Nuclear --- From The Founder Of Greenpeace

[Thumper]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...041401209.html

The time has come. Says the author:

"Here's why: Wind and solar power have their place, but because they are intermittent and unpredictable they simply can't replace big baseload plants such as coal, nuclear and hydroelectric. Natural gas, a fossil fuel, is too expensive already, and its price is too volatile to risk building big baseload plants. Given that hydroelectric resources are built pretty much to capacity, nuclear is, by elimination, the only viable substitute for coal. It's that simple."

[Matthewc]

Interesting stuff....I think part of the fear of the global scale is that many of the third world countrys may not or do not have money for plants OR needed maintenance. Such plants are already in place and in need of repair. Some say that these pose a danger if not fixed soon.

Your thoughts?

[Silver Hilton]

Originally Posted by Matthewc

Interesting stuff....I think part of the fear of the global scale is that many of the third world countrys may not or do not have money for plants OR needed maintenance. Such plants are already in place and in need of repair. Some say that these pose a danger if not fixed soon.

Your thoughts?

I don't think there are many nuclear plants in third world countries. The majority of energy consumption is in developed countries, so that's where most of the power generation is, too. Even so, looking at the risk narrowly, if a third world nuke plant fails, it harms the immediate area around the plant. If a third world coal plant operates successfully, it generates CO2 that affects the whole world.

Count me among those that think we should be investing in making nuclear power a reasonable choice.

[Fast Water]

Well written.

Didn't we "discuss" this article a while back?

[Gun Rod Bow]

I was recently installing machinery at a plant that builds bases for wind turbines. There is about 330,000 lbs of steel in each tower base.

I wonder how long those turbines need to spin just to make enough power to offset the energy needed in the bases alone?

Right next door was an ADM plant that is being built to produce Ethanol.

The plant will consume 80 rail cars of COAL every other week in order to produce ethanol....to save the planet....

I am all for common sense things that will improve our environment. But the "feel good" stuff is a lot of shooting ourselves in the foot.

[Chrome Bumper]

Originally Posted by Thumper

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...041401209.html

The time has come. Says the author:

"Here's why: Wind and solar power have their place, but because they are intermittent and unpredictable they simply can't replace big baseload plants such as coal, nuclear and hydroelectric. Natural gas, a fossil fuel, is too expensive already, and its price is too volatile to risk building big baseload plants. Given that hydroelectric resources are built pretty much to capacity, nuclear is, by elimination, the only viable substitute for coal. It's that simple."

How is solar intermittent and unpredictable? The sun will shine steadily for billions of years! We just need to transform the energy to a useful form and transport it to its point of use.

With electricity you can turn carbon dioxide and water into gasoline.

[Pilar]

Centralized power generation is going the way of the dinosaurs. When you generate locally where the power is actually used, many problems simply dissappear.

But we lack the leadership to telecommute, put a solar retrofit on the old homestead and drive electric cars.

Let's build a nuclear power plant instead.

[Thumper]

Originally Posted by Pilar

Let's build a nuclear power plant instead.

No, let's build 150 of them and be done with this "toy technology" game. Make all the hydrogen you like with the excess power. Problem solved.

[wsuweston]

Originally Posted by Thumper

No, let's build 150 of them and be done with this "toy technology" game. Make all the hydrogen you like with the excess power. Problem solved.

[Queeg]

Originally Posted by Chrome Bumper

How is solar intermittent and unpredictable?

mmmm

are you new to the Pacific Northwest ?

[Hogmaster]

Finally.

Not only does the article show that reasoned thought calls for a change in thinking, but the responses of the ifish audience by many sharp and yet different people reflect a similiar shifting.

Chrome Bumper, not to argue your points. Whether solar can be made cost--effectively or electricity can be made into gasoline are "potentials".

The cost of nuclear power generation is known. At present it is comparatively inexpensive.

A tipping point is going to be reached. Very soon.

Anyway, the point is over the years (at a very "lay" level) a tremendous amount about the risks, benefits and realities of nuclear issues has been learned.. Nuclear power is scary to the uneducated. Stop.

Lets put it this way - they are part of the global future, and we in the US need to acknowledge the waste issues can be managed and the bomb potential has to be because it will be present whether we have nuclear power or not.

Global warming? I don't comment on that anymore. Purely economics baby!



It has been extremely enlightening

[Point-of-Sale Clerk]

When we first jumped big into nuclear power Televisions still utilized vacuum tubes and I believed that generating electricity with the engineering of the era was foolish. We now have micro-chips, carbon nano-tubes, and computer designs for intrinsically safe facilities. Add to that the new vitrification and glassification technologies for waste and the time now may be right for a re-examination of fission.

I whole heartedly believed that traditional “fusion” power generation would be a reality by now, but that has not come about. Solid state fusion may one day become the technology of the future but being older now I am somewhat jaded….

[Queeg]

I want to believe it ... but there is this


and



I know, it's all better now ... the check is in the mail ... there is no danger to the public ... mission accomplished ...

[Hogmaster]

Queeg -

Did you read the article? No slamming, just wondering. Because his point is exactly what you show.

Chernobyl's design had NO CONTAINMENT building! That is a flaw that would never occur again (not even in Russia).

The two pics illustrate exactly the point - TMI did. Notice the absence of a big hole. Notice the absence of death.

And both examples are of old technology. Cars didn't used to have airbags, either. Perhaps they should not have continued manufacturing them...

How many people have died associated with Coal generation facilities since both of those accidents?

[anglingaddict]

I've always thought that nuclear power would come "back into the picture" as technology advanced and helped us make it safer to provide. I wonder though, how ( or if) that same technology has allowed us to deal with the waste that is generated from those plants? I pray that we aren't just going to bury it under a mountain in Nevada (or anywhere for that matter!).

