From Guest-Blogger Jessica Greenberg: Nuclear Power – Is the Industry Doomed to Fail?
After the Chernobyl incident, nuclear power became infamous as a potent yet deadly source of alternative energy. It would seem that no one would want to take second chances, not after the calamity that fell on the once prosperous city in Eastern Europe. The unfortunate accident that fell on one of Japan’s nuclear reactor during the March 2011 tsunami disaster was another cause of concern for any country planning to use nuclear power as their means for solving the energy crisis. And lately, the nuclear reactor near Crystal River, which is north of Tampa Bay, have been closed down permanently due to the cracks discovered within the reactor dome in 2009. Fixing the crack caused other cracks within the dome to appear as well. To repair all of the cracks would mean spending at least $ 1.5 billion at minimum, therefore it was more sensible to close down the nuclear power plant.
While efficient at best, having a nuclear power plant within a particular sight is actually not a good thing. Everyone’s talking about the dangers of getting exposed with radiation and the destructive powers of a nuclear explosion, as seen and popularized in the Internet and mainstream media, have caused people to fear nuclear power .But in this age where fossil fuel deposits are ultimately running scarce, do we have another choice? You might say that natural gas is the hope of this country, but still, natural gas is another form of fossil fuel and, in time, it will deplete in time.
We are not the only country that is in need of a constant supply of energy. Countries from Europe and Asia are also dependent on fossil fuel. And while everyone’s scrambling to get their hands on an adequate supply of fossil fuel energy, there is still no permanent solution to the energy crisis. Humanity has yet to discover an unlimited amount of energy source.
In my own honest opinion, nuclear power has potential, provided that our government decide to delegate most of its funding into discovering new technologies that will prevent accidental nuclear breakdown and the enhancement of safety procedures for employees within the site. One can point out that the nuclear power plant in Japan was very efficient until the tsunami damaged most of the facilities, including the reactor. If that natural calamity didn’t happen, then that particular nuclear power plant would continue to work efficiently. One of the best advantages of a nuclear power plant is it’s capacity and efficiency. It’s also not harmful to the environment when radiation is properly controlled.
Perhaps the government should focus more on developing nuclear energy instead of wasting most of its money on defence and military spending. Instead of building weapons and other devices that kill, why not discover or make new devices that will help ensure that nuclear power is a potent and safe power supply? The world will be a better and peaceful place once an unlimited supply of energy is introduced.
About the Author:
Jessica Greenberg is an avid green blogger from San Diego, California. She loves writing about alternative energy, such as natural gas, nuclear energy, and the importance of energy conservation and preserving the environment.
Jessica, you go girl!!!!
There are nuclear technologies that are much safer than our generation I and II reactors. Most of the old reactors have been working safely without loss of life for 40 or so years.
The Thorium reactors that were developed at about the same time as the Uranium based reactors have been shown to be much safer with built-in features that physically prevent runaway nuclear reactions.
Adoption of these safer reactors is a hard sell to hard headed environmentalists that are really against any large scale energy production. Even the big wind turbines and solar projects are fought with phoney arguements. It is the large scale that these folks object to. Backyard Maoist technology is fine, right down to those infamous backyard blast furnaces. Maybe if we can reduce nuclear reactors to a backyard model, those narrow thinking green proponents will adopt them with open arms. Probably not.
Larry, those backyard energy sources do exist. What do you think is used in deep space travel. The answer to your request starts at 4:15 in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdusXIvyLFQ
LANL has already answered the depleted PU-238 concern with another small reactor called DUFF: http://www.lanl.gov/newsroom/news-releases/2012/November/11.26-space-travel.php
The German are also thinking of re-investing in nuclear but at the micro level: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/02/08/uk-nuclear-micro-urenco-idUKBRE9170LW20130208
I’m sure there are others, and some day you may be carrying around a hand held power source just like your iPad.
Until then, this will work for now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DK5H3VUEtv4
There are major difficulties with nuclear which are cost which nearly always overruns projections, and the long delays which always occur when planning such a project.
