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Green to the Core?
Posted on Saturday, November 19, 2005 @ 22:40:22 UTC by vlad
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How I tried to stop worrying and love nuclear power
by JUDITH LEWIS (LA Weekly)
Nothing in life is to be feared; it is only to be understood. - Marie Curie
[Extracts] ...Even plutonium, one of the world’s most toxic materials,
emits only alpha particles, which can be blocked by paper, a thin sheet
of aluminum or even your skin. “As long as you don’t ingest or inhale
[them],” Golden says, “alpha particles can’t hurt you.” Or, in the
words of Elena Filatova, the intrepid Ukrainian motorcyclist who
documented Chernobyl’s dead zone in photographs, “You can play billiard
balls with pure plutonium. Just don’t swallow it by mistake.”
Back in the learning laboratory at San Onofre, where I’ve come on my
own open-minded journey to test my assumptions about nuclear power,
Golden holds up a small vial of yellow powder: uranium oxide, or
yellowcake uranium, milled and refined — the substance at the heart of
the current CIA leak investigation. Before its atoms’ energy can be
harnessed, uranium oxide has to be enriched, by centrifuge or by being
turned into a gas and passed through a series of membranes, a process
called “gaseous diffusion.” Uranium comes out of the ground only .7
percent uranium-235 (or U-235); fueling a light-water reactor like San
Onofre’s requires a concentration of 4.7 percent U-235. Using a mock-up
of a reactor core that stands at the front of the room — a contraption
that looks like the inside of a miniature pipe organ — Golden
demonstrates how uranium pellets the size of baby fingertips fill the
core’s 236 zirconium tubes, which are then bundled together in a fuel
assembly.
..He accuses the nuclear industry of “falling down on the job” by
keeping so many secrets about its world, and holds that if the American
public, like the more nuclear-friendly French, knew all the facts —
what happens when atoms split, how unstable nuclides decay, how uranium
is enriched and waste is transported — nuclear energy might be more
popular with the American public. “Most Americans think they know about
radiation because of Chernobyl, science fiction or the three-eyed fish
in The Simpsons,” he says. “So as a country, we are phobic about
radiation.”...
... Of course, the U-235 that fuels San Onofre is highly fissile: When
one of its atoms absorbs an extra neutron, its nucleus splits and forms
other nuclides, including radioactive versions of strontium, cesium
and iodine, along with plutonium. It also lets loose more neutrons to
hit other U-235 atoms, provoking a chain reaction of fission events.
Fission generates heat, which in a light-water reactor turns water into
steam. Maintaining the right balance of fission events — keeping the
reactor at a “critical” state — is a tricky process. If too many
neutrons fly around splitting atoms, the core gets too hot, in which
case operators insert control rods made of boron and silver into the
fuel assembly to slow or stop the chain reaction and avert a meltdown.
If it doesn’t stay hot enough, the core loses power, provoking a
different set of events that can lead to an equally disastrous loss of
control. If the reactor drifts in either direction, or if for some
reason the core loses too much water — which cools the core at the same
rate it transfers heat — a partial or complete meltdown could result.
In the early days of nuclear power, many people feared that once a
meltdown was in process, it would continue to melt through the Earth’s
core from North America all the way to China: the “China Syndrome” of
the movie’s title....
... “Our core is only a 12-foot cube,” Golden says, “yet it powers 1.2
million homes for four years before you ever need to refuel.” The
trillions of fissile atoms in one tiny uranium pellet yield enough
energy to replace 150 gallons of gas, 1,780 pounds of coal, 16,000
cubic feet of natural gas and two and a half tons of wood. And they do
so without adding an ounce of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. It is
widely accepted that one nuclear power plant spares the atmosphere the
emissions of 93 million cars...
“How it could be possible that the worst nuclear power plant
accident in history, releasing between 100 and 200 million curies of
radiation into the environment, could produce positive ecological
consequences?” the official wanted to know.
“The answer was simple,” the men concluded. “Humans have evacuated the
contaminated zone.” It’s not that radiation hasn’t harmed the animals —
the mice in the freakishly abundant new wilderness show profound
genetic mutations — it’s just that “the benefit of excluding humans
from this highly contaminated ecosystem appears to outweigh
significantly any negative cost associated with Chernobyl radiation.”
Nuclear power may change the world after all...