A.A.

[Pilar]

Chernobyl had far more significant problems than containment. Basic flaws in design. Look up RBMK reactors.

The big problem was something called 'positive coefficient of reactivity'. I'm not going to teach a class on reactor physics here but a simple explanation is in order. Since this is really oversimplified I will not satisfy other reactor operators out there. Please sit on your hands.

Almost all modern plants shut down as they get hotter. In other words the temperature of the coolant regulates the reaction rate. Hotter coolant means slower reaction. This is a safety feature and it is called 'negative coefficient of reactivity'. And pressurized water reactors have the added feature of using the coolant to facilitate the reaction (the word is moderate). When the water leaks out the reaction stops.

Chernobyl used a solid moderator, graphite. And it had a positive coefficient of reactivity. The hotter it got the faster it went. This is typical of early Soviet designs and at least one at Hanford called the 'N' reactor. Add the fact that graphite burns and you get an accident like Chernobyl.

There is only one problem with fission Nuclear power. They have not overcome it yet and they IMHO never will. It creates an enormous amount of waste. This waste is dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years. The fuel cycle leaves a trail of contamination that starts where they dig it out of the ground, transport to the processing plant, left overs from processing, the unburned fuel, the used up fuel (extremely contaminated) and finally the burned out power plant. Even the non-fuel metal in the reactor that is exposed for years to high energy neutrons becomes activated and radioactive. Oh and all the rags, suits, hoses, bottles, supplies and other stuff too.

Any proponents of the new nuclear age have any comments on radioactive waste?

As a former nuke operator I am satisfied that plants can be operated safely. But the thing that never gets any answers is the fuel cycle and the waste generated.

[Hogmaster]

Again, from the article:

""Nuclear waste will be dangerous for thousands of years." Within 40 years, used fuel has less than one-thousandth of the radioactivity it had when it was removed from the reactor. And it is incorrect to call it waste, because 95 percent of the potential energy is still contained in the used fuel after the first cycle. Now that the United States has removed the ban on recycling used fuel, it will be possible to use that energy and to greatly reduce the amount of waste that needs treatment and disposal. Last month, Japan joined France, Britain and Russia in the nuclear-fuel-recycling business. The United States will not be far behind."

Don't forget that this article was written by the founder of Greenpeace.

This is not to say there is not a hazard. On the other hand, how hazards are handled dictate whther the hazard represents excessive risk. What Pilar describes is very real in the sense that the volume of contaminant grows as it things it is exposed to also becomes contaminated.

If there were a train accident it would be expensive, but the scorched earth could be scraped. Same thing could be said about a creasote factory burning, or a tank farm explosion, or (maybe harder to contain) an Exxon Valdez.

And let's face it - are any of us foreseeing a real need to get a couple miles inside Yucca mountain in the next 100,000 years? Ideal? No. Better than excessive pollution from other energy sources? That is the tipping point question.

[anglingaddict]

I'm leaning into Pilar's camp here Hogmaster on the waste issue. I know the article was written by a Greenpeace co-founder, and I read the paragraph you quoted regarding the "waste myth". However, I noticed that in his article he doesn't give any solutions, examples or sources of information. Which to me is extremely surprising for someone who helped found Greenpeace.

We can see that the power can be delivered safer, and I am betting more efficiently, yet nobody seems to be addressing the waste issue and how that can be better handled. Oh, and the one thing in his article that I disagree with him on is calling it "waste". It is a byproduct of a process that is not needed anymore, I.E. - waste. True, as he pointed out there are countries starting to "recycle" it to get more use from the used fuel which is great, but it's still waste. SHOW me how in this country we plan to keep our country safe and livable for our children's families from any dangers posed by the by-products of generating nuclear power. Make it viable and cost effective, I'm sold!


A.A.

[Two Fister]

Thumper,
He's not exactly the golden child of the environmental movement any longer...

Moore today supports nuclear power, along with renewable energy sources such as hydroelectric, geothermal, biomass, and wind.[3] He argues that any realistic plan to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and the emission of greenhouse gases should include increased use of nuclear energy.[3] He has publicly acknowledged that this is in stark contrast to his views on this subject some decades earlier [3] (as has another pioneer environmentalist, Stewart Brand). In 1976, Moore called nuclear power plants "the most dangerous devices that man has ever created. Their construction and proliferation is the most irresponsible, in fact the most criminal, act ever to have taken place on this planet".[5] Moore believes that alternatives to fossil fuels must be found and that nuclear energy is one of the most effective technologies to reduce fossil fuel use.[3]

Moore is supported by the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), a national organization of pro-nuclear industries which hopes to enlist Moore's help in bringing about a nuclear renaissance.[6]

Moore became a mouthpiece for several pro-nuke groups several years ago. He also formed a new consulting/lobbying group with former EPA/NJ Govenor Christie Todd Whitman, who is no friend of the environment.

Listen to Pilar, the actual nuclear scientist in the discussion. It can be done, but you have to think cradle to grave. The waste is a problem. Even breeder reactors produce very dangerous, weapons grade plutonium as a waste product. Do we really need more of that floating around countries like India, Pakistan, and China?

By all means build more, but figure out how to deal with the waste first.

Not to be a Pilar parrot, but centralized energy systems are the folly of egotistical engineers.
TF

[Mad Mikey]

I suggest some folks get a copy of "Trashing the planet" by the late great Dixie Lee Ray. Her common sense approach to nuke waste disposal is quite refreshing.

We create the stuff and store it in our own back yard(s)!!!!, when we could put it elsewhere, safely.

Look it up.

I voted to close down Trojan. But I was young and naiive at the time.

If we had the nukes, some of the dams could come down eh'?