With ever tighter safety standards the cost of nuclear power plants has now become so high that they are all but impossible for private business to finance. This is then compounded by the delays due to extensive environmental impact assessments, public enquiries, court challenges, protests, revisions due to changes in safety regulations and the inherently long timeframe of this type of construction.
Aside from the above, there are concerns about the potential for accident, and for security incidents etc.
What I would suggest instead of nuclear is to substantially increase investment in researching new ways to cut the cost of geothermal power and heat. Drill down anywhere on the planet, and within around 10 km of the surface are temperatures able to produce high pressure steam.
In a few places if you drill down, high pressure steam comes out of the ground without any further intervention. In others, it is necessary to fracture hot dry rock and circulate water or other working fluid like supercritical CO2 to extract the heat.
Possibly the most useful things to research are
1. Faster non contact drilling techniques such as plasma torch, high intensity sound and thermal cracking.
2. Better ways to identify and characterise the best resources and minimise “dry holes”
3. Improved techniques to achieve and control hydraulic cracking for enhanced geothermal where the rock is not naturally porous enough to circulate working fluid.
4. Standardising techniques to reduce the risk of triggering earthquakes (Usually small, but still a concern).
As well as research, incentives to increase deployment will help to drive the geothermal learning curve – reducing future costs.
Why geothermal? Geothermal is the only major renewable energy source which is potentially available for base load power anywhere on the planet. With some technical refinements and temporary incentives, geothermal should become less expensive than nuclear without most of the associated concerns.
“In my own honest opinion, nuclear power has potential, provided that our government decide to delegate most of its funding into discovering new technologies that will prevent accidental nuclear breakdown and the enhancement of safety procedures for employees within the site.”
An excellent point indeed!
Unfortunately, as I have previously stated, during the Clinton administration our government made the unfortunate choice to stop nuclear R & D, asserting that it was not necessary. Suppose that in 1910, a decision had been made to halt transportation R & D.
From my extensive reading, I have concluded that the liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) may well be the nuclear technology that we should be using. It looks as though it could eliminate all the valid objections to the use of nuclear power, including the waste problem. However, I am now reading the book “Plentiful Energy” by Till and Chang; they advocate the integral fast reactor (IFR). It looks as though it would be far better than our current pressurized water reactors (PWR), but although I have not yet finished the book, I’m still leaning toward the LFTR. I highly recommend the book; the first part of it is devoted to the history of the development of nuclear technology and the consequences of halting R & D.
We will never completely recover from the halting of nuclear R & D. There were highly competent and experienced teams of scientists, engineers, technicians, and support people. Those teams were disbanded when R & D was halted solely for political reasons and now it would take many years and hundreds of millions of dollars to bring new teams up to speed.
It is important for nuclear reactors to be designed in such a way that they are passively safe, i.e., that safety does not depend on operator intervention, emergency power, or automatic controls which could fail. The LFTR, and probably the IFR, meet those criteria and had they been used in Japan, the melt-downs would not have occurred.
In any case, halting nuclear R & D was an exceedingly serious mistake. That means that if the limitations of renewables prove to be too great to make them practical, we may be stuck with our PWR nuclear technology which is a serious mistake and our migrating away from fossil fuels will be greatly delayed. Fortunately, it looks as though the Chinese and others are doing serious R & D on the LFTR so if they succeed, we may be able to buy LFTR technology from them.
Although some may object to government funding of nuclear R & D, we should be aware of how greatly we have benefitted from government funding of R & D. For example, integrated circuit development was funded by the government, mainly through the space program. Without that government funding, integrated circuit development would have been greatly delayed and even now we might not have personal computers, cell phones, and many of the other things which we now take for granted.
Any technology is doomed to fail when it becomes inherently lethal to an entire region the moment we humans or our technology perform imperfectly.
Cameron, that technology started quite some time ago with man made ‘fire’. We have had disasters ever since.
People who lived in Chicago at one time would certainly agree.
