US companies partner on nuclear recycling technology
world-nuclear-news.org
world-nuclear-news.org
Oh all of the potential opportunities we lost
Is this a reference to the Yucca mountain nuclear waste facility?
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_rep...
Do you mean they will be used for waste processing?
Fossil fuels: what are you going to do with the waste?
We don't need nuclear!
You're going to need a lot of batteries. A lot of batteries. The world uses 60 TWh of electricity per day. So 12 hours of storage would be 30 TWh, or 30,000 GWh. By comparison global annual lithium ion battery production is about 300 GWh.
Additionally, it's obvious there are many other things we can do besides just match current consumption with renewables. We can and must mandate less wasteful consumption. Anyone who has flown at night in a window seat knows just how much energy is being wasted on completely pointless night time signage and lighting for businesses that are closed, as just one small example.
Regardless, nuclear and its permanent poisoning of the earth is not the answer.
> Regardless, nuclear and its permanent poisoning of the earth is not the answer.
By "poisoning the earth" you mean burying extremely small amounts of uranium half a kilometer under the ground. The entirety of the USA's nuclear waste from power generation fits in a volume the footprint of a football field and 10 yards high. That's 70 years of nuclear waste.
By comparison, renewables + natural gas is poisoning the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. And there's no plan to operate wind and solar without natural gas until a breakthrough storage solution is discovered.
Citation needed, just looking and the temporal storage facilities of a single nuclear power plant is bigger than a football field.
> 5. Nuclear fuel is extremely dense
>Because of this, the amount of used nuclear fuel is not as big as you think.
> All of the used nuclear fuel produced by the U.S. nuclear energy industry over the last 60 years could fit on a football field at a depth of less than 10 yards.
btw, in case a football field at a depth of 10 yards sounds small: http://www.ccnr.org/max_plute_aecb.html#1
What's disingenuous about it? I guess there's used concrete that needs to be cleaned up, but used concrete is hardly unique to nuclear plants.
Also, your link about plutonium overdoses seems like a non-sequitur. Most spent fuel is uranium, not plutonium. Furthermore, chances of it contaminating people when that waste is buried 400 meters underground beneath impermeable rock is zero. The only things that would make it get into the ecosystem is deliberate excavation, or maybe a meteor strike kicking.
Low level rad waste still has cumulative health exposure risks, subject to many requirements for proper handling and disposal. there are lots of materials "not unique to nuclear plants" which do become irradiated once used in a nuclear plant.
BTW in hanford washington each year 10% of the DoE's budget goes to preventing plutonium leaking into a river, a lot of hubris to trivialize the geoengineering involved in designing a "zero risk" containment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear...
Both times they've claimed it showed demand is flat, when it very, very clearly shows a daily variation in power usage that correlates with sunlight hours.
Was that you as well or am I missing something obvious that everyone else can see?
Also, you know there's no plan to run a nuclear grid without natural gas and/or storage right? This isn't new information so it feels like your sources are more anti-reneweable than pro-nuclear if they've convinced you this is a reason to prefer nuclear.
Nuclear does not require energy storage, its power output can be modulated by more aggressively cooling the reactor. Plants don't do this because they want to operate at 100% capacity as much as they can, it's not that nuclear plants can't modulate power output as is commonly stated.
But somehow the "nuclear is bad" people are fine with coal plants throwing literal radioactive fumes on the atmosphere and prefer that to nuclear plants
So color me skeptic the worry is legitimate
Solar and lithium batteries are currently forecast to supply a big chunk of the world's power, cheaper and more cleanly than our current options (both nuclear and fossil).
This cheap power will actually be part of the long term carbon reduction steps we'll probably need to do at some point because the transition to carbon fees and renewables was stalled for so long. Theres easier things we can do first though, like building lots of PV and using that power instead of fossil fuels.
EV charging and desalination are both good targets for demand response of renewables.
PV production is not hard to scale or carbon intense, and even if it was you'd be able to offset it against the carbon free output they produce.