Sourse: http://www.laweekly.com/ink/05/51/features-lewis.php
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Transversing The Valley Of Death (Score: 1)
by vlad on Saturday, November 19, 2005 @ 22:53:09 UTC
(User Info | Send a Message) http://www.zpenergy.com | Evan Mills and Jonathan Livingston ( Forbes.com)
BERKELEY, CALIF. - Americans will spend about
$850 billion this year to power their homes, businesses, transportation
and industries. This amount would have been twice as high without
energy efficiency improvements and structural changes made since the
energy crises of the 1970s. The energy savings achieved over the past
decade are four times greater than new energy supplies.
A new generation of emerging technologies
could again double our efficiency. Government and corporate research
and development have produced a stream of energy-efficiency
technologies. Local and federal programs and policies have also driven
end-use efficiency market expansion. These market interventions range
from mandatory appliance standards to broad-based and voluntary
incentive programs that are utility funded.
The key to this process lies in transitioning
from R&D to the market--a stage in business development so perilous
that it's often called the Valley of Death. Transversing it requires an
intelligent blend of public and private sector investment, targeting
the most promising innovations.
In California, for example, state policy ranks
energy efficiency ahead of new power plants in plans for meeting future
electric-load growth. Funding for the statewide Emerging Technologies
(ET) program will increase in 2006 to $10 million out of a total budget
of $581 million for utility energy-efficiency programs. The ET program
helps in demonstrating, debugging and creating successful pathways from
R&D to commercialization. This complements energy-efficiency
R&D funding of $25 million provided by the California Energy
Commission's Public Interest Energy Research Program (PIER).
Read the whole article here: The Valley of Death [www.forbes.com]
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Re: Green to the Core? (Score: 1)
by kurt9 on Sunday, November 20, 2005 @ 00:08:21 UTC
(User Info | Send a Message) http://www.metatechnica.com | About f***ing time someone said something positive about nuclear power.
In my 20's, I used to be against nuclear power. Once I began to read more about nuclear power that was not based on what was PC, I began to think that it was a good thing.
I still think that global warming is BS, and I think that cold fusion may or may not be real. No matter what, I think that nuclear power is the way to go and that the Japanese and Chinese will lead the way. Ideas such as the pebble bed reactor and the integral fast reactor are part to blame in my change of thinking. More fundamentally, nuclear processes are 3 orders of magnitude more efficient than chemical processes at creating useful energy, and that is what has sold me on nuclear power.
Also, I met some people at los Alamos who had developed a plasma transmutation process to convert the radioactive waste to non-radioactive material. It is exothermic to boot,
F*** the luddites who are against nuclear power. Their whole agenda is anti-free market, anti-capitalist, and anti-free chioce anyways. Their green agenda is just a smoke-screen anyways. So, I don't give a rat's arse what they think anyways. |
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Re: Green to the Core? (Score: 1)
by ElectroDynaCat on Sunday, November 20, 2005 @ 07:58:20 UTC
(User Info | Send a Message) | The article is factual, but don't be juggling plutonium or playing pool with it!If we can't pull a rabbit out of our hat with ZPE, nuclear power is going to be the last resort , acceptable as an alternative to not having anything at all.
It can be safe, as long as the waste is recycled and we don't have idiots running the reactors like Chernobyl or TMI. The US Navy does an outstanding job of keeping their reactors running safely. |
Re: Green to the Core? (Score: 1)
by nanotech on Sunday, November 20, 2005 @ 17:47:06 UTC
(User Info | Send a Message) | Well what most people do not seem to realize is this: There IS a NUCLEAR ALTERNATIVE that is CLEANER and CHEAPER and SAFER. It is LIGHT ELEMENT NUCLEAR REACTIONS! Using elements like lithium exposed to ultraviolet light, I dont have the details on me but I'm sure you can do searches. Bill Lyne discusses this in his books, as do others.
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Re: Green to the Core? (Score: 1)
by malc on Monday, November 21, 2005 @ 00:54:59 UTC
(User Info | Send a Message) http://web.ukonline.co.uk/mripley | Here we go again. How many times do we have to go through this attempt by the pro nuclear folks to justify the most astonishingly stupid method of boiling water ever invented! To this day nobody has yet found a safe method if disposing of the waste. The claims about CO2 emissions from a nuclear plant gloriously forget to include the amount of CO2 emitted during the construction and de-commissioning phases. They also fail to include the costs of those phases in the overall cost.
I notice one contributor has resorted to swearing. If you need to swear to make your point you've lost your point and you know it ! There 's also the very tired dig at anti nuclear being anti everything lefties. Please grow up!
Here's interesting point which I discovered about 2 months ago : if the whole world converted to nuclear power (i.e. replaced oil) there's only enough "fuel" for 3 years.....ooops!
