Americans should care that so much of America's Nuclear Industry is now owned by foreign interests. We will need to expand the nation's use of nuclear energy to preserve American quality of life. The fact that so much of the industry is in the hands of foreign interests should be a matter of some concern. We need to support new disruptive US nuclear technology that will allow American manufacturers to retake this critical industry with better, less waste generating, and safer nuclear technology. Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors are technically and economically disruptive nuclear technology that would allow America to retake its nuclear industry and build on America’s first six decades of nuclear leadership. The following summary of Foreign Ownership of US Nuclear Industry is provided by respected industry analyst Rod Adams of Adams Atomic Engines and Atomic Insights. “Westinghouse is about 80% owned by Toshiba - 67% (Japan), Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries Co., Ltd. - 3% (Japan), Kazatomprom - 10% (Kazakhstan). However, 20% of the company is in the hands of Shaw Group out of Louisiana. GE Nuclear is in a joint venture with Hitachi (GEH), but remains fully owned by a US based company. Combustion Engineering disappeared into Westinghouse. Part of B&W disappeared into Framatome and then into Areva, but the part that has been focused on US Navy nuclear power remains a US owned company. It is that part that is marketing the mPower™ 125 MWe modular reactor. Many smaller nuclear manufacturers also remain in US hands. A couple of start-ups like Hyperion and NuScale have been funded by US venture capital. The NRC certified designs are the ABWR, the AP-1000, the AP-600, and the System 80+. The ABWR certification is still owned by GE, but they sold rights to a major portion of the technology to Toshiba. Toshiba has filed a modified design certification application to incorporate the replacement parts of that technology as part of its NRG South Texas Project, so there will be two certified ABWR designs - one owned by GE, one by Toshiba. Chinese firms are not owners of US manufacturers or NRC certified designs. However, part of the deal for the first four AP-1000s sold in China is a technology transfer agreement that will allow Chinese manufacturers to produce the design under license without further US involvement. I am not sure, but I expect that license will be geographically limited, sort of like the original Westinghouse licenses to France and South Korea.” The intent of this message is not to demonize foreign ownership of the nuclear industry (we should thank French Areva for continuing to develop nuclear technology and for being willing to sell it to us as allies and friends). We should take wise steps to retake the American Nuclear industry by supporting the development of new disruptive American nuclear technology that would re-level the playing field and allow smaller American innovators to compete.
America can no longer build the Light Water Reactors they pioneered in the 1950s. The large 600 ton steel forgings required build the reactor vessels needed to insure safety for this class of reactor can now only be built in Japan or Russia. It is probably not possible to regain the capacity to build these heavy steel forgings associated with traditional Light Water Reactors in the USA. It would be better to concentrate American efforts on developing superior disruptive new nuclear technology that does not require the heavy and expensive reactor containment vessel that currently can be built in the USA and create nuclear design and manufacturing jobs in this country instead of in Japan or Russia. The only Japanese manufacture, Japan Steel Ltd, can only build four reactor containment vessels a year and this is a limiting factor for any plans to improve American energy sufficiency through nuclear energy as there is already a decade long backlog on reactor containment vessels from Japan Steel. Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors could currently be manufactured in USA and do not require a reactor containment vessel because they do not have a traditional solid reactor core that could suffer a core meltdown. Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors are safer because they have liquid cores of molten salt and just cannot suffer a meltdown in the event of loss of primary coolant. LFTR Thorium reactors do not require the heavy and expensive reactor containment vessel which cannot be manufactured in the US. The overwhelming majority of the current NRC certified reactor designs pre-approved for use by US utilities are now owned outright by foreign companies. Profits from sales of the existing NRC certified reactor designs will now go to supporting foreign economies and new nuclear manufacturing jobs will be created primarily in those foreign lands.
Our current NRC regulatory approach favors the preservation of the advantage of the foreign owners of the current NRC certified designs and discourages smaller American start-ups from entry into the nuclear industry. American nuclear start-ups are prevented from supplying superior new American nuclear technology because they cannot overcome the hurdle of the initial high million dollar regulatory fees when they submit their designs for NRC review. We need to revise the way we regulate nuclear manufactures and not charge huge million dollar fees to submit new nuclear designs for review as new American designs will be needed to retake this critical industry and the present regulatory system favors the huge entrenched foreign interests. Small American start-up manufacturers are priced out of participation in the nuclear industry because of the way we fund nuclear regulation at the NRC. We should fund NRC the way we fund other government agencies like the Department of Commerce or Interior. NRC regulators should not have their salaries paid for by the industry they regulate.With the help of Government and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission American nuclear innovators could retake the American nuclear industry and provide significantly better nuclear technology to all Americans.
Spent Nuclear Fuel from US Light Water Reactors still has enormous energy value (only 3% of the Uranium in typical fuel rods is actually burned) - the remainder of the fuel ~ 96% is disposed of as "waste" but is in fact perfectly usable fuel in alternate technology reactors and is a tremendously valuable resource. Each year America’s current 104 LWR reactors produce 2000 tons of spent nuclear fuel. The energy value left in 2000 tons of spent fuel rods after they are considered expended and are removed from operation in America’s LWRs is approximately 7.0 x 10^12 KW-hours of additional energy if all fissile and fertile uranium in the spent fuel is completely burned in an appropriately designed alternate technology molten salt reactor. The value of the electricity that would result from fully burning all of the 2000 tons of spent nuclear fuel is $685 billion dollars a year presuming a 2009 average cost of commercial electricity of 9.79 cents per KW-hour. This 2000 tons of spent fuel is produced every year, year in and year out, and the potential exists to consistently produce a sizeable revenue stream to help pay the cost of government from the combination of sale of electricity and nuclear industry waste fund payments from nuclear waste generators. The magnitude of this revenue steam is on a par with the magnitude Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 which Congress provided to kick-start the US economy. The funds that would come from completely burning the energy left remaining in spent nuclear fuel would produce a lift to the national economy which is of the same approximate magnitude of what is required to fund Universal Healthcare for all Americans on a sustainable long term basis as long as the 104 existing US LWRs operate. The spent nuclear fuel that has accumulated from US LWRs to could provide start-up fuel for new less waste generating Thorium Reactors. Thorium Molten Salt reactors can be started on spent nuclear fuel and then gradually converted over in the course of three decades to run pure Thorium nuclear fuel that produces only 1 part in 100 the amount of waste and 1 part in 1000 the long term radio-toxicity of waste. Thorium Molten Salt Reactors have dramatically higher fuel efficiency (>98%) and produce, almost exclusively, easier to handle fission products as waste that decay to the benign level of the natural background in ~350 years. Thorium is more abundant (by about 300%) than natural Uranium and 55000% more abundant than Uranium-235 which is the principle fissile fuel component in current fuel rods that is actually burned by current LWRs. We should use Spent Nuclear Fuel to produce abundant less waste generating nuclear energy to become fully energy self sufficient and launch a nuclear renaissance based on improved Thorium Technology. Thorium Molten Salt Reactors are good science. Dr. Edward Teller, the founding director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, wrote his final paper a month before his death on the subject of the advantages of Thorium Molten Salt Reactors. http://www.geocities.com/rmoir2003/moir_teller.pdf Respectfully, Robert Steinhaus – Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (Retired) A Program of Positive Change should include Changing America's Nuclear Fuel Cycle to Thorium
A partial answer might be provided by previous directors of ORNL:
Dr. Alvin Weinberg:
“Why didn't the molten-salt system, so elegant and so well thought-out, prevail? I've already given the political reason: that the plutonium fast breeder arrived first and was therefore able to consolidate its political position within the AEC. But there was another, more technical reason. [Fluoride reactor] technology is entirely different from the technology of any other reactor. To the inexperienced, [fluoride] technology is daunting…
Dr. “Mac” MacPherson:
“The political and technical support for the program in the United States was too thin geographically…only at ORNL was the technology really understood and appreciated. The thorium-fueled fluoride reactor program was in competition with the plutonium fast breeder program, which got an early start and had copious government development funds being spent in many parts of the United States.”
