Nuclear Recycling?

[Roxanne Appleby]

Read: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.07/juice.html

Then read it again - we currently generate twice as much electrical energy as we need, half of it is lost in heat and line losses - and the current scheme of centralized production has reached the limits of grid capacity - the Ca. blackout of a couple of years ago was plants being ordered to shut down during the peak demand summer months due to the grid reaching within 5% of it's capacity. Plants had to shut down or risk blowing out the whole grid.

Micropower on a distributed grid works becasue the supply is closer to the demand, so a Kilowatt of mocropwer replaces Two Kilowatts of centralized power. You still need the power plants, micropower cannot replace the energy needed for industrial use, peak demand, etc., there is currently no feasable method of storing large amounts of electricity, so you need the power plants whent he sun doesn't shine, the wind doesn't blow, etc., although micropower also includes high efficiency gas and coal turbines, etc.

It is a common accusation, but in fact, the distributed grid desn't call for getting rid of centralized power production, just supplementing it primarily in the domestic power market.

If for instance, every home in Ca., Nevada, Az, etc., installed just enough[ PV cells to run their air conditioners, it would probobly extend the current grid lifespan another 20 or thirty years without having to build any new plants of any sort - conservation has so far been keeping pace with increases in demand for the most part, Flourescents, more efficient appliances, etc., but eventually that may plateau too.

That's cool. How about peak load-pricing, or whatever it's called? Where they charge more for power at peak hours.

BTW, to be a "good citizen" and responsible consumer, on really hot days I avoid running my AC between the peak demand hours of 3 pm to 7 pm. My house can easily "coast" on the stored up coolness for that length of time, so it's no real sacrifice. Maybe a little stuffy by 7:00 pm, but I feel good knowing I'm helping avoid overload problems. (By .0000001 percent, but hey, it all adds up. )

 

[xssve]

Define "self interest." On health damages, I provided for reimbursing actual damages for those who are actually harmed, plus a reasonable level of "pain and suffering." I said $500k on the latter, but if you want to make it a million or two that's OK. Just not a zillion trillion dollars. NIMBYs - I don't accept that they are actiing in genuine self interest. Instead, I think they are seeking to impose their personal aesthetic preferences on the rest of society. If someone's use and "quiet enjoyment" of their property is acually diminished by a nuke or any other facility, then they have a legitimate claim. But those are well-established legal standards, not open-ended excuses to stop all progress and development.

The only "alternative" to nukes that you have mentioned - "micropower on a distributed grid" - is just another form of fossil fuel generation - natural gas turbines (jet engines) or deisels. Fine for limited niches, but hardly "our energy future."

Look up the insurance thing if you want, this is just the situation, I forget the numbers - the bottom line is, if there is an accident, taxpayers will pay to clean it up - period.

Anybody else get a deal like that? Oh yeah, Barrick Gold, under number 41.

I hate to tell you this, but this is the only alternative, anything esle is only delaying the inevitable.

Go ahead, see if you can calculate the costs of building an entire new grid on top of the old one, nationwide.

And don't forget to include the cost of lawsuits.

This is done, for the most part, most large cites, and a lot of small ones have already mad the neccessary modification to their grids to convert them to run both ways, the costs are negligable.

The only hold up is that subsidized energy is keeping costs low enough that alternatives are not competitive enought to get economies of scale established that would drive prices down again.

 

[xssve]

That's cool. How about peak load-pricing, or whatever it's called? Where they charge more for power at peak hours.

BTW, to be a "good citizen" and responsible consumer, on really hot days I avoid running my AC between the peak demand hours of 3 pm to 7 pm. My house can easily "coast" on the stored up coolness for that length of time, so it's no real sacrifice. Maybe a little stuffy by 7:00 pm, but I feel good knowing I'm helping avoid overload problems. (By .0000001 percent, but hey, it all adds up. )

You know you mostly only need the AC when the sun is shining...

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Go ahead, see if you can calculate the costs of building an entire new grid on top of the old one, nationwide.

And don't forget to include the cost of lawsuits.

This is done, for the most part, most large cites, and a lot of small ones have already mad the neccessary modification to their grids to convert them to run both ways, the costs are negligable.