Just my

[Thumper]

Originally Posted by anglingaddict

I'm leaning into Pilar's camp here Hogmaster on the waste issue. I know the article was written by a Greenpeace co-founder, and I read the paragraph you quoted regarding the "waste myth". However, I noticed that in his article he doesn't give any solutions, examples or sources of information. A.A.

The modern developed countries are reprocessing the "waste" into new fuel. The article is two years old. Reprocessing technology has made major strides.

The "waste" issue is a straw man.

Heck, with a nuclear-generated power surplus we could even give Freespool his four busted Snake River Dams.

[freespool]

Moore today supports nuclear power, along with renewable energy sources such as hydroelectric, geothermal, biomass, and wind.[3] He argues that any realistic plan to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and the emission of greenhouse gases should include increased use of nuclear energy.[3] He has publicly acknowledged that this is in stark contrast to his views on this subject some decades earlier [3] (as has another pioneer environmentalist, Stewart Brand). In 1976, Moore called nuclear power plants "the most dangerous devices that man has ever created. Their construction and proliferation is the most irresponsible, in fact the most criminal, act ever to have taken place on this planet".[5] Moore believes that alternatives to fossil fuels must be found and that nuclear energy is one of the most effective technologies to reduce fossil fuel use.[3]

Moore is supported by the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), a national organization of pro-nuclear industries which hopes to enlist Moore's help in bringing about a nuclear renaissance.[6]


Dang flop flopper's, ya just can't trust them flop flopper's.
Jack I'd love to get on your nuclear train to Nirvana, but I just can't afford it right now, you see I still owe billions on the defunked WPPSS and Trojan power plants.
I remember watching TV adds that said with nuclear power they would take the meter off your house, and you would just pay a flat rate and use all you wanted.
This industry has been built on a big fat lie, and we the rate payers are still paying for being foolish enough to believe it.

[Thumper]

Originally Posted by freespool

This industry has been built on a big fat lie, and we the rate payers are still paying for being foolish enough to believe it.

So you blow off the entire technology for the whole U.S. because of the WPPSS screw-up? Seems harsh, man.

[scottishsetter]

Just don't try to build five at a time in one location.

Put the waste in a safe place OR convert that stupid NASA; "Moon, Mars, and Beyond" to a decent cause. A pea sized particle could destroy a trillion dollar project a half light year from home, bummer.

[Silver Hilton]

Originally Posted by Thumper

So you blow off the entire technology for the whole U.S. because of the WPPSS screw-up? Seems harsh, man.

The WPPSS screw up was essentially financial, not technological, as well. That is, as we math types like to say, an orthoganal issue. In lay speak, that means it's unrelated to the main point, which is, is nuclear power a viably safe technology?

Hydro kills fish. Low cost, but high environmental impact in certain targeted areas.

Coal kills the planet with CO2, smog and acid rain. Low cost, very high impact in terms of pollution, and impact due to mining.

Solar cells have a highly toxic waste stream from their production, and production is limited by the available silicon supplies. Very high cost, and can't serve base load needs.

Nuclear has a relatively compact, yet highly toxic waste stream, that can be reduced by reprocessing the used fuel. Other than the waste stream, it's a pretty low impact technology, though currently relatively high cost.

There isn't any easy answer here, and progress is not well served by a bunch of armchair engineers proclaiming what the right answer is.

[Hogmaster]

TF -

Originally Posted by Two Fister

Thumper,
He's not exactly the golden child of the environmental movement any longer...

I have to assume that is a position statement (however the "environmental movement" is defined).


Moore became a mouthpiece for several pro-nuke groups several years ago. He also formed a new consulting/lobbying group with former EPA/NJ Govenor Christie Todd Whitman, who is no friend of the environment.

How many years ago? I'm sure someone can tell me. I ask because an earlier post mentioned a quote taken in 1976. That is a lot of technology awareness ago. Is it morally wrong to change one's beliefs based on new knowledge?

Listen to Pilar, the actual nuclear scientist in the discussion. It can be done, but you have to think cradle to grave. The waste is a problem. Even breeder reactors produce very dangerous, weapons grade plutonium as a waste product. Do we really need more of that floating around countries like India, Pakistan, and China?

But it needs to be recognized that weapons grade fissionables - dirty bombs are still weapons aren't they - are readily available on the world market. So risk of it being traded out of the many countries that it originally came from is there.

By all means build more, but figure out how to deal with the waste first.

There have been suggestions, and many are managable for 10,000 or so years. That is not 100,000 years. We have been in the nuclear age for less than 75 years. In that time we learned a tremendous amount. Nobody even understood the half-life of any of this stuff. Exotic byproducts of fission that were being built at Hanford were being dumped in ditches.

It seems if the knowledge curve increases it has the last 75 years, there might be a chance in 9,999 years or so that it can be dealt with. Heck, by then maybe they can re-use the re-use of the re-use. Or something. After all, what if in 75 years we learn it is not only long lasting, but useful?- Perhaps it solves untold problems.

Unless everything in the world is already invented.

And yes, I guess that is a position statement.

Not to be a Pilar parrot, but centralized energy systems are the folly of egotistical engineers.

I too believe off the grid energy is practical for many applications. But what happens when we start looking at 40 Sporting Goods Outlets, 12 boat builders, 10 shopping malls with 122 theaters and don't even ask where we store all the groceries like fresh meat, fish and produce (like tomatos in the off season) all in one metro area?

Then there is all the stuff a guy would want too.

Could the answer be both?
TF

OK, one last thing. Please do not think I am attacking TF (I suspect he doesn't think I am even though I have never met him.) I always am trying to find enlightenment.

[freespool]

Originally Posted by Thumper

So you blow off the entire technology for the whole U.S. because of the WPPSS screw-up? Seems harsh, man.

