Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

[pgsmith]

There is a lot of debate currently about green energy. Solar is still not efficient, and wind energy is way too intrusive. Both of these are also not dense enough to provide for our ever increasing power needs. Nuclear energy has as many for it as against it. New technology and strict building codes could conceivably make a nuclear power plant as safe, or safer, than any other form of power generation. However, that safety comes at a very high price, higher than most utilities would pay. This is evident in the Fukushima disaster where the company did not want to pay the cost to ensure containment in the event of a disaster such as the one that struck. Not that they couldn't, they considered it an unlikely enough event that they were unwilling to pay for it. Added to the cost of the initial build, is also the cost of the nuclear waste generated.

So, what do you think about the future of energy?

 

[Steve]

There is a lot of debate currently about green energy. Solar is still not efficient, and wind energy is way too intrusive. Both of these are also not dense enough to provide for our ever increasing power needs. Nuclear energy has as many for it as against it. New technology and strict building codes could conceivably make a nuclear power plant as safe, or safer, than any other form of power generation. However, that safety comes at a very high price, higher than most utilities would pay. This is evident in the Fukushima disaster where the company did not want to pay the cost to ensure containment in the event of a disaster such as the one that struck. Not that they couldn't, they considered it an unlikely enough event that they were unwilling to pay for it. Added to the cost of the initial build, is also the cost of the nuclear waste generated.

So, what do you think about the future of energy?

The real problem with nuclear energy is the hazardous waste for which there is no current means of disposal. Last I heard, it continues to accumulate, the idea being that by the time it becomes a real problem, we'll have figured out a solution. Not all that promising.

There won't be any one answer, I don't think... unless Tony Stark gets involved. But increasing our ability to store energy will help a lot. With sources like wind and solar, we can't control the production as much, and so often the energy is being thrown away because it's being produced at times when people aren't using it.

Nuclear is reasonably cheap and definitely viable, but there's a cost. Same with coal and also with natural gas.

But when we talk about energy, I think that ALL energy is part of the conversation, particularly our reliance on foreign oil.

Ultimately, at the top of my checklist is domestic. First and foremost, I think we need to be energy independent. AFTER that, we can talk about clean, sustainable or whatever else. I'd rather use 100% American coal to create dirty, stinky American energy if it helps us become energy independent. Of course, I think we can do better than that.

 

[cdunn]

We can probaly develop an approprate means of disposal for nuclear wastes, if we choose to put resources there as a society. However, everything is stop-gap until Tony Stark does show up.. and we fund him.

We need to begin moving beyond fossils as an energy source; the ROI and ROEI are slowly dropping as time goes past. Someday, it won't be profitable. The question that comes then: Will we be ready? At the rate we're going stifling the competition, the answer is likely no.

 

[billc]

Nuclear energy is one answer and I would bet that something will come along that we don't even expect yet. It will be something out of the blue and we will get it when we are ready for it. What that "it" will be, no one knows yet.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

I like all the replies so far!

Nuclear power is one alternative. And with the exception of fossil fuel and hydroelectric power, it is the only one that can ramp up and down on demand to meet capacity requirements. Solar requires sunny days, wind requires, well, wind. And all the 'green' solutions require more effective storage solutions than we currently have, since they cannot ramp up and down easily. Batteries and storage as heat just aren't efficient enough.

I am not saying that we should not continue to pursue alternative solutions; we should. But they won't be replacing traditional power generation anytime soon.

I hope we continue investigating and trying new forms of energy generation, such as wave and water current power (undersea units that draw power from the moving ocean currents). I hope we also are able to develop fusion power - a dream at the moment, but clean if we can do it. There is also the possibility of power from space - solar power sent to earth as microwave or other radio wave transmissions. Theoretically possible, all kinds of technological issues at the moment, but not impossible to overcome. There is also geothermal if we manage to drill down past the crust into the mantle. Lots of heat down there, waiting to be exchanged via power generation.

 

[jks9199]

I like all the replies so far!

Nuclear power is one alternative. And with the exception of fossil fuel and hydroelectric power, it is the only one that can ramp up and down on demand to meet capacity requirements. Solar requires sunny days, wind requires, well, wind. And all the 'green' solutions require more effective storage solutions than we currently have, since they cannot ramp up and down easily. Batteries and storage as heat just aren't efficient enough.

