Fusion-Fission System Burns Hot Radioactive Waste 432
An anonymous reader writes "A hybrid fission-fusion process has been developed that can be used in some traditional fission reactors to process radioactive waste and reduce the amount of waste produced by 99%. This process uses magnetic bottle techniques developed from fusion research. This seems like the first viable solution to the radioactive waste problem of traditional nuclear reactors. This could be a big breakthrough in the search for environmentally friendly energy sources. Lots of work remains to take the concept to an engineering prototype and then to a production reactor."
Weapons Grade Production? (Score:5, Insightful)
If at any point in this process (say you stop it at 50%) the 'waste' is now weapons grade this will never be allowed in the US.
If it's still 'radioactive' you can still get energy from it. You can refine it, clean it up and shove it back through again.
Generations ago we were masters of waste not want not. If you burned candles for light, you collected your drippings, remelted them into new candles. Imagine if the 13 Colonies outlawed this because you could also remelt them into canon wicks... absolute stupidity.
Re:Weapons Grade Production? (Score:5, Informative)
I RTFA, but I'm still a bit snowjobbed because it's pretty light on detail.
It seems like their touting the solution primarily as a way to reduce transuranic waste (sludge). There were no numbers based on how much more or less energy this process would produce.
It's my understanding that re-enrichment is more about separating undepleted U-235 from depleted U-238, so I have no idea what reducing transuranic sludge would have to do with this. It might increase the (relative) percentage of U-235 enough to keep the fission reaction going, or it might just make the reaction slightly cleaner.
Transmutation of waste (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm also guess here. A decade ago, Los Alamos pioneered Accelerator Transmutation of Waste. There the idea was you bombard high level waste with a particle beam to, ironically, make it even higher level waste. The clever thing was this. The higher the radioactivity the shorter the half life.
The plan was to convert things with halflifes of 50,000 years to half lifes of hours. An insanely clever idea. But it never got much funding.
I'm guessing that this Fission/fussion system is probably playing the same game. Fusion makes for heavier nuclii, which if they are not stable, tend to be even short lived as a general trend.
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My god man... a sensable explanation that doesn't require a PHD in physics. This site isn't what it used to be!
MOD parent up.... and find more like him.
Re:Transmutation of waste (Score:5, Insightful)
The fusion of the lighter nuclei will produce a lot of neutrons, their idea being to bombard the 'sludge' with neutrons to cause its nuclei to destabilise and fiss apart. Its kinda win-win really: the fusion reaction won't be terribly efficient, and on its own would probably produce only about as much energy as it takes to sustain it, but the fissing of the heavy nuclei will release a bunch more.
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As a byproduct, of course, the decay produces a huge amount of heat, easily enough to feed a steam turbine to power the beam and other stuff.
I wish the article had mentioned something about it's energy generation capabilities. By the sounds of it, it probably doesn't process 'raw' waste out of cores, instead treating the waste resulting from reprocessing them to sort out the still usable fuel elements.
I'm still for using breeder reactors.
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I RTFA, but I'm still a bit snowjobbed because it's pretty light on detail.
There are more details at the following links:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/01/university-of-texas-at-austin-proposes.html [nextbigfuture.com]
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/01/how-long-until-there-is-capable-fusion.html [nextbigfuture.com]
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Thinking about it further, weapons grade waste is almost all transuranic (e.g. plutonium), so if the purpose of this is to reduce that, then there should be less weapons grade waste, not more.
If it's actually using that plutonium to sustain it's reaction, and produce more energy, it would seem like a good solution.
Re:Weapons Grade Production? (Score:5, Insightful)
If at any point in this process (say you stop it at 50%) the 'waste' is now weapons grade this will never be allowed in the US.
That's the dumbest fucking policy we've ever come up with and yet another reason that Jimmy Carter ranks up there with worst Presidents we've ever had. How does preventing our own country from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel do a damn thing to prevent nuclear proliferation? Other countries can (and indeed do) pursue reprocessing. We've handicapped ourselves for zero gain as far as I can see. Thanks a lot Mr. Carter.
