NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote: 
There are some pretty decent reviews on Blees book on Amazon as well.

I don't know enough about this subject and I'd like to read his book, however my reading list is six books on my desk right now.

Regards

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote: 

Yes, I read the article in the Guardian today.

My only comment is about the title of the thread- why does it have to be "saviour or scourge?"- this isn't the X factor.  It's a useful tool but not without some significant drawbacks.

Georges Monbiot has really put the cat among the pigeons today with his article favoring nuclear power.

Before everyone starts ditching the idea of nuclear power, take a look at this design and I'd appreciate if anyone could tell me what the drawbacks are..

(I know there must be some but the concept looks damn good to me. The danger in this is that I am neither an engineer nor a physicist so I'm not really qualified to judge)

 

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 

snerk.

 islander wrote: 
huge manatees all over the place?

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote: 
one word: Balloons.

The other thing that excites me about some of these GenIV designs is that they can be used to produce hydrogen thermochemically in addition to the electricity they produce.

I know hydrogen has major problems all of its own (transport, storage, etc.) but at least it's clean.

 cptbuz wrote: 

I'm glad you joined the discussion cptbuz! What is your opinion on fast breeders? Are their claims realistic?
They seem to have pretty good fail-safes built into them and the waste has a half-life of 200 years (or low level for hundreds of thousands but so low it's not a major issue).  I don't know why we are wringing our hands looking for alternative energy sources to replace fossil fuels when this technology is just sitting there unused.

 Beaker wrote: 
I'm a nuclear inspector Jim, not a proofreader!

 cptbuz wrote: 
Nice to hear from someone who is intimately involved with existing facilities. Thank you.

 Beaker wrote: 

damn decaf!

I hate getting involved in these discussions but...

I have been inspecting nuke plants for over 20 years, to me they are a safe and viable energy option. One of the big concerns that people bring up is what to do about the radiological waste. By far the majority (volume-wise) of radioactive waste produced at a nuke plant is very low level contaminated trash. The good news is that over the past 20 years the amount of contaminated trash created at nuke plants has dropped significantly through better planning, the reuse of materials/tools etc. in contaminated areas. The source of high level waste is spent fuel. Sites have spent fuel storage pools, but they are fast filling up (due to operating license extentions). Dry cask storage, an above ground shielded storage 'pod', allows for safe on-site storage of spent fuel and is a system used at many sites already. Dry cask storage has created a public uproar at some sites that could potentially cause a plant to shutdown prior to the end of its licensing.

Many people argue that wind and solar are "green" energy sources while nuke power, because of the waste and potential of contamination, should not be considered 'green'.  What these arguements don't consider is the climate damage created in the manufacture of items such as fiberglass for fan blades of a wind farm, or manufacture of the panels for solar collectors. Yes, the concrete and steel used in the manufacture of a nuke plant adds a size or two to the ol' carbon foot print too, but unlike wind and solar farms, the concrete structures of a nuke plant do not need to be routinely replaced.

Finally, ground has been broken in the U.S. for a new nuke plant @ the Vogtle site in Georgia. The hope is for the new unit (one of 7 planned in the US) to be on the grid by 2017...and one last thing, nuclear power plants are not run by baffoons as depicted in movies like 'China System', or  (UGH!) the made for TV abomination 'Atomic Twister'.

The discussion so far seems pretty reasonable.  Is this RP??? I read Beaker's link and the Wikipedia article on the IFR. Looks like the IFR wins on points. Nice to see both PEAK OIL and Global Warming taken seriously, even tacitly.

Thanks for the topic, Beaker.

 miamizsun wrote: 
far out.. they are pretty amazing claims! Here's the wiki entry on it.

I remember the fast breeder project getting cancelled in Germany in the nineties although I do seem to remember that a lot of the reservations were technical rather than political.

Still, I'm with James Lovelock, I think it is high-time we put nuclear power back on the agenda. It is certainly not the only solution and I would love investment in "cleaner" technologies to mushroom, like that osmosis power plant Hazzeswede posted a link to, and solar, but time is running out and we have to get away from fossil fuels and the faster the better.