I am not saying that we should not continue to pursue alternative solutions; we should. But they won't be replacing traditional power generation anytime soon.

I hope we continue investigating and trying new forms of energy generation, such as wave and water current power (undersea units that draw power from the moving ocean currents). I hope we also are able to develop fusion power - a dream at the moment, but clean if we can do it. There is also the possibility of power from space - solar power sent to earth as microwave or other radio wave transmissions. Theoretically possible, all kinds of technological issues at the moment, but not impossible to overcome. There is also geothermal if we manage to drill down past the crust into the mantle. Lots of heat down there, waiting to be exchanged via power generation.

Nuclear is definitely one alternative, and one that should be more actively employed. The waste issue will eventually be solved, when there is a demand to do so.

One thing I wonder about regarding wind, geothermal, and wave power especially is the law of unintended consequences. We suck heat out of the core -- what might the long term impact be? Take some of the energy out of the ocean currents, or wind -- and will we find out that we've influenced the environment? I don't know -- but I wonder about some of that. TANSTAAFL...

 

[Bill Mattocks]

Nuclear is definitely one alternative, and one that should be more actively employed. The waste issue will eventually be solved, when there is a demand to do so.

One thing I wonder about regarding wind, geothermal, and wave power especially is the law of unintended consequences. We suck heat out of the core -- what might the long term impact be? Take some of the energy out of the ocean currents, or wind -- and will we find out that we've influenced the environment? I don't know -- but I wonder about some of that. TANSTAAFL...

I think that compared to the amount of heat, wind, currents, and so on available, it would be nearly if not completely impossible for us to create any impact whatsoever. I agree that there is no such thing as a free lunch, but when you look at the scales involved, it doesn't seem like a problem to me.

On a similar topic, I have been and continue to be irritated by the obnoxious tree-huggers for whom nothing is acceptable. Can't burn fossil fuels, we're polluting the earth. Can't dam the streams, we're destroying habitat. Can't use wind power; birds of prey fly into the blades and are killed. Can't this and can't that. They're boring and asinine.

 

[ballen0351]

I think Steve hit the nail on the head. We need to stop paying our "friends" for there oil support ourselves first and then we can work on the next new way to get our power.

 

[cdunn]

I think Steve hit the nail on the head. We need to stop paying our "friends" for there oil support ourselves first and then we can work on the next new way to get our power.

Developing a way to replace oil for transportation, for cheaper than import, is 150% of how we stop paying the people that hate us for their oil. We have built our communities around the availability of the personal automobile. It is not going away. Therefore, we must replace its powerplant. Be it with long range EVs, flex fuel and bi-fuel engines burning natural gas or hydrogen fractured with the output of solar/wind/nuclear plants, or the insanity of minimum-sized fissile piles, when we replace gasoline at the pump, we stop importing it.

 

[Steve]

Developing a way to replace oil for transportation, for cheaper than import, is 150% of how we stop paying the people that hate us for their oil. We have built our communities around the availability of the personal automobile. It is not going away. Therefore, we must replace its powerplant. Be it with long range EVs, flex fuel and bi-fuel engines burning natural gas or hydrogen fractured with the output of solar/wind/nuclear plants, or the insanity of minimum-sized fissile piles, when we replace gasoline at the pump, we stop importing it.

Guys, I hate to be a zealot, but the average miles driven per day in America is less than 30. I average between 40 and 50. I have literally not been to a gas station or a jiffy lube in 14 months.

While I agree that the range needs to be longer in general, if energy independence were important to most consumers, viable alternatives exist. Energy independence has always been my number 1 reason for early adoption of an EV and I haven't regretted at all. I would get so angry every time I filled up my tank, I was eager to try something new, even if it meant a bit of inconvenience. That it wasn't inconvenient at all is a bonus.

 

[Sukerkin]

With regard to nuclear power, there is really no need for us to be using the methods currently employed which result in radioactive waste (tho' my company provides control systems for nuclear reprocessing so perhaps I shouldn't say anything about other methods ).

I have mentioned these before but it's pertinent to the thread so I'll bring them up again. If we had the political will, we could go back to using 'fast breeder' style reactors, which, in a manner of speaking, produce their own fuel as you feed the waste back in.