“It was a successful technology that was dropped because it was too different from the main lines of reactor development… I hope that in a second nuclear era, the [fluoride-reactor] technology will be resurrected.”
The following extended quote is taken from an open letter “Tell Barack Obama the Truth – The Whole Truth” published Nov. 21, 2008 from renowned climatologist Dr. James Hansen to President Obama
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/20081121_Obama.pdf
“Nuclear Power. Some discussion about nuclear power is needed. Fourth generation nuclear power has the potential to provide safe base-load electric power with negligible CO2 emissions.
There is about a million times more energy available in the nucleus, compared with thechemical energy of molecules exploited in fossil fuel burning. In today’s nuclear (fission)reactors, neutrons cause a nucleus to fission, releasing energy as well as additional neutronsthat sustain the reaction. The additional neutrons are ‘born’ with a great deal of energy andare called ‘fast’ neutrons. Further reactions are more likely if these neutrons are slowed bycollisions with non-absorbing materials, thus becoming ‘thermal’ or slow neutrons.
All nuclear plants in the United States today are Light Water Reactors (LWRs), usingordinary water (as opposed to ‘heavy water’) to slow the neutrons and cool the reactor.Uranium is the fuel in all of these power plants. One basic problem with this approach is thatmore than 99% of the uranium fuel ends up ‘unburned’ (not fissioned). In addition to‘throwing away’ most of the potential energy, the long-lived nuclear wastes (plutonium,americium, curium, etc.) require geologic isolation in repositories such as Yucca Mountain.
There are two compelling alternatives to address these issues, both of which will beneeded in the future. The first is to build reactors that keep the neutrons ‘fast’ during thefission reactions. These fast reactors can completely ‘burn’ the uranium. Moreover, they canburn existing long-lived nuclear waste, producing a small volume of waste with half-life ofonly decades, thus largely solving the long-term nuclear waste problem.
The other compelling alternative is to use thorium as the fuel in thermal reactors.Thorium can be used in ways that practically eliminate buildup of long-lived nuclear waste.
The United States chose the LWR development path in the 1950s for civilian nuclearpower because research and development had already been done by the Navy, and it thuspresented the shortest time-to-market of reactor concepts then under consideration. Little emphasis was given to the issues of nuclear waste. Today the situation is very different. If nuclear energy is to be used widely to replace coal, in the United States and/or thedeveloping world, issues of waste, safety, and proliferation become paramount.
Nuclear power plants being built today, or in advanced stages of planning, in the UnitedStates, Europe, China, and other places, are just improved LWRs. They have simplified operations and added safety features, but they are still fundamentally the same type, produce copious nuclear waste, and continue to be costly. It seems likely that they will only permit nuclear power to continue to play a role comparable to that which it plays now.
Both fast and thorium reactors were discussed at our 3 November workshop. The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) concept was developed at Argonne National Laboratory and ithas been built and tested at the Idaho National Laboratory. IFRs keep neutrons “fast” by using liquid sodium metal as a coolant instead of water. They also make fuel processing easier by using a metallic solid fuel form. IFRs can burn existing nuclear waste and surplus weapons-grade uranium and plutonium, making electrical power in the process. All fuel reprocessing is done within the reactor facility (hence the name “integral”) and many enhanced safety features are included and have been tested, such as the ability to shut down safely under even severe accident scenarios.
The Liquid-Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) is a thorium reactor concept that uses achemically-stable fluoride salt for the medium in which nuclear reactions take place. This fuel form yields flexibility of operation and eliminates the need to fabricate fuel elements. This feature solves most concerns that have prevented thorium from being used in solid fueled reactors. The fluid fuel in LFTR is also easy to process and to separate useful fission products, both stable and radioactive. LFTR also has the potential to destroy existing nuclear waste, albeit with less efficiency than in a fast reactor such as IFR.
Both IFR and LFTR operate at low pressure and high temperatures, unlike today’sLWR’s. Operation at low pressures alleviates much of the accident risk with LWR. Highertemperatures enable more of the reactor heat to be converted to electricity (40% in IFR, 50%in LFTR vs 35% in LWR). Both IFR and LFTR have the potential to be air-cooled and touse waste heat for desalinating water.
Both IFR and LFTR are 100-300 times more fuel efficient than LWRs. In addition to solving the nuclear waste problem, they can operate for several centuries using only uranium and thorium that has already been mined. Thus they eliminate the criticism that mining for nuclear fuel will use fossil fuels and add to the greenhouse effect.
The Obama campaign, properly in my opinion, opposed the Yucca Mountain nuclear repository. Indeed, there is a far more effective way to use the $25 billion collected from utilities over the past 40 years to deal with waste disposal. This fund should be used to develop fast reactors that consume nuclear waste, and thorium reactors to prevent the creation of new long-lived nuclear waste. By law the federal government must take responsibility for existing spent nuclear fuel, so inaction is not an option. Accelerated development of fast and thorium reactors will allow the US to fulfill its obligations to disposeof the nuclear waste, and open up a source of carbon-free energy that can last centuries, even millennia.
It is commonly assumed that 4th generation nuclear power will not be ready before 2030.That is a safe assumption under ‘business-as-usual”. However, given high priority it is likely that it could be available sooner. It is specious to argue that R&D on 4th generation nuclear power does not deserve support because energy efficiency and renewable energies may be able to satisfy all United States electrical energy needs. Who stands ready to ensure that energy needs of China and India will be entirely met by efficiency and renewables?
China and India have strong incentives to achieve pollution-free skies as well as avert dangerous climate change. The United States, even if efficiency and renewables can satisfyits energy needs (considered unlikely by many energy experts), needs to deal with its large piles of nuclear waste, which have lifetime exceeding 10,000 years. Development of the first large 4th generation nuclear plants may proceed most rapidly if carried out in China or India (or South Korea, which has a significant R&D program), with the full technical cooperation of the United States and/or Europe. Such cooperation would make it much easier to achieve agreements for reducing greenhouse gases.”