<sarcasm>But at least we've stopped GE and Westinghouse from going rouge and building their own nuclear arsenals</sarcasm>
Re:Weapons Grade Production? (Score:5, Funny)
<sarcasm>But at least we've stopped GE and Westinghouse from going rouge and building their own nuclear arsenals</sarcasm>
Well, you know what they used to say... "Better dead than red"
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*golf clap*
Nicely done.
Presidential Directives: Ford and Carter (Score:5, Informative)
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Hmm, I wasn't aware that Ford had made it an indefinite suspension. I had thought he made the initial decision to suspend and that Carter then made it a permanent suspension. So I guess we can blame both of them.
Still, I'd beg the question: How does suspending reprocessing in our own country help to combat proliferation? That's like saying "OMG, India has developed the lightbulb! We must stop developing them ourselves to prevent them from obtaining this dangerous technology"
Rogue, rogue, rogue!!! (Score:2)
ROGUE dammit!
Rouge = Red
R - O - G - U - E
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If at any point in this process (say you stop it at 50%) the 'waste' is now weapons grade this will never be allowed in the US.
Producing weapons-grade enrichment (as in "can be used to build nuke") is _frikkin'_ expensive. You don't do that unless you _want_ to build a nuke, since it's a waste of money for any other purpose.
If it's still 'radioactive' you can still get energy from it. You can refine it, clean it up and shove it back through again.
Radioactivity is not a criterion for a nuclear fuel used in
Re:Weapons Grade Production? (Score:5, Interesting)
That was the consequence of materials costing more than manhours. Now thanks to industrialization and automation, manhours are vastly more expensive than material, simply because one manhour produces 1000x more material than it did before. (In the grand scheme of things, the cost of either is a function of its exchange rate with the other.)
Our allegedly wasteful modern society is wasteful of the visible component (material) because it is so careful to conserve the invisible component (manhours). Unfortunately most people are concrete-bound and so do not understand what's going on.
Indeed.
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I sense there's some hand waving going on here because some materials are finite while manhours are not. Yes, I'm playing fast and loose with the term "finite", but I think the point stands. All the manhours in the world won't be worth much when we run out of some critical resource. At which point manhours suddenly become finite too, if you understand my meaning.
Unfortunately most people don't see a distinction between "more than I can imagine" and "infinite". Thus we have no need to worry about our atm
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sometimes being modded up to only +5 just isn't enough.
Re:Weapons Grade Production? (Score:5, Informative)
Eviscerate? I think you mean incinerate.
There are risks to all methods of energy production. There are plenty of other countries who routinely reprocess their waste already, so that scary bomb-grade material you're scared of is already available.
Our disinclination to do reprocessing, coupled with the irrational nuclear paranoia of a subset of our population saddles us with a massive waste problem, outdated power plants, and a dependence on foreign fossil fuels.
If we could build fast neutron plants, even, it would reduce our waste output by 99%, with no increase in likelihood of meltdowns.
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Eviscerate? I think you mean incinerate.
LOL, yeah - I think I let the spell checker out-smart me.
so that scary bomb-grade material you're scared of is already available.
Yes, but why should we add the US portion to the stockpile? Every bit makes it harder to keep track of. You don't want to just keep stockpiling plutonium.
You can use it as fuel, but combined with the cost of reprocessing you end up with a very expensive process - as if nuclear power isn't already expensive. This would add at least a few cents to each kW-h.
And then there's the environmental cost... reprocessing can cause a godawful mess, and in return
Re:Weapons Grade Production? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not about stockpiling bomb grade material, it's about using it to produce electricity. Plutonium works fine in power plants (indeed, most fission plants make a decent proportion of their power off plutonium, because U-238 transitions to Pu-239 during the fission process).
