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Nuke power not so clean or green
June 11, 2007 - Related Blogs
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More money for fusion energy
September 5, 2007
Seventeen different organizations have expressed interest in building 31 new nuclear power plants in the U.S., Frank Bowman, CEO of the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) and a retired admiral from the U.S. Navy, said in an interview with CNET News.com this week. Applications for four to seven nuclear plants will likely get filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission this year, and eight more will probably follow next year, he said.
The planning and permit process for the first plants will take about three years, and construction should take four years or less, he said. Thus, the first of the new plants could start generating power by 2015 or 2016, he said.
As head of the NEI, Bowman is the spokesman for the nuclear industry, which went into a downturn after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. But in the past few years, global warming, rising gas prices and legislative ideas such as carbon taxation have forced governments to explore alternatives to coal, oil and gas. And mining tragedies, such as the recent accident in Utah, and news about coal-engendered pollution in China have further boosted interest in alternatives.
Energy Institute
Nuclear Energy Institute
Although strong opposition to nuclear power remains, politically the subject has become less polarizing, Bowman said. Overall, the general reaction to the industry now is, "yes, but," he said. That is, people can see the benefits of it, but have strong reservations when it comes to safety, disposal, proliferation and other issues.
An MIT poll earlier this year reflects his comments. Thirty-five percent of those polled said they wanted to see nuclear technology increase, up from 28 percent in 2002. Nonetheless, 40 percent opposed storing nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain. Only 28 percent thought nuclear waste could be stored safely for long periods of time.
To this end, the nuclear industry has worked to improve its own practices and technology over the preceding decades, he said. In the past, nuclear plant builders were often vertically integrated. Each made its own components and systems. Now, many have agreed to build according to accepted standards, which should lower prices and speed up the time to build plants.
Some of the standardization ideas come from the Navy, which has used modular manufacturing techniques for years to speed up the construction of nuclear subs. (By the way, there are 104 commercial nuclear reactors in the U.S., and 103 nuclear reactors in the Navy.)
Uptime has also improved, which reduces the financial risks. Fifteen years ago, nuclear plants might have been producing electricity 75 percent of the time. Since then, that figure has risen to 95 percent.
Additionally, safety procedures and practices have changed. Nuclear operators share safety data on a quarterly basis, he noted. The industry has also tried to become more open with the public and tone down some of the insularity and intellectual arrogance that was often part of its reputation.
After Three Mile Island, the industry adopted a "Let's dive into the foxhole' mentality," he said. "An accident anywhere is an accident everywhere."
New technologies for long-term disposal are also being devised. In one scenario, nuclear waste would be reprocessed and used again as fuel. Ultimately, reuse could dramatically cut down the amount of fuel that needs to be sequestered. The U.S. government is also floating supply agreements with emerging nations. In these agreements, emerging nations would get lowly enriched uranium from the developed world, but also agree to let the developed nations and suppliers become the custodian for the waste.
To prepare for an industry expansion, the NEI, in association with utility owners and several state governments, two years ago began to put in programs to train people for the industry, such as recruiting more college students and junior college students. Ideas that have been installed or are being contemplated are ROTC-like scholarship agreements: a utility gives a student a full-ride scholarship, and the student agrees to work at a utility for a set period after graduation.
The industry is also looking at incentives to retain older workers. "Why let 55-year-olds retire?" he said.
Bowman, however, added that he doesn't hold out a lot of hope for fusion. In fusion technology, energy is released by fusing lighter molecules. Nuclear waste and accidents are ostensibly eliminated. Start-ups have gained money to pursue their fusion ideas recently. But so far, no one has gone beyond the experimental stage.
"When I was at MIT in 1971, it was 25 years away," he said. "It is still 25 years away."
See more CNET content tagged:
nuclear power, plant, accident, waste, CEO
devotees are sincere by their response to this, and whether the
political will exists to finally implement the waste solutions that
exist.
They are absolutely opposed to nuclear, coal, oil, hydro (dams
are evil), wind (windmills kill migratory birds don't you know),
and anything else that produces energy with possible exception
of solar. On second thought they oppose solar too because it
would take millions of acres of solar panels to power a city like
Chicago.
But environmentalist extremists are a compromising lot. They
will entertain alternate energy sources as long as its human
muscle power. Can't use animals because PETA is against that.
