Nuclear Power feasibility

But the consequenses of event would result in a burst of humidity that will be store not only in a resolved way but in a reserved opposed humidity in deep H20 and c2. In deep bodies of water.

Thread seems to have drifted considerably from the original.

1. Nuclear wastes

Why not place high level wastes in an insulated container, use the heat to raise steam and generate power.

2. When in plasma state in an electrostatic field, rate of nuclear decomposition can be accelerated up to a billionfold. The heat generated could again provide power, while the final wastes are all saleable minerals or metals.

3. Oil supplies

Coal can be gasified insitu then turned into oil for about $25 a barrel. We are not short of coal. The oil shortage is a deficiency of political will, not a shortage of resources.

4. Basically every problem has a technical solution if we are willing to find it and use it.

5. The link between CO2 and climate change is politically proven. The scientific evidence is dubious. When the IPCC list dissenters as "contributors" to their conclusions you have to wonder how meaningful the "peer review" of the evidence is. (I heard the head of the IPCC admit that this had happened).

6. Previous geological ages (except the carboniferous) all had about 10x our present atmospheric CO2. According to current computer models, this should have shown disastrous warming, yet there is no evidence that it happened.

7. About 400AD there was a mini ice age. The Huns crossed the Danube by driving over the frozen river.

About 1000AD there were vineyards in Northern Britain and Southern Scotland. Grain was being grown in Greenland.

About 1600AD another mini ice age. A fair was held in London on the frozen Thames.

Currently we have experienced warming, but based on history we can expect this to change.

8. Since 1895, the "majority of scientists" have agreed that an ice age is imminent, a hot climate change is upon us and will get worse, an ice age is imminent and now climate is heating up. Some are predicting it will get colder but a few years will be needed for the rest to catch up and cooling become fashionable.

For over 200 years, the environmentalists or their equivalent have been predicting disaster. In over 200 years the score has been environment 200, environmentalists 0.

With this record, why do we still take them seriously?

We can defeat all these problems if we ignore the doomsayers and concentrate on solutions.

Well Sceptic to me your ideas of utilizing all that is now to advantage now makes sense..Perhaps you can convince the US government to try your suggestion on a few of the storage silos at Hanford Washington where much of the nuclear waste is literally just sitting doing nothing positive at this time...outside of leaking continuously as the containers succumb to the constant bombardment of decaying nuclei within their sarcophagi trying very hard to free themselves..

Re coal to liquid fuel the Germans did it fairly well during the last acknowledeged world war and the South Africans continue to do it to-day ..So yes the oil economy has room to continue farther in to the future than current media/oil sponsered studies suggest keeping we the consumers constantly looking for ways to pay the corporate mavins more than they deserve..

I'm also in agreement re the sky is falling environmentalists...I rmember my university days when the Population Bomb by Erlich and Erlich was required reading..I was,at the time convinced that the earth wasn't big enough to share with any more human beings..Now I'm of the opinion that much like the sciencefiction of the past and some current that the earth needs to be thickly peopled before ideas from individuals come to the fore and begin to spread our species around the greater galaxy and beyond..I for one would enjoy a return to the planet in say 200 years..Much will have changed including attitudes to thoughts out of the box.

Being careful in your own nest and by extension in your broader community is not only healthier for our shared environment(the planet) but tends to provide some extra lucre to pass on to the megacompanies that like to sell us energy that provides us with comfort/entertainment and options to do as we wish with our time in this planet.

Regards.....Marty Wolf

But the original thread, bureaucratese as is is, was already "drifting" of its own accord, don't you see? Such, unavoidably, is the nature of the topic.

There are two types of Nuclear power generation methods, Fission, to which you are referring to, and Fusion. Fission is messy, dangerous and expensive. The way to go is Fusion, unfortunately that technology is still very new and will take some time and R & D to achieve. The it takes to develop Fusion could be greatly reduced if we actually funded it, but why invest 100 billion over 15 years in Fusion research which could reduce energy costs for businesses from 25% to less than 1% spurring tremendous economic growth when we can instead spend 100s of billions of dollars on "stimulus packages".

Unfortunately, fusion technology is far from "new"...which makes its prospect as a near-term, or even moderately distant, solution rather bleak for quite a while, if not for ever.

