Excellent article - Obama and Dire Global Warming

Steve "Coal is My Worst Nightmare" Chu is a wonderful and exciting choice for Obama's Secretary of Energy as he has shown true vision and leadership for energy sustainability. I just hope that he is able to navigate the world of politics as succesfully as he has with science and technology.

 

They're quite different to each other, those worlds. It's a tough ask but hopefully he's up to it.

 

Dang it. I hope Chu really does push for Nuclear power....

This whole global warming thing really has me heated

 

Oh no. Don't get me started.

 

Clever wording.

 

I worked out, fossil fuel is energy from the earths past, nuclear is borrowing energy from out future generations. Our kids kids will pay for our short sightedness for hundreds of generations because of nuclear energy.

 

yes and no. Coal has a large radioactive footprint than nukes. Reprocessing of fuel would drastically reduce the amount of waste but I think you get some rather unsavouring products as a result.

 

There are some reactors that can use thorium too, I don't know what sort of waste products are produced and how nasty they are. The CANDU reactor is one such type. Jayman knows something about that design, perhaps he can comment on the thorium by products. Jayman?

 

China plans to purchase and install a large number of AP1000s from Westinghouse - 10 or possibly many more over the next decade? This is quite a safe design, as such things go, with passive rather than active emergency core cooling.

Apparently China also plans to make a (large) number of pebble bed reactors that can use the thorium cycle, but I do not see the definite plans on paper.

The other nations with large building plans are Russia and India. Russia will make their own (of course) and I don't know what india plans.

The US may or may not decide to accelerate the licensing of new plants, but the Westinghouse technology is available now.

 

Any knowledge of how they plan to handle the waste?

 

PBRs (Pabst Blue Ribbon!) can store their waste onsite, I believe. What little I've read about them suggests that the "pebbles" can be stored in the ground and aren't particularly nasty. It's also a quite stable design and some have proposed smaller reactor plants instead of the large 1GW+ facilities that are typical now.

 

Lets hope the Russians aren't planning any more graphite moderated plants.

 

Ok, I just got back today.

This is a long, technical brief on using CANDU for reprocessing and thorium cycles

The Evolution of CANDU Fuel Cycles and Their Potential Contribution to World Peace

The Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility has an older, but also highly technical article

AECL Seminar ~ A Plutonium/Thorium Economy in Canada

Apparently, the byproducts are - net - much lower due to reprocessing and reburn. Using up weapons grade plutonium is also highly desirable

The nice thing about CANDU is that it's relatively safe, and is a highly efficient breeder reactor

 

Well, it *almost* worked. At least up until the moment it went KABOOM

 

Thank goodness Russia is a large country...apparently only a 30Km radius is needed for an exclusion zone.

 

Well, the biggest problem with Chernobyl was this: no containment structure. At least with the Three Mile Island partial core meltdown only a very small amount of radioactive particles were released, unlike the Chernobyl radiation release (which was akin to fallout from an atmospheric nuclear bomb test).

Besides, today's newest reactor designs are extremely safe, especially now with the application of passive cooling so even if the coolant supply is cut off the reactor can be quickly shut down safely.

 

A lot of the reactors used at Hanford had minimal containment too. I guess we were lucky not to have a major accident.

The former USSR had decades of sloppy oversight, sinister disregard for the civillian population, and accidents that remained hushed up for decades

It is widely regarded that Chelyabinsk is one of the most radioactive places on the planet

CHELYABINSK "The Most Contaminated Spot on the Planet" - a documentary film by Slawomir Grunberg - Log In Productions - distributed by LogTV LTD.

One of their worst accidents was an explosion at an underground waste storage tank, when the cooling system quit working. Overall, 3-4 times the radiation released by Chernobyl

With a track record like that, a sinister and callous disregard for the civillian population that was somewhat mirrored here in North America, one shouldn't be surprised at the healthy skeptical attitude towards the Peaceful Atom

 

Cute. I'm hoping the toys have very high lead content too