DailyDirt: Nuclear Power Won't Go Away
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Someday, the world will run out of fossil fuels to burn. But maybe we can avoid running out of fossil fuels by figuring out another energy source, so we won't need to burn hydrocarbons to produce electricity. Nuclear fission is just one possible energy source that could potentially replace coal, oil and natural gas entirely -- but there are some obvious drawbacks such as long-term radioactivity from its waste and the possibility of creating more nuclear weapons. Nuclear technology keeps moving forward (whether or not we've figured out how to deal with WMDs), and here are just a few examples.- Separating uranium-235 from the uranium-238 is a difficult process, but if there were an easier way to do it, nuclear proliferation could be a much bigger problem. Cheaper nuclear energy might solve a bunch of the world's problems, but it could also create a few new ones, too. [url]
- Kenya is looking to develop its own nuclear energy program at the the University of Nairobi. It's an ambitious goal, but Kenya wants to create a sustainable, reliable and affordable source of energy for its economy to become a middle-income country by 2030. [url]
- The ability to turn enriched uranium into weapons isn't a one-way trip -- about 20,000 of Russia's nuclear missiles will be turned into nuclear fuel for US power plants by 2013. A 1993 agreement between Russia and the USA has been turning 500 metric tons of Soviet weapons-grade uranium into electricity for America's cities. [url]
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Filed Under: electricity, energy, fuel, kenya, nuclear, power, uranium
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Incidentally, it's not uncommon to hear talk of "long life, highly radioactive nuclear waste", but such a thing is impossible. Yes, current nuclear waste is both highly radioactive and has a very long life, but that's because it contains highly radioactive but short lifespan fission byproducts and very long lifespan components that are not that radioactive.
Finally, the proliferation problem could be considerably eased by moving to Thorium breader reactors, thorium being pretty much as energetic as uranium, and significantly more common to boot. A thorium breader reactor converts the Thorium to U233, which is fissile. However, unlike U234 and U235 and the Plutonium isotopes created in fussion reactors, U233 naturally decays with the emission of gamma radiation, which is very difficult to hide, making the theft and smuggling of useful quantities a lot more difficult.
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Once ppl stop being emotional and start looking at the facts I'm pretty sure we will embrace the nuclear power as a mid term solution till we can properly use fusion, solar, tidal and other sources.
It's like global warming, too much hysteria and too little facts.
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Nuclear Power ≠ Uranium & Plutonium
Now, finally, we are seeing exploration of alternatives, like thorium, that are of no use for weaponry, and furthermore lend themselves to fail-safe designs that freeze down, rather than melt down, in the event of a catastrophic failure.
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Pernicious nonsense
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And that has been the story for the last 40 years!
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It doesn't really matter in the end. If we figure it out, I'm sure we'll do it anyway.
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But yes, it is so unfortunate that if we started using hydrogen as a nuclear fuel that we couldn't find any more anywhere like, say, oh I don't know, ... JUPITER. Less sarcastically, if we had real fusion technology we could almost certainly build space craft that would allow us to mine hydrogen-rich asteroids, planetoids and planets in our solar system.
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LOL at multiply by 100 for lots of growth. People really don't understand the exponential function.
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rising ocean levels
There is no problem of "rising ocean levels". It's only a postulate from the eco-boffins. It's being pushed by The Maldives as a scheme to get free money from the UN.
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Thorium Energy Is The Answer
This was brought to my attention by a bright young lad fresh out of university at the last place I worked at. I ended up spending an afternoon in research and disbelief that I just hadn't been following energy trends, only media reports. It's worth looking at what the U.S. Energy Dept. are actually involved in before assuming the media has kept us all well informed. The person who developed Flibe Energy, Kirk Sorenson, is a long-time advocate of Thorium Energy.
China will launch it's first thorium reactor in 20 years.
Japan, the USA and Russia have a consortium for the Fuji MSR, which will take 20 years. It is stated to lack funding, with citation on Wikipedia. Perhaps raising awareness and funds for this would be a worthy focus for the public.
The Weinberg Foundation specializes in debating the case for thorium energy, check them out.
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Thorium
There's also the fact that you get around 13 TIMES more energy from coal when using this process as compared to merely burning it. Burning coal really is money up in smoke when there's a much better alternative available.
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And we might not want to completely forget how to use nuclear fission, either, since we might need to recrystallize a dilithium matrix someday. ^_~
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What a lot of people don't seem to realixe is that the world ran on wind power, water power and biofuels BEFORE oil replaced them. What we proclaim as "alternative" energy sources were once the conventional ones. They were replaced by fossil fuels because fossil fuels were cheaper, more efficient and more concentrated. Alternatives can't compete on a level playing field not because "big oil" suppresses them, but because they just aren't competitive (with some exceptions, like solar cells in territories that don't yet have an electricity grid, where they are cost competitive with "conventional" electricity).
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Their logic is "It would cost too much to replace the infrastructure, so let's just use less and less efficient sources of the same fuel instead of making the necessary infrastructure improvements to make other options profitable."
It's not that shale oil is better than the renewable options, it's that we don't have an infrastructure to recharge our transportation system with renewable sources.
This, and lots of lobbying money, will contribute to a deflationary cycle in the energy markets until their is political will to fix the actual problem.
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(Sorry for the double post, couldn't resist.)
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While we're on the subject of radiation...
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Re: While we're on the subject of radiation...
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What radioactive waste?
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Thorium Documentary
We are film-makers who have almost finished a documentary on the potential of Thorium MSRs to replace the current generation of nuclear reactors. It's called "The Good Reactor" and, like your post, starts with the coming energy crisis as motivation.
We are about to launch a Kickstarter campaign for completion funding. Would you be interested in doing a follow-up to this article that covers the recent surge of interest in Thorium power and potentially mentions our campaign? Please feel free to email me to discuss further.
Thanks,
Des Kelleher
Executive Producer
The Good Reactor
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Reactor hysteria
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