Catastrophes that are consequential to proven vulnerabilities will be best regarded as hard lessons, and severe warnings against repetition. The casual dismissal of those vulnerabilities has predictably tragic consequences.
Note: The above comment on vulnerabilities is my own.
“The Thorium reactors that were developed at about the same time as the Uranium based reactors have been shown to be much safer with built-in features that physically prevent runaway nuclear reactions.
Adoption of these safer reactors is a hard sell to hard headed environmentalists that are really against any large scale energy production.”
These reactors are considered to be highly dangerous and are a far cry from being deployment ready. Most of the larger nuclear reactors of this type fast neutron reactors and fast breeder reactors are inherently dangerous because they work at such high temperatures and are difficult to moderate i.e., runaway reactions are possible. Also the moderators used in such reactors are usually liquid sodium. Since sodium is highly volatile and will spontaneously combust on contact with air or water, it would be impossible to cool such a reactor by dousing with huge quantities of water in a Fukushima type of situation. Helium has also been considered as a moderator. In either of these cases the tiniest leak will endanger not only the plant but the whole surrounding countryside. The answer, unpalatable as it may seem, is to exercise patience and wait till a workable solution nuclear, conventional or renewable comes along.
@ D. James
“These [thorium] reactors are considered to be highly dangerous…”
By whom are they considered to be highly dangerous? And exactly what is the failure mode that would pose a serious danger? Is the person who considers them to be highly dangerous referring to the liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR), or to a reactor that uses thorium in fuel rods similar to PWRs that use uranium? Is it clear that he understands the difference between the two types? Some writers highly critical of thorium have written articles that clearly indicate that they were not talking about the LFTR. Thus, it is necessary to read articles extremely carefully to determine exactly what the author is talking about and whether he understands the subject.
One of the advantages of the LFTR is that it can operate at extremely high temperatures, although it need not do so. However, by operating at extremely high temperatures, it can use the Brayton cycle instead of the Ranking cycle and obtain efficiencies high enough that water cooling is not needed, i.e., it can use air cooling. That would enable it to operate in areas where water is scarce.
“Helium has also been considered as a moderator.”
I have never heard of using helium as a moderator. Can you provide a link to a proposal to use He as a moderator? What affect does He have on neutrons? And how could a He leak endanger the countryside? If He could actually be used as a moderator, fission would stop if the He leaked out.
It’s true that Na is highly reactive and for that reason I do have reservations about it. However, I am now reading “Plentiful Energy” by Till and Chang; I’m about 1/3 of the way through the book so I am not yet in a position to evaluate it totally. However, the authors assert that the IFR, which uses Na cooling, can be designed to be passively cooled so that no emergency cooling is required. It can also be designed to have a negative temperature coefficient so that runaway reactions would not occur. Moreover, they need not operate at high temperatures; they could be designed to run at any desirable temperature, although anyone who understands thermodynamics would understand that all power generations systems that use heat must operate at high temperatures to obtain high efficiency. The R & D on the IFR was terminated under the Clinton administration; it should not have been terminated.
I would also like to know exactly how even a tiny Na leak could endanger the countryside.
You state that Na is volatile. It’s boiling point is 883 degrees C which would not seem to indicate that it is volatile. Perhaps you can find information to indicate that it is volatile.
Perhaps you could list some of the books you have read to acquire your understanding of nuclear power to enable me to read them.
After my initial comment and reading subsequent comments about nuclear power and its alternatives I see that even the supporters of green energy are mired down in a debate over the merits of thorium power. LFTR reactors have been lumped together with other thorium power systems and with uranium reactors by people who do not know beans about any of these generating systems or the fuel cycles that support them. The paper tigers that come to the table in these discussions are comical but so sad when the world is in need of clean energy sources.
I am not just riding a one trick pony in this regard. I also have high hopes for geothermal power. Unfortunately a similar mentality that jousts against LFTR reactors is quick to fight geothermal production. Even at tens of miles away from proposed projects there are nonsensical roadblocks placed in the way. Random fluctuations in background earth quake activity in the pacific northwest is used to back up the idea that a new well will cause major problems in Crater Lake national park. I have stopped trying to reason with these people. Most of them have little or no science background and they think that political science is a great major for solving our environmental problems. sheeesh!!!!
@ Larry,
You are quite right.
A couple years ago, I sent an e-mail to an organization that was dead set against nuclear energy. In it, I briefly explained the advantages of the LFTR and included a link to more information. The response was that the LFTR was the last gasp of the nuclear power industry to save nuclear power. Had they known more about it, they would have known that the nuclear power industry is NOT backing the LFTR, the reason being that it would undermine their current business model which relies in the PWR.
I have contacted Interfaith Power and Light; they claim that they don’t know enough about nuclear energy to have a firm opinion it which is why they somewhat oppose it. They also assert that they don’t have sufficient time to study it. As I see it, unless they devote sufficient time to study it, they should not be opposing it.
Regarding geothermal power, I think that more research is needed since in some geographical areas, it might turn out to be an economical and reliable source of power. However, there have been cases where geothermal wells have been blamed for minor earth tremors raising the fear that they could cause serious earthquakes. Whether that is a reasonable fear I don’t know; getting objective information is difficult. There is also concern that pumping water down one well to be heated and drawing the heated water back up from a near-by well will, over time, cause the temperature of the earth at that point to drop to the point that the system will no longer generate sufficient power to justify its continued operation. Again, I don’t know whether or not that could be a problem. Probably one of the problems is that I haven’t done enough reading on geothermal systems and that my main source of information has been media articles which often cannot be trusted.
I really wish that high school graduation would require studying physics, chemistry, and a life science for one year. College graduation should also require those courses at the college level. Requiring studying logic and propaganda would also be helpful.
Regarding the life of a geothermal well, this depends on a number of factors the most important being the recharge rate. If the recharge rate is too low, there will indeed be a gradual and continuing drop in temperature in the heat source. If the resource and conditions are accurately understood at the beginning, there will be an initial modest temperature drop over the first few years after which temperatures will stabilize.
Depending on the local chemistry, there may be a tendency for any enhancement achieved by hydraulic fracturing to close up over time, and also for carbonate deposits to gradually close the well – so there is a possibility of needing to re-apply hydraulic cracking from time to time, and to take measures to remove accumulated carbonates.
For obvious reasons, the larger the volume of rock and the area from which heat is being extracted the greater the thermal mass of the heat source and the greater the amount of heat which will flow in to replace the heat being extracted.
Here is an article I found on the life of wind generators; it appears to be much shorter than expected:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/9770837/Wind-farm-turbines-wear-sooner-than-expected-says-study.html
One would suppose that improved designs would increase longevity and reliability. However, it would seem unwise to depend on wind farms until design improvements are made.
Frank Eggers
The fact that Bill Gates, like it or not, one of the most innovative minds in this century, is advocating more research into nuclear power, shows that there is some potential in this technology. On the other hand the fact that he admits that the technology is so dangerous that research for the project could not be obtained in the US, gives pause for thought. This talk was given on Ted. So, all that I had said, was that nuclear should be approached with caution. The Liquid fluoride thorium reactor that you speak of ( I looked it up) is a case in point. The technology is so old, dating from the 60’s that scientists claim that they can not guarantee any accurate assessment of the technology. Even France which produces something like 70% – 80% of its energy from Nuclear has shut down several of its experimental fast neutron and fast breeder projects , the same has happened in the US and the UK. Then again look at the dismal record of the US with regard to radio active waste disposal. Most of the used fuel rods from these reactors have been sitting underwater in onsite pools ever since the reactors started producing power. So tell me if your solution is so good, why this is.so ?
Frank Eggers
Here is a wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast-neutron_reactor . Look under the paragraph entitled Disadvantages.