The only hold up is that subsidized energy is keeping costs low enough that alternatives are not competitive enought to get economies of scale established that would drive prices down again.

Achh, don't let lots of zeros to the left of the decimal point put you off - calculate instead the value of providing the U.S. economy with the energy it needs to provide the comforts, conveniences and security that industrial civilization provides to 300 million citizens. That is the "real thing" in this discussion, and in that context the cost of major grid upgrades aren't scary at all. The obstacles that seem to worry you are social/political "constructs" - and they can be deconstructed.

(And no, I don't consider actual injuries or property losses suffered by individuals to be in that artificial "constructs" category, but under a reason-based tort systems such losses are finite, not open ended and unlimited.)

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

You know you mostly only need the AC when the sun is shining...

Heh-heh. The first thing I did when I bought my house was crawl into the attic with a bunch of insulation. It does OK for a few hours. My last place was the top floor of a two-flat, and that was a bit dicier, but even there I was able to hold down AC during those grid-stressing 3-7 pm hours.

 

[xssve]

Achh, don't let lots of zeros to the left of the decimal point put you off - calculate instead the value of providing the U.S. economy with the energy it needs to provide the comforts, conveniences and security that industrial civilization provides to 300 million citizens. That is the "real thing" in this discussion, and in that context the cost of major grid upgrades aren't scary at all. The obstacles that seem to worry you are social/political "constructs" - and they can be deconstructed.

(And no, I don't consider actual injuries or property losses suffered by individuals to be in that artificial "constructs" category, but under a reason-based tort systems such losses are finite, not open ended and unlimited.)

Technically, yes, infrastructure is really the upper limit on just how much an economy can grow, i.e., it's potential for growth, which is why the American economy has actually grown faster under higher taxes than it has under lower ones - despite the pork, infrastructure, education and research usually get funded - the Ninties economy was due largely to the maturation of the PC at the same time that the backbone and the protocalls (thanks to Al Gore and the W3C) of the internet were laid.

In the Sixties and Seventies, it was mainly palstics and IC chips, much of it developed during WWII or captured from the Germans, audio tape for example. That and the transportation and energy infrastructure, in 1950, only half the house in the country had indoor plumbing.

That's a buttload of cars, toilets, transistor radios, toasters, etc., and we had awhole generation of engineers and scientists educated on the GI bill to come up with new stuff.

The economy doubled under Reagan, as conservatives like to obseve - though actually not suite doubled - it's at least doubled every decade sicne records were kept however, it nearly tripled in size in the Seventies - and that's with a couple of years of negative growth when the infaltionary spiral (started by tax cuts) got out of control, doubled and half again in the Ninties.

Charted historically, the Eighties are a dip in the curve, as will be the Naught's, and both are going to be associated with rising crime rates, racism, etc. - the latter is a good distraction, a convenient goat, same for any minorities, homosexuals, etc.

Public investment is investment, there are no free rides, as they say - or used to.

Still, rebuilding the grid is a major investment - a quarter of your income taxes are already going to service the debt, that figure is just going to rise. The distributed grid is a perfectly servicable solution, if you read that article you'll see its the solution the energy industry itself recommends - I really don't see why we should get deeper into debt just to prop up a few uncompetetive smokestack industries, it really makes no sense unless you have stock in nukes.

The lower limit tends to be labor, and flexibility of same, when labor gets stretched too thin, growth becomes more problematic, although computerization has been behind most of the recent productivity gains with only intermittent labor shortages, naturally met with interest rate rises by the Fed.

Litigation is essentially the only avenue the individual has to check corporate behavior, it's part of the market, just like anything else. Current tort reform is just like everything else this administrations does - to increase stockholder returns, period.

It's called risk for a reason, risk is supposed to make you think before you do something.

 

[xssve]

Heh-heh. The first thing I did when I bought my house was crawl into the attic with a bunch of insulation. It does OK for a few hours. My last place was the top floor of a two-flat, and that was a bit dicier, but even there I was able to hold down AC during those grid-stressing 3-7 pm hours.

Yeah, it's suprising what a difference another layer of insulation in the ceiling can make.

