What About Nuclear Power's Future?

It is not the answer, but the technology is availlable and "well" know, it is the easy sulution

It appears that the technology is only cost effective if the tax payer picks up the cost of waste processing and storage.

At this point there is already more high level waste in storage than Yucca Mountain can handle.

The industry has made deals in the past where the US supplies the reactor fuel and then takes back the waste for processing. Its a deal alright, but not for the taxpayer.

Until that issue is resolved, I don't see it being cost competitive, at least not if the industry is forced to pay the whole bill.

Gavilan

If the regulation that stops spent fuels from being reused was lifted there would be more incentive for companies to approach it. Right now the only thing that can be done is storing it. There are a lot of uses for plutonium that are not weapons related as well.

There are Reactor types that are less wastefull but these types produce waste that could be used for making WMD's (weapons of massdestruction) "if memory serves me correct"

"If we used the multi-pass process, the final resulting waste, with 95% of it's available energy used would no longer be dangerously radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years, but instead would be dangerous for perhaps 100."

First I want to thank you for your very informative reply.

When I was growing up the promises of Nuclear Energy included an environmentally benign method of producing electricity that was too cheap to meter. Combined with the blatant dishonesty of the industry pundits on too numerous of issues, to include "harmless releases" evidenced by "no increase in background radiation"; I have become a bit suspicious of the claims made in regards to the closed loop fuel cycle.

After making the above claims I don't think it is unfair to ask for a bit more information. Specifically; what is the major component of the final waste, and how much greater would the demand have to be in the medical and industrial sectors to absorb those "many remaining elements?" What is the environmental impact of those other sector applications?

Existing laws that do not require nuclear power plant operators to even notify local and state officials of all releases makes me question not only the safety of the industry but the accuracy of extrapolated safety data and the very integrity of the industry proponents.

Using President Carter as the fall guy who killed the development of the technology may associate its initial demise to a politician of popular and politically correct disrepute; it doesn't detract from the fact that he was an Engineer trained in Nuclear Science with a number of years of reactor operations management experience.

Again, I really do appreciate your informative reply; I look forward to others of the same character.

Gavilan

Gavilan, Carter was not a Nuclear Engineer. He mustered out of the Navy before the USS Nautilus was launched. He MIGHT have had some training, but at best he was unable to complete the coursework before mustering out on a compassionate discharge.

And the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel as a springboard to nuclear proliferation is largely a myth as well. The newer processes actually reduce the amount of Plutonium available for nuclear proliferation.

I am not a Nuclear engineer so I cannot speak to specific amounts and percentages unfortunately. Samarium-149 (non-radioactive and useful for high strength magnet assemblies) Xenon-135 (short lived, breaks down to Cesium-135) Krypton-83 (also non-radioactive), Iodine-135 (short lived, decays to Xenon-135), Neodymium-143, Promethium-147, Molybdnum-95, Cesium-133 (which is non-radioactive), Ruthenium-101, Rhodium-103, Technetium-99, and Palladium-105 &107 are all present, at least until they decay to something else. I know Technetium-99 is used for cardiac imaging. Cesium-135 is used in treating urterine and cervical cancers. Molybdnum-95 is the 'feedstock" for the production of Technetium-99. Promethium is used in thickness gauges and for portable x-ray sources. Iodine-135 is used to treat thyroid cancer, Rhodium-103 is rare, non-radioactive, and is used as a catalyst, as is palladium-105. palladium-107 is radioactive and has a half-life of 6.5 million years where it breaks down to Silver-107 which is stable.

Wikipedia has a more expansive list here.

Again; your posts are quite informative. I am all in favor of allowing the technology to stand on its economic and safety merits. If the technology can be made safe, which I believe that it can, and pays it's own way by self financing the regulatory, fuel cycle, and disposal costs; then I don't see why it shouldn't be allowed to compete with other alternative energy sources. But I would want to see a level playing field where costs are extrapolated from data that can be expected to reflect real end cost. I don't see those costs well reflected as yet. As far as I know, no major plant has yet been dismantled. I am anxious to see how dismantlement costs will compare to construction costs and how that will factor into the end cost per KWh.

In regards to the elements you mentioned as being found in the waste; How does the cost of production from waste compare to other sources?

I would want to peruse a number of professional peer vetted papers, from both proponents and detractors before I would either support or oppose the technology.

Also, doesn't the activity of an element vary inversely as half life? Aren't some of the most hazardous substances less radioactive as some of the less hazardous substances with lesser half life. In terms of environmental impact; wouldn't the other chemical properties of a substance also factor?

Also; I have some conflicting information on President James Earl Carter; "After serving on conventional submarines in both the Atlantic and Pacific, Carter joined the Navy's pioneering nuclear submarine program. After graduate studies in nuclear physics at Union College in Schenectady, New York, Carter was selected by Admiral Hyman Rickover to serve as engineering officer of the Sea Wolf, America's second nuclear submarine." This from http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jimmy-carter/.