Solar is cheap. Nuclear is cheaper than coal and gas, but more expensive than renewables when externalities are included. They're at the point when they're cheaper even without taking externalities into account which is important, as some people will not care about prices they are not directly paying, and other people really don't like government intervention in markets. Nuclear will never achieve this, despite actually being cheaper than fossil fuels.
We dont need nuclear. We'll probably build more globally and end up with about 10% of increased electricity demand coming from nuclear as part of the transition away from fossil fuels but we dont need it.
What we really don't need is people lying about renewables, even if hiding it behind sarcasm to make it harder to call out.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse_gas_emis...
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PCPOST_BabcockWilcox_Trai...
The unincorporated externalities make nuclear much more expensive in comparison to solar/wind.
Nuclear does not have to cover for the eventualities of an accident, their cost does not include long term storage to name just 2.
It can reasonably offset coal, but needs peaking powerplants to meet customers variable demand. Which means it comes into conflict with much cheaper but less reliable wind and solar.
Solving that isn’t simple a question of solving say construction costs. We need to downsize from a 1,000 person workforce at a large scale power plant, and dramatically reduce insurance costs, and dramatically reduce construction costs, and dramatically reduce refueling costs, and dramatically reduce maintenance costs, and dramatically reduce decomisiniong costs. The less any one of those gets cut the more the others must be.
Consider, scheduled maintenance on a nuclear power plant is several weeks at a time. That’s ok if seasonal demand drops significantly and you have other sources to pick-up the slack but the higher your nuclear percentage the larger problem this becomes. It's issues like that which is why most countries have sub 40% nuclear generation and have been like that for decades.
The way you've phrased this, it sounds like there is some other zero-carbon energy source that is better at offsetting fossil fuels.
Take a look at France's electric grid, and the province of Ontario. They're both majority nuclear (75% and 65% respectively), they're both >90% carbon-free (with much of the remainder, indeed, being gas). Now show me a different grid that has a lower proportion of gas (regardless of whether or not it has any nuclear). Or a different grid that has lower CO2 per MWh. (there aren't any)
The real issue with Frances nuclear reactors: they are all over 20 years old, and 51/58 of them are over 30 years old. If they don't get on building replacements asap, they won't have any functional reactors.
Construction started in 2007, for a delivery scheduled in 2012.
Its total cost is already nearly 6 times its budget, and will not be delivered before 2023.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)#Flamanvi...
Regardless, the big problem here isn't specific to the nuclear plant design, but rather public project management (a field I have pretty deep insight into). The same can be seen in most multi-billion dollar projects with high political input and public visibility, whether it be a highway or a bridge or a transit line or an airport.
12.6 billions € are the construction costs right now (the reactor isn't running: they may raise), not the total cost which includes financial fees. Delayed delivery means that loan reimbursements are late because production didn't begin. The total cost, as established by the French Cour of audit («Cour des comptes») was, mid-2020, 19.1 billion € (additional costs and delays were since announced).
Proof: https://www.ccomptes.fr/fr/publications/la-filiere-epr
Pertinent newspaper article: https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2019/06/24/epr-....
Many mega projects indeed have such burdens, however this extent seems pretty rare and such boo-boos showing a lack of understanding of a very dangerous equipment aren't re-insuring.
Here's an article I saw yesterday talking about how most big transit projects in Canada are over budget and over schedule. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/09/world/canada/transit-cons...
> such boo-boos showing a lack of understanding of a very dangerous equipment aren't re-insuring.
On the contrary, I find the fact that all four projects ended up over schedule and over budget rather shows that the design didn't adequately consider constructability. The issues the French project seems to be addressing in the latest delays (weld/pipe issues) seem similar to issues it is also correcting in a number of reactors that have operated for ~twenty years.
As far as I understand the main reasons are that many unplanned difficulties arise because work has to be done in populated areas, creating (sometimes) huge surprises and side-effects (residents fighting against the project), and letting a contractor managing the project reveals that the gov isn't at ease. Building yourself (managing companies: Areva/Framatome then EDF all pertain to the government) a new reactor in a plant you own (without any resident nor tier-infrastructure) is a totally different matter: most burdens threatening Canadian's transit sector simply aren't there.
The French reactor was planned to be delivered form 3.4 billion € and after 5 years. It will cost at least 19.9 billion € and will be at least 11 years late.