As harsh as it might sound, it is the reality of how the nuclear industry conducted business, it was a flat out lie, they said it would be the cheapest power ever invented, and the reality was it was the most expensive, and it had a 50K year after taste.

[scottishsetter]

Much of Hanford waste is the '50s thinking' waste in tanks. Poor handling by todays tech savy. Also the Top Secret "you will be killed if you talk" is not exactly Scientific building info. Also the time frame extreme production(and waste) in a very short time period(for the benefit of the Free world).
It could be done better today but not if 'free enterprise' is allowed to 'cost overrun every last thing' + 10% or 20% or 15% plus safety containment over budget costs + 9.5% if needed including weather elements not foreseen or human employment issues that affect the "normal" cost of business as "we" see fitting.

[Point-of-Sale Clerk]

Pilar

Of the 6 Generation IV reactors types currently under development 3 are closed/fast reactors that reduce high-level waste by as much as a factor of 100.
Vitrification and glassification represent the safest form for low-level waste storage.

[Joe C]

waste: 10,000 years, 100,000 years... I don't see much difference. I'm doubting the human race is gonna make it another 2,000 years at the pace we're heading. At least not on this planet.

[fish_on]

I worked for a guy in Idaho who led a team at the INEL. They pioneered a process that took barrels of nuke waste, subjected it to some kind of high heat plasma and encapsulated it in a glass like material 1/20th the size of the original. After the process it was safe to handle, he even had a softball size piece in his office that started out as a 50 gallon barrel full of waste. They will figure out how to convert and store the waste as the technology is needed.

[Pilar]

I am not a nuclear scientist. I was a lot closer to it than that. For a few years in the '80's I was an operator of a nuke plant that was lets say mobile and stealthy.

It is important to understand the difference between radiation and contamination. If you walked by the fence of Chernobyl after the fire was out (Yes, even today) you would be exposed to ionizing radiation. This is alot like getting an x-ray at county general. So that is radiation. Like little bullets that hit you and do damage. Xray, neutron, Beta and Alpha. Here and gone.

Right now there is a large area of the Ukraine that is closed to human habitation. This area is centered on Chernobyl. The other undamaged reactors at that site have been shutdown and no one lives in the forbidden zone. The reason for this is contamination. That is the actual particles of radioactive matter. Near Chernobyl this stuff is the result of the fire that happened after the steam explosion. The smoke and dust settled on the ground in the surrounding area. Much of this dust was tiny chunks of fuel and reactor. If you get some of these particles on you it is like getting a continuous xray 24/7 until you get it cleaned off. If you ingest it through food or water then well your mileage may vary.

Glass vitrification is a good technology. When they make it practical then the clean up can begin. We have a pretty big backlog of waste now. Yucca mountain is still not open for business. The big problem with moving the stuff there is the risk of accidents during transportation.

The bright side of all of this is that the wallet pinch has people thinking about these things. Maybe some will wake up and make some changes.

[Two Fister]

Originally Posted by fish_on

I worked for a guy in Idaho who led a team at the INEL. They pioneered a process that took barrels of nuke waste, subjected it to some kind of high heat plasma and encapsulated it in a glass like material 1/20th the size of the original. After the process it was safe to handle, he even had a softball size piece in his office that started out as a 50 gallon barrel full of waste. They will figure out how to convert and store the waste as the technology is needed.

Have you talked to that guy lately fish_on? Vitrification can encapsulate some forms of high level waste, but in many cases the encapsulation phase contains the radiation long enough to safely transport the waste for long term geologic storage. That's what Yucca Mountain is supposed to be for, but it'll be years before all of the lawsuits are completed. The stuff that really needs to be vitrified is also highly, highly guarded and controlled so I'll bet it was a chunk of test vitrification rather than an actual waste stream. If it was an actual chunk of vitrified waste, call NSA.

The vitrification plant at Hanford was originially estimated at $4,000,000,000. To date the costs are somewhere over $9,000,000,000. Estimated final costs (from what I've read in Environmental Trade Journals last year) is somewhere in excess of $12,000,000,000. I think the zeros are a lot more impressive than writting Billion. Here's an excerpt from the Government Accounting Office:

In December 2000, the Department of Energy (DOE) awarded Bechtel National, Inc. (Bechtel) a contract to design and construct the Waste Treatment Plant (WTP), one of the largest nuclear waste cleanup projects in the nation. Originally expected to cost $4.3 billion and be completed in 2011, DOE now estimates that WTP will cost over $12.2 billion and be completed in late 2019.

It's a triple/triple...triple the cost and triple the time to construct. But is that any surprise at Hanford? And anyone that thinks the $12,200,000,000 is accurate needs to take a deep breath of fresh air. Lots of allegations (some confirmed) of cutting corners and falsifying documents and inspections. Doesn't make me feel all that warm and fuzzy, but at least we're upwind.

So who wants to sign up for having all of the high level radioactive waste that is sitting in various sites around the US trucked through their community to get to the Hanford Vit Plant? Anybody? Should they build $12,000,000,000 Vit Plants at every waste site so that the waste doesn't have to be trucked in it's highly radioactive form? Would that be cost effective?

Nuclear is enormously expensive initially and it has lots of long term costs that are not frequently considered. Even the most effiecient reactors still produce highly radioactive waste and not all of it can be reprocessd. Creating less of something harmful is typically a good thing...unless, of course that wastestream is substantially more dangerous.

What it comes down to is that nuclear power is just another way to create steam to spin turbines. When you look at the basics of how power is generated by nuclear, coal, hydroelectric, natural gas, and oil it's still all about spinning a turbine as we've been doing to create electricity for 150 years. It's time for a new approach instead of simply building a better $20,000,000,000 mousetrap that produces waste that's extraordinarily dangerous for 10,000 years at a minimum.