That's absolutely untrue. Please refer to this thread:

http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/28338#newcomments

Such irresponsible comments as you have made above perpetuates the myth that this technology is somehow out of reach. Educate yourself on the subject and you'll find it has simply been underfunded.

Roger

In the 80's I read a proposition for fusion power that suggested exploding a fusion bomb underground, then extract the stored heat for power. With proper design, this cavern could be permanently reheated and continuous power produced.

Obviously there are many hurdles to overcome, (eg radiation isolation) but it could be feasible without the time needed to develop completely new technology.

The technology to develop a fusion plant is not "completely new". Please read the following link (it's short, I promise):

http://www.iter.org/a/index_nav_4.htm

Detonating Fusion bombs underground is impractical, unfortunately. The good news is its also unnecessary, we just have to get these tokamaks working right.

Hi RP

if you try the link given by DuckinthePond you will see all information concerning CANDU and its offspring.

India has bought some a long time ago and is pursuing its own line of development as they have vast amounts of thorium.

Some others have been installed worldwide and have proven reliability and safety.

The feature of refueling without shutdown helps a lot.

Regarding ITER and JET the situation will be much more difficult than to get it running continuously.

JET has burnt for a second or so and now is radioactive - nobody will ever be allowed to come near any more!

The vast amount of neutrons in fusion reactors is activating any material in reach. So the final construction is intended with a Lithium blanket inside the plasma ring. This will the produce Tritium - that is new fuel.

The problem are the impurities in the tube and the blanket and the plasma. These will be activated by the neutrons and there are some pretty ugly radioactive elements existing in the atomic-mass region up to iron or a little bit above that will be produced by neutron capture. I have no idea to what impurity level we will have to go but a simple extrapolation will show some idea: If JET burnt for 1 second with 10^-6 the power of a typical today power-plant and the radioactivity has to be down minimum a factor of 1000 likely much more, then we get a factor of 1 second to 30 years lifetime or 10⁹ from time, a factor of 10⁶ from power and a factor of 10³ from radioactivity.

In total this will require a super-shielding by the blanket - but this will prevent power extraction. And this will require a super purity of the plasma-tube that will not likely be possible better than 10-5. So from total 10¹⁸ a fraction of 10¹³ is required for shielding - not very likely to be achieved. So what else?

So may be there will be a way in 50 or so years (the same time to reality was announced 50 years ago). But I am sceptic.

RHABE

You Wrote: "JET has burnt for a second or so and now is radioactive - nobody will ever be allowed to come near any more!"

Really? That's too bad for the top French ambassador who just went there September 12th.

http://www.jet.efda.org/

Seriously people, can we at least attempt to be factual?

Thanks Roger Pink..I viewed the JET site and watched the 9 minute film which loaded surprisingly quickly on my dial up system..Most educational..and fun to watch..I may try it again in a different language to brush up on my german.Any idea when a pocket sized plasma containment device with ancillary power generator and plug ins will be available for the consumer market....Highly recommend this site and have locked in on the jet site by listing it in my favorites section..Thanks again

Marty Wolf

Hi RP,

there are many places with highly radioactive inventory.

But this will not give any visitor nor employee the possibility to play with their health.

The worst thing you can do - and many do so - is to cut dry with a circular diamond blade any material containing uranium or thorium - for example granite! (Typical content is 50 to 150g/t - no move without permission if concentrated!)

RHABE

Hi Roger,

I saw a program yesterday about the JET project and the result of what happened when they fired it up. To me this was very interesting as you could actually see the fusion in progress, albeit for a very short time.

I do not expect that this will be the future in the near future, but I do expect that this is the way to go, don't you agree?

Spencer.

I totally agree that this is the future of energy (along with solar). As for how long it takes to evolve, that is directly related to how much money the government invests in it. The more money, the faster the technology develops.

I'm totally disgusted when our government tells us there's no money for research, no money to repair our roads and bridges, no money for the higher education of our citizens, bla, bla, bla. But they can suddenly come up with trillions upon trillions to bail out Wall St., and fund a war overseas.

It's not a matter of coming up with the money, it's a matter of where they would rather direct that money.

It just goes to show that Government thinks it's more fun to finance wars and wall street instead of boosting our economy and educating the people.

Government wants to keep you stupid. That way when they do something that's disagreeable with the people, they can tell you that you just don't understand the big picture.

Thanks Roger. Very interesting. I hadn't realised they had come so far.