I agree with your last paragraph. Delivering then exploiting without any fuss is key (the proof is in the pudding), the industry (Framatome's videos are impressive) made patent progress and the EPR in France may start in 2023: let's wait.
Provisioning enough nuclear to meet peak demand is certainly feasible, assuming you measure in dollars, environmental impact or human deaths.
Of course, building a mix of renewables and nuclear would be even better, but let's not pretend clean, essentially limitless power production hasn't been a solved technical problem for 50+ years.
Nuclear actually kills more peolle as it’s a more dangerous construction job and on top of that has the occasional accident. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...
We'd need 1000x more nuclear deaths per watt hour to match coal.
That's multiple Chernobyl's per year. We'd be better off "decommissioning" old plants by yanking out the control rods than we are building more coal plants.
Every other coal project has been canceled, with none being constructed or even planned at this point. Coal’s share of production fell from 51% in 2001 to 20% and it just keeps dropping. In absolute numbers it’s a more modest 40% drop, but still falling.
Nuclear is unfortunately a poor replacement for peaking power plants like natural gas. The technology isn’t at issue just the costs relative to solar/wind backed battery systems.
~90% of new generation in the US is carbon free, that’s changing the landscape not simply having the same 3X% of electricity come from nuclear for 40+ years.
Quite simply nuclear stagnated in 2000 the world produced 2,590 TWh of nuclear, 31.3 of wind, 0.8 from Grid PV. By 2019 that jumped to 2,789 nuclear, 1,427 wind, and 681 Grid PV. In 2020, renuables where 29% of all commercial electricity generation while nuclear was 10%.
PS: Diablo Canyon produced ~12.6 TWh per year at the rate things are going with wind and solar that’s going to be replaced in about 40 days.
https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix
which tells a different story.
It even shows 2021 numbers as 2,735 nuclear, 1,813 Wind, and 1,023 solar. So counter to your previous point Wind + Solar > Nuclear. With Hydro at 4,206; Wind + hydro + solar > 2.5 times nuclear.
We are at the point where 1 year of solar PV growth (2020 to 2021 = 189 TWh) is more than the last 20 years of nuclear growth (2001 to 2021 = 163 TWh) and solar keeps accelerating.
About 10 years ago I saw a few major installation put in in my area (upstate NY) and also I could see solar roof installers all over the place.
I don't see anywhere near the activity I saw back then, which I'd expect to see if there was a huge solar boom and it was evenly distributed.
Globally: https://solarpower.guide/solar-energy-insights/largest-solar...
In the US it’s largely California, Arizona, Texas, and Nevada. https://list.solar/plants/largest-plants/solar-plants-usa/
There is a plan to put a 13,000 acre solar farm in Indiana, but generally northern areas get what look like large solar farms but are far smaller scale. Even 50 acres looks massive from up close and can significantly offset local consumption but doesn’t represent a big project.
(I am charitably assuming that you know enough about renewals to know that they are not currently a realistic replacement for the entirety of FFs.)
Nuclear power is not needed and it is worse than fossil fuels. Renewables with battery storage can be 100% of our power. We just have to stop being distracted by the fossil fuel and nuclear industries who keep telling us we can't do it.
> By stuffing them in a mountain and putting signs outside that we hope people in 10,000 years will understand means death is inside?
You can visit the Elephants foot safely today. Nuclear fuel is no where as deadly as you make it out to be.
> Renewables with battery storage can be 100% of our power. We just have to stop being distracted by the fossil fuel and nuclear industries who keep telling us we can't do it.
No it cannot. 100% Battery storage would cost trillions and be beset by toxic waste that is toxic forever and since it's a consumable and need to be replaced every decade. It's a full non starter.
Compare that to the tiny amount of spent nuclear waste which is solid, can be safely stored or even recycled.
Nuclear is a solution which works well right now. No need for fantasy battery technologies which would be better used in transportation anyways.
Visit. No one can live there. Parts of the earth are off limits because of nuclear errors. And there will be more as long as we continue to use nuclear power.