Switching to fast neutron plants would cut the waste by 99%, which would cut the cost of reprocessing as well. All the "worst" nuclear waste is high energy stuff that needs to be stuffed back into a reactor, not stored under a mountain. The only stuff that can't be reused is on the level of the stuff we use for medical imaging.
I would love to see every existing plant decommissioned and replaced with something that wasn't hip in the 70's. We need the power, it's cheaper and cleaner than coal and better for the environment.
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"Generations ago a single bomb couldn't incinerate millions of people."
To eviscerate means, literally, to remove the viscera. That's innards in the colloqial.
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Actually, it's been multiple generations now...
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But not in the era of recycling candle wax.
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There appears to be a bit of a sample bias in a study where you ask people if they're still alive ;(.
Re:Weapons Grade Production? (Score:5, Insightful)
What a bunch of mealy-mouthed dreck!
I challenge you to define 'need', 'safer', and 'needless' in a way that excludes nuclear energy production in the face of its competitors for base load generation. Your statement must account for all the safety and environmental issues (including wars) associated with fossil-fuel extraction.
And your definitions must hold for those regions that are not blessed with geothermal, tidal, and wind resources. Nor can you handwave away solar power's problems with efficiency, transmission, overcast sky, and battery problems.
Re:Weapons Grade Production? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, no. That would be Truly Terrible. We'll just leave it in the safe, responsible, competent, caring hands of the US government and military, who are always looking out for our best interests as citizens. ;)
Re:Weapons Grade Production? (Score:5, Interesting)
As a former nuclear engineer you must also be aware that nuclear material can and is frequently used with virtually no risk to anyone.
I too am scared by unregulated, corner-cutting businesses working with the stuff. But no more afraid of a commercial farmer breeding a potentially lethal or ecologically dangerous super-crop though... and that's legal. So is colliding particles that may or may not cause the end of the planet.
The nuclear industry exists now, and there have been tremendous strides in the technology and safety. To suggest that we should not encourage an industry that may, with advances such as this article discusses, result in nearly zero net effect on the environment is pretty awesome if you ask me.
Honestly, nuclear fission is probably the best energy source we could pursue right now. Why, because we can do it now with virtually no waiting and no chance of finding out later that we rushed into something we shouldn't have (like corn ethanol).
One small hitch... (Score:5, Interesting)
First, they have to get sustainable fusion working, then they can installed the Super-X Divertor to bleed off neutrons to burn fission waste.
Why not use safe, proven technology [nationalcenter.org] available TODAY to burn 99% of current fuel AND WASTE?
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Re:One small hitch... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the eco lobby does not like it and will scare monger anything to do with it. Grandma thinks that a reactor failing will look like Hiroshima.
Unfortunately people can not get it through there heads that fission/fusion is the only sustainable method of energy generation that can deal the increasing demand. Demand will not decrease, this would mean your children will have a lower standard of living than you.
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Have you not read anything about failed reactors? I have, and let me tell you -- it scares the shit out of me.
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Why? We have had what two failed reactors of note and together they put out far less radioactive anything than coal power plants. You seem to be scared and scared irrational fear has no place in decision making. Would I want to walk into one? No I also would not want to walk into the bottom of a coal power plants smoke stack. Nothing is perfect fission has it's risks but it's the least risky solution that does not involve reductions in living standards. In the modern world that might not seem to bad b
Re:One small hitch... (Score:5, Interesting)
The solution is to educate people about the pros and cons, and reasonable people will start siding with nuclear. (Of course, whether or not people are reasonable is another question entirely...)
Re:One small hitch... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One small hitch... (Score:4, Insightful)
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The anti-nuclear lobby has nowhere near the kind of clout that you seem to attribute to it. I can think of only 1 reactor project off the top of my head in the United States that was canceled due to environmentalist pressure (the Shoreham plant on Long Island).
It's often claimed that Three Mile Island was the catalyst that caused the eco lobby to sink nuclear power projects in the United States. What's not often mentioned is that power companies and their investors took a hard look at nuclear power after
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Re:One small hitch... (Score:5, Interesting)
You know there is no problem sustaining a fusion reaction with todays tech, the problem is sustaining a fusion reaction that has a net surplus of energy.