Here is some food for thought.
Let’s say we took 200 billion dollars and built 40 nuclear power plants. Say 20 by GE and 20 by Westinghouse. All steel and parts would be required to be manufactured in the United States of America. We would locate them on Government land like the INEL, NTS, ORNL, Hanford and other location that are part of the DOE complex. The power generate by these plants would be sold to the grid to recover the cost of building these plants. This would jump start an industry that we are the best in the world and we could then export the technology to reduce are trade deficit.
Please commit
If need to make smart decision with the money we spend on the recovery plan.
The need to store spent nuclear fuel in a Yucca Mountain style long term repository for in excess of ~25,000 years is one of the biggest problems preventing more wide spread acceptance of nuclear power. An improved nuclear technology, Thorium Fuel Cycle implemented in Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTR), dramatically reduces the need to store high level nuclear waste.
When it comes to Nuclear Waste, it is better to just make less of it.
Every year America's 104 Light Water Reactors generate another 2000 tons of high level nuclear waste all of which ultimately must be sent to repository storage. Yucca Mountain, the nation's current designated long term nuclear repository, will technically be "full" in accord with statutory limitation sometime during 2010. It will be very politically difficult to locate a new long term repository site anywhere in the US.
We should Transition to Nuclear Technology that makes less waste.
To generate 1 gigawatt of electricity for one year a current conventional one pass through Uranium-Plutonium Fueled Light Water Reactor would require 35 metric tons of enriched Uranium Fuel and would produce 35 metric tons of waste all of which would have to be placed in Yucca Mountain for in excess of 10,000 years. A conventional Uranium-Plutonium Fueled Light Water Reactor only burns about 2-3% maximum of its nuclear fuel and the typical value is closer to 2%.
A Thorium Fuel Cycle LFTR reactor would burn 1 metric ton of Thorium-232 to produce the same 1 gigawatt of electrical energy while producing 1 ton of fission products as waste. LFTR Thorium reactors are in excess of 98% fuel efficient and burn up almost all of its Thorium fuel to produce energy and fission products. The fission product waste produced by a LFTR reactor to produce the identical amount of electrical energy decays to safe levels in a much shorter amount of time. 83% of LFTR fission products would decay to the level of the natural background radiation in 10 years. All of the remaining fission products (17%) will decay to natural background radiation level within 300 years. None of these fission products would have to be placed in a Yucca Mountain geological repository. A LFTR reactor started on its preferred start-up fuel, Uranium-233, would produce on the order of 30 grams of Plutonium and minor Actinide contaminants in the course of generating 1 gigawatt of electricity. Only the 30 grams of Plutonium and minor Actinide contaminants would have to ultimately have to be put into long term storage at Yucca Mountain. This is less than 1 part in 100,000 of the quantity of waste requiring long term sequestration by our current technology Uranium-Plutonium Fueled Light Water Reactors. It is very possible that this very small quantity of Plutonium produced in the operation of Thorium LFTR reactors could be yet further reduced by improvements in LFTR chemical processing and contaminant extraction technology which may be improved to remove minor Actinide precursors like U-236 and Np-237 so they never become Pu-239 which is a potential worry from the standpoint of weapons diversion.
If you use Thorium Fuel Cycle power and do not generate as much Plutonium and minor Actinide nuclear waste to start with you will not have build and fill Yucca Mountain storage facilities at great cost leaving a long term environmental worry for hundreds of generations of Americans. Thorium Fuel Cycle nuclear technology greatly reduces the long term high level nuclear waste problem. Thorium Fuel Cycle is better technology and it deserves your investigation and support.
For a cost of approximately one tenth the projected 2010 budget of NASA per year for five years the US could have Oak Ridge National Laboratory and an industrial partner prepare plans for a commercial 1000 MW Thorium Molten Salt Reactor that would, in the future, greatly reduce the amount of toxic high level waste that would have to be placed in the Yucca Mountain Repository. Approximately 1.8 billion dollars a year for five years could fund a complete NRC certifiable approved reactor design that could be quickly adopted and built by utilities wanting to provide improved nuclear power. Ongoing design efforts at the Laboratoire de Physique Subatomique et de Cosmologie in Grenoble, France and in Japan are underway to produce new, updated, Thorium Molten Salt Reactor designs. It might be possible to bootstrap design efforts by joining with the French and Japanese on a combined, updated, NRC reviewable commercial TMSR reactor design and share the costs of development.
Calculations reported in this message can be verified by referring to the following source:
Dr. Robert Hargraves, AB Mathematics Dartmouth College, PhD physics Brown University
Aim High -- Thorium Energy cheaper than from coal
http://home.comcast.net/~robert.hargraves/public_html/AimHigh.pdf
Sincerely, Robert Steinhaus - Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (Retired)
Note1: It is possible to use a fast neutron spectrum Thorium Fast Reactors to burn all of the toxic high level contaminants produced by either LFTR Thorium Reactors or conventional Light Water Reactors. Such Reactors have been studied but not yet built. The Laboratoire de Physique Subatomique et de Cosmologie in Grenoble, France has prepared designs studies for a TMSR which promises to produce a sufficiently hard neutron spectrum to permit burning high level contaminants. In the case of the LFTR Reactor you only need to process one thousanth the amount of minor Actinide toxic waste and one part in 100,000 the amount of Pu-239 which is the material in spent nuclear fuel that is easiest to consider using for weapons diversion.
Note 2) A very nice Google Tech-Talk presentation on LFTR Thorium Reactor Technology delivered by Dr. Joe Bonometti can be found at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHs2Ugxo7-8
It is unfortunate that due to the dangers of climate change and America’s dependence on foreign oil that anyone, anywhere, would be speculating about the expansion of nuclear power/energy.
You are writing on a subject that needs to be presented honestly and I cannot imagine that you can honestly say the things that you do in just your first paragraph.
Uranium mining takes up a tremendous amount of land area and whether it produces 100 times less radioactive or toxic waste than coal power plants is not a positive point. That it produces and leaves behind both radioactive and toxic waste in the very high volumes that it does is what should be considered when dealing with nuclear power/energy. This is not a compare and contrast situation.
If you are fully informed and willing to be honest with your readers you would not, or better yet; could not say that nuclear power produces no greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases are emitted by the production of nuclear power/energy. Plutonium does not miraculously appear at a nuclear power reactor. There is a process that gets it there and you, nor anyone else, can separate the process from the product.
You are apparently not considering the carbon emissions created during the use of very heavy equipment while engaged in the mining process, the mining process itself, the coal fired plants used in the uranium processing, or transporting the nuclear fuel to the reactor site.