I have not multi-source vetted that information; but it is in line with what I had been taught three decades ago.

Gavilan

Gavilan, the thing to remember is that for most of these elements there is no other source. They are almost ALL synthetic and must be made either in a reactor, or in a cyclotron. The refining steps are the same in most cases either way. so by my way of thinking, the costs should at worst be a wash. The fact that fuel reprocessing results in salable nuclear fuel should offset the refining costs I would think.

Carter left the service before the prototype power plant for the USS Seawolf was complete and only 5 months into the nuclear power training program. He was not qualified nuclear engineer before he resigned to take care of the family farm. Achievement.org is incorrect.

There also have been quite a few decommissioned reactors, the one that comes to mind off the top of my head is TMI 2. The only one that Carter ever inspected as far as I know.

Yes, that was what i meant, read it a while ago in the scientific America, just remembered some key points.

Thanks for the insightfull post

The fusion reactor at Princeton's Plasma Power Physics Lab has had success in creating brief pulses of energy form shorty lived fusion reactions.

A the present levels of funding, success will be slow in coming however, if the new administration stays true to its commitment to freeing us from our dependence on foreign oils and accelerates the research being done at Princeton, fusion power could very easily displace the controversial use of fission based nuclear reactors within the next decade.

Fusion power brings with it a level of safety not possible with fission based reactors.

Runaway reactions are not possible. There is no hazardous waste to dispose of. The "fuel" needed is readily available from sea water without disrupting the environment and there is no weapons grade material being made that could be used to make a bomb.

With cheap energy available from such a source, the economics of producing hydrogen as a fuel for cars would be brought down dramatically making reductions in green house gases commercially viable.

Best of all, the USA and the world at large would no longer be held hostage to the oil suppliers nor would it be affected by the weather patterns as are other forms of renewable power.

L.J.

http://www.pppl.gov

Is not the containment of the heated plasma still a problem?

If the magnets used to contain the process fail, the process stops and the heated material cools off.

At least that is my understanding given my conversations with those at the Princeton Lab.

L.J.

Maybe not a long term but definely a long time intern cure!

"Maybe not a long term but definitely a long time intern cure!"

Which one are you referring to. . . . fission or fusion?

I was referring to fission. Fusion may someday a viable alternate but so far maintaining a fusion reaction is but a dream. One that may be possible but still unproven.

It takes so much energy to just start a reaction and then the plasma field must be must be confined in a magnet "bottle". Controlling a temperature of over 200-million degrees is a real bug-a-boo.

In the foreseeable time frame, fission power will be the King!

I was at the Lab in Princeton last month and had a chance to observe their "museum" of Fusion Project memorabilia.

One thing that caught by attention was a hollow metal casting that resembled a donut that had been ravaged with a rolling pin.

While the cross sectional area appeared to be constant, the exterior shape was twisted and pinched like a cruller.

If this be the new "bottle", heaven help those who must make it!

L.J.

"So long as one permits politicians to dictate engineering solutions, there is not going to be a solution to anything."

The forced use by Congressional fiat of a known carcinogen (MTBE) in gasoline has poisoned the aquifer in virtually every community where underground gas tanks have leaked.

The forced replacement of incandescent bulbs with more "energy efficient" fluorescents containing mercury is made even more absurd by the fact that even more efficient LED alternatives were available.

The forced use of ethanol, subsidized with taxpayer money, is costly beyond the awareness of most and simultaneously drove up the cost of everything containing corn, from feed stock to baked goods. It simultaneously has created operational havoc across a wide field of Otto cycle IC engines used everywhere from marine to aviation.

The stupidity of elected officials does not say much for the intelligence of the American voter who is blatantly oblivious of your rationale.

Stop being rational!

You'll ^$#@&! scare people!

L.J.

I need to correct something. As a result of my posts, I have created the impression that fusion technology doesn't create hazardous waste. That has not always been the case.

The amount of radioactive waste that was generated during the dismantling of the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor weighed in the neighborhood of two million kilograms and had a volume of 2,500 cubic meters.

The materials were highly contaminated with tritium, which presented unique challenges during packaging and transportation to the disposal areas.

From what little research I have done, it appears that future generations of fusion technology will not pose this degree of complexity of waste management.

L.J.

The beauty of that problem is that in 120 years the level of radioactivity from tritium should be nil (10 half-lives), as long as Tritium was the only contaminant. But even then Tritium is an alpha emitter and even clothing is an effective shield for that. It is also lighter than air so even if it were to seep through the packaging (as hydrogen is wont to do) as long as it was exposed to atmosphere, there should be very little buildup. Frankly, Tritium is probably about the safest radioactive substance there is. The half-life is short, there is little possibility of concentration in the body, and the decay mechanism is alpha decay. The level of contamination would probably drop due to diffusion into the atmosphere faster than the decay half-life.

That said, the neutron flux from the fusion reaction probably did neutron activate some of the elements in the tokamak, so Tritium was probably the least of their worries.