The plant design above literally runs on nuclear waste.
I laughed.
Naw, people who think that we are still in the mud brick phase of nuclear power and that the economics don’t work and there are major safety issues that no one has thought of are the ones who are ‘not well informed of the reality’. One has but to look at the actual safety record of nuclear power to get that.
The actual safety record sucks. Every accident could have been avoided, but wasn’t. The safety problem isn’t the technology, it’s human fallibility.
We can shut down coal mines tomorrow and danger is over. Nuclear waste isn’t so easy to deal with.
A dirty bomb that spreads coal dust over downtown Manhattan doesn’t worry me much either.
There are floods/collapses/avalanches (pick your term) from coal mining and coal ash that are pretty nasty.
Here’s the first example I find on Google: Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill - Wikipedia
What he said.
Oil may have killed more people than coal and nukes. What’s your point?
As for the waste problem: so what? You have the design in the OP that eats waste. You can surely design more of the same that are better and eat even more. Whatever is left will be a fraction of the original and can easily be stashed. Not buried, not removed forever from the ken of Man, just…stashed. Mix the waste with lead glass, cast into bricks, and pile them in the center of White Sands or China Lake. No shielding. Put up a fence a few hundred yards away, mine the snot out of the area (if desired) and post a sign that says “If you go past this point, you will die.” Then leave the stuff. Who knows, we might need it some day. It’s not like Canadian terrorists can drive a truck onto China Lake and drive off with the waste.
I went yes although I must admit to having some fear of the things. I know the best and brightest do all that they can to keep them as fool-proof as possible. But the older I get, the more able we seem to be able to build better fools.
Then the trick is removing the fools entirely with passive safety systems that literally cannot be overridden. For example those passive safety systems prevented three mile island from becoming Chornobyl. The two disasters had a lot in common but the three mile island reactor had systems which couldn’t be overridden by the engineers, yes in both cases the engineers turned off systems that would have prevented any disaster because they were too busy trying to save their jobs including taping down a dead mans switch.
The new design goes even further and they’ve proven that even in a worst case scenario the reactor will shut itself off without damaging itself or posing any danger. It’s very cleaver the heat causes expansion and the expansion happens in a way which stops the chain reaction and the reactor turns off.
It is unfortunate that the issue of nuclear fission power is so polemical and, for many people, highly emotional, because it prevents the discussion of the actual technical problems (which are substantial) and the effective mitigations (which address most of the technical issues to a point that the gravest fears are minimized). It is also unfortunate that many advocates of nuclear power are so willing to wave away these concerns out of a combination of willful ignorance and ad hominem toward those who express concerns instead of providing an informed counterargument.
Without going through all arguments for and against at tiresome length, I’ll note that the problem of disposal of high grade nuclear material can be technically resolved, albeit not by burying it at the now-cancelled Yucca Mountain Repository (which, if it had been activated, would be completely full with all of the waste currently sitting in dry cask storage on-site at reactors) but by burnup and responsible local storage, which would ensure that reactor operators are not so caviler about assuming that material that is out of sight can be safely out of mind. A more pressing concern is the ability to produce new material; virtually all operating reactors require substantial enrichment for fuel, which requires specialized facilities and produces more radioactive waste, and the reactor has to be safety retired and dismantled at end of life, both of which are costs and require infrastructure that should be considered in the total lifecycle cost of nuclear power.
The very real safety concerns and costs of a natural or man-made catastrophic failure such as Chernobyl or Fukushima also need to be addressed with more care; human fallibility in the design, maintenance, and security of nuclear power is a concern that should be mitigated by careful adoption of failsafe mechanisms and the construction of reactors in locations that are as secure and using construction that is as robust as possible. The notion that Fukushima “proves” how safe and effective nuclear power is, just because it didn’t kill hundreds of people or require the evacuation of the entire north side of Honshu is belied by the fact that the cost of the cleanup effort is already projected to be several times the economic value of the reactors over their planned lifetime, and every subsequent evaluation increases the cost. We really can’t afford to have reactors catastrophically fail, even once in a while, regardless of whether or not they actually kill anyone.