Uranium ore is the source of the plutonium that is used in our nuclear reactors. Uranium ore has to be mined, like coal, to be used as a fuel source for the production of nuclear power/energy. Uranium is both radioactive and a chemical toxin. Additionally, numerous heavy metals are present in uranium ore.
Uranium milling consists of chemically separating uranium from other ore components. A thousand tons of ore must be processed to get just 2 tons of uranium. The waste produced is known as “mill tailings” which are often left near the land surrounding the mine, creating another dangerous legacy of the mining process. For typical uranium concentrations, the tailings contain 85 percent of the radioactivity in the original ore along with toxic chemicals and heavy metals. Furthermore, the volume of mill tailings is enormous and the majority of the radioactive components are extremely long-lived. Unfortunately, a large portion of mill tailings in the United States were “grandfathered” when more protective standards began to be implemented in the late 1970s, leaving behind more than 100 million tons of uranium waste with limited regulatory oversight.
The mill tailings can infiltrate surrounding waterways. {In 1979, near Churchrock, New Mexico, a United Nuclear uranium mill tailings dam broke, dumping nearly 100 million gallons of liquid radioactive tailings and 1000 tons of solid tailings into a surrounding area, spreading nearly 60 miles from the facility. The Rio Puerco River was contaminated and the local Native American tribe was devastated since their water source was forever rendered toxic by the tailings. Please don’t say that 1979 was a long time ago. When some of the waste has a 200 million year half life, 1979 was not that long ago}
After the uranium ore is milled, it is converted to uranium hexafluoride. It is then further enriched through a chemical process known as gaseous diffusion. Enrichment is required to increase the percentage of Uranium-235, the isotope of uranium needed for nuclear power or nuclear weapons. In natural uranium, U-235 concentration is too low, even after milling and conversion. The end results of gaseous diffusion are called a) the “product,” in which the percentage of U-235 has been increased and b) the “tails,” which is predominantly U-238, also known as depleted uranium, in which the percentage of U-235 has been decreased. Uranium Enrichment has been the largest contributor of wastes to the DOE’s materials inventory.
Nuclear power would not be considered cheap by any stretch of the imagination without our tax dollars supporting it with subsidies. See if any investor would touch it if it were not so subsidized by our federal tax dollars.
How you arrived at your numbers stating that nuclear power produces 70% of the non carbon dioxide polluting electricity in the U.S. is flawed if you did not include the full process of producing nuclear power/energy, i.e. mining, milling, transport, waste storage. It seems that proponents and supporters of nuclear power/energy are very willing to skew numbers and statistical data when promoting it to the general public. If it is so great, why is that necessary?
You might want to look into the realities of reprocessing spent fuel. No matter what you do, or how many times you run it through, there will be hotter, dirtier radioactive waste each time. It will never be a closed fuel cycle, never.
No, it is still not easy to see why numerous countries around the world are interested in nuclear power. There are reasons that there are financial and political obstacles for nuclear power here in America. The biggest reason is that the majority of people have a voice and all voices have the opportunity to be heard. And for those who don’t have the opportunity to be heard, there are people willing to speak up and speak out for those Americans who suffer from the effects of nuclear power/energy expansion who may be in a minority, and who, for whatever reason, cannot speak for themselves. This is America and we tend to not be willing to make one group of people suffer for the comfort and financial enhancement of others. This is America and we prefer to look for solutions that do no harm when we have the option to do so.
The U.S. is not behind the rest of the world, we have moved on ahead of the rest of the world. We are a civilized nation attempting to move into the future with our energy policy, we are not trying to revive a dirty, dangerous dinosaur from the past.
It is unfortunate that you think that the problems that we face with spent fuel and nuclear waste are largely political. I read your four point solution to nuclear waste in your article Short & Long Term Solutions for Nuclear Waste and they were not only farfetched, they were very expensive and not very practical.
I am not sure that you are considering the full breadth of the nuclear power/energy issue. There are a number of areas to which you don’t seem to give any consideration. There are a number of reasons beyond technology that nuclear power/energy is wrong for America and Americans.
It is environmentally wrong because the nuclear fuel cycle is dirty, extremely and irreversibly polluting. The long-term radioactive wastes that are produced on both ends of the fuel cycle are so harmful to this environment we may never recover if you continue on this path. Every aspect of our environment is adversely affected.
Can you tell us:
Expansion of the nuclear power/energy industry is morally wrong for a number of reasons:
Expansion of the nuclear power/energy industry is fiscally wrong for our country in any economic scenario.
Referenced: Appendix C of Code Red Alert: Confronting Nuclear Power in Georgia 1 (published by Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, May 2004. (Copyright 2004 Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. All rights reserved.) www.cleanenergy.org/Code%20Red/FinalCodeRed.pdf
by Marcel F. WilliamsFossil fuels are predominantly responsible for putting excess carbon dioxide and methane intothe Earth's atmosphere, greenhouse gases that are melting our polar ice caps, raising global sea levels, and causing more extreme climate conditions around the world. The coal and natural gas power industry has looked looked towards future technologies for the on site capture of flu gas in order to recover and sequester carbon dioxide. However, there is no cost effective technology for capturing the CO2 from the mobile producers of carbon dioxide: automobiles, trucks, aircraft, and sea craft.But there are new technologies that are rapidly being developed that may eventually divorce carbon dioxide polluting sources of energy from the need for on site capture and sequestration of carbon dioxide. These devices are sometimes referred to as mechanical trees. But what they do is to simply extract and recover carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. And these future technologies appear to be far more efficient at extracting CO2 from the air than the plant life on our planet.Some argue that these carbon dioxide from air extracting technologies could be the saviors of the fossil fuel industry. Ironically, such future technologies could also eventually lead to the complete extinction of fossil use on this planet if the CO2 taken from the atmosphere is used in combination with hydrogen from water to produce hydrocarbon fuels such as: gasoline, methanol, diesel fuel, jet fuel, and dimethyl ether.HydrogenBecause the combustion of hydrogen produces only energy and water, hydrogen via the electrolysis of water through hydroelectric, nuclear, wind, and solar has often been proposed as a replacement for hydrocarbon transportation fuels. Liquid hydrogen fuel has been used in US space craft since the days of the Apollo Moon program. And liquid hydrogen has also been frequently proposed for future generation subsonic and hypersonic airliners and aircraft. Hydrogen fueled buses now transport commuters in many urban areas in the US. And hydrogen automobiles have been demonstrated by many automobile companies around the world .However, hydrogen automobiles have a substantially shorter range than hydrocarbon fueled vehicles and are a lot less efficient than electric vehicles. Refueling hydrogen vehicles also takes much longer than refueling with