New nuclear fuel source would power human race until 5000AD • Hacker News Board

Re: New nuclear fuel source would power human race until 5000AD

#91

Post by DennisP » Wed, Aug 22, 2012, 10:48 PM UTC

ericd wrote: post #79

ChuckMcM wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DoE actually did extensive research into subduction encapsulation and while expensive (you are working at depths that crush most stuff we build up here) was technically quite acceptable (their design ended up essentially drilling what amounted to bore holes 5000' below the surface and dropping in waste from the top until its half full then covering it up and moving on. The advantage was that containment was expec…

So we'd essentially need a very tightly controlled fast breeder reactor or 20 that handle the world's less pleasant nuclear byproducts? It seems that if the breeder reactor is cohabitated with the reprocessing facility, most of the danger would be nullified (I imagine that transport is the riskiest part). Or perhaps people simply don't want those things to exist in concentrated form, ever, to eliminate the risk of so…

Argonne National Laboratory tested a cohabited breeder called the Integral Fast Reactor. The reprocessing would happen on-site, using a process similar to electrolysis which never separates plutonium from the other transuranics. The material would never be in a form usable for bombs, and making it bomb-ready would be more difficult than just enriching uranium. But the fast neutrons in the reactor would easily burn up those transuranics.

What's more, they had very good passive safety. Fukushima had problems because it lost external power. Argonne shut off the power to their test reactor, and it just quietly shut down with no damage, simply due to the physics of the fuel and coolant.

They had it just shy of production ready when Clinton shut it down in 1994. But GE-Hitachi has a design derived from it, called the PRISM. The NRC has approved it for a demonstration reactor, and they're currently trying to sell it to the U.K. to destroy their plutonium stockpile.

Since the reactor can use U238, it's about a hundred times as efficient with uranium. Combining that with seawater extraction gives us fuel for a very long time: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/01/nuclear-options/

A pretty good book on all this was just put online for free, here: http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/prescription-for-the-planet...

There's also a new book by two lead researchers from the Argonne project, called Plentiful Energy, by Till and Chang. That one goes into quite a bit more technical detail. Another good online source is here: http://bravenewclimate.com/integral-fast-reactor-ifr-nuclear...

Re: New nuclear fuel source would power human race until 5000AD

#92

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 22, 2012, 10:52 PM UTC

adimitrov wrote: post #75

crpatino wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... unless their kids eat a lot of dirt ... You don't have any kids yourself, I take. They are entropy machines! You never know what stupid (from adult perspective) thing they are going to do next. Besides, it may be nitpicking, but kids eating dirt right outside power plants would die horrible deaths within days. It is the lesser doses in the rear by populated areas whose effects may not be so well understood.

> Besides, it may be nitpicking, but kids eating dirt right outside power plants would die horrible deaths within days. It is the lesser doses in the rear by populated areas whose effects may not be so well understood. Nah, it's not nitpicking. It's just totally wrong. The radiation that upon ingestion kills you is alpha/beta radiation, i.e. particle radiation. This radiation doesn't otherwise cause harm (except in v…

[deleted]

Re: New nuclear fuel source would power human race until 5000AD

#93

Post by justatdotin » Wed, Aug 22, 2012, 10:53 PM UTC

pgrote wrote: post #13

rosser wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The used-fuel problem is already solved. The solution is just effectively permanently blocked by NIMBY-ism.

What is the permanent solution?

I think I can answer that: here in australia, we have a lot of experience with all aspects of the nuclear industry, and decades of research and concerted policy development has finally led to a world class program to manage our small but significant legacy of radioactive wastes, that sets a standard : We're building a dirt track to a remote arid region, where the aboriginal traditional owners of the land are geographically isolated, politically underrepresented, and economically disadvantaged. Some fringe commentators try to make something out of the risk of transporting a range of materials (from contaminated soil to reprocessed fuel rods) through a jurisdiction that suffers an uncommon level of collisions and derailments, has minimal emergency service capacity and is the epicentre of the single greatest earthquake event in the southern hemisphere - but these concerns are effortlessly overrun by the brute application of raw political power. We're gonna build a shed at the end of the dirt road, and surround it with razor wire. What could go rong?

Re: New nuclear fuel source would power human race until 5000AD

#94

Post by DennisP » Wed, Aug 22, 2012, 10:54 PM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #55

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #5

I really thought this was going to be about Thorium. Surprise - its about extracting Uranium from seawater.

I assume if you can extract Uranium from sea water, you are very close to extract Thorium. In any case, we are all set up to use Uranium and Thorium still require a lot of R&D, politics and safety regulation before we can start generating commercial power with it.

Thorium isn't soluble in water. (But there's enough thorium on land to last us for millennia, if we ran all of civilization on it at our present usage rate.)

Re: New nuclear fuel source would power human race until 5000AD

#95

Post by justatdotin » Wed, Aug 22, 2012, 10:55 PM UTC

SudarshanP wrote: post #67

We seem to be discussing pros and cons of nuclear. But is this assertion of reasonably extractable uranium from sea water even true? Considering the source to be theregister, what I would like to know is whether the energy available as per the paper is really as big as claimed? or is it just clever math? Keeping aside the issue of waste disposal, are the costs really that low or is the cost cleverly buried elsewhere?

this is an old non-story. the energy required to extract the low levels of uranium from huge volumes of seawater outweigh the energy that uranium can produce as fuel for a nuclear power reactor.