 

[Pure]

roxanne's source

of the following:

In the first place, the whole idea that there is such a thing as "nuclear waste" is a bit of a misconception. More than 98% of the material in a spent nuclear fuel rod is being recycled in other parts of the world. About 97% of spent fuel is uranium: 2% is fissionable U-235 isotope, the fuel that powers the reactor and the other 95% is good old U-238, the same non-fissionable isotope that comes out of the ground. It can't be used for bombs. Sure, it has a half-life of four billion years (that's why environmentalists think they have to sit and watch it for a million years) but this is the same stuff that's in granite.

No, the isotope everybody really worries about is plutonium-239, which is formed when small amounts of U-238 absorb neutrons during the three-year cycle. It makes up 1% of spent fuel. Separating it and putting it back in a reactor as "mixed oxide fuel" (uranium plus plutonium) is no problem


is--according to the url posted-- the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal. the opinion piece is by one William Tucker, who is apparently a conservative journalist.

so rox has nothing approaching a proper source for these figures.

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rox's and ami's general reliance on political commentators and conservative columnists for "authoritative data" on scientific matters (to which ami adds his favorite novels, as further sources) does not inspire confidence in the alleged evidence.

here's one ref by authoritative sources, presented to congress, with lots of details about the process of recycling.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/crs/97-564.htm

report for congress, from Congressional Research Service:

Nuclear Weapons:
Disposal Options for Surplus Weapons-Usable Plutonium

May 22, 1997

Craig M. Johnson
Research Assistant
Environment and Natural Resources Policy Division

Zachary S. Davis
International Nuclear Policy Specialist
Environment and Natural Resources Policy Division

==
sources for France:
Uranium Information Centre, of Australia

"nuclear power in france" (aug 2007)

http://www.uic.com.au/nip28.htm

====


here is an older article from "new scientist" about France's recycling and disposal issues.


http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14119150.900-troubled-rebirth-for-french-fast-reactor-.html

Troubled rebirth for French fast reactor

05 March 1994
From New Scientist Print Edition.
TARA PATEL , PARIS

Tools
Superphenix, the world's first commercial-scale fast breeder reactor, will be restarted to carry out research into the disposal of nuclear waste, the French government announced last week. The core of the reactor, which was designed to create - or breed - more plutonium than it uses, will be changed so that it burns up plutonium and other long-lived radioactive isotopes. French ministers say the decision is a crucial step in managing the country's stockpile of plutonium, which will reach 180 tonnes soon after 2000.

===

 

[Pure]

hydrogen for cars.

interesting article by previously cited person, on the problems of this alternative proposed by President Bush. it might be noted that most hydrogen is made, at present, from natural gas; so arguably the Bush proposal is for an immense involvement of the oil and gas industry.

http://mb-soft.com/public2/hydrogen.html

Hydrogen as a Fuel for Automobiles

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here is an article on the new Mercedes Benz F cell car currently available in iceland. it's said to be a 'green car', and to have a travel radius of 160 km. (thus partly addressing the problem of tank volume raised in the above article).

http://puregreencars.com/Green-Cars...s/Mercedes-Fuel-Cell-Deliveredin-Iceland.html

 

[SeaCat]

Without subsidies, the industry would simply cease to exist - those lawsuits and NIMBYism represent the self interest of individual Americans, annoying things like health etc.

To answer your main question, if there were no alternative, then it would not be a bad way to go - since there are alternatives, and better ones, which the energy industry as a whole supports, with the exception of a narrow cabal of nuke fanatics who, although they don't have enough money for adequate insurance or decommissioning the plants they have, seem to have a lot of money for marketing and lobbying, then it isn't.

I'm interested in these comments. Please give me some more information.

As for the NIMBYism, I can point to several situations where the NIMBYism is purely self interest. Case in point is an ongoing debate on Cape Cod where people are fighting against the erection of a Windfarm in Nantucket Sound. Some of those fighting against it, including Senator Kennedy, at first complained against it on the grounds they would see it from their mansions. (They have now dug deeper and found other reasons to dislike it.

What are these alternatives you talk about? Please give me a link to the information about them.

Cat