I am not overstating anything, you are buying into nuclear industry propaganda. Nuclear waste is deadly for millennia. People have ideas on how to recycle it, but none of them work today. Not one. Nor do we have any reasonable belief they will be soon. But the nuclear industry pushes these ideas to try to reduce resistance to nuclear power.
> No it cannot. 100% Battery storage would cost trillions
So would replacing all fossil fuel power with nuclear.
> and be beset by toxic waste that is toxic forwver and since it's consumable and need to be replaced every decade.
Lithium Ion batteries can be recycled today. Not some hope that a promising idea will become viable in the future. Today. When we are talking about grid load backup they do not need to be replaced every decade. They have a much longer useful life than that. My Nissan Leaf is 8 years old and still using the original battery pack which still has 100% capacity. Yes that is not a typo. I also still have a 2012 Retina MacBook Pro which still has its original battery. That does not have 100% capacity but it still functions and I have no need to replace it. When we are talking grid storage batteries they can degrade extremely significantly and still be useful. They will not degrade 100% in 10 years. When they do reach the end of their useful life they can be recycled.
Lastly, that you try to claim that battery production waste is worse than nuclear waste is beyond absurd. You have bought in way too much to nuclear industry propaganda.
https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc785510/
the fission products are less radioactive than the original uranium in 500-1000 years.
Lithium mines, rare earth mineral mines, and other mines which are used for battery technology and electric motors are contaminated, forever, with ground water contamination which is much more dangerous than the solid spent nuclear fuel of a Reactor. Those sites will never be livable for humans.
>Nuclear waste is deadly for millennia.
Extremely long half life's mean that a material is extremely low in radioactivity. Meaning that it's actually quite safe to be around. It's short half lives which you should be worried about, but those also become safer more quickly. Given the nature of depleted nuclear fuel, it doesn't have a risk of leaching, nor does it have a risk of accidental ingestion. You are much safer near it than you are near a coal plant.
>Lastly, that you try to claim that battery production waste is worse than nuclear waste is beyond absurd. You have bought in way too much to nuclear industry propaganda.
Nuclear waste is the only toxic waste in the world which becomes non toxic at some point. That's a miracle. And the fact that you only need about a coke can volume of material to provide enough power for your entire natural life is a second miracle. Compared to the literal tons of lead, lithium, neodymium, and other materials that will be required for your alternative, the numbers start stacking in one side's favor.
> Lithium Ion batteries can be recycled today. Not some hope that a promising idea will become viable in the future. Today.
Lithium ion battery recycling is more expensive than new battery production. The toxic batteries are melted down to extract lithium from them. But let's say that it's the same price, or even half the price of new batteries. That's still an enormous amount that will have to be spent remanufacturing the batteries. Just because your car or laptop still operates with worn down batteries and you don't mind lower capacity doesn't mean that will scale just dandy to a grid solution. The failure case of your laptop dying prematurely is not nearly as big of a deal as brown outs or black outs because it's not sunny or windy enough.
How long will it be until parts of the earth are inhabitable due to climate change? There will be more as long as we continue to neglect nuclear power.
>When we are talking grid storage batteries they can degrade extremely significantly and still be useful
I doubt it. It will be a major blow to energy efficiency.
>Lastly, that you try to claim that battery production waste is worse than nuclear waste is beyond absurd. You have bought in way too much to nuclear industry propaganda.
Nuclear waste is extremely manageable compared to mining waste.
A 10 megawatt project I was adjacent to that would cycle the batteries every day estimated 5 years.
Im not really convinced that a set of baseline nuclear + renewables + batteries to handle peaking isn’t the way to go
Lithium is extremely plentiful on the earth. Today's mining methods -- like all of today's mining -- have more negative environmental impacts than anyone would like, but this is not a reason to go nuclear, it's a reason to regulate the industry and require better practices.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup#Cos...
AFAIK nobody (here) advocates fossil fuel. Usually it is about nuclear/renewable.
"Renewables" is really wind and solar supplementing fossil fuels. There's no realistic plan for a predominantly intermittent grid without some form of dispatchable source backing periods of non-production. If that happens to be a hydroelectric dam, great. But for most regions that means fossil fuels. So advocating renewables is advocating fossil fuels in effect.