gasoline, ethanol, or methanol. Because of the hydrogen embrittlement of metals like steel, hydrogen pipelines are more expensive to maintain than natural gas and oil pipelines. Aircraft, seacraft and ground vehicles, and the infrastructure associated with these vehicles, would also have to be completely replaced if we completely replaced our fuel economy with hydrogen.Hydrocarbon fuels from CO2 and hydrogenAlternatively, there are several demonstrated methods for synthesizing hydrocarbon fuels by utilizing carbon dioxide in combination with hydrogen which could allow a country to avoid any major overhaul in its transportation energy infrastructure.Chemist have known how to produce methanol from hydrogen and carbon dioxide for more than 80 years:CO2 + 3H2 → CH3OH (methanol) + H2OMethanol is mostly used as a feedstock for making other chemicals. But methanol can be converted into dimethyl ether (DME), a fuel that can be effectively used in diesel engines equipped with new fuel injection systems. The fact that dimethyl ether produces no black smoke, soot, or sulfur dioxide is an clean advantage it has over diesel fuel.Methanol can also be converted into high octane gasoline via the Mobil Oil methanol to gasoline (MTG) process. Back in the 1980's, the New Zealand government produced 600,000 tonnes of gasoline a year from methanol derived from natural gas using the MTG process.Methane gas can also be synthesized from hydrogen and carbon dioxide:CO2 + 4H2 → CH4 (methane) + 2H2OAnd methane can also be converted into diesel and jet fuels via Fischer-Tropsch and hydrocracking processes.Mechanical extraction of atmospheric CO2Plants capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while utilizing sunlight to convert the CO2 into starch. During photosynthesis, trees, for instance, convert carbon dioxide and water into starche molecules and oxygen through a series of oxidation and reduction reactions:6 CO2 + 6 H2O + sunlight ---> C6H12O6 + 6 O2Some farm crops and trees can produce up to 20 metric tons per acre (4047 square meters) of biomass a year. One tonne of dried tree consist of 0.45 tonnes of carbon which would translate into the extraction of 1.65 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually extracted from the atmosphere. That's 33 tonnes of CO2 per acre extracted on an annual basis.Even though the concentration of CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere is a meager 0.04 per cent, companies like GRT (Global Research Technologies) in Arizona and Canadian researchers at the University of Calgary have already built machines that can extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere far more efficiently than any tree or any other source of biomass. GRT claims that its carbon dioxide air extraction system is a thousand times more efficient than a tree of equal size.
GRT CO2 absorbent material The University of Calgary team has shown that they could capture CO2 directly from the atmosphere with less than 100 kilowatt-hours of electricity per tonne of carbon dioxide. Their carbon dioxide from air extraction tower was able to capture the equivalent of about 20 tonnes per year of CO2 on just one single square meter of air scrubbing material. Astonishingly, this suggest that even the most conservative estimates would allow these CO2 extracting machines to produce more than 80 thousand tonnes of carbon dioxide per acre annually.
University of Calgary carbon dioxide extraction machine Because of the need for cheap electricity for hydrogen production, only nuclear and hydroelectric facilities would be currently viable for hydrocarbon fuel production utilizing carbon dioxide from air extraction technologies. Hydroelectric facilities currently produce electricity at 0 .85 cents per kwh while electricity from nuclear facilities currently cost 1.68 cents per kwh. Wind and solar thermal electricity, however, is much more expensive and ranges from over 4 cents per kwh to over 6 cents per kwh.At the Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, F. Jeffrey Martin and Williams L. Kubic, Jr. have developed the Green Freedom concept for using the cooling towers of nuclear reactors to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for the production of gasoline and methanol.
They argue that a 1 GWe power plant using their Green Freedom method could produce 18,000-bbl/day of gasoline or 5000 tonnes a day of methanol.Carbon neutral hydrocarbon synfuel production at nuclear and hydroelectric facilities would not only allow such power facilities to produce transportation fuels and industrial chemicals, they would also allow them to pump methanol and oxygen up to 80 kilometers away to high efficiency power plants for the production of peak-load and back-up-load electricity and commercial waste heat. Nuclear power plants could therefore not only produce base-load electricity but could also supply methanol fuel to replace greenhouse polluting natural gas power plants which are used for daytime peak-load energy and back-up energy for wind and solar power plants.In 2006, the US consumed nearly 21 million bbl/day of petroleum for transportation fuel and industrial chemical use. If we assumed that nuclear power plants replaced all of the petroleum used in the US in 2006, that would roughly require more than a thousand new 1Gwe nuclear reactors, over 1000 GWe of electrical capacity. Existing nuclear sites that already have nuclear reactors could probably on add an additional 200 to 300 Gwe of capacity. However, if one large centralized nuplex (nuclear park) with about 30GWe of average electrical capacity were set up in every state in the union, then that could add an additional 1500 GWe of electrical capacity, more than enough to replace all of our petroleum needs today and probably our needs 30 years from now.If the new Obama administration is going to invest substantial R&D money into new energy technologies, I would strongly suggest investing in the fast tracking of these carbon dioxide extraction from air technologies that could revolution synfuel production by helping to achieve US independence from the petroleum fuel economy while protecting the global environment from the dangers of global warming and climate change.Links and References1. Green Freedom: A concept for producing carbon-neutral synthetic fuels and chemicals, Los Alamos Labs, November 2007 F.J. Martin and WL Kubic, 2. GRT (Global Research Technologies, LLC)3. Giant Carbon dioxide Vacuums4. Snatching Carbon dioxide from the Atmosphere5. CO2 capture from air6. First Successful Demonstration of Carbon Dioxide Air Capture Technology Achieved:7. First Successful Demonstration of Carbon Dioxide Air Capture Technology Achieved by Columbia University Scientist and Private Company, (2007) Earth Institute News Archive, 04/24/078. Carbon capture and storage:9. Researchers Scramble to Create CO2-Busting Technologies:10. CO2 capture from ambient air: a feasibility assessment:11. Carbon Capture and Storage A False Solution12. The Case for Carbon Dioxide Extraction from Air13. Klaus S. Lackner, Patrick Grimes, Hans-J. Ziock, Capturing Carbon Dioxide From Air14. K. Schultz, L. Bogart, G. Besenbruch, L. Brown, R. Buckingham, M. Campbell, B. Russ, and B. Wong HYDROGEN AND SYNTHETIC HYDROCARBON FUELS – A NATURAL SYNERGY General Atomics Poster15. G. Olah, A. Goeppert, and G. Prakash, (2006) Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy, Wiley-VCH Verlang, Weinheim, Germany
This blog post written by Charles Barton from http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/ is being reposted with permission. This is an excellent summary of what is at stake for our country and makes the point that the market cannot be expected to reign free and deliver a strategic solution to our energy problems. For further reading please go to http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/
Focus I: Energy Decision Making
During the next few years our society faces basic choices on its energy future. The decisions have been long deferred. The decision making process should be finished by the end of the next administration, and implementation should be underway. The decision making process should be public, and should bring the best minds in the country to the table to share in the decision making process.
