Zapping Nuclear Waste in Minutes Is Nobel Winner’s Holy Grail Quest
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
I don't think we need to spend money and energy to transmute it by theses questionable laser schemes. Accelerator driven transmutation of waste was shown the dustbin a few decades ago, hopefully this will have the same fate. Please don't ruin our valuable trash.
Its been done since days of nuclear plants. And no - there are no security issues, since as the name indicates, its a “waste”; you can’t make a bomb out of it and spreading it would not be as efficient as some type of gas that you would have easier access to. I imagine actually officials would love just to give away that nuclear waste to ISIS, preferrably deliver it to them for further handling by their peers, without gloves of course ;)
http://nuclearconnect.org/know-nuclear/technology/nuclear-wa...
> The cask systems are designed to handle a wide range of severe environmental conditions, including earthquakes, flooding, extreme temperatures, and tornadoes. This includes objects that may impact the cask at high speed, such as during a tornado.
I suppose that means they withstand a car crash too.
https://youtu.be/1mHtOW-OBO4?t=80
It's a pretty awful source (dubbed impact sounds), and very much in UK dialect, but it has some footage of the US testing I've not seen elsewhere.
Without applying a lot of imagination, I can think out about some non trivial security issues in the idea of adding deplected uranium waste to a bomb as shrapnel. Definitely a bomb can be made with this stuff.
Paper, your clothing, or even your dead skin cells is enough to block what little radioactivity is present in DU. What is dangerous about DU is that it’s a heavy metal (and pretty toxic). It’s not easy to work, so even forming it into bomb parts would kill more ISIS members than using it would kill the general public.
If you cannot think of security issues around nuclear waste, you have no business discussing nuclear waste and you are doing your "cause" a disservice.
That's just hope. How convenient not having to deal with the mess! To me, it sounds like a religion.
The same argument could be applied to rising CO2 levels. Just let future generations figure it out. What could go wrong?
The "safely" caveat is controversial, maybe even dubious, certainly politically charged, but there's a fundamental difference here nonetheless.
Unfortunately nuclear energy had a very bad PR for past 50 years, as a result nobody wanted to do any searcher in areas related to it).
It seems that it is slightly better now, environmental organizations at least are not trying to occupy nuclear reactors, unfortunately still they are pushing wind farms and solar farms, even though they cannot be usable on a massive scale without efficient way to store energy surplus.
There is not a positive way to tell people that will be forced to quit their homes, workplaces and properties when nuclear problems eventually arose but hide information or lie systematically about it does not help, neither does the "see no evil/ what could happen?/ but nobody died / your cancer is not my fault" permanent defensive stance deployed again and again.
Nuclear energy sector worked hard to earn the current mistrust
That is an enormous problem, but the problem there is that governments aren't being held accountable for forcing people out of their homes.
The Fukashima evacuation debatabley caused ~3 orders of magnitude more deaths than the Fukushima nuclear disaster ([0] see the sidebar for 2,000:1 figure and the opening paragraphs for the debatable part).
When the cure is that much worse than the disease, we have to ask why we are forcing people to evacuate.
Whenever the government enacts a policy there are the potential for statistical deaths. Approve a coal plant? Statistical deaths. Change safety standards? Statistical deaths. Drop speed limits? Statistical deaths. We can cope with some unidentifiable people being worse off. It happens all the time. The responses to nuclear risks are not only irrational, they are out of line with how we treat all other physical and chemical hazards.
Statistical illness and deaths from nuclear are not worse than any other health issue. This is a fantastic time to use the science to make decisions, and it isn't at all obvious to what standard the exclusion zones are being managed. When the gap in damage done by the response and the crisis is that large there is a lot of room for questions to be asked (I wish I spoke Japanese so I could look up some primary reports on the subject).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...
In that case, is there an increase or decrease in statistical deaths? We had a recent change here and I'm interested on how it might change things
I guess that maybe is for things like that:
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2915/2004/1600/belarus.jp...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_the_Chernobyl_disas...
The Integral Fast Reactor was a reality in 1994, including a reprocessing scheme and inherent safety, when congress cut its funding. It's not my favorite reactor. My favorite, the molten chloride fast reactor, was theoretically investigated in 1972, including its potential for transmutation of actinides (excellent), I-129, Tc-99 (both good) and even Sr-90 and Cs-137 (both rather pointless).
What could go wrong and in fact did go wrong is politics. That's what prevents the practical investigations.
Renewable is simply a cheaper, easier form of energy. And it gets cheaper every single day.
And many of the bids for power projects are including batteries as well.
Meanwhile, my home country is phasing out "expensive" nuclear and building up "cheap, easy" renewables, and electricity gets more expensive every year.
Renewable here are propped by subsidies even to get at the same price of nuclear-produced electricity, so I don't know how you get that.
Er, no this is demonstrably false. France recycles >98% of its spent nuclear fuel in breeder reactors. This isn't fantasy, this is already existing technology. It's not as profitable at the moment which is why few countries recycle waste but it is absolutely something that could be done in the future.
It's not like rising CO2 levels, and this comparison is intellectually dishonest in the extreme. Rising CO2 in the atmosphere levels impact the environment, spent nuclear fuel buried underground does not. The possibility of contamination is either nullified by storing waste in areas already contaminated by nuclear testing, or by burying it miles underground.
How valuable could it possibly be? I challenge you to calculate the net present value on all of that nuclear waste.
The article doesn't go into technical details, but it appears this boils down to a compact proton accelerator. Those protons could be smashed into heavy metal atoms, which will release high energy neutrons. Those neutrons could in turn be used to irradiate nuclear waste, transmuting it.
