Thanks so much Skarn. Its much appreciated from me and my cohorts
It’s expensive. Though nuclear power is heavily regulated, it’s also heavily subsidized, directly and indirectly. For example, the Price-Anderson Act limits the liabilities of a nuclear plant in the event of a meltdown/whatever. Nuclear power also has very high capital costs.
The arguments you use can also be used for solar, wind, hydro, etc. “The sun is the safest, cleanest, most abundant energy source available.” “The wind is the safest, cleanest, most abundant energy source available.” “Water is the safest, cleanest, most abundant energy source available.” But all of these forms of energy are very expensive, due to high capital costs.
Maybe in the future nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, or some other form of energy production will be the most affordable. Maybe all of them will be. But in the meantime, we have to make use of “dirty” coal, natural gas, and petroleum.
I agree Kaju, but pretty much ALL energy sources are subsidized/regulated to the hilt at this point. I honestly doubt the market on its own would have developed nuclear power in its current form. The current technology was basically developed in tandem with nuclear weapons, to provide the materials needed for bombs as well as concentrated power for naval vessels (most critically submarines, but also carriers).
They should’ve just read that post on MPR today instead of having 3 morons on who did nothing to contextualize these events.
IOW, you have no idea if it’s expensive. You can’t tell whether the costs imposed by bureaucracy are higher than the subsidies or not. I would bet on it being vastly cheaper in a free society, but who knows?!
Here’s an interesting article. It says that Fukushima cannot meltdown at all now.
I have a question for you. I’ve been considering a 3 year chemical engineering college program. What kind of work are you anticipating doing with that?
Well I am not completely certain, I chose the CE path because I enjoy the material mostly, there are a broad range of options based on what you want to focus on. I could go with that back to a nuclear plant, and start working up to chemistry control manager, there is also Petrochem, etc. From what I have heard it is the most difficult Engineering path (in terms of schooling) as it is very broad, per se.
Of course even after getting the degree you will have to get certified etc in whatever field you choose, to its more of a door opener I imagine (especially with degree bloat going on now)
lol nir, I didn’t realize you posted that video here. I posted it on the other Japan thread.
Just updating this with some random thoughts. I feel a bit bad, almost like I was shilling for the Nuclear industry or something, ‘downplaying’ the risks or whatever. I was not familiar with the civilian plants enough it seems, or at least the spent fuel retaining ponds. Naval reactors are only refueled every 30 years or so, in a much more involved process, but we don’t keep the spent fuel. It appears that once again the Government’s dead hands have wreaked havoc.
I will be honest that I haven’t followed the story as much of late, due to school and so forth, but from what I gather, it appears that they were storing far too many fuel rods in a given pond, and worse that some rods were still ‘hot’ (that is to say still had sufficient fission product activity/decay heat), so the whole setup required cooling, which in turn required power to a cooling pump setup for those pools. I don’t believe that this is the case in the US, as far as I know. Typically it takes 6 or so months for the majority of the decay heat to go away (enough so that the reactor can’t even light a light bulb), so I would have thought they would rotate operating plants to ensure refueling operations would invole cold spent fuel. It seems this is not the case however. Perhaps due to Japan’s energy needs in particular. Of course this is complicated by Anti-proliferation treaties and so forth.
The original design for the plants was to produce bomb quality materials, and so reprocessing the spent fuel involves concentrating the trans uranics (Plutonium notably), which could be used to make nuclear weapons. So we have the rediculous policy of plants storing spent fuel on site, basically forever. This was the purpose of the Yucca mountain site, a more permanent solution. Worse the government forced the utilities to tax the energy they generated to pay for said development and then shut it down. Personally, I was always worried about real ‘terrorists’ getting their hands on spent fuel and making a nice massive dirty bomb, expecially with lax security at some facilities.
Hopefully, if nothing else, this will make the governments of the world rethink their policies in general, and further spur development of other reactor types (Thorium Salt, Fusion, etc), which would not have this problem.
@ SkarnkaiLW
I highly appreciate your information. Can you elaborate a bit about the MSR (Molten Salt Reactor) versus IFR (Integral Fast Reactor) versus Fusion? What do you think is the better technology, and really has potential to be realized in an economic way within next 10/20 years?
I am not too familiar with either of those, unfortunately. I have read up on Wikipedia, both seem like good developments to me. I am a bit hesitant on the use of liquid sodium of course, is it a very volatile substance. On the economics side, both seem a bit more murky, in my opinion. For good or ill, most utilities prefer known technologies. I would expect the IFR to come into play if we actually decomission a sufficent number of nuclear warheads that disposal of the plutonium & uranium becomes an issue. Both the MSR & IFR have an advantage in that they are more efficient in terms of waste, as they generate their own fuel over the life of the core. the IFR can also burnup other forms of fuel for disposal purposes (such as Plutonium again).
Fusion remains a bit more distant, and many teams are working on the proof of concept phase. I really only follow the one I linked earlier. Depending on the fuel used, it generates little to no waste, and may be much easier to scale. Also the radiation levels are different, and little remains after shutdown, compared to a fission plant. Also power generated is on an order of scale higher, and a factor or 10 or more cheaper. Basically the holy grail for energy development right now. There are significant technological hurdles, yet unfortunately. The group I am following had to basically design their own parts just to get to fusion so it will be a while yet. 10 years minimum until ground is broken on a fusion plant I imagine, and that is being very generous. The other two are proven already technologically, its just the economics/efficiency part. While uranium remains abundant, I doubt there will be a significant shift to either of them.