The decision making process should begin by identifying potentially valuable candidate technologies for resolution of components of the energy crisis. These technologies would include solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal and other technologies for electrical generation; electrical and liquid fuels for transportation; solar, nuclear and other sources of process heat for Industry; and solar and electrical technologies for heating and cooling, in some cases the decision might not involve exclusive use of one technology. Air transportation would be impossible without liquid fuel, and without a carbon neutral liquid fuel technology we will simply loose the ability to achieve transportation through the air.
The decisions related to electricity generation will be perhaps the most important, because potentially up to 80% of the energy in a post carbon society will be transmitted through electrical lines. Decisions cannot be left to the market. The market, while providing efficient mechanisms to determine price, and product choice, is poorly equipped to make strategic choices for the future. Decision makers have to basically anticipate future markets. That involves informed guesses, something the market regards as speculation. Markets like to gamble only if there is a great deal of money potentially to be made on bets. There is far too much at risk, and too much uncertainty about the energy future at the moment for most investors to feel comfortable about the risks involved in future energy investments. In the case of solar and wind generated electricity, this has led to the demand for government subsidies, both for the construction of generating facilities, and in tax linked support of revenue produced from energy generation.
The stake in the decision making process is such that wrong decisions could easily lead to the misspending of tens, or hundreds of billions of dollars and perhaps even trillions of dollars of tax payer, rate payer, and investor money, without the production of a satisfactory electrical system. Impossible you say? Well just pay careful attention to where the decision making process is today. If the decision making process is not improved; it will lead to very unsatisfactory outcome.
We cannot hope to reach a proper decision without a judicious determination of facts, and there are at present a lot of enemies of facts in the environment. Enemies of facts include people who are selling flawed ideas and flawed products. Fact finding needs to be turned over to people who are skilled in determining facts, and this would certainly include Nobel Prize winning scientists. Others who are somehow representative of the general public need to included among the fact finders, and the fact finding process needs to be open to the public. The fact finders need a first rate staff, and the ability to commission research.
The fact finders need to be aided by skilled politicians who have ascended to the rank of statesmen. My father observed one such politician while attending a hearing of Project Independence in 1974. "I was most impressed," my father wrote. "He is young, intelligent, and highly articulate." Such a figure, if he were still around 34 years later, might well prove a valuable asset to the fact finders, perhaps as chairman of a fact finding commission. And if the politician, by now an elder statesman, were to hold high political office, so much the better. The name of the young politician who so impressed my father was Joseph Biden.
Any group of fact finders would need to carefully separate fact from hype before reaching its decision. As I have demonstrated on Nuclear Green there is a lot of hype in our current discussion of energy options. In fact the hype to information ratio in any discussion of renewable electrical sources is astonishingly high.
During a discussion with wind advocate on The Oil Drum Wind advocate "Jerome a Paris "acknowledged that a basic assumption of wind advocates was an electrical grid to which a very large number of fossil fuel burning electrical generators were attached, which would pick up the slack when the wind does not blow. In this view the function of wind is to partially and temporarily defer fossil fuel burning rather than replace it.
It might be added that solar power also partially defers rather than replaces fossil fuel use. Nuclear reactors can replace fossil fuel burning facilities.
Thus the choice between nuclear power and renewables is a choice between an approach designed to stop emitting CO2 in the generation of electricity, or to decrease the burning of carbon based fuels. This is a choice of fundamental importance and should be the focus of an important decision about energy.
Atmospheric scientist James Hanson argues that CO2 remains in the atmosphere for centuries. Hanson argues, "The only realistic way to sharply curtail CO2 emissions is to phase out coal use . . ." While the use of wind and solar defers the burning of some coal, renewables by themselves would never be able to replace the burning of coal.
Hanson envisions coal fired power plants with carbon capture and sequestration, but the EREOI of CC&S is very unfavorable, with somewhere between half and three-fourths of the energy produced by burning coal being going into CC&S. Thus electricity from CC&S plants will be very expensive. In addition we appear to be facing the almost immediate prospect of peak oil, with a significant decline in oil production looming in the near future. Energy currently derived from oil, including energy used in transportation, must be replaced by energy from other sources. Among the proposals is the use of fuels derived from biological sources, but this proposal like coal CC&S has a low EROEI. Other liquid fuel options include hydrogen production, and the production of methanol from atmospheric CO2. The later two options would require massive amounts of process heat from non-carbon sources. There is one further option, to power land based transportation with electricity. This is technologically possible, but still leaves an energy gap for water born shipping and air transportation. Switching the land transportation system to electrical energy will increase the demand for reliable carbon free electrical production.
Efficiency Hoover Style: There is a wide spread belief in American society that energy efficiency will make up for short falls in carbon free generating capacity, but far to much is expected of electrical efficiency. The belief in efficiency as an economic solution is an old one in the United States, and is called Hooverizing after the 31st president of the United States, who was a great proponent of efficiency and enemy of waste. (World War I propaganda posters from the Herbert Hoover lead Food Administration contained slogans like, "Feed a Fighter: Eat only what you need. Waste nothing that he and his family may have enough.") First achieving high levels of energy use savings through Hooverizing electricity would require very large capitol investments. Secondly some energy uses may be relatively impervious to the Hooverizing approach. If effective post carbon energy sources are available at reasonable prices, then it may be more cost effective to invest in them rather than higher priced efficiency measures.
We need to know a great deal more about the impact of efficiency before we will know how much impact greater efficiency will have on the energy situation, but given the possibility of electrifying land transportation it is not a safe bet that Hooverizing will lower our demand for electricity.
Such is the American faith in Hooverization, that it will take us some time and considerable discussion before we realize that efficiency will not by itself replace coal. Once attention is fixed on our problems, it will then take us some time as a country, before we clearly focus on our energy options, and begin the process of making choices.
Personal Note: I am American enough to admire efficiency; I just cannot accept blind faith in it as a remedy for our energy problems.