There is a particular point that needs to be addressed, though; the idea that nuclear reactors are carbon-neutral energy generators that will immediately mitigate contributions to global climate change is not correct. Although the generation of electrical power from nuclear fission is essentially carbon-free, the construction of nuclear power plants, especially as they are currently designed, has a very large carbon footprint, as do the logistics of uranium mining and distribution. The effect of shutting down all coal and natural gas fired plants as quickly as possible to replace them with nuclear would very likely result in a net increase in carbon emissions over the near term. Precise estimates on how much additional carbon load is added depend on the rate at which plants and other infrastructure are built, the type of plants that are constructed, and what other offsets might be performed (e.g. using Gen II biofuels for transportation) but careful consideration should be given to how to reduce carbon emissions in the aggregate and the long term impact rather than just assuming that building nuclear plants will make atmospheric carbon levels immediately start dropping. It very likely makes much more sense to retire the worst carbon-emitting plants, use sequestration technologies on advanced coal-fired and natural gas facilities, and put effort into both more advanced (safer, more efficient, less invested cost) nuclear fission technology and renewable/carbon neutral energy sources, as well as putting greater effort into more efficient use of the energy we produce.
Until we make nuclear fusion power generation a reality (about which I am not optimistic even in my lifetime) nuclear fission power will be a necessary component of a reduced carbon energy production capability, but to think that it is a panacea or that immediate, spastic replacement of all carbon fuel facilities with nuclear fission has negligible downsides is not a considered position, and of course, utterly fails to address transportation energy needs which will require some kind of hydrocarbon fuel for the foreseeable future.
Stranger
Again, the question is not “nuclear power or no”. It’s “nuclear power or fossil fuels”. And that’s a really easy question.
Yes, nuclear power plants can fail. Yes, they can have disasters. But those disasters are, across the board, far less serious than fossil fuels. Three Mile Island cost a lot of money, but probably didn’t kill anyone at all. In the wake of the Japanese tsunami, there was more cleanup effort needed for an oil refinery that failed than for Fukushima, and more deaths from a dam breaking, and the Fukushima plant almost didn’t even fail at all, even in the face of the worst tsunami in recorded history. Chernobyl required stupidity on such a monumental scale that engineers would be hard-pressed to even replicate that much stupidity if they were deliberately trying, and as a result, it did nearly as much damage as the world’s coal-powered plants do in a year even without disasters.
We cannot afford more fossil fuels. They’re dirty and dangerous even when things work right, and horribly prone to disaster. We should be replacing our entire fossil fuel infrastructure with nuclear, starting immediately. If in the future we ever develop anything better than nuclear, then we should in turn replace the nuclear plants with that, but that hasn’t happened yet.
Well, yes and no. It is obvious that we need to reduce atmospheric carbon emissions. And energy production by nuclear fission is certainly a way to do so, insofar as the actual power produciton cycle introduces essentially no new carbon dioxide. However, there is a significant invested carbon cost to construct a nuclear power plant, including the production and transportation of materials (primarily cement, aggregate, and steel). This is not insignificant, and if done on a wide scale may well result in a net increase in carbon emissions, which is actually worse than spreading larger total emissions across a longer interval. The other issue is that rushing to impement extant nuclear power production technology is missing the significant opportunity to develop and implement far more efficient and safer methods of fission power production.
The fact that we should have been working on these methods since the 'Seventies is immaterial; we still need to make best use of what is ultimately still a limited resource instead of rushing into another poorly thought out dependency on a non-renewable and potentially hazardous energy source. We also need to recognize that no matter what desire we may have to implement nuclear fission as a replacement, there will be a significant transition period, and alternate methods for reducing or ameliorating carbon emissions, including point-of-source sequestration, as well as renewable sources and energy efficiency methods should be applied as advantageous should be applied. Assuming that nuclear fission by itself will serve as a total replacement to all ‘fossil fuel’ hydrocarbon and mineralized carbon sources is not either practical or efficacious.
Stranger
A new nuclear plant costs on the order of $6/W.
Even if you spent your entire capital costs on a coal bonfire, you would still only get 265 lbs of carbon per watt (at a delivered price of $45/t). Since coal power produces around 1 kW-h/lb fuel, our 1 watt of reactor needs to run for 265,000 hours to become carbon-neutral. That’s about 30 years, which is still somewhat less than the typical reactor lifetime.
Of course that’s an absurdly conservative estimate, based on the most efficient possible way of turning money into carbon emissions. I have a hard time believing the real number is even a tenth of that, making the breakeven just a few years.