In 2016, Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry estimated ((...)) decontamination costs estimated to rise from ¥2.5 trillion (US$22 billion) to ¥4 trillion (US$35 billion), costs for interim storage of radioactive material to increase from ¥1.1 trillion (US$10 billion) to ¥1.6 trillion (US$14 billion), and costs of decommissioning reactors to increase from ¥2 trillion (US$17 billion) to ¥8 trillion (US$69 billion).
The very amount of backup needed by a renewable-based system can be reduced by adequately spreading-out production units: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/180592/european-cooperation-...
Energy storage (hydro... V2G has a huge potential: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid) and curtailment further reduce it.
A dispatchable source ('backup') isn't necessarily fossil-fuel-burning: green-hydrogen-fueled gas turbines are clean: https://global.kawasaki.com/news_211209-2e.pdf This very green hydrogen can be produced thanks to (clean!) renewable units overproduction.
Even fully-nuclearized France produces around 9% of its electricity thanks to such 'backup' (today: fossil-fuel burning plants). Red surfaces: https://www.statistiques.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/editi... 9% is 33 days per year, that's quite a margin.
Hydrogen storage has significant technological barriers. Nobody has successfully deployed a hydrogen grid storage facility so far. There's no telling when, or if, these barriers will be overcome.
France can build more nuclear plants to drive down it's fossil fuel use. But no amount of overproduction will make a solar plant produce electricity at night, or wind turbines on a windless day. For that reason, "renewables" is really renewables plus fossil fuels. While France uses 9% fossil fuels Germany, the biggest renewables stan, uses fossil fuels and biomass (which gets a green label but is often even more polluting than fossil fuels) for just under 40% of it's electricity. Not much of a win for renewables.
On matters such as those (vast, gov-funded, lengthy and intrinsically new projects) largely under-estimating seems way (way!) more probable to me.
> Nobody has successfully deployed a hydrogen grid storage facility
Indeed (this is a work in progress, and may indeed not be possible), however the industry already uses huge amounts of H (therefore short-term storage for intermittency compensation is possible), and more and more vehicles do so (therefore a quite large distribution network for intermittent consumers is possible).
> France can build more nuclear plants
France already tries to builds a new nuclear reactor ("EPR") since 2007, it is way over budget and over schedule.
As for renewables intermittency: I answered in my previous post.
> While France uses 9% fossil fuels Germany, the biggest renewables stan, uses fossil fuels
This comparison seems absurd to me.
France launched its nuclearization in the 1970's, while very rich ("30 Glorieuses)", industrial, and it was a strategic case (continuation of the "atomic bomb" program and therefore benefiting from military credits + oil crisis), and the need (electricity consumed) was 3 times lower than it is now, using reactors existing since the 1950's. It then took 25 years to build the nuclear fleet.
Germany isn't as (relatively) rich and industrial as it was in the 1970's (after many crisis since the 1990's), there is a quite strong "the climate crisis isn't really a strategic top-priority form most governments" (even in Germany) argument, really launched its transition in 2011, and it uses very-quickly evolving technologies.
> biomass (which gets a green label but is often even more polluting than fossil fuels)
This is more nuanced: some are rather clean.
Incorrect. We have plenty of experience working with hydrogen produced by steam reformation. But that emits CO2, and thus cannot be used for energy storage. The vast amounts of hydrogen produced for ammonia production does not translate into usable infrastructure for hydrogen electric storage.
Energy storage is a problem that has resisted an effective solution for a long time. There's no guarantee we'll find a good storage system 20 years from now or 200 years from now.
> France launched its nuclearization in the 1970's, while very rich ("30 Glorieuses)", industrial, and it was a strategic case (continuation of the "atomic bomb" program and therefore benefiting from military credits + oil crisis), and the need (electricity consumed) was 3 times lower than it is now, using reactors existing since the 1950's. It then took 25 years to build the nuclear fleet.
So investing in nuclear yielded great reductions in CO2 emissions, and brought fossil fuel use to near zero.