Unfortunately, Lazy is also right when he describes the Luddites behind the anti-nuclear movement back in the day. I remember it well. Very very few in the movement actually knew what they were talking about and 3 mile island and Chernobyl sealed the fate of the entire industry in the public's eye. A great shame because it has cost us a good 20 years of pursuing technologies like this.

If the claims are true (99.5% efficiency, use of spent fuel from water-cooled reactors, nuclear waste with a half-life of 200 years, enough fuel already there (i.e. no new mining) for a thousand or more years), then we don't need to wait for fusion... or at the least it will give us another 1000 years development time..
Sounds pretty good to me!

Savior.

We'll need it.

Does anyone know anything about this:

Prescription For The Planet

here's some video:

 dionysius wrote: 
okay, and reasonable. But given the demand, and the increase in demand between now and when when fusion becomes viable, how do we support the increased system load? Solar, wind, geothermal, tidal ect. will help, but even with support that they are not likely to get near term they are only pieces of the whole solution, that also include conservation and systemic shifts in usage.  That really leaves fission and fossil as the only proven things on the table that can scale to meet the demands. I"m all for the experimental too, but we need a plan B (or really a plan A while we hope one of the experiments pans out). And since we know that fossil just exacerbates the problems... well, that leaves nuclear - which is pretty well proven and would probably be saving our bacon already had we not had such high profile problems as 3 mile island and Chernobyl.

 islander wrote: 

I just want a bigger effort made towards fusion (with solar, geothermal and wind energy utilized as stopgaps until such time as it is feasible). Then we can abandon the poisonous carbon and fission technologies altogether.

 dionysius wrote: 
I like this analogy. But I'm surprised that given your view of climate change (a correct one I think) that you are worried about this. We have a far better chance of figuring out what to do with/how to properly label nuclear waste if we use this tool to fix the larger climate problem. Else the ensuing climate catastrophe/flood/famine/riots/ handfull will render our current nuclear sites (and possibly melted down nuclear plants, and piles of nuclear weapons) just as much a future landmine for whatever species manages to figure out how to survive the new environment we create.

I think it's even more shortsighted to wait for a better solution while plunging headlong into the void. Do what we can when we can.

dionysius wrote:
Assuming it works, or that the eventual solution (if any) looks even remotely like what ITER is doing. ITER will not generate usable power, it's an experimental setup. Those involved are happy just to be working on the problem; if it doesn't ultimately produce anything usable they had their fun and still got paid. This is the difference between basic research (which the for-profit private sector does poorly) and people driven by curiosity rather than profit: when your own money is on the line you invest it where you think it has a decent chance of paying off. Real discoveries seldom happen on a schedule.

And that post-peak oil market is going to have a lot fewer customers if somebody can make fusion work. But I suppose if that day comes we can always subsidize the oil industry as a pointless, inefficient money-bleeding sop thrown to senators from oil states. Like Amtrak or the sugar industry.


The really dangerous hard radiation-emitting waste is actually a small fraction of the waste produced by nuclear power; most of it is low-level stuff contaminated in maintenance and use (like used bunny suits).

For instance the beta sources I work with emit so little radiation (beta particles—you can stop all but an undetectable fraction with two sheets of paper or about a foot of air) that they could be legally sold as food. The health risks associated with that level and type of radiation is miniscule, but since the sources are classified as hazardous they have to be handled with extreme and very expensive care. Stuff like this constitutes the bulk of the radioactive waste we're talking about.

Yes, it will be radioactive for thousands of years, but so will some of the soil it's buried in. You could probably walk around the house you're living in or a national park and find completely natural sources that give off more radiation than a ton of this stuff buried a foot underground. And we have lots of places we could put it a lot farther away from humans than that. We have some good solutions for stabilization and storage (vitrification and burial in  offshore subduction zones, for instance) but in the current political climate they can't be used.

Regardless of how good a solution we come up with it will meet reflexive opposition—there are people simply unalterably opposed to anything to do with nuclear power. That's not a technical problem, but it remains the single biggest obstacle.

Nonetheless waste raises the cost and complexity of fission power. If we can find a way to fusion power (or some other holy grail technology) then we can stop generating that waste. If we can't then we need fission anyway and we need to start using it. It already works.