NEW PAPYRUS
The online magazine of science, technology, socioeconomics, and politics
http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/
Monday, October 20, 2008
Natural Radiation
by Marcel F. WilliamsHumans exist on a planet and within a universe that is naturally radioactive. In fact, humans and all other plant and animal species that live and breed on Earth are also inherently radioactive.Since the birth of the cosmos, the earth has been subjected to an endless hailstorm of cosmic radiation. These potentially deleterious ionizing particles consist of highly accelerated protons, electrons, and neutrons originating mostly from other stars in our galaxy.Our planet of evolutionary origin is also radioactive due to naturally occurring radioactive elements in the earth's crust such as: potassium-40, uranium-238, thorium-232, and rubidinum-87, and radium-226. In fact, the radioactive decay from uranium, thorium, and potassium may be responsible for 45 to 90% of the earth's internal heat source which is the source of earthquakes, volcanoes, mountain building, hot springs, and continental drift.On average, humans receive 0.4 mSv (40 millirems) of cosmic radiation. People also receive about 0.5 mSv (50 millirems) of terrestrial radiation. We also inhale about 1.2 mSV (120 millirems) of radiation from radon gas annually.The human species is also internally radioactive due to the potassium in our bones which exposes our tissues to 0.4 mSv (40 millirems) of ionizing radiation. So being in constant proximity to other human beings increases one's exposure to ionizing radiation.So if you lived with at least one other person in your house, you would receive 0.4 (40 millirems). That's more than ten times as much radiation as you would receive by living near a nuclear facility. If you lived in California and moved to Colorado, you would receive 45 times as much ionizing radiation as you would living next to a nuclear power facility.Ionizing Radiation Levels (annual):0.39 (mSv) Annual human internal radiation due to radioactive potassium0.35 mSv Annual exposure to cosmic radiation in the state of Louisiana1.20 mSv Annual exposure to cosmic radiation in the state of Colorado0.30 mSv Annual exposure to terrestrial radiation in the state of Texas1.15 mSV Annual exposure to terrestrial radiation in the state of South Dakota0.07 mSv Annual radiation exposure to while living in a stone, brick, or concrete building0.03 mSv Annual radiation exposure while living near the gate of a nuclear power plant0.01 Annual USA dose from nuclear fuel and nuclear power plants1.15 mSv Annual radiation exposure while working at a nuclear power plant2.0 mSv Annual human internal radiation due to radon1.0 mSv Annual Limit of dose from all DOE facilities to a member of the public who is not a radiation worker5.0 mSv Annual USA NRC limit for visitorsIonizing Radiation Levels (acute):0.o5 mSV One round-trip to Paris-New York0.46 mSv off-site exposure to the Three Mile Island core meltdown accident2.2 mSv Average dose from upper gastrointestinal diagnostic X-ray series50 mSv Lowest dose at which there is any evidence of cancer being caused in adults100 mSv USA EPA acute dose level estimated to increase cancer risk 0.8%500-1000 mSv Low-level radiation sickness due to short-term exposurePersons working at a nuclear facility are normally exposed to 1.15 mSv (115 millirems) annually. This would be the equivalent of living in the state of Ohio where Americans there are exposed to an equivalent amount of cosmic and terrestrial radiation and below that of states like Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah where one receives a lot more background radiation.If you lived near the gate of a nuclear reactor and never left the house, you would be exposed to 0.03 mSv (3 millirems) of radiation annually from that nuclear facility. However, you would receive 0.07 mSv (7 millirems) of radiation if you were living in a stone, brick, or concrete building. So you would receive more radiation from your house than from living near the gate of a nuclear facility.But what about a nuclear meltdown?Thanks to the fact that US reactors are housed in huge protective containment structures, the nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island exposed nearby residents to only 0.46 mSv of acute radiation. That's nearly five times lower than receiving a gastrointestinal medical X-Ray and more than 100 times below the level of cancer causing radiation. But the new generation of nuclear reactors such as the AP1000 and GE's ESBWR have core damage frequencies at least 100 to 1000 times lower than current reactors such as the LWR at Three Mile Island. But, again, even if a meltdown did occur, the public would be protected by the containment structures which are also designed to withstand an impact from a jet plane.Americans are exposed to natural radiation from cosmic and terrestrial radiation ranging from as low as 0.75 mSv (75 millirems) to as high as 2.25 mSv (225 millirems). And Americans are exposed to an additional 2.0 mSv (200 millirems) of radon gas on average. Yet living near the gate of nuclear power facility would only expose them to 0.03 mSv (3 millirems) of radiation. And even consistent contact with a family member would expose you to another 0.4 mSv (40 millirems) of radiation annually. So the idea that a dramatic increase in nuclear power would expose humans to a dramatic increase in ionizing radiation is clearly not supported by the scientific evidence.References and Links1. G. Olah, A. Goeppert, and G. Prakash, (2006) Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy, Wiley-VCH Verlang, Weinheim, Germany2. Ionizing radiation (Wikipedia)3. Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor4. Martin D. Ecker, and Norton J. Bramesco (1981) Radiation: All you need t know about to stop worrying...or to start, Vintage Books, New York5. Radiation and Life Posted by Marcel F. Williams at 12:53 AM 0 comments:
On October 2, 2008, the Senate proposed a bill (S.3680), "Thorium Energy Independence and Security Act of 2008", sponsored by Senator Hatch (UT) and co-sponsored by Senator Reid (NV). This is an excellent start and at a minimum introduces the thorium nuclear fuel cycle and its many advantages. Unfortunately, this bill is largely a mining support bill, as one of its main goals is to aid the mining of Idaho's Lemhi Pass(1).
The Bill is correct in its statement of benefits (safety, wastes, & nonproliferation) to existing nuclear reactors should they be converted from their current uranium-plutonium fuel cycle to that of thorium-uranium-233 fuel cycle. Unfortunately, most Democrats do not know their party's extensive history of support for thorium research and a meltdown proof reactor called the Molten Salt Reactor (MSR). It would be an ironic tragedy if Republicans were able to revive thorium and MSRs, both technologies that they killed.
