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Zapping Nuclear Waste in Minutes Is Nobel Winner’s Holy Grail Quest

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Re: Zapping Nuclear Waste in Minutes Is Nobel Winner’s Holy Grail Quest

#21

Post by arcticbull »

chmaynard wrote: post #2

This is another of many "silver bullet" proposals to reverse the environmental damage caused by Western civilization. Most of they won't work and will have unintended consequences. As always, prevention is the best cure.

Everything we do is about trade-offs. Solar panels have toxic chemicals, too (Cadmium compounds, Hexaflouroethane, Lead [1]). Wind involves rare-earth metals like Neodymium which are produced in mines that resemble toxic war zones in far-flung regions of China [2]. None of us will ever exist on this earth without leaving fingerprints. It's not about 'zero' it's about 'better' one step at a time. Defeatism and refusing to accept anything short of perfection is a good way to get nowhere.

For reference 1 ton of Thorium produces as much electricity as 200 tons of Uranium or 3.5 megatons of coal -- which would you rather use?

[1] https://sciencing.com/toxic-chemicals-solar-panels-18393.htm...

[2] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1241872/EXCLUSIVE-I...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power

Re: Zapping Nuclear Waste in Minutes Is Nobel Winner’s Holy Grail Quest

#22

Post by arcticbull »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #18
mschuster91 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but most nuclear waste came from the US, UK, France and Russia. As for a better idea, molten salt/thorium reactors, they can eat at least the highly dangerous/ultra long half life stuff.

Fast neutron reactors can. Most thorium MSRs are slow neutron reactors and struggle to transmute significant used nuclear fuel.

My understanding is that Thorium reactors are far less likely to produce transuranic elements with long half-lives, and less waste in general (two order of magnitude). [1] However, it does in fact require some fissile material such as recycled plutonium, so the two reactor kinds can work in conjunction to yield a net drop in long-half-life nuclear wastes. [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power

[2] http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and...

Re: Zapping Nuclear Waste in Minutes Is Nobel Winner’s Holy Grail Quest

#23

Post by mimixco »

arcticbull wrote: post #17
mimixco wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is your friend! Only one nuke plant in the US was shut down over protests (San Onofre) and that took 20 years. The press releases from plant owners who closed or cancelled their plans all cite negative economics as the reason.

Generally on HN, unlike other comment zones on the Internet, it's on people making claims to back them up with sources. Ideally if you have something controversial or interesting you provide links and resources, so we can all learn, instead of farming out the work of backing up your opinion to each reader.

I appreciate that and I often do. However, nothing I said was controversial. Many nuke plants in the US have closed and all others (but one) have been cancelled. This is stuff you can see on the evening news. I don't really have to time to re-research every single case but, if someone doubts me it might be worth their time to do it.

Most likely, it's easier to just dismiss comments like mine if you're already pro-nuclear. It happens to me whenever I talk about nuclear here.

Re: Zapping Nuclear Waste in Minutes Is Nobel Winner’s Holy Grail Quest

#24

Post by mimixco »

arcticbull wrote: post #16
mimixco wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since there is no working thorium reactor at scale, it would be more accurate to say that it is true today and some people hope that we could escape the uranium cycle with thorium. So far, no one has.

I'm saying that "nuclear power" != "uranium cycle power" and that if we continue to couple the two, nobody ever will. It's on us, if we think there is opportunity, to advocate for better technology options where possible. Casually linking the two is part of why we don't have use at scale.

Yet, in practice, the two are the same. It's like Uber saying "Never mind, we're not profitable. We'll make flying taxis!"

The reasons that thorium reactors don't work aren't because people don't like nuclear. They don't work for technical reasons.

Besides, this story is about uranium power and that's where all our problems lie today. Even if we had thorium reactors tomorrow, we still have over 100 nuke plants in the US that would need to be de-commissioned along with all the waste they've already created -- and that's billions more in subsidies.

Re: Zapping Nuclear Waste in Minutes Is Nobel Winner’s Holy Grail Quest

#25

Post by hermitdev »

arcticbull wrote: post #13
mimixco wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simplest source is the closure of many existing nuclear plants and the cancellation of all but one which we're planned for the US. It's not well known that the industry requires billions in government subsidies to even exist today. If taxpayers are footing the bill, that tells you that selling electricity isn't paying its own way. Fewer people still know that nuclear plants are uninsurable, for somewhat obvious r…

It's as likely they were cancelled due to negative public sentiment towards nuclear energy. We're going to need some sources.

In my recollection, most US plants are closing or have closed due to end of lifetime. Plants are reaching end of 50-60 year planned lifetimes. New plants are hard to build due to burdensome regulations, mostly nonsensical negative public sentiment and enormous capital requirements. I remember hearing that you have to upfront the cost of waste disposal in a trust. I don't have any citations handy, but you're looking at something like 10 billion upfront to build a new fission plant in the US. They also take a long time to build and start up, so you're lucky to see any revenue for at least 5 years on a multibillion investment. Not a very attractive investment, is it?

That said, I'm a fan of nuclear fission for power baseline. It has its warts, but it's better for us long term than coal or gas.

Re: Zapping Nuclear Waste in Minutes Is Nobel Winner’s Holy Grail Quest

#26

Post by Someone »

saagarjha wrote: post #5

> The idea is to transmute this nuclear waste into new forms of atoms which don’t have the problem of radioactivity. What you have to do is to change the makeup of the nucleus. Ok, but what exactly is it transmuting the atom to?