The first problem with that idea is that stable atoms would be transmuted, too. So unless the waste is separated chemically (aka reprocessed), irradiating it with neutrons tends to make matters worse. In some cases, notable cesium, isotopic separation seems necessary. But if you assume reprocessing, you might as well stuff the components to be irradiated into a reactor, where the actinides act as fuel and some waste products will transmute away.
The second problem is the ridiculously low efficiency of such an accelerator system. Carlo Rubbia has been talking about the concept (ADS, Accelerator Driven System, also called Energy Amplifier) for something like 20 years, and even he only envisions supplying comparatively few neutrons to a subcritical reactor. But a barely subcritical reactor isn't all that different from a critical reactor, except you can turn it off by turning off the accelerator instead of by moving a control rod.
In short, this is another guy with a solution (the accelerator) looking for a suitable problem.
(For the record, continuous recycling of actinides is a good idea that turns "the waste problem" from an unsolvable million-year problem into a manageable 500 year problem. Transmutation of iodine and technetium may be a good idea, too, because these are the only long term radionuclides that would leach into water.)
Edit: names are difficult
> no country can claim to have a comprehensive solution for dealing with its toxic waste.
> more than 60 years after getting into nuclear energy, [France] still has no definitive way to cope with it.
Sentences like these imply that there's dangerous waste just sitting sitting around while officials scratch their heads about what to do.
We do have comprehensive solutions. We build giant concrete wells and just put the waste there, problem solved.
This solution seems to be accepted as reasonable for garbage via landfills, but for nuclear waste its somehow treated as a workaround until we find some other magical way to get rid of it.
"For Cedric Villani, a French lawmaker and the winner of the Fields Medal—the Nobel Prize equivalent for mathematics—that’s no reason to give up. “What Mourou is really after is the accelerator that the laser creates,” he said. “It’s far-off, but why not?” "
Actually most don't.
What I want to know is whether there is a technical issue with what I am suggesting.
There are many issues there obviously. This is not some easy thing you try to dig in there. It'll be there for a very long time.
My argument was also not aimed at the depth but at the unreflected "just dig a hole and hide it there" idea which reminds me of the dumping of nuclear waste into the sea.
I won't even touch geological issues that may come up. A few decades ago we wouldn't know that we would be able to cause earthquakes because we're shooting chemicals into the ground. Who knows what will be in 100 years or in 200?
Btw what about Countries like Japan. They can't do that for obvious reasons. Will the US take this waste? I mean, they will keep producing it. And what about the next country that comes along. I'm sure they can pay good because it won't be every country that can afford this procedure. What about the former soviet republics (currently already used as dump by France for example)? They can't afford that. Will the US take that too or will they pay for it? Maybe the EU because they are closer and are more afraid?
And yes I agree with you that it's irresponsible to store that on the surface. It's even more irresponsible to produce even more of it. But hiding it away in the hope that some later generation in the future will still remember where it is and not touch it, not do anything to the terrain around it or dig it up to misuse it is not only naive, it lacks imagination. You should read more SciFi. It teaches you to think in time frames that are relevant here. Looking back at our own short history may help also.
As for other countries - again, just because Japan cannot do it doesn't mean we shouldn't be doing this altogether. They can store their waste on the surface until we come up with a better plan. But countries like US can, and US has enough nuclear waste to fill 800 of these boreholes already - it's definitely worth doing for them, even if Japan can't. The answer to your question would be ultimately political, and yes, I imagine Japan would pay someone else to have it disposed of. But that's just a guess.
And I do read a lot of Sci-Fi, thank you for your concern. I just don't think you realize what sort of depths we are talking about - there is no geological process bringing material up from these depths to the surface. When we dig to that depth we literally find material buried for millions of years. You'd be talking about rupturing of the Earth to a point where a new mountain range rivaling the Alps would be created - and if that happens then like I said - we're all dead anyway.
As for the lack of imagination - quite the contrary! The mantle in the shallowest spot is only 7km below the surface - and the temperatures there can be as high as 4000C. That's enough to melt nuclear fuel, in which case it would just become part of the Earths crust forever - and it's not like you're polluting the Earth with filthy waste that someone might dig up at some point - the composition of the Earth at that point is already radioactive itself, dropping our nuclear waste into it is not just a proverbial but a literal drop in the ocean. Just like sending this stuff into the sun doesn't make the sun any worse off - the Earth's mantle is already an extremely dangerous place where no Sci-Fi would even suggest digging or future human activity of any kind. In that sense it's a good place for our most dangerous waste, since putting it there doesn't really make it any worse off.
And finally - as you noticed, whatever we do is irresponsible. In my mind, keeping it as we do right now is more irresponsible than burrying it in a way that makes it completely safe even if a comet struck our planet and civilization was completely wiped out. Whoever survives that won't accidentally run into steel containers full of death pebbles. And if civilization emerges that is somehow capable of not only digging but also retrieving material from close to the Earth's mantle, then that civilisation will understand what radioactivity is - no one will ever dig this stuff out "by accident". It's just the sensible option right now, while keeping it around isn't.
In fact, this very idea was already researched and test holes drilled - but of course was cancelled due to public opposition, even though we could get rid of our nuclear waste almost overnight using this method. Typical.
As per your Wikipedia article, current technology limits the borehole to 50 cm. That gets us 500 to 1000 m^3 worth of storage per borehole, assuming the lower 1km to 2km is used for storage.
From this[1] page, as far as I understand, on a global scale the current amount of nuclear waste in need of such storage is 482000 m^3. So roughly 500-1000 boreholes to store the current waste inventory.
Anyone got any ideas on how much it costs to drill a 5-6km 50cm hole?
[1]: http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fue...
But this is your usually drilling equipment for those depths.
Nuclear is like the insolent child who refuses to clean up his room. There isn't any cleanup, really. The waste keeps piling up (usually in something that looks like a swimming pool). It must be attended to by humans for decades or centuries. And the uranium cycle leaves its dirty underwear all over our planet.