by Marcel F. WilliamsOne frequent argument against the expansion of commercial nuclear power is the the claim that our planet is simply running out of the nuclear material to power the world's nuclear reactors. So any future expansion of the commercial nuclear power industry would simply be out of the question.Uranium oreNuclear power produces approximately 20% of the electricity in the US and represents approximately 6% of the world's energy consumption. Uranium currently sells at below $35 per kilogram on the world market. But it is estimated that there are approximately 5.5 million tonnes of proven uranium reserves at a cost below $130 per kilogram. With the resurgence of nuclear power, however, it is estimated that the exploration for new uranium sources would increase total reserves to more than 16 million tonnes. The current world demand for uranium is 65,000 tonnes per year. So there should be enough uranium to supply current global nuclear power facilities for 246 years.Countries with the most abundant uranium suppliesBut if nuclear power were required to supply the world's total energy needs, 1.1 million tonnes of uranium would be required annually. So these terrestrial uranium reserves could only power our planet for less than 15 years. And even reprocessing spent fuel would only extend the nuclear fuel supplies to no more than 20 years.However, there are alternatives to terrestrial uranium.The world's oceans contain more than 4 billion tonnes of uranium in seawater. That's enough to power our entire planet for more than 3600 years or over 5000 years if spent fuel is also utilized. Japanese uranium from seawater demonstration projects estimate that marine uranium could be extracted at a cost of $135 to $250 per kilogram. Current world uranium prices are less than $35 per kilogram but expected to rise as uranium demand rises as new power plants are built around the world. But since uranium fuel only represents about 5% of the total cost of the energy produce by a fission power plant, that would only increase the total cost of energy via nuclear power by 14 to 31 percent which would still make the cost of nuclear electricity significantly lower than coal and natural gas. New laser uranium enrichment techniques, however, could dramatically lower total fuel cost which could, in theory, wipe out the increase in cost of using seawater uranium since enrichment represents 30% of the cost of nuclear fuel.Yellow cake extracted from seawater
So even if our future global society used three times as much energy as we use today, marine uranium and spent fuel could provide more than 1600 years of energy. Of course the contribution of renewable energy systems (hydroelectric, wind, solar, and biomass) could stretch uranium supplies even longer.But even without marine uranium, breeder technologies could power our global society at three times the current level for 700 years using terrestrial uranium. Nuclear breeding technologies such as fast neutron reactors or ADS accelerator reactors could increase fuel supplies by a factor of 140 since fissile uranium 235 only represents about 0.7% of natural uranium. In light water reactors (LWR), approximately 70% of the uranium 235 is converted into energy while another third comes from the conversion of plutonium into energy which is created as a by product of the neutron irradiation of uranium 238. Breeder technologies could give the world a 500,000 year supply of nuclear power or a 166,000 year supply at three times current energy use levels. However, the oceans are constantly being replenished with uranium from the worlds oceans, depositing over 32,000 tonnes of uranium annually. Since breeder technologies would only require less than 24,000 tonnes of uranium annually, marine uranium could power our entire society at three times the current level essentially-- forever!Thorium is another alternative to terrestrial uranium. There is at least 3 times as much terrestrial thorium 232 as there is terrestrial uranium 238. Neutron bombardment within a reactor can convert fertile thorium 332 into fissile uranium 233. And there is at least 3 times as much terrestrial thorium 232 as there is uranium 238. So terrestrial nuclear fuel sources could power our global society at three times the current level for approximately 2800 years.A CANDU heavy water reactor could have an 80% conversion rate if it utilized fissile uranium or plutonium inside of a thorium blanket. A modified CANDU heavy water reactor that uses thorium fuel enriched with fissile uranium 235, plutonium 239, or uranium 233 can produce as much fissile fuel as it utilizes. An ADS accelerator reactor could also breed uranium 233 from thorium. For every kilogram of plutonium burned in a thorium breeder, approximately 2.73 kilograms of uranium 233 could be produced, more than 8o% of a reactors total fissile fuel requirements. Combined with the 30% of reprocessed uranium 235 from spent fuel, an ADS could supply all of a reactors fuel needs through uranium 238 and thorium 232. However, it might by easier and cheaper just to gradually replace third generation reactors with thorium and uranium burning ADS reactors.Japanese companies currently lead the world in uranium extraction from sea water technology. But, in my opinion, the next US administration should set the goal for the commercial extraction of uranium from sea water within 10 years time. The US should also set the goal of having a functioning full scale ADS accelerator thorium breeder online within a decade with the goal of having commercial ADS reactors online within 20 years time. The same goal should be set by the Canadian government for the CANDU thorium breeder reactor.Such policies should insure a smooth transition from our current terrestrial uranium, third generation, nuclear economy to a more diverse nuclear economy that includes current reactor technology, fast neutron reactors and ADS breeder reactors along with a more diverse fuel supply that includes terrestrial uranium, uranium from seawater, and thorium.
http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/2008/10/fueling-our-nuclear-future.html
http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com
Senators Hatch and Reid have introduced the "Thorium Energy Independence and Security Act of 2008". Thorium will provide a proliferation proof nuclear technology and dramatically reduced waste products. It is very important to have this bill pass so a new energy alternative can be developed. For more information, see http://www.thoriumpower.com/
Here is the text of the bill:
A BILLTo amend the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 to provide for thorium fuel cycle nuclear power generation.Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.This Act may be cited as the "Thorium Energy Independence and Security Act of 2008".SEC. 2. FINDINGS.Congress finds that—(1) the United States and foreign countries will require massive and increasing quantities of energy during the 20-year period beginning on the date of enactment of this Act to support economic growth;(2) nuclear power provides energy without generating unacceptable quantities of greenhouse gasses;(3) the generation of nuclear power in the United States and many foreign countries has been discouraged by concerns regarding—(A) the proliferation of weapons-useable material; and (B) the proper disposal of spent nuclear fuel;(4) nuclear power plants operating on an advanced thorium fuel cycle to generate nuclear energy—(A) could potentially produce fewer weapons-useable materials than uranium-fueled plants; and (B) would produce less long-term waste as compared to other nuclear power plants;(5)(A) thorium is more abundant than uranium; and (B) the United States possesses significant domestic quantities of thorium to ensure energy independence;(6)(A) thorium fuel cycle technology was originally developed in the United States; and (B) cutting-edge research relating to thorium fuel cycle technology continues to be carried out by entities in the United States; and(7) it is in the national security and foreign policy interest of the United States that foreign countries seeking to establish or expand generation and use of nuclear power should be provided—(A) access to advanced thorium fuel cycle technology; and (B) incentives to reduce the risk of nuclear proliferation.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Federal support for non-carbon dioxide polluting energy technologies
by Marcel F. Williams
Management Information Services, Inc. of Washington D.C. has recently come out with a report that indicates that most of the US tax subsidies and R&D for the energy industry from 1950 to 2006 has gone to the fossil fuel industry. The oil industry led the way with 335 billion dollars in Federal Energy incentives. The natural gas industry was second with over 100 billion dollars in federal energy incentives. Coal was third with 94 billion dollars. So the greenhouse gas polluting fossil fuel industries have received over 529 billion dollars in Federal energy incentives from 1950 to 2006.
Amongst renewable energy technologies, hydroelectric power has received 80 billion in federal energy incentives, wind and solar has received 45 billion in federal energy incentives, and geothermal has received 7 billion in federal energy incentives. So the amount of federal energy incentives for renewable energy was 132 billion between 1950 and 2006.
Nuclear energy has received 65 billion in federal energy incentives. However, less than 6 billion dollars of federal energy incentives have been provided for light water reactors in the US which are the only nuclear power facilities that produce commercial electricity in the US. The rest has been for R&D for breeder reactors and other reactor types that have never gone on line commercially in the US.
While nuclear energy has received less than half the federal energy incentives of renewable energy systems, it currently produces nearly 20 % of electricity in the US while renewable energy systems produce less than 9% of US electricity. Solar, Wind, and Geothermal energy has been provided with 52 billion in federal energy incentives, yet , combined, they provide only 1.1% of US electricity.
So it is clear that amongst the federal energy incentives for non-carbon dioxide polluting technologies, nuclear power has produced substantially more electrical energy than renewable systems for far less money. And this is especially true when it comes to wind, solar, and geothermal technologies which currently produce nearly 20 times less electricity than nuclear power.
References and Links
1. Analysis of Federal Expenditures for Energy Development September 2008By Management Information Services, Inc. Washington, D.C.
http://www.nei.org/filefolder/Bezdek_Report.pdf
2. Which Energy Industry Gets the Biggest Subsidies?
http://www.businessweek.com/investing/green_business/archives/2008/09/which_energy_in.html
3. Support for nuclear dwarfed by that for fossil fuels A New Papyrus Publication
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NP-US_government_spending_on_nuclear_dwarfed_by_fossil_fuels-2509085.html