It's not your fault you didn't know. Ever since the false cold fusion claims of the 1990s this industry has been essentially blacklisted in this country. The top scientists in the world need to start a campaign promoting this. I'm not holding my breath.

RP and maybe et al.....Quickly perused a site with letters ITER...This is a joint fusion project of various rather large countries including...China,India,South Korea,European Pact nations,Russia and the USA..So there is ongoing at considerable globally pooled expense fusion research.......And its surprisingly un newsworthy when i feel,now that i know more than i ever new about fusion and its potential to make turbines turn, its a story worth keeping up with and highlighting to a planet peppered with news services dealing mainly with tales of internecine conflicts/disease/monopoly players caught with their collectivepants down using other peoples monies etc...Go figure..With our species collective knowledge of history/science etc we still throw mud instead of sharing all that is...and we like to hear about the mudslinging more based on news that i am exposed to regularly..The internet may be changing that...I don't know.

Regards...Marty W.

As pointed out by Red Craig (#1), Nuclear Power is essentially "renewable", having an expected supply of over 10,000 years.

I think the best way to use Nuclear Energy is by using a class of Nuclear Reactor, called "Fast Neutron Reactors" which not only do not produce plutonium, but can consume it along with most of the long-lived highly radioactive waste products that have accumulated from our conventional "Light Water Reactors". Our current stockpile of highly radioactive waste from our current Nuclear Plants could be reprocessed and burned in these Fast Neutron Reactors, thus drastically minimizing the problem of storing huge piles of radioactive waste. We could win on two counts: We can get a nearly unlimited supply of energy AND we can safely "dispose" of our existing stockpile of Nuclear Waste.

These "Fast Neutron Reactors" are somewhat safer in that they operate at atmospheric pressure, using a liquid metal (like sodium) in the core instead of superheated water. Fast Neutron Reactors are not even new technology! The French have been running them for decades. You can read more about this in the December 2005 issue of Scientific American (at www.sciam.com).

Reprocessing all this waste will require a lot of energy, but these Power Plants can provide it. We should be moving full speed toward development and construction of these Reactors, as we are going to suffer fuel shortages during the long (15 years?) wait for them to come on line.

13th International Conference on Emerging Nuclear Energy Systems (ICENES 2007) 3-8 June 2007, Istanbul, Turkey http://www.icenes2007.comInternational Journal of Energy Research (ER)

Hi to all,

in the ICENES conferences the new concepts and the added information on existing systems of nuclear power generation are discussed.

There is clear evidence that systems based on the Canadian CANDU design (as stated by others above) are ready, have superior features, use less fuel of lower enrichment, burn more of the fuel, burn a considerable part of the waste are commercially competitious.

The most retarding obstacle seems to be the existing giants that want to push "their" concepts.

There is more than enough fuel existing for longterm uranium and thorium reactors, as low grade ores are not of interest today but uranium cost is not really significant today although uranium price is up from 8 to 80 $/lb.

Most important also inherent safety (not existing in any other reactor type), derived from heavy water moderation and light water cooling. Any loss or dilution of moderator by failing of encapsulating tubes will shut down the reactor.

http://www.candu.org/candu_reactors.html

http://www.nucleartourist.com/type/candu.htm

RHABE

Rhabe,

The link doesn't seem to be working for me. Can you provide a new one, I would like to read up on this.

Thanks,

Roger

http://www.aecl.ca/

This is the official Candu site............from the guys who built it.

Check out the Chalk River reactor.....specifically the date since it first kicked in.........

The Lucas Heights reactor in Australia has been going since the late 50's and seems to have been exceptionally reliable. It is also a CANDU type heavy water reactor.

The original query was basically to discuss the concern whether nuclear fuel is sustainable.

From the views expressed, the nuclear fuel availability is not a concern, as IAEA publication also supports this.

Also it is seen from the discussion that global warming is not entirely attributed to burning fossil fuel alone. Abrupt stop of fossil fuel cannot fully solve global warming!

Can we conclude that nuclear fuel option is feasible in the long term?

Hi,

a long time ago there was a publication in SCIAM about the abundance and availability of uranium - may be somebody will find this article again.

It stated that for a price rise of a factor of 10 there will be a factor of 300 times more uranium mineable!

This is very unusual in mining and reflects the distribution of low grade uranium ores.

