Questions
1. Who are you? Résumé Energy Engineer's Certificate Professional Engineer's ID card Business Card
I am not an expert in anything. I do think, however, that if my training and career have given me insight on how we might end the world's climate emergency and our country's energy stress, I do not have the right to remain silent.
2. The coal2nuclear website is very interesting. Can you please tell me how you would address the problem of nuclear waste?
(From this web site's YUCCA MOUNTAIN, NUCLEAR WASTE RECYCLING)
YUCCA MOUNTAIN Nuclear Waste Repository, Spent Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing
Yucca Mountain: All nuclear energy paths lead to Yucca Mountain.
If we use current generation slow-neutron reactors and recycle the spent fuel 10
to 15 times, we end up with 5% mass actinides that are highly radioactive to
begin with but rapidly decay down to raw uranium ore radioactivity in a couple
hundred years.
If we use next generation fast-neutron reactors and completely run the uranium down
over 20 or 30 years,
Yucca Mountain is a heck of a fine national nuclear asset that has
already been paid for by the American electrical consumer. Obama was wrong
in shutting it down. Storing small-mass actinides vitrified in glass
instead of huge volumes of slightly used uranium pellets in enormous storage
casks should give that place useable storage space for the next ten thousand
years.
http://www.energy.gov/news/8584.htm
President Obama's Blue Ribbon Commission on Nuclear Waste.
Interim Report Due summer 2011, Final Jan 2012.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Isolation_Pilot_Plant
WIPP, in New Mexico, is the U.S.' current repository for non-high level military
nuclear waste.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#Long_term_management_of_waste
High-level repository considerations.
Sub-seabed Nuclear Waste Disposal .pdf
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf69.html
pdf
Processing of Used Nuclear Fuel. The United States built 3 in the
past, has as many as 3 new under consideration. Savannah River Plutonium
Recycling is an Areva project under study, General Electric-Hitachi's
ARC is a
more advanced process under consideration.
http://www-ns.iaea.org/tech-areas/waste-safety/disposable.htm The IAEA
Nuclear Waste and Spent Nuclear Fuel Group.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing Excellent overview
of today's state of worldwide spent nuclear fuel reprocessing.
Areva's automated actinide vitrification facility is a shocking example of how the United States has permanently become a second world nation with mostly vestigial industrial capacity. The 5% of true nuclear waste you have on hand after spent nuclear fuel reprocessing - the residual actinides - is very nasty stuff. It is extremely radioactive and a rich source of lethal gamma radiation. Fresh minor actinides aren't even safe to touch with a 10-foot pole. "Too hot not to cool down," the more intense radioactivity is, the quicker it decays into near non-radioactivity. In this case, perhaps as little as 200 years.
Areva now has a safe automated way to embed large amounts of fresh actinides in glass - the safest long-term disposal storage container of all - and the best way to use Yucca Mountain. The United States has the largest amount of spent nuclear fuel in the world and will have to license foreign technology to complete what it started 65 years ago. Induction heating of metals (Areva's "Cold Crucible Method") is a common technology that has been known since 1831 and is no more exotic than a induction heating kitchen range. Since we trashed our nuclear recycling facilities over a generation ago, we never got to the point where we needed to develop a safe way to vitrify substantial quantities of actinides for disposal in Yucca Mountain.
Vitrification - Areva Cold Crucible Method .jpg Vitrification - Areva Cold Crucible Method .pdf
The U.S. has 104 old-generation nukes up and running and perhaps 35 more large old-generation nukes about to be built. We are going to have large old-generation reactors running for the remainder of this century producing large amounts of nuclear waste. That makes the idea of a large fleet of smaller, nuclear waste-consuming reactors, which incidentally, will be producing a huge amount of additional cheap electricity, a very good thing.
Bottom line: I favor not building any more reactors that make "slightly used" nuclear waste. I personally would rather see a large fleet of small new-generation PRISM nuclear waste burners than a small fleet of large, new old-generation nukes that continue to emit what the world has come to call "Nuclear Waste". The PRISMs would never run out of fuel because, if need be, they could run on a blend of fresh, diluted with inert to emulate waste.
3. If you have time, could you react to this assessment from the Union of Concerned Scientists regarding nuclear energy?
http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_power_and_global_warming/nuclear-resurgence.html
A. Certainly. James Hansen said it best in his book, "Storms of My Grandchildren" beginning at the bottom of page 203. At the top of page 204, he refers to them as the "Union of Concerned Lobbyists" as the head of the organization is not a scientist and neither are many of the members.
Many, myself included, wonder where anti-nuclear lobbyists are getting all that money they are spending on anti-nuclear publicity. The coal industry comes to mind. Rod Adams, a pro-nuclear blogger [ http://www.atomicinsights.blogspot.com/ ] is keeping a log on his web site under the title "Smoking Guns." He has about 20 examples so far. This is where I first started wondering about who would spend big money on anti-nuclear propaganda.
You may
also wish to look at what I have observed about the net effect of the
antinuclear movement:
