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?
A. Nuclear waste, i.e., one-power-pass and more accurately called "Spent Nuclear Fuel," has most of its energy left in it. With recycling, perhaps 15 more power producing trips through old-generation slow-neutron reactors are possible. Eventually, these recycling and power runs will burn the fuel down to near-nothingness - 5% of its original mass - now just broken (fissioned) uranium atoms unable to remain radioactive very long. No electricity or weapons potential remains.
New-generation reactors (US version is the Integral Fast Reactor) are generally fast-neutron types that burn their nuclear fuel down to near-nothingness in one long power run - over 20 or more years. "IFRs use virtually all of the energy content in the uranium fuel whereas a traditional light water reactor uses less than 1% of that energy content. This means that new-generation reactors can power the energy needs of the planet for over a billion years." (Wikipedia)
Today's safest
(but not the cheapest)
recycling technology package is from General Electric
- Hitachi. They have a combination nuclear waste recycling/burning new-generation
reactor facility called ARC-PRISM that they are presenting to the U.S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission for certification.
ARC-PRISM Introduction
More
NRC Advanced Reactor Docket:
We can begin getting rid of all nuclear waste now. The world has about 40 years of spent nuclear fuel stored at reactors which have about 40 years of running life left. Here is a list of past and present Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing Sites. The problem is that reprocessed nuclear fuel costs more than fresh and storage of spent fuel is cheap, safe, easy, and does not take up much space. The solution is to force old-generation power plant operators to recycle and burn down what they are sitting on before allowing them to buy fresh.
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 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 should 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: 1_Supersized_Power_Plants