There are even tabletop fusionreactors that are used as a source of neutrons.
The point of this tech is to scale the fusionreactor up so you get alot of neutrons to bombard the sludge, the fusion doesn't need to generate any energy.
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A couple of questions.
1) Are current fusion reactors able to provide the necessary neutron flux to assist a fission reactor in burning this waste?
2) Is the energy generated by the boosted fission enough to power the fusion reactor if you don't have the luxury of a self-sustaining fusion reactor?
If either answer is no, I'd rather see IFR technology put into place starting now than wait for this to become feasible.
Re:One small hitch... (Score:4, Interesting)
1) Yes.
2) Yes.
We can build stable, multi-Megawatt Fusion reactors that are close to break even. The basic idea is used by H-bomb's. They use the high neutron flux from fusion to increase fission yield. One of the basic fission problems is it becomes hard to have a stable reaction as you scale things up. You can use lot's of crappy fuel in a huge mound, but you have little control over what that pile is going to do. And as you burn fuel you change the nature of the fuel in such a way that it becomes even harder to maintain stability. If you can have a fixed source of neutron that feeds the pile you can setup a multiplier where 1 neutron in produces X reactions, but it's not self sustaining so it can't get out of control.
PS: Breeder reactors are far less stable than non breeder reactors. Think of a traditional oil lamp filled with gasoline. With with great care it can work, but it's just not as stable as heavy oil.
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As to sustainable fusion - Sustainable fusion for the purposes of directly generating energy, where the energy output of the process is more than the energy in, is difficult and years away from being achieved.
Sustainable fusion for the purposes of generating neutrons (albeit at a net energy loss) is already here - look up the Farnsworth Fusor. Can't create energy but is routinely used as a neutron source.
I've always wondered if you couldn't solve the breakeven problem with a hybrid approach like this - a c
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Yes, and the sun isn't shining outside, since it can't make helium out of hydrogen and give off a whole bunch of energy. Duh.
Since you didn't understand what your science teacher tried to convey back then, why don't you look it up on wikipedia how the fusion reactions work? Hint: It's easier to make helium from deuterium and trition then from plain hydrogen.
Fast Neutron reactors also do this (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Fast Neutron reactors also do this (Score:5, Insightful)
Amen. That article was a reprint from Dec. 2005, IIRC.
Here a link [nationalcenter.org] to a QA session regarding AFR/IFR technology. It irks me to no end that ignorant, short-sighted politicians quashed this technology 15 YEARS AGO, and the greenies have taken that long to get over the "my god, it's nucular!" fearmongering and actually start to embrace it as an environmentally-safe alternative to our current mess.
Unfortunately not too easy (Score:5, Informative)
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Keep wishing... (Score:2, Insightful)
There's never going to be an energy source that will be environmentally friendly enough for the people that think nuclear is too dirty now. Should coal and nuclear be replaced with solar, wind and/or wave generation, these same people will begin complaining about the negative effects of removing energy from the environment with those methods, wildlife being killed in wind/wave farms or whatever other impact can be identified.
The fact will always remain that life, regardless of humanity or other life, impac
Neat technology (Score:5, Insightful)
This is neat technology, and may some day be practical. But, i don't think that day is coming for 50-100 years.
Here's why : solar is getting cheap very rapidly. Today, you can pick up panels at $2.85 a watt off the shelf. Below $1 a watt, and it will be cheaper to put panels up than it will be to burn coal.
A fusion-fission hybrid system will cost a LOT. According to the wall street journal, nuclear fission plants are already deal-breaker expensive. It would be cheaper per watt to build more wind farms than new fission reactors. http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/05/12/its-the-economics-stupid-nuclear-powers-bogeyman/ [wsj.com]
Another way to look at it :
To operate a fusion-fission hybrid system, as well as dozens of large gigawatt fission reactors takes a lot of well trained and educated people working round the clock to make all of the technology work. There are very real dangers, and very expensive regulations that have to be followed.