There is nothing eco about nuclear.
The radiation plume under Hanford is not as terrible as certain sources make it to be, the same with the contamination of the river. The area around the reservation itself has led to a recovered and strong population of many endangered indigenous animals in the area as well.
Regarding Rocky Flats, again, not as terrible as many make it out to be. Once you factor in living at high elevation there's not a huge increase in overall exposure.
An important consideration that comes into this is that most of these were weapons production facilities (dealing with purifying and handling some of the nastiest material around).
The waste from properly designed and operated power reactors is a much cleaner and much easier to contain process. Condemning an entire avenue of clean energy (most of the fuel needs for a century+ which have already been extracted and refined) because the work done on the technology in the 40's-60's (when we were still figuring out how awful some of the waste is), is not conducive to progress.
Source: Field engineering on projects at Hanford, Rocky Flats, and Yucca Mountain
Going by order-of-magnitude of input materials, if it is an environmental nightmare it is still going to be better than the mining process for raw materials going in to solar panels and whatever else. AFAIK they all use rare earths that get mined in China and refined with some horrible process. Pure volumes of solar panels suggest the incidental environmental damage will be worse from, eg, trampled grass and land disturbed.
So it isn't an environmental or an economic nightmare relative to the alternatives. In what sense is it a nightmare? It seems to be working for France.
[0] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
Because France heavily subsidized its nuclear infrastructure. They also have a big problem right now because most plants are old and have to be decomissioned, and building new plants is not economical.[0] Energy from nuclear power plants is pretty expensive sans subsidies, not just in France.
Just as an example of the live cycle costs: An old plant in my country is in the process of deconstruction - for over 25 years now. The company created as a legal umbrella for the job employs over 500 people since its creation. No end in sight.
[0] https://www.ft.com/content/c7421fbe-f326-11e8-9623-d7f9881e7...
Also those per kilowatt numbers in the chart don't mean much without comparing total consumption per household. I pay way more than the most expensive example in the charts, at 30 cents per kilowatt, yet our monthly total is only 80 Euros for a 5 person household.
I'm also getting kind of tired of the "solar pollutes, too" argument. Yes, solar pollutes. So does making PC processors. But neither of those activities create radioactive materials which can poison people from a distance and persist in our environment for thousands of years. There is simply no comparison between poisonous heavy metals and radioactive nucleotides.
We will never solve any of these problems if we don't embrace nuclear technology.
Ok, but what exactly is it transmuting the atom to?
It's worth noting that transmutation is definitely possible. The alchemists of old would be thrilled to know that we can, in fact, make gold from base metals (in a nuclear reactor). The problem with that is that the cost of doing so is worth more than the gold could be sold for.
Also, will the end result still be energy positive? Even if the transmutation doesn’t add energy to the nucleus, that can be problematic, as that laser will need to be powered.
And of course, there’s the question of ‘aim’: can we really target individual atoms well enough to ‘hit’ them exactly once? (this might be fairly easy if the process requires specific energies that the radioactive atoms, once ‘hit’ no longer are sensitive to)
Depending where you start from and how do it. Here is an example: http://www.ipodphysics.com/resources/trans90.jpg
Here's the list of the 7 long-lived fission products [1]. The nastiest appears to be Caesium-135 [2]. If you zap this with a proton it becomes Barium-136, which is a stable element (the half-life is so long that it cannot be estimated; probably it is in the trillions of years).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-lived_fission_product#The...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_caesium#Caesium-13...
What is your better idea, now that the time for prevention has passed?
As for a better idea, molten salt/thorium reactors, they can eat at least the highly dangerous/ultra long half life stuff.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power
[2] http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and...
Thorium reactors do indeed produce fewer transuranics, since Thorium-232 is 6 AMUs lower down the chain than Uranium-238. Used nuclear fuel is generally 95% U-238, 1% Pu and minor actinides, and 4% fission products. If you do chemical separation to partition the transuranics you can then try to burn them in a variety of reactors. In slow-neutron reactors using Thorium or Uranium fuel, they'll burn ok if they're well partitioned. In fast-neutron reactors, you can burn them with out as aggressive of partitioning. So it's probably easier and cheaper to reprocess UNF for fast reactors. They're far less sensitive to neutron-poisons and fertile species (e.g. fission products and U-238).
Any breeder reactor will make 2 orders of magnitude less TOTAL waste than a non-breeder. Thorium can breed with slow neutrons (which requires continuous removal of the neutron poisons via online chemistry, usually requiring fluid fuel). Uranium can breed with fast neutrons in solid fuel or in fluid fuel. Note I say total waste, not high level waste. High-level waste is proportional only to the burnup (fraction of the fuel you put in that gets fissioned) and doesn't include any process waste from before that (e.g. enrichment or reprocessing waste like U-238).
In a fast neutron uranium-fueled reactor, you can transmute the hell out of all actinides, leading to waste that decays to low levels in a few hundred years. See the link below.
Thorium's only true physical advantage is that it alone allows breeding with slow neutrons, which can be done with low fissile densities. Other than that, Uranium and Thorium have pretty similar characteristics and capabilities in advanced reactors.
[1] https://www.iaea.org/publications/7112/implications-of-parti...
That's merely a short question of time. China will end up #1 on that list. The US only has 98 nuclear reactors in total. The UK has a mere 15. China already has 45 operating, with more than a dozen under construction. In less than 15 years they'll surpass the US figure. Nuclear power will be used by more nations in the future, rather than fewer. It rather emphasizes the importance to all nations of waste disposal breakthroughs.
For reference 1 ton of Thorium produces as much electricity as 200 tons of Uranium or 3.5 megatons of coal -- which would you rather use?