Hydrogen economy. If we can break the stranglehold of big oil and big power it's realistic and possible today.

TF

[retaliate]

Prove they can safely store the Waste, & I'll go along with it, building more Nuclear Plants, & hopeing the'll come up with a plan to safely store the Waste along the way is too dangerous. I don't know anything about this Greenpeace Guy, But I wonder if they paid him to change his tune, pay somebody enough money, & the'll say anything you want, we all have our price.

[Thumper]

Originally Posted by retaliate

Prove they can safely store the Waste, & I'll go along with it, building more Nuclear Plants, & hopeing the'll come up with a plan to safely store the Waste along the way is too dangerous. .

Every industrialized country now re-processes the waste. Read the article.

[Threemuch]

I am pro for sure. I spent 3 years designing backup generators for an ABWR reference plant at GE. Three diesels and a gas turbine, all to provide power to systems in the event of a catastrophic shutdown.

Clean and safe stuff. Waste is small and contained and in my opinion, managable. There is still lots of empty space on this planet, much uninhabitable due to a lack of water. Waste can be stored in the wastelands.

Building a plant is a 5 year project minimum. None of this would happen fast.

[Two Fister]

Originally Posted by Thumper

Every industrialized country now re-processes the waste. Read the article.

Read it. Funny how a Greenpeace founder suddenly gets credibility when he changes his tune...


Here's some excerpts from the Union of Concerned Scientists about fuel reprocessing. The rest of the article was just about minor topics like how easy it would be to make a bomb (dirty or atomic) from reprocessed fuels verses spent fuel in solid fuel rod form. The rest of the article can be seen at: http://www.ucsusa.org/global_securit...pent-fuel.html

Reprocessing would hurt U.S. nuclear waste management efforts.

First, there is no spent fuel storage crisis that warrants such a drastic change in course. Hardened interim storage of spent fuel in dry casks is an economically viable and secure option for at least fifty years.

Second, reprocessing does not reduce the need for storage and disposal of radioactive waste, and a geologic repository would still be required. Plutonium constitutes only about one percent of the spent fuel from U.S. reactors. After reprocessing, the remaining material will be in several different waste forms, and the total volume of nuclear waste will have been increased by a factor of twenty or more, including low-level waste and plutonium-contaminated waste. The largest component of the remaining material is uranium, which is also a waste product because it is contaminated and undesirable for reuse in reactors. Even if the uranium is classified as low-level waste, new low-level nuclear waste facilities would have to be built to dispose of it. And to make a significant reduction in the amount of high-level nuclear waste that would require disposal, the used fuel would need to be reprocessed and reused many times with an extremely high degree of efficiency—which is very expensive and would take years. For example, in 1999, the Department of Energy estimated it would cost $279 billion over a 118-year period to fully implement a reprocessing and recycling program for the entire inventory of U.S. spent fuel.[1]

Finally, reprocessing would divert focus and resources from the U.S. geologic disposal program and hurt—not help—the U.S. nuclear waste management effort. The licensing requirements for the reprocessing, fuel fabrication, and waste processing plants would dwarf those needed to license a repository, and provide additional targets for public opposition. What is most needed today is a renewed focus on secure interim storage of spent fuel and on gaining the scientific and technical consensus needed to site a geological repository.

Reprocessing would be very expensive.

Reprocessing and the use of plutonium as reactor fuel is also far more expensive than using uranium fuel and disposing of the spent fuel directly—even if the fuel is only reprocessed once. In the United States, some 55,000 tons of nuclear waste have already been produced, and existing reactors add some 2,000 tons of spent fuel annually. Based on the experience of other countries, a commercial scale reprocessing facility with an annual throughput of about 1,000 tons of spent fuel would cost anywhere from $5 billion to $20 billion to build. A facility with twice that capacity would be needed to process the new spent fuel produced; taking into account economies of scale, it would cost from $7.5 to $30 billion, excluding operating costs. A second facility would be needed to also reprocess the existing spent fuel over a period of some 30 years.

All of the other industrialized countries that reprocess spent fuel rods as also sitting on a stockpile of plutonium and mid to low level radioactive wastes for which they have no disposal site.

TF

[Thumper]

I don't care whether we re-process it or store it. The point is that waste is no longer a deal-killer.

We need to quit futzing around and start forging our way to genuine energy independence. For once and for all.

Then tear down as many dams as Freespool wants to, get on with re-building our fish populations, and finally move into a hydrogen era.

Everything else is just twiddling our thumbs.

Imagine telling the folks with all the oil that we will decide how much it is worth, not them.

Imagine the change in world power and trade balances if the oil-based economy could be swapped out for unlimited hydrogen fuel. A cleaner planet.

What are you guys afraid of? Just git-er-done.

Rant over.

[Fried Oyster]

Originally Posted by Thumper

I don't care whether we re-process it or store it. The point is that waste is no longer a deal-killer.

We need to quit futzing around and start forging our way to genuine energy independence. For once and for all.

Then tear down as many dams as Freespool wants to, get on with re-building our fish populations, and finally move into a hydrogen era.

Everything else is just twiddling our thumbs.

Imagine telling the folks with all the oil that we will decide how much it is worth, not them.

Imagine the change in world power and trade balances if the oil-based economy could be swapped out for unlimited hydrogen fuel. A cleaner planet.

What are you guys afraid of? Just git-er-done.

Rant over.

YES.

[Two Fister]

Originally Posted by Thumper

What are you guys afraid of? Just git-er-done.

Seems pretty obvious to me that most people are afraid of radioactive waste that is deadly for anywhere between 10,000 to 250,000 years.