To build more solar panels? You print some more off the reel and slap them on to glass. You park the panels in the desert and leave them alone for 25 years. Maybe a simple robot wipes them off occasionally.
There's no liability, or need for exhaustive quality control. If a panel fails prematurely, you pay a warranty claim.
Inherently, solar is going to always be cheaper for the foreseeable future.
Re:Neat technology (Score:5, Interesting)
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To build more solar panels? You print some more off the reel and slap them on to glass. You park the panels in the desert and leave them alone for 25 years. Maybe a simple robot wipes them off occasionally.
There's no liability, or need for exhaustive quality control. If a panel fails prematurely, you pay a warranty claim.
Inherently, solar is going to always be cheaper for the foreseeable future.
You miss one important thing that most people do and that's the powergrid today can't utilize solarpower efficiently. The grid is built for steady generation and steady consumption. To be able to use solar power effeciently you have to build energystorages where the surplus are stored during daytime and then discharged during night. This costs money.
It's basicly the same with any source of energy that has an output that's intermittent.
The good thing about solar/wind/wave etc. is that we can use it to lessen
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Define 'easier' please?
Because right now, the market's actions indicate that it is ea$ier to build more powerplants than it is to use less energy.
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When 70% of the coal plants are shut down because solar and wind have put them out of business, will we be looking for something even more expensive than coal? No, we'll just pick up the tab for the loan guarantees for a few new nukes as tax payers and never finish construction, just like in the eighties.
I look at it this way (Score:2)
It is an interesting technology, but lets be realistic here.
Building an existing 'off the shelf' LWR design requires roughly 10 years. Turning this technology into a standardized design which can be used by industry will require some amount of time, probably 10-20 years by the time all the safety engineering is complete and a prototype reactor is built, run for several years, and the bugs are worked out of it.
So, we're talking about OPTIMISTICALLY 2028 and possibly 2038-2048 before the first one of these re
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Below $1 a watt, and it will be cheaper to put panels up than it will be to burn coal.
Yeah, but that's $1/watt year round and including downtime for clouds.
Besides, you still need some other form of power for when the wind ain't blowin' and sun ain't shinin'. So you either need to add the cost of moving power around or you need some hydro/nuke/tidal/fossil plants.
Umm. . . baseline power? Land use? (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for increasing solar, wind, ocean-based, and other 'passive' power systems. But, all the people talking about wind and solar seem to always leave off some important problems - That solar panel which is producing 1kw (or whatever) at noon on a clear sunny day might only be producing 150W on a cloudy day, and nothing at night. That wind turbine which is producing 1kw on a nice windy day might be producing nothing on a stagnant day.
Now, I believe the counterargument to that is the i
Claims to Destroy TRU Waste (Score:5, Informative)
Waste falls into three categories:<BR>
Low Level Waste (LLW)<BR>
High Level Waste (HLW)<BR>
Transuranic Waste (TRU)<BR><BR>
LLW is anything that has been exposed to a reasonably low level of radiation. This is typically things like gloves, towels, suits, etc. and their activity level is usually low enough to store in a temporary facility until the activity level in them dies off enough to be disposed of safely.<BR><BR>
HLW is primarily spent nuclear fuel that, in places like France, is usually reprocessed, but here it is typically either sent to be disposed of or onto research facilities, disposal, or weapons.<BR><BR>
TRU waste is what the article has been discussing, which is a big problem. TRU waste comes about as nuclear fuel is fissioned out into various fission products. Obviously these fission products are radioactive and all depend on the type of fuel, but for old LWR/BWRs, there is a significant amount of TRU waste coming out. If what they claim is actually true, then it will be a very big step in the right direction.
Re:Claims to Destroy TRU Waste (Score:5, Funny)
Man, you must be cold.