Another method, that doesn't provide you with politically problematic plutonium, is to use a Thorium salt reactor design. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/01/what-is-thorium-nuclear-power

 

[ballen0351]

With regard to nuclear power, there is really no need for us to be using the methods currently employed which result in radioactive waste (tho' my company provides control systems for nuclear reprocessing so perhaps I shouldn't say anything about other methods ).

I have mentioned these before but it's pertinent to the thread so I'll bring them up again. If we had the political will, we could go back to using 'fast breeder' style reactors, which, in a manner of speaking, produce their own fuel as you feed the waste back in.

Another method, that doesn't provide you with politically problematic plutonium, is to use a Thorium salt reactor design. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/01/what-is-thorium-nuclear-power

So why do we not use thes types? Are they more expensive? I know nothing about this topic so Im just curious if there is a better method why dont we use them?

 

[jks9199]

I think that compared to the amount of heat, wind, currents, and so on available, it would be nearly if not completely impossible for us to create any impact whatsoever. I agree that there is no such thing as a free lunch, but when you look at the scales involved, it doesn't seem like a problem to me.

We've said that before, about a lot of things. What'll a couple of rabbits do in Australia... What's a little smoke from exhaust fumes...

I'm not saying that there will be problems -- just that we need to look at the possible impacts. Let's say we use a geothermal model, based on a house or four per generator (or even just geothermal heat pumps for heating cooling...). OK -- what happens when you have hundreds of people sucking heat out of the earth's core? Do we find out in 10 or 20 years that we're messing up the magnetic fields that protect us be slowing down rotation of iron/magnetic ores? (Forgive me if my "science" is completely out of whack; you get the idea, I hope!) Do we then end up sending nukes into the Earth's core to reliquify it? (And then what happens to Pellucidar?)

 

[geezer]

I'm not saying that there will be problems -- just that we need to look at the possible impacts. -- what happens when you have hundreds of people sucking heat out of the earth's core?

Are you kidding? Do you have any idea how huge the volume of the Earth's mantle and core is? ...and the immense quantity of heat stored there? Compared with the interior of the planet, the surface we know is tiny... a thin film... and humankind, our cities, roads, and all or works are just a faint stain marking bits of that film. Changing the climate of the surface by a century and a half of burning coal and oil is one thing. But affecting the planet's core... not bloody likely!


Note: My response above is based on absolutely no hard facts, just logical conjecture derived from having slept through a couple of general science courses in high school and college about a zillion years ago. If that's not good enough for you, go ask Elder! :uhyeah:

 

[Bill Mattocks]

We've said that before, about a lot of things. What'll a couple of rabbits do in Australia... What's a little smoke from exhaust fumes...

I'm not saying that there will be problems -- just that we need to look at the possible impacts. Let's say we use a geothermal model, based on a house or four per generator (or even just geothermal heat pumps for heating cooling...). OK -- what happens when you have hundreds of people sucking heat out of the earth's core? Do we find out in 10 or 20 years that we're messing up the magnetic fields that protect us be slowing down rotation of iron/magnetic ores? (Forgive me if my "science" is completely out of whack; you get the idea, I hope!) Do we then end up sending nukes into the Earth's core to reliquify it? (And then what happens to Pellucidar?)

Scale is the key here. The crust of the earth is very very thin. Everything underneath is very very large - and hot. We could not cool it off if we tried. The earth's core cools at a rate of about 100 degrees Celsius per billion years. There is literally nothing we could do that would have any effect on that. The scale is too vast. This is similar to the old canard that we possessed enough nuclear weapons to blow the earth apart. Not even close. Not even a significant chunk of it. We could not even render the earth uninhabitable with all our nuclear weapons. Unhappy for humans, yes. Destroy all life? No. Crack the planet in half? No. So we can draw all the power we want from geothermal energy and never affect the heat at the earth's core in any measurable way.

However, I will grant you that adding heat to the atmosphere may have a measurable and negative effect over the long term. But we do that anyway with fossil fuel burning.