> Germany isn't as (relatively) rich and industrial as it was in the 1970's (after many crisis since the 1990's), there is a quite strong "the climate crisis isn't really a strategic top-priority form most governments" (even in Germany) argument, really launched its transition in 2011, and it uses very-quickly evolving technologies.
So Germany invested in renewables and even after more than 30 years of investment it hasn't seen nearly as big a reduction in CO2 emissions.
Again you're making a very strong case for nuclear, renewables not so much.
> Incorrect. We have plenty of experience working with hydrogen produced by steam reformation. But that emits CO2
Not pertinent: I was writing about green hydrogen (no CO2 emissions), as stated above: "green-hydrogen-fueled gas turbines".
> cannot be used for energy storage
Many factories do have hydrogen tanks, the unknown territory is storing huge amounts of it in the long term (ongoing experiments try to use salt caves), both goals not necessary for the electrical system.
> Energy storage is a problem that has resisted an effective solution for a long time
There was no incentive, as fossil fuels are incredibly convenient.
>> France
> So investing in nuclear yielded great reductions in CO2 emissions
Not-so great, if you consider that electricity is only at max a quarter of consumed (final) energy, and also the total amount of emissions (taking into account importations): abstaining from emitting is easy if other nations are producing goods for you. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-co2-embedded-in-tra...
> and brought fossil fuel use to near zero.
In France 9% of electricity is produced by burning fossil fuel.
In France fossil fuels remain the main source of energy: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fossil-fuels-share-energy...
>> Germany >> really launched its transition in 2011
> So Germany invested in renewables and even after more than 30 years of investment
Sorry but 2011 to now is 11 years, not 30
> it hasn't seen nearly as big a reduction in CO2 emissions.
Starting from a way higher amount of consumed energy, in a way more difficult context (crisis...), without de-industrializing as much as France... in 2010 Germany's emission intensity were 471 (before shuting down many nuclear reactors) and in 2020 314. This is a pretty good result! France also reduced its emissions, but only thanks to renewable sources (no new nuclear reactor since 1999, because an attempt to build a new one, ongoing since 2007, fails) https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/daviz/co2-emission-i...
Huh?
>We don't just have to stuff it in a mountain and pretend it doesn't exist.
What is your problem with the current state of nuclear waste management? Seems pretty safe to me. I mean, you already seem to pretend that background and cosmic radiation doesn't exist.
>regulate the industry and require better practices.
... Which will inevitably increase costs.
Nuclear power is inherently too risky for its benefits. It creates too many opportunities for human error to cause irreversible damage.
When a solar farm gets hit by an earthquake it might stop working. When a wind farm gets hit by the storm of the century it might fall over. Nuclear reactors present existential threat and we have no need for it.
More important, once-through is not available. They closed Yucca Mountain so we have to do something else with the waste.
Ignoring the rest of your grossly misinformed statement, this absurdity alone should give you pause.
The "gold standard" today is to pulverize plutonium oxide together with uranium oxide in a high energy ball mill which produces homogeneous fuel that won't come apart. That makes nanoparticles of plutonium which you could potentially inhale and have lodge deep in your lungs. Experiments in dogs show a single particle can develop a cancerous tumor.
Handling the fuel pellets is a high touch operation (you gotta pick up the pellets with gloves and load them in the fuel rod) and there's a lot of controversy about safety. France has workers at COGEMA wear a respirator all the time, the U.S. doesn't accept that as safe working conditions. Both the U.S. and U.K. failed to import mixed oxide technology from France.
Russia was looking at a different method of fuel processing they called "vibropacking" but for
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-800_reactor
they adopted something like the French process.
Some advance in remote handling that keeps workers away from the dust would be welcome.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/26/16030222/fukushima-nuclea...
The trouble at Hanford was that the current methods for reprocessing produce a stream of fission product raffinates that they originally stored in liquid form in tanks. Later on the technology was developed to trap the fission products in glass which is not too hard to dispose of (and that decays mostly in 500 years) but the Hanford tanks had started to fail before then.
Future reprocessing plants will store liquid waste temporarily but like THORP in the UK and COGEMA in France they will plan on vitrification from day one.
My comment was more on humanoid robots being powered by small nuclear batteries.