Seems pretty obvious to me that people are afraid of creating more material for dirty and atomic bombs.

Seems pretty obvious to me that people are afraid of trusting the government and companies like Bechtel with properly handling wastes that are dangerous for so long that the think tanks at the CIA and NSA have been trying to come up with ways to develop legends about the danger of the Yucca Mountain area that will outlast our civilization.

Seems pretty obvious to me that the costs associated with nuclear power are astromonical high in every economic analysis that looks at the whole life cycle of nuclear energy and not just the $/kwh snippet.

The only thing that's not obvious to me is why do you think we need nuclear to move to hydrogen?

TF

[Thumper]

Originally Posted by Two Fister

The only thing that's not obvious to me is why do you think we need nuclear to move to hydrogen?
TF

Economics. Currently it costs $9 to generate 1 kg. of hydrogen industrially, and that amount contains approximately the same energy as a gallon of gasoline. Replacing $4 per gallon gasoline with $9 per kg. hydrogen ain't gonna cut it.

The easiest and cheapest way to make hydrogen is to crack water (electrolysis or steam reforming). Yes?

The easiest way to crack water is with oodles of raw electricity. Yes?

The easiest way to create oodles of raw electricity is with nuclear. Yes? That is the key. We have to reduce the cost of generating the electricity to crack the water.

Seems simple to me.......

But what are the economical alternatives?

[fish_on]

Originally Posted by Two Fister

Have you talked to that guy lately fish_on?
TF

Not for 13 years.

[BrianMaguire]

Originally Posted by Chrome Bumper

How is solar intermittent and unpredictable? ne.

Given a single cloudy night I can show you.

[Fried Oyster]

Originally Posted by Two Fister

Seems pretty obvious to me that most people are afraid

Seems pretty obvious to me that people are afraid of

Seems pretty obvious to me that people are afraid

Seems pretty obvious to me that the costs

The only thing that's not obvious to me is why do you think we need nuclear to move to hydrogen?

TF

Wow. Just an all around no-can-do attitude about the whole subject, I see.

Not me. I'm much more afraid of staying dependent on oil, and breathing coal smoke. Oil war, oil polution, and other energy sources are currently killing plenty of people....millions, I'd venture to say.

[Silver Hilton]

Originally Posted by Thumper

Replacing $4 per gallon gasoline with $9 per kg. hydrogen ain't gonna cut it.

This year.

[Slobes]

So I am a major in nuclear engineering at OSU and it is really great to see this level of optimism for my chosen field.

A few thoughts...

First, much of the public's fear of power plants is based on Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, fears about the effects of nuclear weapons, and how the media has taught us to fear them. The simple truth is that with TMI, the media grabbed on and made everyone afraid of what was in reality a very safe design that successfully contained any serious damage. Many things went wrong at TMI, and safety systems, in the end, WORKED. In Chernobyl, simplified Soviet designs and shortcuts led to dramatic failures of safety systems. Something on that order would not have happened in a US based design.

Pilar and others have mentioned the appeal of local power production. Currently at OSU there is a lot of research and development going into a modular reactor design that will be able to provide power on smaller scales. There is aslo a lot of research going on here into extremely safe, passive designs.

It is however, unnerving to here some of the bits of nontruths. Some info:

The greenpeace co-founder that currently backs nuclear energy is suddenly losing credibilty w/ his folks over this issue.

Next generation reactors will be able to manufacture hydrogen because of extremely high operating temperatures.

Waste transportation is extremely safe. Many years of development have gone into the transportaion vessels and they can withstand direct hits from freight trains at full speed.

Also, prior to waste deposit, it must cool off for a long period of time before it can be handled.

I really love trying to provide positive and truthful information about nuclear technology to people that may not have had specific info on the topic. I am not an expert in all things nuclear, but I would really enjoy providing information to anyone interested. Feel free to PM me.

-Alex Mieloszyk

[Two Fister]

Originally Posted by Thumper

Economics. Currently it costs $9 to generate 1 kg. of hydrogen industrially, and that amount contains approximately the same energy as a gallon of gasoline. Replacing $4 per gallon gasoline with $9 per kg. hydrogen ain't gonna cut it.

The easiest and cheapest way to make hydrogen is to crack water (electrolysis or steam reforming). Yes?

The easiest way to crack water is with oodles of raw electricity. Yes?

The easiest way to create oodles of raw electricity is with nuclear. Yes? That is the key. We have to reduce the cost of generating the electricity to crack the water.

Seems simple to me.......

But what are the economical alternatives?

One of the things that people have to get their mind around when it comes to a hydrogen economy is that things are going to be radically different. Dr. Geoffrey Ballard (Ballard Power Systems in Vancouver, BC) has written extensively about the decentralization of power supply that will be inherent in a hydrogen economy. He writes about it much more eloquently than I can, but in nutshell instead of building large, expensive, and extremely inefficient power generation facilities, we'll spread the actual generating to individual small scale sites. And I'm talking about really small scale, like batteries being replaced with small fuel cells. Computers and other electrical components will be designed with internal fuel cells. Even a cell phone will have an internal fuel cell. The technology for this exists today.

You'll drive you fuel cell vehicle to work where you'll plug it into the grid to supply power for the buildings electrical supply. The fuel cell vehicle is essentially a mobile generator. A hundred people show up for work and bring 100 generators with them. The vehicle is fueled at home by your own personal hydrogen generator that contains it's own fuel cell and the fuel cell in your vehicle supplies additional power. These home based hydrogen generators have been available for more than 5 years from a company in Canada called Hydrogenics since their acquisition of Stuart Energy who developed the technology. The cost about 5 years ago was around $5,000 for a pump that would refuel your vehicle overnight. The business will have it's own fuel cell stack for back up power if enough vehicles are not plugged into the building grid. In the future these stacks will split water on an as needed basis. These systems are already being produced and supplied for back up power generation at airports, police departments, hospitals, etc. by Idatech in Bend. They plan on releasing a camping sized generator this summer for personal use. Your single family house will have it's own fuel cell stack and multi-family housing will have one centralized unit. Instead of relying on PGE, Pacificorp, etc. to supply us with power, we'll supply our own. Energy independence from OPEC and big power.