Re: New nuclear fuel source would power human race until 5000AD

#96

Post by maxerickson » Wed, Aug 22, 2012, 11:00 PM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #52

baq wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think that the biggest problem is the potential for making places on our planet unsuitable to live in forever (for all practical purposes). people look at chernobyl and see a place that will be dangerous to all life long after they're dead. they don't want that to happen again. fukushima is potentially the next such place, albeit on a lower scale. the fact that radiation doesn't hurt doesn't help either. if our civ…

I don't think there are any Chernobyl-like reactors in operation today. Even if the design of reactors like ones at the Fukushima plant may be considered horribly flawed (they should be able to cool themselves passively, with no external power input whatsoever, after someone hits the scram button) the magnitude of the disaster is much smaller. An article posted here a couple days back mentions the hot zones around Fu…

Why not check:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK

There have been extensive (safety oriented) modifications to the design since the Chernobyl incident:

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf31.html

The second article says the modified reactors account for almost 50% of Russia's nuclear power generation.

Re: New nuclear fuel source would power human race until 5000AD

#97

Post by ChuckMcM » Wed, Aug 22, 2012, 11:01 PM UTC

InclinedPlane wrote: post #90

ericd wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we'd essentially need a very tightly controlled fast breeder reactor or 20 that handle the world's less pleasant nuclear byproducts? It seems that if the breeder reactor is cohabitated with the reprocessing facility, most of the danger would be nullified (I imagine that transport is the riskiest part). Or perhaps people simply don't want those things to exist in concentrated form, ever, to eliminate the risk of so…

How many nuclear power plants of any sort has the US build in the last 4 decades? That's the reason why it's hard to get the concept of reprocessing nuclear fuel off the ground.

Agreed, I've always wondered how it would fair from a regulatory perspective if such a thing was positioned as a 'nuclear waste disposal system', probably not much better.

Re: New nuclear fuel source would power human race until 5000AD

#98

Post by anigbrowl » Wed, Aug 22, 2012, 11:06 PM UTC

adimitrov wrote: post #75

crpatino wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... unless their kids eat a lot of dirt ... You don't have any kids yourself, I take. They are entropy machines! You never know what stupid (from adult perspective) thing they are going to do next. Besides, it may be nitpicking, but kids eating dirt right outside power plants would die horrible deaths within days. It is the lesser doses in the rear by populated areas whose effects may not be so well understood.

> Besides, it may be nitpicking, but kids eating dirt right outside power plants would die horrible deaths within days. It is the lesser doses in the rear by populated areas whose effects may not be so well understood. Nah, it's not nitpicking. It's just totally wrong. The radiation that upon ingestion kills you is alpha/beta radiation, i.e. particle radiation. This radiation doesn't otherwise cause harm (except in v…

That's great, but in this case we're discussing the environment around the Fukushima nuclear plant, where we have a distinctly abnormal radiological environment. The teratological damage we have observed in butterfly populations around that area is not necessarily going to show up in the human population or food chain, but I find it easy to see why people would lose sleep over the possibility: it is widely acknowledged that management of the nuclear plant and the Japanese government handled the situation poorly, so there is no reliable standard as yet by which to judge the safety of the affected population.

Now, I'm in full agreement about the filthiness of coal plants, and that many objections to nuclear power are the result of ignorance. However, nuclear advocates simply can't afford to be glib about the safety issues.

Re: New nuclear fuel source would power human race until 5000AD

#99

Post by ChuckMcM » Wed, Aug 22, 2012, 11:11 PM UTC

jellicle wrote: post #36

rauljara wrote: post #9

"Since the Fukushima meltdown - as a result of which, not a single person is set to be measurably harmed by radiation - we know that nuclear power is safe." It seems to me like the primary danger from radiation like that leaked from Fukushima would be an increase in cancer. I think it's a little early to be claiming that Fukushima will cause no increase harm to humans. There is already evidence that it caused harm to…

Hah. The Register takes the IAEA statement, which says "To date no health effects have been reported in any person as a result of radiation exposure from the nuclear accident.", and turns it into the very different statement that no one WILL be harmed. I would give that a classification of Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire. Even though probably not very many people will get cancer that is traceable to the Fukushima disaster,…

I agree that the Register, and Lewis Page in particular, tend to roll some what fast and loose, but that is why I don't go to them for authoritative news, mostly for puns.

That said, this is inaccurate:

permanently abandoning several large towns.

As part of the process this risk is being evaluated, and while there are spots where some isotopes have concentrated (and will be cleaned up) the amount of radiation in all of the towns of Fukishima Prefecture is still less than the radiation the residents of Denver receive [1] [2]. So once the towns have been surveyed people will be allowed to move back. Reading the Economist the biggest challenge is that the Government would like to coalesce some towns to save money but that is causing complaints.

[1] http://www.epa.gov/radtown/cosmic.html

[2] http://isis-online.org/risk/tab7

Re: New nuclear fuel source would power human race until 5000AD

#100

Post by ScottBurson » Wed, Aug 22, 2012, 11:15 PM UTC

DennisP wrote: post #91

ericd wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we'd essentially need a very tightly controlled fast breeder reactor or 20 that handle the world's less pleasant nuclear byproducts? It seems that if the breeder reactor is cohabitated with the reprocessing facility, most of the danger would be nullified (I imagine that transport is the riskiest part). Or perhaps people simply don't want those things to exist in concentrated form, ever, to eliminate the risk of so…

Argonne National Laboratory tested a cohabited breeder called the Integral Fast Reactor. The reprocessing would happen on-site, using a process similar to electrolysis which never separates plutonium from the other transuranics. The material would never be in a form usable for bombs, and making it bomb-ready would be more difficult than just enriching uranium. But the fast neutrons in the reactor would easily burn up…

Steve Kirsch has a rather breathless but nonetheless informative summary here: http://skirsch.com/politics/globalwarming/ifr.htm

Personally, I incline to the view that until we have a viable fusion option, it's worth building some IFRs.