[1] https://sciencing.com/toxic-chemicals-solar-panels-18393.htm...
[2] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1241872/EXCLUSIVE-I...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R5G5hTC7pc
next quest
This seemed like a vague definition, didn’t sit well with my memory of high school chemistry and physics. Turns out it’s the first sentence on Wikipedia:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radionuclide
Someone at Bloomberg got a little lazy.
Imagine that you have a bunch of free particles that are not connected to each other in any way, and are far enough from each other that any interaction between them (such as electromagnetic fields) is negligible. Ignoring their own masses, the energy of the system is zero. Now imagine these same particles, bound together into a single atom.
Obviously, for the atom to be stable, you don't want it to be able to fall apart on a whim. You want a system where you have to input a lot of energy for the atom to fall apart. But as we just said, the state where the constituent particles are separate is the default, zero-energy state. Therefore, a stable state where you have to add energy to reach the default free state must actually have negative energy! To be specific, the binding energy is negative while the energy related to the mass of the particles, i.e. e=mc2, is positive. The atom is actually lighter than the sum of its parts!
An atom that doesn't have negative binding energy, i.e. has "excess energy", has nothing binding the constituent particles together, since they have more than enough energy to go run free on their own. Therefore it is unstable. Elements with a small enough binding energy, small enough that random fluctuations can overcome it and make the atoms fall apart, are what we call radioactive elements.
Here's the most comprehensive peer-reviewed survey around:
We summarize the results of a recent statistical analysis of 216 nuclear energy accidents and incidents (events). The dataset is twice as large as the previous best available. We employ cost in US dollars as a severity measure to facilitate the comparison of different types and sizes of events, a method more complete and consistent that the industry-standard approach. Despite significant reforms following past disasters, we estimate that, with 388 reactors in operation, there is a 50% chance that a Fukushima event (or more costly) occurs every 60–150 years. We also find that the average cost of events per year is around the cost of the construction of a new plant. This dire outlook necessitates post-Fukushima reforms that will truly minimize extreme nuclear power risks. Nuclear power accidents are decreasing in frequency, but increasing in severity.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221462961...
Also consider that NPPs need cooling water so they are often located near rivers. As are population centers.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7151231_Estimates_o...
https://www.greenpeace.org/archive-international/Global/inte...
Anyway, about the first link: Wow, 40000 cancers attribuable in Europe by 2065 to Chernobyl, the worst nuclear accident in history. That sounds bad, until you finish reading the abstract, where the authors evaluate that impact as "several hundred million cancer cases are expected from other causes ... unlikely that the cancer burden from the largest radiological accident to date could be detected"
Try to compare with the number attributable to coal pollution now ?
Second link: Greenpeace, overtly being against nuclear power, will bring the biggest estimates of impact right ? Anyway, what they find is 200k additional deaths in Russia and Ukraine between 1990 and 2004 (first para page 9). But around 34M deaths were recorded in those territories in that time. By Greenpeace's own admission, 0.59% of those are attributable to Chernobyl.
Again, try to compare to coal pollution.
How can I? Who would provide that? Especially in Japan where politics and ignorance go hand in hand with avoidance to even talk about the whole thing or any disastrous event. The piles of white bags full of earth next to the roads in the region are the only silent reminders that something really bad happened there.
> Anyway, about the first link: Wow, 40000 cancers attribuable in Europe by 2065 to Chernobyl, the worst nuclear accident in history. That sounds bad, until you finish reading the abstract, where the authors evaluate that impact as "several hundred million cancer cases are expected from other causes
I don't understand what you want to say by that. Do you mean it's okay to ignore the fallout of this disaster because people die of cancer either way? I mean seriously. There are radioactively contaminated wild animals running around in Bavaria's forests today and the accident happened almost 2000km away. Can you imagine how Europe would look like if one of those old and leaking reactors in France goes sideways?
There is nothing to compare to besides a nuclear war.
I can understand it's a nice thing with this radioactive accidents. There is usually a small amount of people who die in a spectacular and direct way while the rest dies a silent deaths over a long period of time. It's very handy if you want to push a technology which is too expensive and outdated and the only other argument out there is the death count of accidents. But this is not the case. Renewables are coming while even gas is a better solution then building even one nuclear reactor and most of the people, Governments and energy providers got the message already. The people never wanted a nuclear waste dump or reactor in the neighborhood in the first place. The only people left are those directly profiting from the immense subsidies (nuclear lobby) and those who fell for the recent artificial hype created by this lobby.
It's time to face the facts: it's dead Jim.
And yes it as an yes or no question. Especially if you consider building a new reactor today and investing into that. It doesn't look like many people consider to vote "yes" on that now with the alternatives growing. It's also not a bridge technology. A gas or even oil power plant would be better then a decade long involvement in a nuclear plant.
It's done and we just can hope now that what's still there won't fall apart before it gets demolished.
Once you have a 100% fossil/bio-free grid, you can replace those pesky nuclear plants with hamster wheel power for all I care.
For those people, it has to be "clean renewables", with the speculation being that technology will fix all the issues with it. That ignores that maybe technology can also fix the issues with nuclear - and more readily so.
Renewables are not working right now (see Germany) and they aren't necessarily cleaner, considering that all this infrastructure needs to be produced with ordinary industrial processes.
Of course it's not an either-or, renewables can make more sense in some places and not so much in others.
I like nuclear but c'mon. Its clear that its not at an acceptable level of safety. Large scale disasters like Fukushima can't be hand waived away.
>Renewables are not working right now (see Germany)
What am I supposed to see from Germany? They're the largest electricity exporter in Europe.
> considering that all this infrastructure needs to be produced with ordinary industrial processes.
Is this not true of nuclear power?
