tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post7722075400279394532..comments2023-10-10T08:02:18.073-04:00Comments on Rationally Speaking: Understanding Nuclear Power, Part 3: Fission reactorsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-49016642331812751672012-06-28T07:09:06.588-04:002012-06-28T07:09:06.588-04:00I like Helen Caldicott and her data may be reliabl...I like Helen Caldicott and her data may be reliable, but it's nuke or the vege patch (sustainability), and it will take a while to wind down. 6 billion, half in deprivation rising every day, nuke may need to be a buffer, but its too balanced to be anything more than an attitude on my part.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14612283941807324298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-62286857957060805432012-06-27T10:33:03.203-04:002012-06-27T10:33:03.203-04:00Some additional points made in the "San Onofr...Some additional points made in the "San Onofre" editorial: <br /><br />* more sophisticated techniques have discovered that there are greater seismic threats to San Onofre than previously believed (at the time of licensing).<br /> <br />* use of seawater by the plant is damaging marine life. This is really a story in itself (not in the editorial). Environmentalists warned of this result. San Onfre got licensed over the objections of environmentalists on the promise that it would create a marine life refuge to "offset" the sea life that they would be killing. After the license was granted, they subsequently wormed their way out of the expense of the "offset". In a closed door meeting, the compliant people at the NRC were only too happy to agree to let them off the hook: Let the PUBLIC bear the cost of lower quality environment, while the industry takes the profits and crows about how "cheap" nuclear power is. <br /><br />* the editorial noted "there's still no solution to the problem of how to store nuclear waste.Tom D.https://www.blogger.com/profile/16005219519644708237noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-40326255585718206172012-06-27T10:29:53.086-04:002012-06-27T10:29:53.086-04:00Since there seems to be a paucity of comments here...Since there seems to be a paucity of comments here, allow me to buttress my previous comments with two recent newspaper articles. <br /><br />(1) "Energy Department Steps In to Help Uranium Enrichment Company" [New York Times, 06/14/2012]<br /><br />Via the U.S. Department of Energy, the taxpayers are taking over tons of left-over uranium from a company called USEC. This uranium is considered to be WASTE and is worthless on the open market. Indeed, USEC lists the left-over uranium as a LIABILITY, and rightly so, since it would cost money to dispose of it. Taxpayers will pay USEC $88 million dollars for this trash, and perhaps an additional $190 million in aid to the same company. The government handouts going to the company are more than the entire company is worth!<br /><br />This is the manner in which nuclear fuel is "cheap" -- enormous government subsidies. <br /><br />(2) "San Onofre's Cloudy Future" [Los Angeles Times editorial, 06/24/2012]<br /><br />Several points are made in this editorial. San Onofre is my local nuclear power plant. There is a "flaw" in the generators that cost the ratepayers $671 million to build. The tubes vibrate too much, which causes excessive wear, and it is a very expensive replacement. Who will pay for that? Not Mitsubishi Industries (maker of the generators). Mitshubishi EXPLICITLY EXCLUDES themselves from liability in their contract. Strange, that people who build generators and claim that they are safe and cheap will not accept the liability. The costs are always fobbed off on the ratepayers, or taxpayers in general, while the industry takes the profits (see the "Price Anderson Act"). <br /><br />The tube problem occurred because the new generators were represented as being nearly identical to the old ones -- allowing them to be "fast tracked". The NCR was only too happy to agree, without bothering to note that the tube design was, in fact, very different -- hence the vibration problem.Tom D.https://www.blogger.com/profile/16005219519644708237noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-56820300802868670072012-06-15T08:52:06.316-04:002012-06-15T08:52:06.316-04:00Nonsense! How can you say that using sloppy proce...Nonsense! How can you say that using sloppy procedure in one case will necessarily balance out with sloppy procedure used in another case?<br /><br />The not calculated costs for nuclear may be much higher than the not calculated costs for gasoline, particularly since the cost for nuclear *should* (but often doesn't) include costs for disposal and seclusion of waste that can remain dangerous for thousands of years -- a problem that remains, as yet, unsolved. You can't even put a price tag on it because no one knows how to solve the problem at any price.Tom D.https://www.blogger.com/profile/16005219519644708237noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-31594494685852550802012-06-14T23:24:53.848-04:002012-06-14T23:24:53.848-04:00"Not counted here is the energy required to m..."Not counted here is the energy required to mine the uranium and process it so that the energy can be extracted. Also not counted is the energy required to construct the plant. Decommissioning costs, transportation costs are also not included here."