@ D. James,
I did check out the link you provided. The disadvantages listed are correct, but every reactor type has both advantages and disadvantages. The fact the IFR (integral fast (neutron) reactor) operates at atmospheric pressure makes it practical to have a huge reactor vessel filled with Na coolant and that greatly slows down the rate of temperature changes which occur in response to changes in fission rate or heat removal rate. The high heat conductivity of Na compared with that of water is another advantage. Also, according to what I read last night (I still have a way to go), core melting will halt the fission as the core disperses within the vessel. So, although a core melt down would be a disaster for the investors, it shouldn’t put the public at risk. Proper design results in a negative temperature coefficient which should make excessive power excursions unlikely.
The fact that the IFR uses fuel rods with cladding is a problem because the cladding adds to the waste stream, a problem it shares with the PWR but which the LFTR does not have. Even so, the waste generated is far less than with PWR technology.
The fact that the IFR coolant is Na is a problem because of the reactivity of Na. Although that poses a risk for the investors, it shouldn’t put the public at risk. And, Na is not corrosive to the materials used in the reactor or its vessel. The fuel is a metal rather than an oxide and the metal fuel would not react with the Na even if the cladding were damaged.
One of the things that makes me uneasy with our current PWR technology is that its extremely inefficient use of the enriched uranium fuel results in too much high level radioactive waste. Sequestering the waste seems to be more of a political problem than a technical problem, but surely it would be better to reduce the amount of waste generated which both the LFTR and the IFR do. The other things that make me uneasy with PRW technology are the need to have a pressure vessel pressurized to about 2500 PSI and an emergency cooling system. Although the PWR can be made safe, it is basically an inelegant design requiring multiple levels of safety precautions to make it acceptably safe. The new Westinghouse AP1000 reactor is an improved PWR, but still a PWR; by having a huge water tank on top of it, they’ve been able to make the emergency cooling system passive so that it does not have to rely on Diesel generators for emergency power. However, I’d like to see PWRs phased out.
It’s understandable that nuclear scientists feel that they cannot adequately assess the LFTR. That’s why we cannot be certain that it is the way to go, but from what I’ve read about it, it looks very promising. It is a technology that should not be overlooked; we should be doing R & D on it with the idea of putting it into full-scale production if prototypes and limited production indicate that it is a good way to go.
Too many decisions have been made for political reasons driven by a public that lacks sufficient knowledge to have a valid opinion. The only way to have a valid opinion is to spend almost countless hours studying which the public is unlikely to do. Instead, the public depends on two sources of information: 1) The mass media, which are not good sources of thorough and reliable information, and 2) Various organizations which have an axe to grind and seriously lack objectivity. That has resulted in shutting down programs which should not have been shut down. Imagine what cars would be like if halting R & D had frozen automotive technology at 1910 levels.
Although I see nuclear power as absolutely essential, because R & D was unwisely halted, we cannot be certain what the best nuclear technology is. I tend to favor the LFTR, but there is an urgent need for more R & D. Even when a better nuclear technology is decided upon, R & D should continue indefinitely to make continuing improvement possible.
PV Toxic Waste
From the following article, it appears that PV power is less “green” than it is commonly thought to be:
http://news.yahoo.com/solar-industry-grapples-hazardous-wastes-184714679.html
The problems with PV toxic waste are not sufficient to justify halting PV production. Although the toxic waste can surely be adequately dealt with, it should be acknowledged that the problem does exist and that it must be dealt with.
The fact that many environmentalists, even in the face of undeniable evidence, insist that PV power is totally clean, calls into question their objectivity. I’d have much more respect for them if they acknowledged that the problem of PV toxic waste is serious and worked to find solutions for it.
Here is an article on what is happening with renewable energy systems in a few countries:
http://theenergycollective.com/willem-post/169521/wind-turbine-energy-capacity-less-estimated
Hi Frank,
I am a ioo% in agreement with you that, as things stand, things look bleak. But, look up, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. And even as I speak to you, that light grows brighter. I am in possession of a technology that will change the world. Yes, it is clean, yes, it is renewable, yes it is cost effective. It will deliver a MINIMUM of 10 Kw 24 x 7 wherever you live in the world. Beat that ! I am like the pipe in Hamelin, give me my due and I will give you what you want!
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