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Agreed re: EM radiation, but neutron activation is not the only source of LLW. Contamination via contact with fuel rods, waste, etc generates large amounts of LLW as well. As the GP stated, suits, gloves, etc are hopefully not radioactive from neutron activation - that would mean that the wearer probably got a fatal dose of neutrons! More likely the contamination came about from handling 'hot' objects.
Note that hospitals generate a fair amount of LLW, too.
Life Cycle Analysis (Score:5, Interesting)
This idea was (in some sense) around in the 1960's, believe it or not.
The high neutron flux produced means that the CFNS would itself become radioactive, and the steel of its construction weakened by neutron irradiation. I would like to see a life-cycle analysis to make sure that the total waste consumed was more than that produced by the CFNS itself.
This general issue is why I would like to see a lot more emphasis places on He3 fusion, and also on linear fusion devices. (He3 fusion, either He3 - Dt or He3-He3, produces much less neutron flux. To me, the end goal would be to have nuclear fusion power that did not produce radioactive waste, which ITER definitely will do. Linear fusion is for spacecraft propulsion, of course - it is thought to be much easier technically than making a tokomak work.)
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Plausible, but, as I said, I would like to see a life-cycle analysis to see if the numbers really work out.
I wish the computer hadn't turned off (Score:2)
I remember when the post-Starbuck crew of BattleStar Galactica made it to Earth and solved this problem, too bad the computer went on the fritz
Breeder reactors? (Score:4, Insightful)
Forgive my vast amounts of ignorance on the matter, but I thought breeder reactors [wikipedia.org] were a viable way of burning nuclear waste down to nothing. Or is this the same thing? I'm confused.com.
Either way, it's good to know there are options to hush up them "ZOMGZ NEWKEELER HOLLERCAUST!" crowd that's so vehemently opposed to the cheapest and quickest to implement short- to mid-term solution we have to burning fossil fuels.
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From what I can tell, this is asserting that breeder reactors can't effectively burn some of the elements that get produced, and this can. If you read carefully, they do mention that they want to do most of the reprocessing in less exotic reactors, and then just take the stuff that those can't effectively burn and "hit them with a sledgehammer", i.e. expose them to a much stronger neutron source, to burn /those/.
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Thanks for translating TFA for me :D
Problems (Score:2)
Second they want to have one of these for every dozen or so conventional reactors. This means transporting waste and an inevitable accident. They might be able to build one of these transmuters and take it around to each decommissioned power plant site to help with clean up, but what of the transmuter itself? How soon does it become radioactive waste?
I think I'd like to
There already is an alternative (Score:5, Informative)
The liquid fluoride thorium reactor [theoildrum.com] can burn existing nuclear waste just fine, and it's been available since the 50's.
Candu reactor, anyone? (Score:2, Insightful)
We've had it for decades. It has such a high burnup that spent fuel can be returned directly to the ground, because it is less radioactive than natural uranium ore. The submitter is uninformed, or a luddite moron shilling for the enviro-freaks.
Extracting nuclear fuel? (Score:2)
While this invention may mitigate some of the nuclear waster there is still the issue of contaminating the environment while extracting fuel. I don't think this fact should stop anyone from building this reactor or any nuclear reactor. After all, global warming is, uh, global and any incidental contamination due to mining is merely local. It's just another problem that needs to be solved.
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What? You don't have one yet? Oh right, forgot, not everyone has a time traveling car. Guess it sucks to be you.
Re:Mr. Fusion (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Mr. Fusion (Score:5, Interesting)
What we need is a mainstream movie and miniseries about the hazards of coal; perhaps going through the life of a Chinese coal miner?
Oh, and point out the cost/hazards of solar and wind while you're at it.
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Dangers of coal (Score:4, Insightful)
Instead of calling it "fly ash," we need to start calling it "carbon fallout"
Re:I'm selling a bridge! Cheap!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately much (most?) of the US public thinks that:
Everything that's "natural" is good. (Umm... what about ricin? Perfectly respectable "natural" product...)
Everything "nuclear" is bad. (The parent is potentially a good counterexample).
Everything "renewable" is good. (Using corn-based ethanol as a fuel source is a really bad idea ... there are better sources that have less environmental and economic impact).
Etc. Unfortunately the state of science education in the US is in such a sorry state that too many people are unable to think rationally about many of the choices facing us - they'll pay more attention to what Oprah or Paris think about some scientific question than they would to the scientists and engineers who actually do know something about those choices.
For all those people, I've got a bridge for sale in Manhattan! Cheap!! Buy it now while you have the chance, because it'll sell fast!!!
:-( :-( :-( Our country is so screwed... hopefully some of the rest of the world can keep civilization going until the nitwits here die out ... :-( :-( :-(
Re:I'm selling a bridge! Cheap!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Weed is natural and they hate that. I don't think the 'average' person has a pattern, they are just idiots.
Re:Mr. Fusion (Score:4, Insightful)
Fortunately, soon enough, the Baby Boomers, the generation who both fought against nuclear power and have proven time and time again to be happy to fuck over their children and grandchildren so they can indulge in the present, will all either be senile or dead. Then, we can stop banking on some tech riding in on a white horse to save us all and talk about a real solution to our energy needs.
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Can it? I mean, really, with all the safety features in nuclear power plants, are they even capable of "blowing up" or is it all just hogwash?
The only things that have went wrong with nuclear power plants have been meltdowns. There's only been, what, three or four meltdowns ever out of some 400 plants in the world? Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and one or two others that I can't quite remember.
That represents a roughly 1% failure rate. Yes, it contiminates the area. Some people get cancer and some people di
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Maybe we have found a device that could take care of all those prisoners down in Getmo!
Re:Missing link.. (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks for sharing, Nostradumas. While you're pulling prophecies out of your ass, can you tell me when my 401k is going to rebound?
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can you tell me when my 401k is going to rebound?
Sometime between next week and the end of your life.
Should I e-mail the bill for my financial consulting services to 'Satanicpuppy@gmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]' or do you have an alternate address you would like me to use?
Re:Missing link.. (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sure with your amazing powers, you know where to put the bill.
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So you believe that the system we are running will be viable in 50 years? I don't seem to have any psychic abilities, yet I recognize imminent failure in several key systems, (aside from any climate-change issues) which appear to have irreversible consequences for an unacceptably large number of our higher species, not to mention the possibility of making the biosphere unviable for our species as well. Since most of YOU are unsuited to agrarian or hunter-gatherer life, I'd suggest keeping up the good work.
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Yea, there are a lot of things on the horizon right now, lot of things that could cause problems for thousands of years to come, but only one of us (apparently) knows the form all those things will take.
On top of that astounding hubris, you walk around throwing out cryptic pronouncements over pieces of tech which, while interesting, will do absolutely zero to change the next 50 years. This ain't cold fusion buddy, this is just a way to reduce the waste output of a fission reactor. If we really gave a damn a
Re:Missing link.. (Score:5, Funny)
While you're pulling prophecies out of your ass...
Wouldn't that make him "Nostra-dumbass"?
Re:Developed in Texas. (Score:4, Insightful)
Most corporations diversify, and the smart ones don't waste money maintaining their infrastructure. (Federal bailouts FTW.) If I had oil production revenues, I'd be plowing all my profits into tying up all the alternative energy IP and buying legislation to benefit from the coming switch.
Re: (Score:2)
My understanding is that Yucca mountain was for everything from spent fuel to incidentally contaminated materials such as reactor parts (which are pretty low grade compared to fuels as far as I know). As for transport, I don't see why you wouldn't just build these systems into existing plants. Right now, since Yucca isn't open, our store of spent fuel is being stored on-site at those plants. Building the new systems on the old sites would eliminate the need to transport fuel until the process is complete
Re: (Score:2)
this has been around for years (Score:2)
"To burn this really hard to burn sludge, you really need to hit it with a sledgehammer, and that's what we have invented here," says Kotschenreuther.