Should Japan be building nuclear power plants in areas which are at risk of both? Probably not. Should that be stopping countries like Germany fro building them? Also not. The same standard doesn't have to apply everywhere.
I am no nuclear safety inspector, but I would argue that there's large variance in terms of safety in different nuclear installations. Not putting a nuclear plant next to a Tsunami-coast would be a major factor here.
> Large scale disasters like Fukushima can't be hand waived away.
Neither can the Bhopal disaster, yet we continue to engage in large-scale chemical production. It needs to be put into perspective.
> What am I supposed to see from Germany? They're the largest electricity exporter in Europe.
In terms of kilowatts, perhaps, but not economically. Energy prices in Germany are almost double those in France. Germany exports a lot of surplus wind energy, sometimes for negative prices just to keep the powerlines from overloading. Lack of wind needs to be compensated by dirty coal (50% of their energy mix) or import of (likely nuclear) energy from neighboring countries.
Without coal (or nuclear from the neighbors) the system would collapse. There are no means of storing the wind energy in a remotely economical fashion on the horizon and there are no obvious alternatives to wind (at least for Germany).
> Is this not true of nuclear power?
Yes, but nuclear power isn't considered "clean".
https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...
Cattenom is especially great for Luxembourg as it's the only country on this planet which is threatened in it's entirety by a nuclear disaster from a single nuclear reactor.
You should have seen through you charts that the small difference can't be related to the actual amount required in Germany. Germany sells more energy elsewhere...Much more: https://www.agora-energiewende.de/service/agorameter/chart/p... The main problem right now in Germany is that you don't have the transfer infrastructure to deliver the amounts of energy generated by renewables everywhere. https://www.energy-charts.de/energy_pie.htm?year=2019&month=... You also HAVE to let coal in even if you don't need it and turn renewables off because of standing contracts with the providers. Germany is still paying for coal plants that have been turned off because of this. This is the main reason why energy is so expensive in Germany. There are newly build coal power plants which will never run because nobody needs them. And the amount of renewables is rising: https://www.energy-charts.de/ren_share.htm?source=ren-share&...
PS. there is also Gas but you don't seem to care about all that I guess because I can't imagine how one could overlook that.
There is not a single reason for Germany to turn to nuclear again. Its time has passed and no, Germany doesn't need Frances nuclear power...
Wait, your country is building coal plants in 2019? At least reconvert them to gas or oil.
Otherwise I agree that the difference is small. Your country is probably exporting for cents at a dollar during wind peaks and importing at night when France sells surplus nuclear energy at a discount. The issue with many variable renewables in the mix is that you have to build excess transport capacity which only gets used during peaks. Not to mention that solar has 0.2 max capacity factor and wind around 0.45 - the difference between that and 1 is idling.
I don't get what you want to say with all that. Of course Norway is not expanding capacity. Why should they? Renewables are coming. Here and there. And if the US wants to deliver cheaper LPG, why shouldn't we buy it?
> Wait, your country is building coal plants in 2019? At least reconvert them to gas or oil.
You don't start building something like that the year before it's finished and no. There are no new coal plants planned. The exit from coal is planned and no the ones that have been finished last year or the year before and never been turned on will not be converted to gas or oil because nobody needs that too. How is it you don't get that? I gave you an overview over a whole years energy production in Germany. We're selling the stuff for cheap in masses.
Because it requires building a terminal in Hamburg or another Baltic port and a distribution pipeline. It's easier to keep buying from Russia.
What you do not understand is how energy is being produced/sold. Supply has to meet demand at all times, otherwise energy is sold at a discount or lost. Pure end of the year statistics don't mean much.
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...
Your figure of 19,5% only accounts for lignite, not hard coal.
The peer reviewed study I posted right here said the risks are underestimated.
It is still highly location specific though.
Might there be value in efficient energy transport using high voltage DC? There is probably a lot less fluctuation in power supply and usage if you sum up over larger areas (especially east-west, as you average out time-of-day effects)
https://reneweconomy.com.au/dispelling-the-nuclear-baseload-...
"The north German states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Schleswig-Holstein are already operating on 100% net renewable energy, mostly wind. The ‘net’ indicates trading with each other and their neighbours. They do not rely on baseload power stations."
These rather sparsely populated states combined make up for only 4.5 million of Germany's 83 million population. Germany still supplies 50% of its power with fossil fuels, of which coal makes up 35%.
It is also completely misleading to say that these states are 100% "net renewable". They're part of the national grid. Perhaps they're the places where disproportionately many wind turbines are deployed (e.g. on the coast).
Think about it, if Germany knew a way to fix the problem of base load, why haven't they implemented it? It couldn't be a problem of financing, they spent a huge amount of money on subsidizing renewables already.
"In 2014 the state of South Australia had 39% of annual electricity consumption from renewable energy (33% wind + 6% solar) and, as a result, the state’s base-load coal-fired power stations are being shut down as redundant. For several periods the whole state system has operated reliably on a combination of renewables and gas with only small imports from the neighbouring state of Victoria."
Same story, Australia nationally relies on 30% coal to support its base load. To even out peaks from renewables, natural gas is used. The idea that the "base load requirement" is a myth is in itself a myth. If you use the right numbers, they don't add up.
They are at the coast and it's not misleading since they produce much more and even have to turn off turbines. The nationwide peaks are also impressive: https://www.energy-charts.de/energy_pie.htm?year=2019&month=...
> Think about it, if Germany knew a way to fix the problem of base load, why haven't they implemented it?
Because of politics, money and lobbying. There are jobs in the coal industry especially in the east germany where Fascism is getting powerful. You don't want to lose those votes. There are also long running contracts with energy suppliers that force Germany to pay for coal plants who are not producing power at all. Wind turbines have to be turned off because the sparse power lines infrastructure is clogged with dirty power. Adding to that, there is a movement of people who are afraid of power lines nearby...and yes, there are many and they are slowing down the expansion of north-south infrastructure.