The red herring of enormous infrastructure problems with hydrogen are being perpetrated by an oil industry that will become vastly less important once a hydrogen economy is in place. You won't need large tanks of processed hydrogen as it will be possible to split water in to hydrogen and oxygen at pumps like those produced by Hydrogenics. They are using this approach in Iceland where they have committed to moving to a completely hydrogen economy within the next 30 years. They use the same pumps to fuel test buses that are currently running in several locations around the country.

The real brass ring is a fuel cell that can split hydrogen and oxygen from water and recapture the steam generated by the fuel cell for reuse. It's as close to a closed loop perpetual motion system as I can imagine.

Is it going to happen overnight.
Nope.

Are we going to need other sources of fuel and electricity until then?
Yup.

Is sitting on our hands waiting for alternatives going to do us any good? Nope.

Is that a good enough reason to build a nuke plant?
Not until the waste issue is resolved.

Is it going to be economical any time soon?
Well, that depends on whether or not there is adequate investment in research and development. Both the US Military and NASA are pursuing fuel cell research at a much more aggressive pace than private industry and they are both the source of a lot of our current technology.

Thumper, we both agree on hydrogen is going to be the way of the future. The approach that is presented by Dr. Ballard is really captivating. It's a world where power becomes available to the world without transmission lines. I hope you'll read some of his work as I'm too tired and jet lagged to really do it justice here.

TF

[Two Fister]

Originally Posted by Fried Oyster

Wow. Just an all around no-can-do attitude about the whole subject, I see.

Not me. I'm much more afraid of staying dependent on oil, and breathing coal smoke. Oil war, oil polution, and other energy sources are currently killing plenty of people....millions, I'd venture to say.

Nothing of the kind. I have a very positive, can do attitude. I just happen to work in the field of cleaning up hazardous waste. What it comes down to is that every tank leaks eventually. Every landfill leaks eventually. Every drum leaks eventually. It's a fact of life. Just wishing it weren't that way doesn't solve the problem with handling waste that is immediately dangerous to your life for 10,000 years.

We are not going to build our way out of this crisis in any short order by building a bunch of nuke plants. They take years to design, years to permit, years to build, and they are extordinarily expensive when you look at the whole economic picture.

If you want to solve the energy crisis, sell your gas guzzler truck, insulate your house, put in some efficient windows, turn the heat down 2 degrees in winter, and up 2 degrees in summer. Spread that minor effort across a couple of billion people and there is no energy crisis.

That's a positive, realistic solution to the current energy woes.
TF

[BCF]

Originally Posted by BrianMaguire

Given a single cloudy night I can show you.

BrianMaguire, I have attached a picture of just one of the ways to solve the problem you brought up.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008...en_salt_as.php

It is really frustrating to listen to rhetoric and people you care about frozen in their perceptions, thinking in the same old paradigm.

BCF

[BCF]

Originally Posted by Thumper

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...041401209.html

The time has come. Says the author:

"Here's why: Wind and solar power have their place, but because they are intermittent and unpredictable they simply can't replace big baseload plants such as coal, nuclear and hydroelectric. Natural gas, a fossil fuel, is too expensive already, and its price is too volatile to risk building big baseload plants. Given that hydroelectric resources are built pretty much to capacity, nuclear is, by elimination, the only viable substitute for coal. It's that simple."

Thumper et al: http://www.fraw.org.uk/mobbsey/papers/oies_article.html

This link discusses the limited quantity of viable ore. At current levels of demand estimates are around 72 years, at projected demands maybe as little as 12 years.

This is not the technology I would choose to "crack" hydrogen out of water.
It is to expensive, to short lived, to dirty, to dangerous, and just plain unnecessary.

Get smarter you guys, wean your self from the grid. Demand our communities to be responsible for their own energy production where it is needed. At the point of demand. Demand appropriately designed buildings, and modes of transportation. No permits issued for wasteful edifices to Architects, or gas guzzling automobiles. Get smarter. Be willing to sacrifice and have the guts to change.

I don't need nor want a chainsaw to cut my butter.

I am going to protect my family and the families of my neighbors from the narrow thinking that advocates the same old thinking from the past. It was just too expensive and dirty technology for our future rooted in the past is not going to really fix the problem.

BCF is almost done preaching; I will go back to work and I will see you in the halls of the the legislature or the small group meeting room, yacking about it on a fishing chat room board, while it might change the attitudes of a few, in the end ultimately results in nothing.

Again, nuclear may have a place... but not yet. The world is just to unstable.

BCF out:twocen ts::twocen ts: more than two cents.

[Thumper]

BCF --- Good point. Long-term supply is a serious issue, unless fast reactor technology can keep pace.

http://www.cfr.org/publication/14705...nd_demand.html

"Currently, there are nearly one thousand commercial, research, and ship reactors worldwide, more than thirty are under construction, and over seventy are in planning stages. The world currently uses 67,000 tons of mined uranium a year. At current usage, this is equal to about seventy years of supply. The World Nuclear Association says demand has remained relatively steady because of efficiency improvements, and it is projected to grow “only slightly” through 2010. However, more efficient nuclear reactors, such as “fast-reactor” technology could lengthen those supplies by more than two thousand years."

Maybe the question is whether over the next 70 years one can count on development of such technology.

But, dang, you make sense here.