I've been using a sledgehammer for years.
You seem to be missing (or ignoring) the point (Score:5, Informative)
"[1st and 2nd generation Thermal] Nuclear power [are] a dead end. No new [1st or 2nd Generation Thermal] nuclear plants have been built in 25 years". . .
There, fixed it for you. Yes, old reactor designs are a dead end. They are prone to a risk of melt-down (though that risk has been, mostly, successfully managed for the past 30 years; yes, Three Mile Island was a problem, but, keep in mind that even with the TMI incident, the safety features of that reactor design prevented an escape of radiation when the melt-down did occur), they only extract a miniscule amount of the potential energy available in the fuel, and they create waste that "would have to be kept under armed guard forever".
Nuclear physicists and engineers have continued to do R&D for the past 30 years, and they are proposing *new* ideas. When new ideas are presented, you can't just assume that the same arguments that were valid criticisms of the previous designs continue to be valid for the new designs.
We have, right now, a Nuclear Waste problem, because of those previous generations of dead-end reactor designs, that must be dealt with. Putting the stuff into storage for 100000 years is not really a solution. The only real solution to the nuclear waste problem is to further process it to make the waste 'safe' and short lived.
Now, I do not really know if the design proposed in this article is "the solution" or not. Maybe it is. There was also a solution proposed in the 1990s, called the Integral Fast Reactor, which was essentially melt-down proof - not because of systems put in place to prevent a possible melt-down, but because it used a different Nuclear Reaction called a Fast Nuclear reaction, instead of the older Thermal Nuclear reaction, and was such that if the reactor increased in temperature beyond the normal operating temperature, the reaction actually choked itself, sort of like a candle sealed in a glass container. They even successfully tested the design, by purposefully cutting off the cooling to a prototype reactor that the DoE built out in the desert somewhere, and it did, in fact, shut itself down as it is designed to do.
The IFR design was also based around the concept of using our existing waste stockpiles as *fuel* for the reactor, producing hundreds of times more energy from that fuel, than older 'conventional' reactors do, which should have made it much more economically feasible.
The reason I mention the Integral Fast Reactor, is that is an example of a new design which I've studied more about than this new fission-fusion hybrid in the article, which demonstrates that the old arguments don't *necessarily* apply to new designs. Every proposal must be studied and evaluated on it's own merits - you can't just make a sweeping statement that Nuclear power is a dead end.
Unfortunately, the IFR project (which was being conducted by the Department of Energy) was canceled by the Clinton administration because of the same knee-jerk reaction to all Nuclear technology, exhibited by the parent, instead of really considering the IFR design on it's own merits or problems.
Also, in regards to this new technology, it sounds like they are not necessarily proposing to build new plants, but to 'upgrade' existing plants. If we can upgrade the already built plants in such a way as to reduce our existing waste stockpiles, where is the downside? True, this new design, as with any new design, needs to be thoroughly evaluated and proven, and also compared to other proposals (for example, we should consider if this proposed design is actually superior to the IFR design - if not, we should be restarting the IFR project instead, perhaps) before we role it out to any large scale.
*Maybe* we should have never gotten into the business of Nuclear Fission, but the fact remains that we have all this waste that we need to do something with. Why not 'burn' it in a new reactor type in such a way that we produce significantly less toxic, shorter lived waste? Environmentalists should be proponents of finding ways to deal with our nuclear waste problem, not object to every single proposal with a blanket statement that nuclear power is a dead end and re-hashing the same old tired arguments regardless of whether or not they apply to the new proposals.
Re: (Score:2)
You can use inconel. Most reactors use a lot of that anyway. The only reason it isn't used exclusively is because of cost.
Re: (Score:2)
The whole nuclear argument is the same as fear of flying. I forget the exact speed but somewhere around interstate speeds, your chances of surviving an auto accident plummet. Yeah if the plane com