<br /><br />True, but I also didn't include drilling, transport, cleanup etc. energy for gasoline, so the comparison is still pretty much apples-to-apples.ianpollockhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15579140807988796286noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-42304739859529490122012-06-14T12:07:35.953-04:002012-06-14T12:07:35.953-04:00RE: "Nuclear Options" / "Do the Mat...RE: "Nuclear Options" / "Do the Math":<br /><br />The "Do the Math" slogan goes up my nose a bit: it implies that people who disagree with the conclusions have *not* done the math.<br /><br />In truth, math works on a "garbage in, garbage out" principle. Math can only calculate the factors that are input. It is no more infallible than the assumptions you make. <br /><br />Sec. of State McNamara committed this error in the conduct of the Vietnam War. He stubbornly pointed to statistics "proving" that he was winning the war <br />without considering that the statistics he relied upon were garbage based upon cherry-picked facts and distorted information. This was satirized in the movie<br />"Full Metal Jacket", when Private Joker asks if the blood trails found after a fire-fight should be reported as their platoon "killing a NVA General". <br /><br />I think the most interesting (but perhaps unwitting) point in the article is this: <br /><br />"Unlike solar or wind, nuclear will not be distributed, but will be centralized into large, expensive, high-tech facilities."<br /><br />The implications for democracy are not good.** When you have a large concentration of wealth and power the tendency is for the interests of the wealthy investors to run roughshod over the interests of the public. If you have billions invested in a power plant, you want that plant to operate and make a return on investment. You can't have some hippy environmentalist standing in the way and threatening to shut the plant down. The fact that the hippy environmentalist may be in the *right* is irrelevant. The money and power behind a nuclear project will take on a life of its own and, like a run-away freight train, it will crush anyone who dares stand in the way. What inevitably happens is that facts are re-interpreted, ignored, or kept secret if those facts interfere with profits. It is the avowed principle of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the Nuclear Industry be mainly "self policing". The NRC's approach to questions of safety is to evaluate them on a "cost/benefit" basis (their own words).<br /><br />The "cost/benefit" approach puts the cart before the horse: it assumes, a priori, that nuclear energy is cost effective, and then uses that assumption to evaluate the worth of safety regulations. If a regulation stands in the way of making a profit, then negative profits is taken as evidence that the proposed regulation must be unreasonable and too burdensome. <br /><br />It should be the other way around. Responsible people decide on regulations that *must* be met -- whether it is profitable to the investors or not. But it's not what happens in real life. <br /><br />** "In the mid-1980s the citizens of the three counties surrounding Three Mile Island voted by a margin of 3:1 to permanently retired TMI Unit One, which had been shut when Unit Two melted. The Reagan Administration trashed the vote and re-opened the reactor..." (Harvey Wasserman)Tom D.https://www.blogger.com/profile/16005219519644708237noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-5565245935066911432012-06-14T09:50:02.558-04:002012-06-14T09:50:02.558-04:00Speaking of "doing the math", I had some...Speaking of "doing the math", I had some problems with the math in the article. <br /><br />Tmurphy states that .7% of natural Uranium is U235. He then states that to get 600 tons of U235 we need to dig 800,000 tons. But when I divide 600 by .007, I get 85,714. <br /><br />Tmurphy:<br />"That works out to about 600 tons [of U235] per year. In terms of total uranium (235U is only 0.7%), we would therefore need to dig out about 800,000 tons yearly."<br /><br />Now perhaps tmurphy is talking about the total amout of *ore* you'd have to dig, not the amount of uranium oxide / yellowcake. In the U.S. the percentage of uranium oxide in the ore is about .05% to .3%. You'd have to dig about 333 to 2,000 tons of ore for each ton of uranium oxide (and get only .007 ton of U235 out of that). To come up with 800,000 you'd have to have an ore with about 10% Uranium Oxide in it (an un-heard of amount). It is hard for me to see where tmurphy gets his figure of 800,000.