> Same story, Australia nationally relies on 30% coal to support its base load.
Yeah same story, Australia relies on their coal industry. Who wants to tell the voter that they'll cut those jobs and coal is being mined everywhere throughout the continent.
> The idea that the "base load requirement" is a myth is in itself a myth. If you use the right numbers, they don't add up.
As you have seen, the reasons why renewables are not even further and even more relevant are beyond the technically related reasons. Most of them are political and this is surely no reason to turn back to nuclear. Especially because the growth is there and it's unstoppable:
https://www.energy-charts.de/ren_share.htm?source=ren-share&...
It is clearly misleading to point at an island of green energy when there's coal all around it.
> Because of politics, money and lobbying. There are jobs in the coal industry especially in the east germany where Fascism is getting powerful.
That still doesn't add up. Just because you want to keep coal jobs alive doesn't mean you have to burn it at home. You can just export it, coal is valuable. The only reason you need subsidies is because extraction is too expensive when done by German labor.
> Wind turbines have to be turned off because the sparse power lines infrastructure is clogged with dirty power.
That's an "interesting" way to frame the high volatility of wind energy against the low volatility of other methods, when having to buffer that volatility is the main problem.
> As you have seen, the reasons why renewables are not even further and even more relevant are beyond the technically related reasons.
I haven't "seen" anything. No numbers, no calculations. I'm sure there's some impact of coal lobbying, but that can't be what prevents the development of alternatives. Germany has blown an incredible amount of subsidies into wind energy, so now you're telling me there's none left to solve its problems because of coal?
...which is the reason why they have to turn off turbines. And the reason why they keep this coal running is because nobody want's to kill jobs when there are elections incoming and the right wing party is on the run in the region.
> You can just export it, coal is valuable.
No, it's not. It's already heavy subsidized and coal in Poland or even further east is so cheap, it's still cheaper if you carry it through half of Europe. Most of the mines in Germany has been closed down because of this even before the environmental movement got popular. How do you not know this?
> That's an "interesting" way to frame the high volatility of wind energy against the low volatility of other methods, when having to buffer that volatility is the main problem.
No it's not. If I have cheap renewable energy but can't transfer it because I have to pay for coal, it's clogging the infrastructure. So just what I wrote.
> I haven't "seen" anything. No numbers, no calculations.
It's not like those are the 90s. You didn't even know how cheap coal is. Maybe you should invest some time googling. The information is out there.
> that can't be what prevents the development of alternatives. Germany has blown an incredible amount of subsidies into wind energy, so now you're telling me there's none left to solve its problems because of coal?
What are you talking about? https://www.energy-charts.de/ren_share.htm?source=ren-share&... This is the development of alternatives and it's not stopping or anything like that. Coal power plants are being turned off and there is already a deadline for them all. There is not even theoretical space for nuclear there.
1. https://www.planete-energies.com/en/medias/close/france-s-ov...
2. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...
Coal is clogging up the infrastructure...this is why wind generators have to be stopped. It's a very known fact here we even get it explained by power providers at the end of the year when they explain the bills and this is also the reason there are huge projects to expand the infrastructure. We even have to pay for coal plants which HAVE been turned off (especially in states which do not produce coal) because of the ongoing contracts. We have coal plants which never have been turned on and the company which build it now tries to sue for money from the tax payer for all those Euros lost or at least to cover the costs to remove it again...and no those lignite-fired plants are not that easy to fire up/down. That's why they run through even in East Germany where there is more then enough renewable energy.
And why should I look at Frances power mix (calling it "mix" is ridiculous...)? It's dangerous remains of a dead technology. Germany can only hope Fessenheim will finally be turned off before it falls apart and Luxembourg can hope that Cattenom doesn't eradicate it completely one day. Meanwhile Germany is exporting energy and has to turn off renewables after they dropped nuclear. There is no way back to that and only because France doesn't care about their nuclear waste (especially if it disappears in Sewersk),doesn't make it less of a problem. Germany will have to deal with that for decades and millennia to come even without a single new plant. Nobody wants the shit back here and all over the world. You need to finally face the facts. Meanwhile renewables grow further and further.
https://www.agora-energiewende.de/service/agorameter/chart/p...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...
TMI came within hours of being a monumental disaster.
Anything at level 5 ("3 Mile Island") and above is pretty serious.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Nuclear_Event_Sc...
Is it only me who is reminded of Iron Man 2 and the new element created by that hacked together accelerator in Tony Stark's basement?
As for the topic of the article: I would really find it interesting how much "bandwidth" (=kg/day) such a setup has and what the energy requirements are. If the process consumes more than half the energy that the fission process generated, is it still profitable then? Also, what are the byproducts? I can't really believe that this leaves stable lead and other things only behind.
Nuclear is anything but cheap. It's a net negative energy source, meaning the the electricity costs more to produce than it can be sold for. This is why the industry requires massive subsidies to stay alive. (If I recall correctly, the last round of subsidy in the US was over $50 billion.)
Nuclear power also requires massive amounts of carbon, as the uranium fuel must be mined and extensively processed before it is useful. The mining and milling process is horribly polluting and has ruined the land and water in many places on Earth.
Now, having said that, I certainly hope this guy can come up with a way to transmute radioactive elements with lasers. That would be terrific. But I'm doubtful.
It's not well known that the industry requires billions in government subsidies to even exist today. If taxpayers are footing the bill, that tells you that selling electricity isn't paying its own way.
Fewer people still know that nuclear plants are uninsurable, for somewhat obvious reasons. Government insurance for nuclear accidents is another huge subsidy that shows the industry isn't viable on its own.