I’m not sure where you get that cost or what the basis is given, but even if we accept it as fact, the cost of constructing a nuclear plant is only part of the total life cycle cost of operating a nuclear plant. The replacement of all fossil fuel energy generation (setting aside transportation, which will require some source of hydrocarbon fuel, where petrochemical or synthezised, for the foreseeable future) in the most expeditious fashion would entail a substantial rise in atomspheric carbon production while still operating current energy production facilities, which would result in a spike in carbon emissions which may ultimately be more harmful than a phased implementation of nuclear and retirement of fossil fuel energy production.
In other words, making blasé statements like, “We should be replacing our entire fossil fuel infrastructure with nuclear, starting immediately,” ignores both the practicality of broad implementation and the potential failing to assess unintended impact of an immediate mass conversion versus implementation of sequestration and energy efficiency in effecting an overall reduction in carbon emissions. This same “all or nothing” attitude has resulted in polarization of positions on energy production and carbon reductions methods, and an aversion to investing research effort into eventual neutral atmospheric carbon energy sources such as the “glucose economy” proposed by Steven Chu, which while conceptual at this point offers the only current potential for a carbon-neutral transportation and off-grid energy infrastructure.
In short, if Donald Drumpf were elected in November and decreed (in addition to building a 50 foot high wall) that all fossil fuel energy sources were to be replaced in ten years by nuclear fission, it would be neither practicable nor preferable to do so. We can transition to a low carbon, and perhaps carbon neutral, energy infrastructure, but not by reflexively adopting a single technology that is neither fully mature nor a universal replacement for all energy needs, nor can be implemented without substantial cost of additional carbon emissions. What we need is a multinational, and preferably global (or at least promoted by all industrial powers) comprehensive plan for developing and implementing reduced carbon and carbon sequestration or mitigation technologies. That we should have started developing and implementing such a plan decades ago–or at least, at the end of the Cold War when such an opportunity existed–doesnt negate the reality that rushing to implement a singular technology is not going to fix the problem any more than dreams of spraying magic ferrite pixie dust into the atmosphere is going to make global climate change go away.
Stranger
I’m pleasantly stunned at how overwhelming the vote is in favor of nuke energy.
I’ve always thought nuclear energy is like flying: Many people are more afraid of flying commercial than of driving a car, even though commercial aviation is far safer.
No argument with any of that. I was just disputing your claim that the initial infrastructure costs of a nuclear plant could end up emitting more carbon than saved over the lifetime.
I like nuclear reactors and think we should build more, but the reality is that building enough of them to make a dent in the effects of climate change would first require immense capital spending in, essentially, reactor factories. There are only a small number of factories at the moment that can perform the heavy forgings required for large reactors. This does not seem likely to change significantly anytime soon.
I think solar+wind+storage will be the dominant technologies in the near future, if for no other reason than that they do not require immense upfront capital spending. They can be deployed incrementally, which not only makes their funding easier, but also any environmental impact or other regulatory issues. There is a reason they have shown massive growth while other power generation technologies have not.
Nuclear power is an expensive and overrated method of reducing carbon emissions. The cost of solar power is plummeting and there are some exciting lower carbon fossil fuel technologies being tested.
I say apply a carbon tax or require emissions permitting so that there’s a cost of emitting CO2 pollution. Rather than allowing this happen for free. Then let the market figure out what the best technology is. I doubt that nuclear will win in a big way: it’s prone to cost overruns in the best of circumstances. But if it does in a rigorous but rational regulatory environment, so be it.
On top of that, I favor a modest nuclear plant construction program in the US, to retain our technological capacity to build them. This will probably involve extra subsidies. Furthermore, the US should invest in next generation nuclear technology again to keep our options open.
We have a modest nuke plant construction program now. What we lack is a rational carbon and methane pricing system.
As opposed to solar or wind, which will require the same amount of construction, or more (because solar and wind are much less concentrated and efficient).
There aren’t any issues with nuclear that aren’t worse with other forms of energy. That is what is so frustrating about the debates - the known problems with nuclear have reasonable solutions. But the known problems with wind and solar and other forms don’t.
Regards,
Shodan
God yes.
And for the poster upthread who mentioned “stashing” waste rather than the bury it and forget about it methodology.
Yeah, I don’t quite get that either. Put the stuff somewhere reasonably safe and keep a damn eye on it. Make it into a form unlikely to leach. Put in a bombproof container that has a chance of lasting 10,000 years. Put it in a mine in the middle of the desert or somewhere likely to keep any leaks to a minimum.
Then, just don’t do the last step. Don’t seal it up and walk away. Keep an eye on it. Starts leaking? Go in and fix the problem.