[geeks] Re: [rescue] Energy

[Nathaniel Grady]

[Stuff about Nuclear Wast disposal problems]

CC'ing geeks as this discussion should probably move there...

I aways thought we should just save all the dirt that comes with the uranium 
when we mine it, mix our spent fuel with it and put the stuff right back 
where it came from - it wasn't bothering anyone before we played with it, and 
we're just artificially shortening the half-life. 

The single biggest problem with nuclear power is that the navy was pressured 
to commercialize it ASAP. Reactor designs that worked well for small sub- 
/ship-based reactors really were bad designs for the land where you can 
"waste" a lot of space in the name of increased safety / lower maintenance.

Another way of reducing the nuclear waste problem is to use breeder reactors 
that automagically re-process their own fuel. The integral fast reactor (IFR) 
(see http://newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/phy99/phy99xx7.htm and 
http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/designs/ifr/ - probably could google for more) is 
designed to use more of the transuranic products itself, and it includes a 
recycling scheme to keep all the waste as heavy as uranium and heavier in the 
plant such that the stuff actually thrown away is not nearly as bad as 
current waste. Reprocessing has been tried in other places, usually 
seccussfully. Unfortunately congress seems to think that reprocessing == 
making nuclear weapons so they do their best to kill any such program 
(remember, these are the same people who bring us silliness like the 
Communications Decency Act and DMCA...). Oh, btw - they cut funding for the 
project.

Physics Today, either last issue or 2 issues ago had a good article about 
reactor design with lots of goodies about future reactor designs. The way I 
see it, nuclear power plant engineering is finally a mature field and we're 
finally at the point where safe reactors can be built. Furthermore we should 
be building them - fossil fuels are horrible for the environment and will run 
out, wind/wave/geothermal is not practical for 90%+ of the worlds power needs 
and wind at least takes up a huge amount of fields (read: don't want trees 
around them) so it's really only environmentally friendly in the great plains 
or elsewhere where trees are not so rampent. Solar is cool, but what happens 
when it's cloudy - I know around here you would have power for about 3 weeks 
during the year! 

I'll stop ranting now and let you go back to reading about computers :)

-- 

--Nathaniel Grady

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