Can't eat animals either. I was going to say that they want the
human race to regress back to the hunter/gatherer era but I
guess it would just be the gatherer era since use of animals for
anything is forbidden.
Did I miss anything?
Do we really need to use so much energy per human being to live the lives we want for ourselves and our children? I believe we are still blinding ourselves to solutions to our dilemmas that could still transport us, feed and power our needs without gargantuan power consumption per person.
Much of this could be accomplished with a change in thought, and that will require very little caloric energy.
Have u chenged over to florecent light bulbs?????
Its always easy to talk the talk
A low-energy lifestyle would be world-changing for a lot of us. Of course, after the fallout, or cost of living would be a lot lower and there would be a lot of other benefits. But the sacrifices involved would be enormous.
Much easier to look to science to rescue the lifestyles we have.
A few years ago I read that the former head of Greenpeace even said nuclear should be used as a stop gap, as coal is worse. Until alternate energy technologies catch up (such as tidal), there needs to be something in between. You can't jump from A to Q without first getting everytthing else in between.
have already been developed. Perhaps the best of them would be
the Integral Fast Reactor concept. Using that, we have a 4,000 year
total U.S. energy supply sitting around as depleted uranium (which
we'll just continue to shoot at people if nothing else is done with
it), and the waste from the process takes about 500 years to
become less radioactive than natural uranium. You could look at it
as a "radiation reduction program" in the long run.
2) Only about 2% of the spent fuel is actual waste. If the other 98% can be put back into a reactor. If fuel is recycled, the waste volume can be reduced significantly.
3) Most of the actual waste (that 2%) is very short lived, taking only a few hundred years at the most to fully decay. Some isotopes like Xenon and Iodine decay in a matter of hours. So if we decide to recycle the fuel this waste issue essentially goes away.
4) Some environmentalists might instead propose the alternative of covering the earth with high-efficinecy gallium-arsenide solar panels. Because of their minuscule energy density compared with nuclear, solar uses much more material per kW of generation. These solar panels don't last forever, maybe 30-50 years at the most. After their lifespan, we'd then wind up with tremendous amounts of arsenic and other toxic materials which do not decay. THAT would be the real disposal nightmare.
Mars has plenty of minerals and natural resources. Maybe even nuclear energy stored somewhere by combining some Martian rocks.
By current standards of green technology, nuclear energy is one of the safest and cleanest power sources available to humankind. Don't be blind and ignorant.
Something that is going to "burn" for thousands of years, is not putting out much "heat", and is little problem.
Something that is highly radioactive, is going to "burn out" fairly soon, and will not be a problem for long.
nuclear industry (try www.nei.org) and from individual web sites
and blogs run by some very knowledgeable people. You can begin
your search with terms like "nuclear electricity", "atomic energy",
"nuclear renaissance", "atomic insights" etc.
As you say, there are plenty of technically adept people on the net
- surely they understand how to gather and filter information.
not be used to generate hydrogen to fuel clean
hydrogen burning motor vehicles and reduce our
dependence on oil at the same time? It has also
been established that coal fired power plants
emit a significant amount of radioactive
contamination, so perhaps "clean" nuclear power
is the way to go?
were being researched at the Idaho National Labortory. Ways to use
the heat directly without the wasteful electrolysis step. Would take
a very high temperature reactor, though.
As well as direct thermochemical production of Hydrogen in Generation IV high-temperature reactors, all clean sources of electricity - not just limited to nuclear - can be used to produce energy stored up in the form of Hydrogen as a transport fuel.
This is in contrast to your head-in the sand and backwards blanket assumptions that nuclear power is bad.
http://talkclimatechange.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=105
the debate about nuclear power in terms of a liberal versus
conservative approach to the world, the reality is quite different.
In the US, many of the strong proponents of the technology have
been quite liberal in their views. People like Al Gore, Sr., L.
Mendel Rivers, John F. Kennedy, and Glen Seaborg have all been
both strong supporters and liberal thinkers.
Though I often shy away from pointing to France's nuclear power
successes - since everyone else normally does that for me - it is
pretty difficult to think of that country as "conservative", yet they
produce more than 80% of their electrical power needs using
standardized, state owned nuclear power plants.
