Reprocessing is its own nightmare and, I think, only France tries to do it. All of these processes (the "uranium cycle") are terribly polluting in their waste outputs and dangerous places for the people who have to work there and live near them.
It's like the US doesn't already have a number of remote areas like Hanford, Oak Ridge, Idaho Falls, the Savannah River Site, Rocky Flats, etc. that are already set up (and somewhat contaminated already) for handling this sort of material and process. In reality it's a political nightmare, not a pollution one.
That's the Russian approach. Just put it in a remote place. Problem solved.
>and that the risk is overblown I like nuclear but c'mon. Its clear that its not at an acceptable level of safety. Large scale disasters like Fukushima can't be hand waived away. >Renewables are not working right now (see Germany) What am I supposed to see from Germany? They're the largest electricity exporter in Europe. > considering that all this infrastructure needs to be produced with ordinary industrial processe…
> Its clear that its not at an acceptable level of safety. I am no nuclear safety inspector, but I would argue that there's large variance in terms of safety in different nuclear installations. Not putting a nuclear plant next to a Tsunami-coast would be a major factor here. > Large scale disasters like Fukushima can't be hand waived away. Neither can the Bhopal disaster, yet we continue to engage in large-scale chem…
This is true not of nuclear energy in general but -- if what you're saying is true -- of the Uranium cycle commonly in use today. To my knowledge, it was originally selected because it can support production of weapons-grade Plutonium. I'd wager, at the time, the power generation (and economics) was more of a side-effect. I'm personally more interested in seeing Thorium reactors re-visited, as Thorium is much more pr…
>Thorium [...] can't be used to produce weapons-grade Plutonium Sure it can. Thorium breeder reactors do not burn Thorium as Thorium is not fissile. Thorium is fertile and a blanket of Thorium is used to generate fissile Uranium. It's pretty straightforward to introduce U-238 into the U-233 from the Thorium. Then at that point it's no different than breeding Plutonium in a traditional reactor. The difference is that…
A detail worth mentioning is that the U233 produced in the Thorium cycle is mixed with U232 which is higly gamma radioactive, it's still Uranium, not another element, which means beast of luck separating it U233 from in the mix. You'd have to wait quite a bit for it to decay to Pa232 before you an chemically separated it. That's why the Thorium cycle is touted as being proliferation resistant. It's not, but it's makes it harder and more expensive to build nuclear weapons.
Very easily these days [1] Its been done since days of nuclear plants. And no - there are no security issues, since as the name indicates, its a “waste”; you can’t make a bomb out of it and spreading it would not be as efficient as some type of gas that you would have easier access to. I imagine actually officials would love just to give away that nuclear waste to ISIS, preferrably deliver it to them for further hand…
I wasn't afraid of terrorists or people making bombs, I'm not American. I was worried about a truck or train crashing and showering an area in nuclear waste. > The cask systems are designed to handle a wide range of severe environmental conditions, including earthquakes, flooding, extreme temperatures, and tornadoes. This includes objects that may impact the cask at high speed, such as during a tornado. I suppose tha…
> 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 think the best option would be to accelerate the decay. That should be relatively easy (i.e. has a net energy output) and massively reduces the radioactivity.
Very easily these days [1] Its been done since days of nuclear plants. And no - there are no security issues, since as the name indicates, its a “waste”; you can’t make a bomb out of it and spreading it would not be as efficient as some type of gas that you would have easier access to. I imagine actually officials would love just to give away that nuclear waste to ISIS, preferrably deliver it to them for further hand…
I wasn't afraid of terrorists or people making bombs, I'm not American. I was worried about a truck or train crashing and showering an area in nuclear waste. > The cask systems are designed to handle a wide range of severe environmental conditions, including earthquakes, flooding, extreme temperatures, and tornadoes. This includes objects that may impact the cask at high speed, such as during a tornado. I suppose tha…
In the U.K., a nuclear cask was tested in a train crash and came out fine. I’m sure a car crash would be alright too. :)
This is really not compelling. If you can't provide any more compelling evidence for nuclear vs clean energy improvements, why not gamble on the currently safer/cleaner bet?
It's not a bet or a gamble. It's always a mix. Renewables other than geothermal and solar-thermal + molten salts cannot currently provide base load power. They have something like 0.2..0.5 capacity factor, meaning that 50 to 80% of the operational lifetimes of the power generation facilities are spent idling. Those two that can provide base load power that are very location specific (volcanic area or desert). So rath…
Hydro can also provide base-load. Especially when used as storage for overproducing intermittent renewables.
It is still highly location specific though.
Might there be value in efficient energy transport using high voltage DC? There is probably a lot less fluctuation in power supply and usage if you sum up over larger areas (especially east-west, as you average out time-of-day effects)
How many Fukushimas will we (society) accept every 150 years in order to stop climate change? That's really the only question that matters.
An infinity of them, as there are very few deaths attributable to Fukushima, whereas the coal generation plants spew pollution and radionuclides into the atmosphere which result in definitely attributable deaths.
Attribution is a hard thing. Moreover, displacing a population and making land unlivable are bad things in and off themselves, even if people don't die.
Or we could just use that valuable fuel and put it into nuclear reactors to make energy and other useful stuff. But that seem to be a totally crazy idea.
Reprocessing is its own nightmare and, I think, only France tries to do it. All of these processes (the "uranium cycle") are terribly polluting in their waste outputs and dangerous places for the people who have to work there and live near them.
This is wrong. There are many ways of reprocessing and many are far better then the limited once used so far. Its just that we haven't advanced in terms of nuclear technology in the last 40 years.
We will never solve any of these problems if we don't embrace nuclear technology.
Yes - you can burn it for energy, which is already done in many countries. With good enough filters it's the best solution to plastic waste that we have.