Re: Full Speed Ahead on Nuclear

I don't know, you tell me.

It's easy to start a thread only pointing out problems. But unless you can come up with your version of solutions, what's the point of this thread?

Dam, we all know what the challenges are. What's your solution?

Citation for the "20-30 yrs" stat please?

U233 cycle generates it's new fuel from Thorium. There is no shortage of that around the world.

U is contained in seawater and can be extracted from it. The economics of it are not good, but if a shortage developed it could become viable.

High level wastes can be enclosed in an insulated container, used to raise steam and thereby generate power.

Wastes can be vitrified with silica and other alkalis, locked up with synrock, etc.

The major obstacles to nuclear power are political and public relations affairs, not technical.

Within 50-100 years, or possibly considerably less, we will have fusion power available and this will no longer be a problem.

The answer to all your questions is in reprocessing the nuclear fuel. The technology exists and is in use (albeit with issues).

Reprocessing extends the useful life of the fuel several times, reduces volume of high level radioactive waste and keeps "redundant plants" operating; so they are not redundant but rather productive.

As far as enduring choices? Like what? Only a totally detached dreamer would expect the current list of renewable energy sources to be able to fill the world's energy needs anytime in the current century barring a catastrophic population drop.

Oh.......you want to rely on the 300 year supply of coal? Or natural gas? Where are you going to put the carbon?

Read the science! Go to the DOE statistical web pages. Crunch the numbers. And remember that every single one of the new "green" technologies has some characteristics that someone isn't going to like, let alone big questions about whether they will produce the desired ROI's over the long term.

Oh.......you're terrified that nuclear waste from a power plant is going to kill someone in an accident 100 or 1000 years from now.

Listen tiger. 35 people died and 3 towns were destroyed by unprecedented wildland fires in the Australian state of Victoria this week. They are having the worst drought in their history there. And you're worried about small statistical probabilities of casualties from nuclear waste or power plant accidents generations or centuries in the future?

Global Warming. Overwhelming scientific agreement says this is happening. Those climatic scientists will tell you that an expected consequence is weather extremes. Like droughts. And floods. And hard freezes and cyclonic storms. Marine biologists are talking seriously about an environmental catastrophe due to excess atmospheric carbon dioxide lowering the pH of the ocean waters.

Time to get real. Look at the numbers. All the jawboning for getting serious about non-nuclear alternative energy is not going to create any magic to make it happen big enough before the carbon dioxide wreaks havoc on our planet's environment. There are only three answers. Pick one, two or three of them:

Massive reductions in world standards of living, serious population reduction through war, famine and disease, and alternative non carbon emitting energy sources. The numbers right now indicate that the potential for the nuclear alternative exceeds the potential for all other alternative non carbon sources including carbon sequestration by two or more times.

I think I'm right on this factor of two; but I will welcome any criticism based on a closer look at the numbers.

Ed Weldon