If you visit Daily Kos, you will find at least two diarists (NNadir
and David Walters) who have extensively written about why they
are advocates of nuclear power developments and life-long
liberals. Even a couple of current presidential candidates on the
left (Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama) have recognized that
clean, low cost, reliable power is a benefit for jobs, economic
development, health and the environment. In other words,
nuclear power fits with many items on the liberal agenda.
I have not always been liberal in my thinking, but serving as a
staff officer in Washington for the last six years has convinced
me of the errors of my ways. The next time I get around to it, I
will change my registration to reflect my new views of the way
that the world can become a better place.
Haliburtin, Bush and Cheney.
How am I doing so far? ;-)
Mallardd -- Sep 14 2007, 7:04 AM PDT
My apologies
Posted on: September 13, 2007, 5:46 PM PDT
Story: Getting fuel out of water
Obviously Water holds a better promise as the Alternative Fuel: reader comment from K A Cheah
Posted on: May 28, 2007, 12:36 AM PDT
Story: Alternative fuel for thought
In our school days we have learnt in Physics that it possible to split water into its basic atomic components with the application of electricity but even great scientists overlooked the fact that
Water by itself is the better, safer & more efficient storage of power, the promise water has as an alternative fuel has been unlimited using a simple process of using electrolysis to split water into hydrogen and oxygen atomic gases only when required, where the hydrogen & oxygen atomic gases HHO's power to drive a car engine will also recharge the battery(minimum 9 volts) that originally did the electrolysis splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen atomic gases and also the hydrogen & oxygen gases will be only produced when needed just before starting the car engine and the electrolysis process will be switched-off when switching off the car engine at the same time. These HHO gases-run engines will run cars, SUVs, trucks, buses, trains and airplanes & power stations & even rockets so cheaply and successfully that no other alternative fuels would ever be needed but these technologies will be suppressed owing to big business money and political scams from Oil Producers and other vested interests. They might even commit murder to suppress these inventions from propagating and flourishing successfully.
Please watch related report of the Water Car Inventor who had been murdered:- Link:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6yRn4IAsrU&mode=related&search =
&
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wb8wIqECwGE&mode=related&search=
Combining H and O back toguether in something like a proton exchange membrane, or fuel cell, would give you about 35% efficiency from what i recall, so by using electricity from the grid to split water and then recombine it to charge a battery you'll get about 5% of the energy you would have put in the battery by just plugging the vehicle directly into the wall outlet.
the point is that you will ALWAYS have losses in any system, and the process you're suggesting is one of the least efficient proceses you could come up with.
as much as we'd all like to have a perpetual motion machine, this violates the laws of thermodynamics. anyone who claims to have one is either a lunatic, a moron, or a scam artist.
If this system is built with 100% efficiency (an engineering impossibility), you would simply get enough energy to power the electrolysis, with nothing left over to run the car.
If your system worked as advertised it would be a perpetual motion machine, as burning the hydrogen with the oxygen would produce water, which could be routed back into the tank.
I suggest you take a simple physics class at your local community college. This would help you to understand these claims.
Heck, just taking salt out of water takes huge amounts of energy. The O-H-H bond is one of the strongest known.
Posted on: June 4, 2007, 9:47 AM PDT
Story: Alternative fuel for thought
Go home, fill a small dish with water. Go get a NEW and FULLY CHARGE 9v battery. Put one wire to the postive and put it in the water and do the same for the negative.
Those bubbles you see in the water are HYDROGEN and OXYGEN. and it took hardly any power...
Posted on: June 4, 2007, 9:47 AM PDT
Story: Alternative fuel for thought
Go home, fill a small dish with water. Go get a NEW and FULLY CHARGE 9v battery. Put one wire to the positive and put it in the water and do the same for the negative.
Those bubbles you see in the water are HYDROGEN and OXYGEN. and it took hardly any power...
Water- the divine gift has the power to give life to all beings on earth or this universe will also give power to all common internal combustion engines in the simple process of electrolysis to produce the fuels in the form of hydrogen & oxygen gases HHO that we would ever need to run everything on earth in including power stations & fuel Rockets
I replied that humans are always "religious" but that their church has changed. Listen carefully to many comments made about nuclear dangers, vegetarianism, windmills, or whatever. Many (make that most) people latch onto their belief system with a religious zeal, which shuts down logical, intelligent discussion. Same thing happens over in politics. Conservatives look at near-hysterical rants of the left and shake their heads at how those people have succumbed to BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome). Liberals think conservatives are dolts. And so on.
