they rightly deserve. The real question here is: "can nuclear electric generation be divorced from the production of weapons (both nuclear and DU)?".

The Thorium Nuclear Option was one of the nuclear options recently reviewed in another thread on CR4. The benefits of Thorium over Uranium give one cause for hope. However with 500 years until "safe" (albeit so much better than ~10,000 years), and with a 99 year life on concrete - we must still take certain extra measures to protect unborn generations. AND when adding up the nuclear threat from power generation we should also remember that there are significant radioactive elements disbursed from the burning of (especially) coal that are NOT disbursed from conventional "nuclear" power generation.

You mention the coal-fired generators of India and China. I think that India is doing yeomans work in trying to develop a Thorium nuclear power program. It is unfortunate that it has a breeder phase - as the particle accelerator initiator type would give it that certain moral acendancy that would derive from the inability to make weapons grade plutonium as a by-product.

As for China ... well... a recent Toronto Globe and Mail article quoted MIT experts who had familiariized themselves with the power generation industry in China. It sounds very much like the "wild west" in China right now, with perhaps as many as 25% of electric power plants being built annually having NO "official" footprint, despite the average consumption of 1.4 billion TONNES of coal EACH annually. This signifys a break between the regulators and the electric generation industry that makes policy enforcement a meaningless concept. Even so, those that ARE regulated do not meet developed nations standards for emissions - however acceptable (or not) those might be.

D

I think it is about time we get back to being rational about Nuclear Power. People are like herd animals. When startled we stampede, responding to hyper emotion. It takes a long time for us to settle down again and make an effort to really see the situation. Once we get over this, I expect the percentage of Energy supplied from Nuclear power (as electricity, and heat, and liquid fuels) to stabilize at over 80%.

The design and operation of Chernobyl was far below the standards, even for that time. Though nuclear power will always be something to be very cautious about, we are far enough along technologically to handle it with sufficient safety. Consider new designs such as the "Pebble-Bed" reactor which is inherently protected from the dreaded "meltdown".

We are also working out the details of using "Fast-Neutron" reactors which are capable of actually consuming our Nuclear Waste that has been accumulating. Furthermore, this technology runs on lower grade ore that the conventional pressurized, water-based "slow neutron" reactors AND it creates more nuclear fuel than it burns!!! The burden of accumulating nuclear waste is eliminated as well as the need to expand mining of uranium.

I think our fear of "terrorists" stealing plutonium from a reactor is way overblown. If they managed to get some of that fuel, they would still have to refine the plutonium it from many other highly radioactive elements present. This is not a job for one's basement! Then they would have to fashion the plutonium into a fissionable configuration. If we really want to worry about loose plutonium, we should be more critical of the stockpiles maintained by the USA and Russia.

As long as we modulate the reactor process to minimize the plutonium percentage, and as long as we never separate it from the other elements during reprocessing, we will have an inherently decent amount of security against theft.

What we really should be worrying about is a terrorist group infiltrating a socially unstable nuclear country like Pakistan. If terrorists ever garner sympathy from a few key people in their Nuclear Missile program, they could commandeer a few Nukes. THAT is the real danger!

I personally never understood why nuclear energy lost popularity. Beacause a copule of explosions? Come on, with a liitle more care explosions will not happen again. The new technology should be able to prevent a metldown this time.

u23fan

you are an idiot

The biggest problem in nuclear energy is non-cooperation from big power to other weaker nations as nuclear is seen as atomic power of war and political imbalance on the earth. Those have power are OK and those do not have are to live like a slave countries and can be shown their way to sit in the corners. It is hard to believe that all other country people are utter stupid and non-rational and only supper power people are rational in thinking.

I think it is time for the world to become one country. I "Shyam" will be its first citizen as it is my copyright idea but will allow all of you to get in easily there. My country can be called earth and its people humans. That is all it requires. No VISA and no work permits and no customs duty, no NPT, no army as we become one. We perhaps will need some nicely dressed up police.