So, other than nuclear, how we gonna make all that hydrogen???

[freespool]

Originally Posted by Thumper

BCF --- Good point. Long-term supply is a serious issue, unless fast reactor technology can keep pace.

http://www.cfr.org/publication/14705...nd_demand.html

"Currently, there are nearly one thousand commercial, research, and ship reactors worldwide, more than thirty are under construction, and over seventy are in planning stages. The world currently uses 67,000 tons of mined uranium a year. At current usage, this is equal to about seventy years of supply. The World Nuclear Association says demand has remained relatively steady because of efficiency improvements, and it is projected to grow “only slightly” through 2010. However, more efficient nuclear reactors, such as “fast-reactor” technology could lengthen those supplies by more than two thousand years."

Maybe the question is whether over the next 70 years one can count on development of such technology.

But, dang, you make sense here.

So, other than nuclear, how we gonna make all that hydrogen???

I'd like to hear what Dr. Geoffrey Ballard has to say on the subject.
I did see on the science channel a few years ago where these scientist had found a way to create a hydrogen solid puck fuel system that powered a car.

[SuperT]

While I certainly understand the concerns about waste, it's being worked on. The DOE is throwing a TON of research money at just about any school or company willing to find new ways to reprocess spent fuel and other wastes generated by nuclear plants.

For those concerned about the isolation of bomb materials, you shouldn't be. The processes being evaluated are those specifically designed to NOT allow the isolation of Plutonium. Sure it is still radioactive material and dirty bombs are still a threat, but they can get that material anywhere, not just from waste reprocessing sites.

[Chrome Bumper]

Originally Posted by Queeg

mmmm

are you new to the Pacific Northwest ?

Not really, just because it gets dark at night doesn't mean the sun quit producing energy. In fact if you go east of the cascades you will see sun light reaches the ground in some places almost every day.

[Two Fister]

Ummm...like I said before we don't need nuclear to make hydrogen.

Here's some links to Hydrogenics and Ballard Power Systems.

This link to Hydrogenics is a .pdf file of functioning hydrogen pump systems. Some are powered with attached fuel cells while other are on the grid. These are in place and functioning today. Notice how the ones installed by Chevron and BP utilize natural gas while the other all use water?

http://www.hydrogenics.com/onsite/pd...ed_success.pdf

Here's the link to their main website:

http://www.hydrogenics.com/default.asp

Here's the main Ballard Power Systems website:

http://www.ballard.com/

Here's a link to Ballards test program supplying 1kw residential fuel cell stacks to individual house in Japan:

http://www.ballard.com/files/Resourc...tudy_FINAL.pdf

Here's another interesting paper called "20 Hydrogen Myths" from Amory Lovins, a physicist at the Rocky Mountain Institute. It's from 2003 so it's a bit dated, but it has some decent information that is both technical and general in nature.

http://www.rmi.org/images/other/Ener...rogenMyths.pdf

And in the sense of full disclosure, Dr. Ballard is a supporter of nuclear energy until an established fuel cell distributed grid is developed. Many of his fellow fuel cell developers and scientists disagree. It's going to take a while to make that kind of paradigm shift.

One of the problems associated with making that shift if the lack of research money from the feds. Our current administration said that they would promised pull out the stops to fund alternative energy (in particular fuel cells and hydrogen) during the 2004 campagin. They promised to spend $1.2 billion on hydrogen. Wow! Unfortunately when it comes to government programs that's a drop in the bucket. $1.5 billion was spent to promote healthy marriages in the same time period. The monthly tab for the war in Iraq is $3.9 billion. The Department of Energy consistently spend more dramatically more on nuclear and fossil fuel research than on hydrogen. Until the government is willing to break some of it's ties with big oil and big energy hydrogen is going to continue to be developed in other countries. It's no coincidence that the significant research and application of hydrogen technologies is occurring overseas and in Canada. Looks like more technology that we'll have to import in the future...
TF

[Chrome Bumper]

So simply put, what is the energy source that will be used to produce elemental hydrogen? If its electricity what produces that? If its gas or oil then we still depend on that.

Hydro power, now that's the ticket.

[Two Fister]

Originally Posted by Chrome Bumper

So simply put, what is the energy source that will be used to produce elemental hydrogen? If its electricity what produces that? If its gas or oil then we still depend on that.

Hydro power, now that's the ticket.

In the near term I guess so.

In the long term fuel cells create the power to produce hydrogen. Since the by products (water and heat) are essentially the fuel there is very little waste. How long it will take is going to be dictated by investment, resistance from current market forces, and how much jelly our elected officials have in place of their spines.
TF

[Thumper]

I hope that some of the sources you folks cite will assure us that enough hydrogen can be made to get the cost down to $4 per KG. Otherwise we are just talking about another toy technology.

[Chrome Bumper]

Originally Posted by Two Fister

In the near term I guess so.

In the long term fuel cells create the power to produce hydrogen. Since the by products (water and heat) are essentially the fuel there is very little waste. How long it will take is going to be dictated by investment, resistance from current market forces, and how much jelly our elected officials have in place of their spines.
TF

So you use fuel cells to create power that produces hydrogen that powers fuel cells. Kind of a perpetual motion machine for the next century, eh?

This plan violates a few laws of physics.

Hydrogen is a fuel. If you are synthesizing it you need an external energy source to do it, like oil, coal nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, whatever. Electricity is not a source, it is a method of transmitting energy, you need a source to produce it too.

[Chrome Bumper]

Originally Posted by Thumper

I hope that some of the sources you folks cite will assure us that enough hydrogen can be made to get the cost down to $4 per KG. Otherwise we are just talking about another toy technology.

So when gasoline and diesel is $15 dollars a gallon they will be a "toy technology"?