Unlike ordinary metals there is no problem with a price rise higher than 10fold as the raw uranium does not have a considerable impact on the price of produced energy.

In fact the price has risen in recent years from 8 to 80 $/lb and nobody is complaining about but new methods in extraction by leaching underground deposits in geologically old river beds are used more extensively.

RHABE

Can we conclude that nuclear fuel option is feasible in the long term?

Yes...economics will dictate the necessity.....as are nuclear research reactors. Unfortunately Canada just lost the Maple 1 reactor due to contamination.

It depends, are you speaking of Nuclear Fission or Fusion. I think you are speaking of Fission. If that is the case, I completely disagree. Uranium is not very plentiful, the plants are dirty and dangerous. Fusion on the other hand has plenty of fuel and are much less radioactive. However this technology needs to be developed.

Can we conclude that nuclear fuel option is feasible in the long term?

Yes, but it can not be seen as the total solution.

Roger Pink et al....The discussion continues unabbated...A lot of threads since my last chance to visit and haven't read them all but allow me to throw this in to the mix..I heard,on the radio early this morning,an excerpt from CBC Radio,"Quirks and Quarks" discussing a find by an emminent mycologist ..Basically this gentleman (I will try and track down the particulars in a timely manner,)has spent the last 50 years of his life in the realm of science and has some expertise in the world of Mycology--fungi in the broadest sense and including lichens which is a symbiotic biological entity comprised of fungi and algae.

In the recent past his team uncovered a lichen (shades of John Wyndhams "The Trouble with Lichen" an interesting sciencefiction from the early 1960's i beleive but am often wrong on preciscion of facts) from Patagonia that is red..After due efforts to classify etc found ,surprisingly,that this particular species emits volatile antibiotic substances in its local space...Further investigation has shown that this volatile release includes heptane,octane and 5 other pure hydrocarbons...In essence the biological diesel that you may or may not have heard/read about in the media recently..It does very well on oatmeal and will thrive on cellulose..This gentleman jump shifted his speculation in the interview and intimated perhaps the biological sources of hydrocarbons for easy extraction may in the end have originated because of lichens and other criters such as this in the first place..

Large pools of abiogenic hydrocarbons are still possible .I beleive in the late 1970's or early 1980's a gentleman named Gold or Golder put out the theory of deep (to mankind anything over 2 miles into the earths mantle is deep)abiogenic pools of hydrocarbons waiting to be tapped into..Does any one have any info on this to share...

The utilization of fusion is still,in my mind,the way to go for massive amounts of controllable energy flux with minimal environmental impact giving us as a species time to spend understanding our home planet and the rest of all that is..Its vital to persue this option regardless of the marketplace movement of readily available and probablly limited naturally occuring reserves built up over the eons.

Regards,Marty Wolf

More on Myco-diesel.....The Scientist interviewed for the Quirks and Quarks program previously alluded too is Gary Strobel,Department of Plant Sciences,Montana State University,Bozeman Montana,USA 59717..The initial journal article was accepted for publication in the journal..Microbiology September 2/08 and can be found via U of Montana in a pdf form ..or in Microbiology (2008) 154 reference mic2008/022186 An interesting piece of investigation offering yet another promising route to petroleum/hydrocarbon generation in an ongoing/sustainable manner if supporting the current lifestyle/economy/transportation/industrial venues is desireable..The fungus has the title Gliocladium roseum(NRRL 50072) and is a newly classified lichen..Regards,Marty Wolf

Hi Martywolf,

"Large pools of abiogenic hydrocarbons are still possible"

This theory was launched after measurement of volcanic events setting free large amounts of methane and after some "impossible" gas and oil was detected - for example at the rim of the meteoritic impact crater "Siljan Ring" in northern Sweden. This crater is geologically old, has 50 ? miles diameter, is located in the old Precambrian granite and gneiss mountain and should not yield at all any gas. Drilling was tried but did not yield any useful amount.

So the theory is that there is a lot of methane (deep) inside our earth - residual from planet forming - slowly seeping up.

If this methane is in contact with fluid hydrocarbon (if seeping into oil) it will become dissolved and chemically attached to the oil (by pressure and temperature).

By this mechanism big oil fields can grow to very big ones.

Some researchers say that only by this mechanism the distribution of oil fields can be explained - others object fiercely.

I don't think we can utilise this gas as too deep and too slow uprising.

RHABE