 

[jezr74]

I'm a supporter of nuclear reactors. They have got a lot of bad press in the past and defiantly have their down sides. But I'm pretty sure there have been more fatalities with coal world wide than any fallouts. I believe the type 3+ reactors are very efficient these days with little waste, we just need designated dumps to bury it. I remember reading from a few sources that putting the waste in a hole is about the best and easiest/safest way to dispose. And wait the many years for it to become deposits again using natural way it has in the past.




Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

[Sukerkin]

So why do we not use thes types? Are they more expensive? I know nothing about this topic so Im just curious if there is a better method why dont we use them?

Sadly, for Thorium, you can lay the responsibility for that at the doorstep of the American military and the necessities of the Cold War with a frisson of MAD thrown in.

Thorium was developed as a fuel type alongside uranium but the latter is the one that got developed and the former got it's funding 're-assigned'. Hindsight is a wonderful thing of course, which is why there is a faint aura of 'conspiracy' that arose around the abandonment of thorium and the 'casting out' from the circles of power of it's primary developer and advocate.

Long story short, the military required lots of nukes fast and Thorium fission is a source of power rather than weapons. So it got shelved and uranium and plutonium fission got developed for decades, leaving Thorium designs long behind. Times may be a-changing, as the song goes, for Thorium really is a better bet for power generation but there is a lot of development needed up front to bring reactor designs up to the same level of refinement {Yeah! Nuclear physics pun attack !} as their dirtier, more violent, cousins.

As to Fast Breeders, they produce plutonium and so some designs are, as far as I know, banned under the various non-proliferation treaties that arose from the Cold War sparring for dominance. Elder will, I suspect, have a more reliable insight than mine into that one.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jul/30/fast-breeder-reactors-nuclear-waste-nightmare

P.S. I approve this comment on the article linked above :lol: :

I do love the commentary from Greenpeace though, their "main objection" to nuclear changes almost every minute depending on the audience they're talking to and the particular news item. Of course, it's easy to be "anti-everything" when you're not actually required to find a solution to a given problem.

 

[elder999]

Lots of good, thoughtful answers here-I'll chime in, but I'll clear up a few points firts:

I like all the replies so far!

Nuclear power is one alternative. And with the exception of fossil fuel and hydroelectric power, it is the only one that can ramp up and down on demand to meet capacity requirements. .

For years-literally-the phone would ring in the control room at Indian Pt., usually aroung midnight. It would be power dispatch-the people who trade power and monitor grid conditions (to oversimplify) asking about the plant situation, and the answer would usually be pretty short: 100%, steady state.

Nukes are not good load-followers. They're generally best off "base-loaded," that is to say, running full on all the time. There's a variety of reasons for this; the larger units, like Indian Pt., have some thermodynamic instabilities at lower loads that just make them a pain in the ***, for example. Somewhere over 600mw, after the second main boiler feed pump and heater drain pump have been started, and things are pretty much copacetic and idiot proof. Below 600mw, and around 200mw? Well, not a comfortable place to be.

Waste, of course is another problem. I've been preaching Accelerator Transmutation of Waste, for more than a decade, and was really hoping we'd get to do a proof of principle experiment at LANSCE-the only accelerator in the country with the right beam available to do so. Unfortunately, well, the government doesn't have the money, and corporations just don't give a ****. Fast breeders, like Mark pointed out, are another possible solution-but here's a mind blower:

"Spent fuel" isn't spent.

In fact, every fuel element removed from a reactor is only about 1/3 used. The original cycle called for fuel to be rerprocessed. There'd still be waste, but not at nearly the volume we have today. In fact, there's a shutdown reprocessing facility in upstate NY. It was shutdown because part of the "waste," a byproduct of the reprocessing is plutonium, and President Jimmy Carter-former nuclear Navy captain and physics major-in his infinite wisdom, decided that the U.S. wasn't going to contribute to the world supply of plutonium any more, and halted all reprocessing in the U.S......

In any case, nuclear is part of the answer, but not without a better solution to the waste problem than the ones that have been supported by the government so far. We've learned a lot in 60 years of commercial production, and the newer, smaller designs promise a lot more safety, and a lot less waste.

Other things we should be doing?

Convert our nationwide trucking and rail freight systems to natural gas, creating thousands of jobs, and using an abundant domestic source of energy to supplant one of our principle uses of foreign oil.