The answer blows past your ears every day and beams down onto roofs every day. The problem is you can't tax the wind or the sun so governments aren't that keen. With decentralised power generation in volume the costs plummet and the fuel costs to the consumer also plummet.
With a switch to green technologies economies would still grow (you still need to build and maintain the turbines etc). In fact with falling fuel costs economies will grow even faster as people have more disposable income for goods and services rather than burning it all to keep warm and moving! |
Re: Green to the Core? (Score: 1)
by ElectroDynaCat on Monday, November 21, 2005 @ 01:46:19 UTC
(User Info | Send a Message) | You're misinformed on two points, waste and quantity.
The average fuel core lasts about 18 months in a typical 1000 megawatt reactor. At that time, only about 2% of the available energy in the rods have been burned, but because of metallurgic fatique in the fuel pellets, their physical integrity is unreliable.
Those fuel rods can be reprocessed and the waste rendered inert.The unspent uranium can be reburned. Like its done in the rest of the world where nuclear power is widely in use. Those nations can look forward to keeping their lights on for the next ten millenia with just the fuel they have in process for recycling
Using recycling and the available Uranium, the world could have enough power to keep going for at least 10,000 years. Its a matter of having the will to committ to such a course of action.
Some countries have no choice, they have no coal, or oil, and no money to keep importing energy. Rather than have the lights go out they've gone nuclear .
It only a last resort, I'd be much happier if we found something else. But just remember, the average power station burns 100 tons of coal an hour, thats 24/7/365 and there's about 400 of them in the US alone.
Thats a lot of wind,solar or whatever you want to use to replace it.
We have to decide what we're going to do before the lights go out, after that its too late
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Nuclear Insider Tale on the net (Score: 1)
by guest on Monday, November 21, 2005 @ 08:25:45 UTC
(User Info | Send a Message) | You might be interested to know that there is a techno-thriller novel about the American nuclear power industry, written by a longtime nuclear engineer (me), that is available online. Written for the lay person, the book provides an entertaining and accurate portrait of the nuclear industry today and how a nuclear accident would be handled. It is called “Rad Decision”, and is at RadDecision.blogspot.com. There is no cost to readers.
Ms. Lewis, author of the LA Weekly article, has posted her initial comments about "Rad Decision" on her blog: http://laweekly.blogs.com/judith_lewis/2005/11/rad_publishing.html [laweekly.blogs.com] "Rad Decision" has also been endorsed by Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, co-founder of the Global Business Network, and a noted author and futurist. "I'd like to see RAD DECISION widely read" - Stewart Brand.
All sides of the nuclear power debate will find items to like, and dislike, within "Rad Decision". I’m not sure myself what the future of nuclear energy, or energy supplies in general, should be. What I am sure of is that we will make better decisions if we understand what nuclear energy is right now.
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The decentralization of energy (Score: 1)
by Rastahal on Monday, November 21, 2005 @ 10:56:26 UTC
(User Info | Send a Message) http://truthbells.com | Concerning the Nuclear Power issue, I think there's another important point that most folks don't bother with, except for folks like Malc above who writes:
"The problem is you can't tax the wind or the sun so governments aren't that keen (to develop them). With decentralized power generation in volume the costs plummet and the fuel costs to the consumer also plummet."
The same thing goes for new energy sources like ZPE and Cold Fusion as well as solar and wind. In my opinion, the issue is not just finding something to replace oil, such as nuclear power. There is also an important political issue...we must move from a centralized energy model to a de-centralized one in which energy becomes as ubiquitous - and cheap - as fire now is.
When I purchase a $1.00 lighter, I don't pay for "fire", I pay only for the device to produce it. IMHO, that's where we need to go with energy. This is a huge political change that will not be easy, a change we are presently in the first stages of. I believe the energy industry (and the political powers-that-be) will fight this change with everything they have. This isn't a "right or left" issue, this is an important world event whose time is coming quickly.
I also believe the obstacles keeping us from reaching this brave new world are 2% technical and 98% political...but what else is new? However, greater forces than are dreamed about in our philosophy are gently pushing us toward this goal, and we will eventually arrive, although it will probably be long after I've left the planet! Just my opinion....RH
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Nuclear Push in the UK (Score: 1)
by guest on Monday, November 21, 2005 @ 16:03:41 UTC
(User Info | Send a Message) | Tony Blair is believed to be convinced over the need for nuclear power to tackle the UK energy crisis.
The government is to announce a review of energy policy,
including nuclear power, after being urged by business leaders to
tackle the UK energy crisis.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4454468.stm [news.bbc.co.uk]
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