I also wonder about that. If it transmutes into the natural decay products, energy must come out, and, depending on the size of that laser/proton gun, we could (although I think that’s highly unlikely) even be talking about a way to make small nuclear bombs.

Also, will the end result still be energy positive? Even if the transmutation doesn’t add energy to the nucleus, that can be problematic, as that laser will need to be powered.

And of course, there’s the question of ‘aim’: can we really target individual atoms well enough to ‘hit’ them exactly once? (this might be fairly easy if the process requires specific energies that the radioactive atoms, once ‘hit’ no longer are sensitive to)

Re: Zapping Nuclear Waste in Minutes Is Nobel Winner’s Holy Grail Quest

#27

Post by acidburnNSA »

mimixco wrote: post #11
graeme wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got a source? I'd read the EROI of nuclear is quite high.

The simplest source is the closure of many existing nuclear plants and the cancellation of all but one which we're planned for the US. It's not well known that the industry requires billions in government subsidies to even exist today. If taxpayers are footing the bill, that tells you that selling electricity isn't paying its own way. Fewer people still know that nuclear plants are uninsurable, for somewhat obvious r…

Nuclear plants in the USA are closing early specifically because electricity revenue dropped below what was expected (and needed) to pay for operation and maintenance costs. Revenue dropped specifically because fracked natural gas became very cheap and undercut the price in deregulated markets.

The idea that nuclear plants are net energy negative is very inaccurate. A 1 GWe plant runs for 60 years releases roughly 2000 PetaJoules of energy from atomic nuclei. Vastly less energy goes into building and operating the plant. They're massive, massive carbon-free energy sources.

But operation cost is high. There are lots of highly trained operators working 4 shifts. There are complex regulations, and safety upgrades after 9/11 and Fukushima.

As for insurance, if fossil plants had to pay insurance for the global warming they're causing, they'd be far far more uninsurable. Right now, fossil makes 85% of the world's energy. Would it be viable if it was liable for climate change? Not a chance. Also, nuclear energy kills fewer people per Watt*hour generated than almost all other energy sources. So why wouldn't it be insurable compared to the others? [3].

Nuclear subsidies in the USA are 1% of the total energy subsidies [1].

Helen Caldicott is not an authority on nuclear energy. She is the number 1 anti-nuclear activist in the world and has said countlessly many things that are wholly unsupported by even minor scrutiny [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2016_Energy-Related_Tax_P...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/apr/05/anti-n...

[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...

Re: Zapping Nuclear Waste in Minutes Is Nobel Winner’s Holy Grail Quest

#28

Post by arcticbull »

mimixco wrote: post #24
arcticbull wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saying that "nuclear power" != "uranium cycle power" and that if we continue to couple the two, nobody ever will. It's on us, if we think there is opportunity, to advocate for better technology options where possible. Casually linking the two is part of why we don't have use at scale.

Yet, in practice, the two are the same. It's like Uber saying "Never mind, we're not profitable. We'll make flying taxis!" The reasons that thorium reactors don't work aren't because people don't like nuclear. They don't work for technical reasons. Besides, this story is about uranium power and that's where all our problems lie today. Even if we had thorium reactors tomorrow, we still have over 100 nuke plants in the…

Sort of. If you'd read my links you'd see that Uranium cycle was originally developed and popularized because the US army wanted Plutonium for nuclear weapons. That has nothing to do with Thorium's intrinsic quality as a power source. [1]

The lack of investment into Thorium (and into nuclear power in general) had a lot to do with Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and of course much more recently Fukushima. [2] On my chart, that would be the giant slump in 1986 and 2012 (what could that have been?). It became far harder to secure funding for any kind of nuclear research because people lost their taste for it, and frankly, the remaining funding came from governments so they could have a steady supply of fissile material for weapons. This kind of research requires huge capital outlay. [5]

Thorium is far more efficient per unit weight (1T is equal to 200T of uranium and 3.5MT of coal), a lot more abundant, safer (from a stability perspective, and also from a non-proliferation perspective) and requires some of the waste products (such as Plutonium) from traditional reactors because it's fertile, not fissile. [4] As such, nuclear waste can be utilized by thorium reactors.

This is all very well documented ([1,2,4,5]).

Uber doesn't work because of its unit economics, but that's a totally unrelated conversation we can leave up to the judgement of the public markets to resolve. [3]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power

[2] https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-a...

[3] https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/11/can-uber-ever-delive...

[4] http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and...

[5] https://www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2012/02/16/the-thi...

Re: Zapping Nuclear Waste in Minutes Is Nobel Winner’s Holy Grail Quest

#29

Post by mimixco »

arcticbull wrote: post #17
mimixco wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is your friend! Only one nuke plant in the US was shut down over protests (San Onofre) and that took 20 years. The press releases from plant owners who closed or cancelled their plans all cite negative economics as the reason.

Generally on HN, unlike other comment zones on the Internet, it's on people making claims to back them up with sources. Ideally if you have something controversial or interesting you provide links and resources, so we can all learn, instead of farming out the work of backing up your opinion to each reader.

This is a start... https://nuclear-news.net/category/1-nuclear-issues/business-...
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