<br /><br />Tmurphy also states that 20 grams per second works out to 600 tons per year. I get 695 tons (20*60*60*24*365/907185) -- closer to 700 tons. Unless tmurphy is referring to metric tons, which would be about 630 tons per year.<br /><br />In my math, 20 grams of U235 per second requires 630 metric tons of U235 per year, which requires 90,000 metric tons of natural uranium per year [a Scientific American article puts the figure at 70,000 metric tons per year, using different initial asumptions] which requires that you dig and process anywhere from 30,000,000 to 180,000,000 tons of ore per year.Tom D.https://www.blogger.com/profile/16005219519644708237noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-88985160603503613312012-06-13T10:06:33.922-04:002012-06-13T10:06:33.922-04:00@rdbrown: Thanks for pointing out the "Nuclea...@rdbrown: Thanks for pointing out the "Nuclear Options" article. The author's opinion on nuclear is mainly "meh", but even this is being overly optimistic! <br /><br />The article states:<br /><br />"First of all, it is important to understand that a nuclear power plant operates in almost entirely the same way as a coal-fired plant. The chief difference is in the source of heat."<br /><br />Um, that's a pretty big difference! Like saying that the only difference between us is that you get your source of money from being a pharmacist, and I get my source of money from dealing black tar heroin. <br /><br />Also, the article never discusses the percentage of uranium in the ore that is needed to be economical. It even discusses extracting uranium from seawater! (While, at least, acknowledging that it is *not* economical!)<br /><br />Many decades ago, German scientists had a plan to pay off Germany's war debt: they would extract minute amounts of gold from seawater and use the gold to pay off the debt. You may notice that, decades later,<br />there are no gold extraction facilities located on the seashore. Of course, the cost to extract the gold from seawater far far far exceeds the value of gold so obtained.<br /> <br />Likewise, it is plain silly to discuss the energy in a kilogram of U235 without discussing the energy required to *obtain* the kilogram and the energy required for all the proper measures that should be taken to safely release that energy. <br /><br />Discussions of obtaining uranium from seawater is just a pie-in-the-sky "too cheap to meter" fairy tale. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it to happen.<br /><br />Thanks for the article. I may have some more comments on it when I digest the article further.Tom D.https://www.blogger.com/profile/16005219519644708237noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-80121836914137845482012-06-12T22:58:20.947-04:002012-06-12T22:58:20.947-04:00Nuclear Options at Do the Math blog may interest.<a href="http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/01/nuclear-options/" rel="nofollow">Nuclear Options</a> at <a href="http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/" rel="nofollow">Do the Math</a> blog may interest.rdbrownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17785829179766055972noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-42450756393119280622012-06-12T14:03:08.038-04:002012-06-12T14:03:08.038-04:00Quote: "However, both per single reaction, an...Quote: "However, both per single reaction, and per mass of fuel, nuclear reactions are much more energetic than chemical reactions. The fission of a single U-235 atom generates about 200 MeV (mega electron-volts) — that’s a factor of 4 million more energy than a single octane molecule combustion. Looked at on a per-weight basis, 1 kilogram of pure U-235 generates 80 terajoules — this time a factor of about 2 million more than 1 kg of gasoline.* One can see why, when physicists first saw these numbers, they used phrases like “too cheap to meter.” Although that proved to be an exaggeration [in other words, a big fat lie], this tremendous difference in energy density is a big part of nuclear’s advantage over other generation methods."<br /><br />Not counted here is the energy required to mine the uranium and process it so that the energy can be extracted. Also not counted is the energy required to construct the plant. Decommissioning costs, transportation costs are also not included here. <br /><br />As Caldicott has written, <br /><br />"... the actual costs of nuclear energy are consistently misstated and incomplete. Nuclear power is(also)heavily subsidized by taxpayers (through programs that benefit the industry, but are excluded from their cost estimates). Developed countries ostensibly wedded to the principles of economic rationalism and the 'free market,' are inexplicably enthusiastic about nuclear power, which cannot be sustained without huge government subsidies and handouts from its very inception. This socialization of electricity within a capitalist society has never been called into question, nor has it been critically scrutinized by the general public and their elected representatives."Tom D.https://www.blogger.com/profile/16005219519644708237noreply@blogger.com