Those talking about LMFBRs should look at France's Superphenix. It cost $12.5 BILLION US dollars.
Ratepayers and taxpayers have to pick up the cost when the nuke plants have cost overruns.
was based in many ways on a plant, EBR-II, with 30+ successful
years of operating experience. Superphenix was quite the opposite,
and in some ways a good example of how not to build a fast
reactor. No doubt an IFR would not produce particularly cheap
energy, but not too many new technologies would. If energy is
more expensive, it will actually help in many ways, starting with our
being motivated to use less in the first place, more efficiently.
But, yes, if there are cost overruns etc. who knows what will happen. Could be contract renegotiations.
Some newer reactor designs, such as the Westinghouse AP-1000 (LWR) are made to overcome many of the construction hurdles by using fewer components modular design, and passive safety systems. In addition, the NRC has streamlined their regulatory process, so this shouldn't be as big of a problem as it was in the past. Westinghouse sold 4 AP-1000s to China earlier this year, at a price of $4B each. Construction is set to start soon.
Once a few of these reactors are built and the process is streamlined they're expected to decrease in price to ~$2B and take 3 years to build.
It is true that the government has offered some tax incentives to the first few plants built in the states, but this is a necessary step to jump-start the industry back up.
The biggest threat to new reactors is not the technology or financing, but the activists and politicians who don't understand the science and are too caught up in their own rhetoric to care.
Although the article states the building of a nuclear power would be cheaper due to standards and modular construction, I would like to see the cost estimates of a 1200 Megawatt power plant and where cost-plus contracts aren?t included. Then due a net present value analysis of the project to see if would make sense.
I believe the US Navy builds mostly low pressure reactors and what is needed for nuclear power is high pressure and temperature steam system that would use a two stage high-low pressure steam turbines that would provide 70% + conversion of heat to electricity.
Although I would like to see nuclear power succeed, I see to many problems to make it feasible.
concept.
Why not give it back?
It came from mines in the ground so make one of them into a disposal facility? There can't be much objection to it's doing what what comes naturally in the place where we found it.
I know this can never work because it's simple.
ore. Which takes next to forever with the spent fuel of today
(100,000 + years). But if all the long-lived stuff is kept in the fuel
cycle and used for fuel, the rest gets to that point in about 500
years. Which would be just about the same length of time the
debate about where to put it would last!
Google "Integral Fast Reactor" to see a system that was developed
to work that way.
What, exactly, does the city of Hiroshima have to do with nuclear power?
What dose of ionising radiation, above background, did the community receive as a result of radioactive releases from the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant as a result of the earthquake?
The next-gen reactors like the AP1000 have even better safety with passive systems.
Your Hiroshima comment doesn't even deserve a reply, and the Japanese leak you're refering to consists of a couple of drums of waste that fell over during the eathquake.
I'd suggest you educate yourself before you go off calling people idiots.
Human beings and most animals have the capability of breaking down and destroying small amounts of radioactive isotopes without a cumulative effect. It would pose no risk and eliminate the radioactive waste altogether. Because the population is so huge, this disposal method could go on indefinitely. There will always be plenty of people to eat the nuclear waste.
Sometimes, you have to think outside of the box;)
- Billions
- by smvans7 September 18, 2007 10:47 AM PDT
- Yeah, they still want billions of our tax dollars to build them and then to send us a bill at the end of the month.
- Reply to this comment
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- *sigh*
- by theroguex October 5, 2007 12:10 PM PDT
- Some people just don't understand.
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(103 Comments)Why you think these companies want to build the plants, to fight global warming? No way.
They don't care about putting their nuclear waste all over the planet, as long as they get our tax dollars and can send us a bill at the end of the month.
I we get rid of the arcane and draconic anti-proliferation laws in the US that prevent us from being able to reprocess spent reactor mass, we can GREATLY reduce the amount of waste produced, as well as greatly reduce the amount of time that said waste is radioactive.
Plus, radioactive waste stored underground somewhere is, well, quite a bit cleaner than belching tons and tons of carbon-rich smoke into the atmosphere, don't you think?