Start processing coal into synthetic gasoline and diesel fuel, a process that is nearly 100 years old, and currently utilized in South America and South Africa, where they've been making their own gasoline from coal exclusively for 60 years, now....

Reexamine the way we centralize and distribute electricity. When people recognize the whole "Edison v. Tesla, DC v. AC" argument, they don't recogniZe the real reasons why Edison wanted DC. He envisioned smaller power plants for communities, and factories having their own plants. While AC offers lots of other advantages as far as motor operation goes, the fact is that communities could be built around smaller, localized grids, with smaller plants from a variety of available sources, including fossil fuel, but possibly from solar or wind-here in New Mexico, where we have full sun for nearly 300 days a year, solar is a real, viable source of power in many places-in fact, it even has possiblities for larger centralized plants up to 300mw: by using solar concentrators, and collecting heat in molten salt, the technology already exists to produce power from solar power during the day and at night, but only in certain areas.

Solve the storage problem. Solve the storage problem. Solve the storage problem, come up with a better battery, and be rich beyond dreams of avarice.

Build newer, cleaner power plants. Solve the CO2 problem. Solve the CO2 problem.Solve the CO2 problem, and be rich beyond dreams of avarice.,.

Oh, and conserve, people. Embrace the hybrid car-they're just not bad at all. Embrace the electric car-they're getting better all the time. Look at taking your home off-grid. I built the Jemez house with off-grid capability, and, as far as geothermal goes, you can sink a 200 ft. shaft, run a ventilation duct down it and back, and use 50F air from the earth to cool your home in the summer, and ease your heat burden in the winter-I know, because I did it-and wait'll I build my next home...:lfao:.... (I'd really love a bwahahaha "mad scientist" smiley, Bob, but the rolling on the floor guys will do...:lfao: )

 

[Sukerkin]

Darn - it seems I have not been as generous with Rep as I should have been of late (it's just so much easier to click Thanks than write a Rep comment ). Just wanted to give kudos to Elder for his 'insider' viewpoint :bow:.

 

[jks9199]

Are you kidding? Do you have any idea how huge the volume of the Earth's mantle and core is? ...and the immense quantity of heat stored there? Compared with the interior of the planet, the surface we know is tiny... a thin film... and humankind, our cities, roads, and all or works are just a faint stain marking bits of that film. Changing the climate of the surface by a century and a half of burning coal and oil is one thing. But affecting the planet's core... not bloody likely!


Note: My response above is based on absolutely no hard facts, just logical conjecture derived from having slept through a couple of general science courses in high school and college about a zillion years ago. If that's not good enough for you, go ask Elder! :uhyeah:

I don't know either. I used that example because it was one I could conceive of -- not necessarily because it's scientifically accurate. It showed the principle -- that there are often unintended consequences to things we do. A handful of people drilling wells into the aquifer -- no problem. Several hundred or a few thousand wells? Suddenly you're getting sink holes and the water table drops... because the water isn't there anymore. A handful of people using geothermal -- no problem. But what happens if several thousand homes in an area try to do so? Do we shift a metaphorically ton of heat into or out of the crust?

We do need an answer. I absolutely feel that nuclear power will be part of the long term answer. I also suspect the power grid will become more local, as Elder has mentioned. I live in a city that happens to have a municipal power company. The longest outage I've had in the nearly 10 years I've lived in the city has been a couple of hours. Even with the derecho storm that hit the DC area in July. Usually, it's just a bump, enough to reset the clocks and frustrate you -- but not even really an inconvenience. Meanwhile Pepco, Dominion Electric, and NOVEC all had people out for several days. Our power grid is currently so interconnected that it's really a vulnerability; in 2003, a huge portion of the Northeast was blacked out in a single event. Not a storm, but a simple failure of the infrastructure.

As to transportation -- Elder has it right there, too, I think. Move to CNG for a lot of it, especially trucking. But anything that replaces gasoline/diesel has to be almost a seamless transmission, or so much better to make switching the infrastructure worthwhile. We have too many gas stations, it's too much a part of the structure... Whatever replaces it has to pretty much work the same way, and almost be able to switch out over night. I hadn't heard of the synthetic gasoline... though I'd often wondered what the magic in petrochemistry is that we can't duplicate it. All I could come up with is that we could -- but it was so costly and energy inefficient that nobody would bother.