For more info, see Helen Caldicott's excellent book, Nuclear Power is Not the Answer.
The press releases from plant owners who closed or cancelled their plans all cite negative economics as the reason.
Most likely, it's easier to just dismiss comments like mine if you're already pro-nuclear. It happens to me whenever I talk about nuclear here.
It's a $25 billion project which is several years late now. [2]
They are building two new generators which should each produce 1,215 MW of power. So that's ~$10 million per MW. Solar by comparison is about $1 million per MW, although a 1,215 MW solar installation would cover about 10 sq km.
I have to assume that solar, without any waste to process or high security requirements or chance of a meltdown, also has lower operating costs.
[1] - https://www.ajc.com/business/georgia-power-parent-after-vogt...
[2] - https://www.power-eng.com/articles/2018/08/vogtle-cost-upgra...
It can be as low as 12% [0], so divide your $/MW by the capacity factor to ascertain the true cost: something like $8 million/MW for solar in Swabia.
The numbers make a lot more sense with that. As I was typing it it didn’t seem right.
You are overestimating the effectiveness of protests and underestimating the effect of sentiment.
It isn't normal for a project to get shut down by protests; capital is already deployed, the government is already on side (having given the requisite approvals) and there is a lot of logistical momentum in place. A couple of protestors aren't going to slow down that sort of juggernaut.
On the flip side, sentiment has a huge impact on whether investors feel like funding cost-up-front ventures. It takes a decade to make the initial investment back, so they have to be confident that 2-3 distinct governments are not going to come up with a hare-brained energy policy that would disrupt the project's profits. They'd have to be very bold in the current environment, especially given the risk of the recent government activism in Germany spreading.
It isn't just possible, it is likely for a nuclear project to have some nonsensical change in standards applied to it by, ironically, anti-science environmentalists.
That said, I'm a fan of nuclear fission for power baseline. It has its warts, but it's better for us long term than coal or gas.
The idea that nuclear plants are net energy negative is very inaccurate. A 1 GWe plant runs for 60 years releases roughly 2000 PetaJoules of energy from atomic nuclei. Vastly less energy goes into building and operating the plant. They're massive, massive carbon-free energy sources.
But operation cost is high. There are lots of highly trained operators working 4 shifts. There are complex regulations, and safety upgrades after 9/11 and Fukushima.
As for insurance, if fossil plants had to pay insurance for the global warming they're causing, they'd be far far more uninsurable. Right now, fossil makes 85% of the world's energy. Would it be viable if it was liable for climate change? Not a chance. Also, nuclear energy kills fewer people per Watt*hour generated than almost all other energy sources. So why wouldn't it be insurable compared to the others? [3].
Nuclear subsidies in the USA are 1% of the total energy subsidies [1].
Helen Caldicott is not an authority on nuclear energy. She is the number 1 anti-nuclear activist in the world and has said countlessly many things that are wholly unsupported by even minor scrutiny [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2016_Energy-Related_Tax_P...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/apr/05/anti-n...
[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...
The nuclear industry externalizes their costs so that they don't ever hit the balance sheet.
What is "insurance for global warming?" That isn't even a thing. But government insurance for nuclear plants is very much a thing.
Wrong. Here is an IPCC meta-analysis reference from a consensus of scientists showing that it's very low, 12 gCO2-eq/kWh, on par with wind. Solar is 40. Natural gas is 490 [1]. See Table A.III.2 | Emissions of selected electricity supply technologies.
Think about it. There is 2,000,000x more energy in a kg of uranium than in a kg of coal or gas or oil or lithium. A single train car of uranium can power a nuclear reactor for a year, vs. a mile-long traincar per day for a equivalent power coal plant. Energy density is where nuclear shines. And shines it does! That's why it's exciting and useful for a carbon-free future. It's the only large-scale low-carbon energy source we have that runs 24/7 and can be installed in very many geographical locations. It also has a tiny overall footprint. This is why James Hansen and Jim Lovelock and Bill Gates are so excited about it.
Same data in graphical form too, if you prefer [2].
[1] https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5...
The nuclear industry regularly uses this technique of "nothing to see here" to hide the fact that all nuclear plants leak and discharge radiation. All produce waste with an un-fixable lifecycle.
As far as your Wikipedia link, it was uploaded by an individual person. No references there.
Helen Caldicott is widely respected and far more of an authority on the subject that you or I or the journalist at the Guardian whom you cite.
This stuff is incredibly well studied. [4]
The total number of premature deaths from burning fossil fuel is 7.3 million every single year. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_di...
[3] https://www.livescience.com/65450-weird-chernobyl-facts.html
[4] https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/b...
First of all, nuclear weaponry waste from WW2 and the Cold War are wholly unrelated to activities of civilian nuclear power. While the material is similar in nature, you do not need to melt commercial waste down into radioactive vats of acid to extract pure weapons-grade plutonium in order to make low-carbon commercial nuclear energy. The civilian waste is solid ceramic and sits on parking lots at nuclear sites, where multiple decades of waste can fit nicely on a small area. Again, that's the glory of high energy density.
For Chernobyl and Fukushima, people absolutely count the effects. For example, UNSCEAR's entire mission is to do just that [1]. So far the counts are in, ~60 direct deaths from Chernobyl plus up to 4000 early cancer deaths on top of a few million that would have occurred naturally (small increase). Up to 1 death from Fukushima. As it turns out, more people die from coal plants operating normally every day than have died from nuclear accidents ever.
> As far as your Wikipedia link, it was uploaded by an individual person. No references there.
That'd be Figure 2 from the CBO in [2].
Helen Caldicott is the laughing stock of many respectable scientists. Don't make me dig up some of the ridiculous stuff she's said. She's a true clown.
