[geeks] electric power [was: [rescue] Need Build Help]

[Sandwich Maker]

" Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2014 16:25:47 -0400
" From: Nick B <nick at pelagiris.org>
" 
" That is very interesting.
" 
" I can't wait for the US to re-embrace real clean power - nuclear.  We need
" to start building new nuke plants *today*, the longer we wait the worse it
" will get.  I'm worried that one of the plants we've kept running for 3x
" it's lifespan will finally have an accident, which I've got to assume is
" the current goal for those blocking new nuke plants.

real clean except for high-level radioactive nuclear waste.  where
should we store it, for ever and ever?  nowhere is safe enough.

i have a love/hate relationship with nukes.

hate - the waste, as mentioned.  a byproduct of appalling efficiency -
american nukes convert only a few percent of their fissionable load to
power.[1]  this is like filling your gas tank, driving -3- miles, having
it pumped out [and paying hazardous-waste disposal costs], then
filling up again.  what would that do to your cost-per-mile?

our plants are fundamentally 1st-generation designs with safety
features added, like a curved-dash oldsmobile[2] with emission
controls, abs, and airbags.  would you want one?  and they've become
so expensive that nobody risks an unproven design no matter how good
it looks on paper.

the people who operate our plants don't seem to be our best and
brightest, either.  i worry their heads are still stuck in fossil-fuel
management and that, despite three mile island, they don't really
appreciate the risks of what they're responsible for.

love - the technical potential.  as far back as the '70s,
theoreticians were desigining 3rd-gen plants inherently more efficient
and with safety baked in.  one was actually built at hanford before it
was closed by clinton.  my favorite was the liquid-fueled slow breeder,
which integrated fuel reprocessing into the reactor so that the
fissionable material never left the plant, only lead, hot by
association but not inherently radioactive.  not only that, but after
'lighting off' it could run on thorium as well as uranium.

theoretical designs are up to 5th gen now.  i believe they are all
slow breeders of one sort or another.  you have to breed u238 up to
pu239 to make use of it; the trick is to do so only as fast as the pu
decays, so you don't build a bomb.  you also get rid of the battlefield
scourge which is du.

india is concentrating on thorium-fuelled designs; they're sitting on
the bulk of the world's -known- th deposits, currently estimated to be
2-3x as abundant as u.  these designs work by breeding th232 up to u233.

the slow breeder neatly solves the problem of nuclear waste, which has
always offended the engineer in me - all is consumed, none is produced.

i've also heard the gee-whiz stat that with efficient nukes we could
power the entire grid for the next 5 centuries on uranium this country
has already refined - and that was taking growth into account.  i
don't know what basis the statement was made on.
--
[1] natural uranium is only 0.72% u235, which is what our nukes run
on, and it has to be enriched up to ~3% to fuel our ractors.  not even
all of that u235 is used before the fuel is too weak to sustain
reaction.  du, the enrichment byproduct, still has ~0.35% u235.

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldsmobile_Curved_Dash
________________________________________________________________________
Andrew Hay                                  the genius nature
internet rambler                            is to see what all have seen
adh at an.bradford.ma.us                       and think what none thought