[1] https://www.unscear.org/docs/reports/2008/09-86753_Report_20...
[2] https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/115th-congress-2017-2018/re...
Oh please do, she truly is a quack.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/apr/05/anti-n...
Comment of mine about utility scale solar. Those plants don't require a lot of specialized skills to keep running. And they're fundamentally redundant. There aren't oopies that take them offline for 18 months.
For instance my dad managed wind tunnels. They typically ran in the late evening at the whim of the power companies schedule. Because that's when PG&E had the extra capacity. Otherwise there was no technical reason they needed to run at night.
So if the pricing structure for electricity means power is very expensive at night, a lot of current customers will just switch. Which will reduce the demand. In this case economics 101 gives the right answer.
France is highly powered by nuclear and is on the cheaper side of European cost of electricity. Not the cheapest, but cheaper than the average and especially so for being a major country.
Part of the reason France does so well is that 17% of its energy comes from recycled nuclear waste. That's not 17% of nuclear power is from waste, that's 17% of TOTAL power is just from waste.
Try coming up with a price for safely storing nuclear waste for the next few thousand years.
Quoting the article:
"Environmental group Greenpeace estimates that there’s a global stockpile of about 250,000 tons of toxic spent fuel spread across 14 countries, based on data from the International Atomic Energy Agency. Of that, 22,000 cubic meters—roughly equivalent to a three-meter tall building covering an area the size of a soccer pitch—is hazardous, according to the IAEA."
That's really not a lot. Who says we need to store this for thousands of years? There's no physical limit to what we can do with it, just economic limits. Future technology may well reduce this waste to nothing at an affordable price.
Let's be honest here, Greenpeace is an environmental group the same way PETA is an animal rights group.
One thing I think a lot of people forget is that many of the same problems that nuclear has are issues with other power sources. For example, coal also has radioactive waste. To put it into perspective, an average coal plant produces 5-10 tonnes of Uranium and Thorium ash per year.[0] Let alone the 400tonns of coal ash. I should also note that ash is more dangerous.
I'm not trying to say here that these aren't concerns. But I'm trying to say that when people mention these things that it always feels either uninformed or disingenuous. There is an issue of scale, so if the concern is about radioactive contaminants then we should be prioritizing the one that is producing more.
> That's really not a lot.
Which shows an understanding of scale (which is difficult). For reference, total waste per person from most nuclear powered countries is about a liter bottle per year, which only ~3% is high level waste[1] (~30ml, < a 10th of a soda can). So taking into account the scale, even when including toxicity and radioactivity, it is still one of the cleanest forms of energy we have. But the reason for that is scale. More radioactive, more toxic, but magnitudes less waste.
[0] https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/do-coal-fired-power-sta...
[1] Only shows UK, but it is relatively similar waste levels across most countries. https://nuclearpoweringvision2020.wordpress.com/2010/09/30/h...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv-mFSoZOkE
Most of the issues with nuclear waste are proliferation related. That's why it's stored and not given away to let's say Iran.
You can see what it looks like if you want to build a new one now in France here[1]:
"Two EPR reactors under construction in France and Finland are years behind schedule and billions of euros over budget."[...]"Building a single EPR in 2030 would require 4 to 6 billion euros of subsidies"
[1]https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/10/reuters-america-building-new...
I'm personally more interested in seeing Thorium reactors re-visited, as Thorium is much more prevalent in the earth, can't be used to produce weapons-grade Plutonium, is much safer, more stable, yields fissile products with much shorter half-lives, and so on. That's not to say there aren't challenges but I think this would be something worth investing in. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power
The reasons that thorium reactors don't work aren't because people don't like nuclear. They don't work for technical reasons.
Besides, this story is about uranium power and that's where all our problems lie today. Even if we had thorium reactors tomorrow, we still have over 100 nuke plants in the US that would need to be de-commissioned along with all the waste they've already created -- and that's billions more in subsidies.
The lack of investment into Thorium (and into nuclear power in general) had a lot to do with Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and of course much more recently Fukushima. [2] On my chart, that would be the giant slump in 1986 and 2012 (what could that have been?). It became far harder to secure funding for any kind of nuclear research because people lost their taste for it, and frankly, the remaining funding came from governments so they could have a steady supply of fissile material for weapons. This kind of research requires huge capital outlay. [5]
Thorium is far more efficient per unit weight (1T is equal to 200T of uranium and 3.5MT of coal), a lot more abundant, safer (from a stability perspective, and also from a non-proliferation perspective) and requires some of the waste products (such as Plutonium) from traditional reactors because it's fertile, not fissile. [4] As such, nuclear waste can be utilized by thorium reactors.
This is all very well documented ([1,2,4,5]).
Uber doesn't work because of its unit economics, but that's a totally unrelated conversation we can leave up to the judgement of the public markets to resolve. [3]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power
[2] https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-a...
[3] https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/11/can-uber-ever-delive...
[4] http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and...
[5] https://www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2012/02/16/the-thi...
Sure it can. Thorium breeder reactors do not burn Thorium as Thorium is not fissile. Thorium is fertile and a blanket of Thorium is used to generate fissile Uranium. It's pretty straightforward to introduce U-238 into the U-233 from the Thorium. Then at that point it's no different than breeding Plutonium in a traditional reactor.
The difference is that Plutonium is an unavoidable waste product for traditional reactors but you don't need to produce it operating a Thorium molten salt reactor.
Not a coincidence that nuclear power plants have been mostly built during the cold war. Or that nuclear power is inextricably linked with nuclear weapons in the minds of defence people (see Iran).
However, there's no actual need for this, and a pacifist nuclear power program could be very economically viable. But there wouldn't be any government subsidies for it, of course, because it would be useless militarily.
I'm sure it doesn't, because it's patently false.