Is there a role for nuclear energy?

[Jovial Monk]

The point of a breeder reactor is, it creates fuel as it generates power—very little waste. I consider them the stop gap solution until in the future fusion is fantastically, phenomenally favored with features galore.

[Viking King.]

The point of a breeder reactor is, it creates fuel as it generates power—very little waste. I consider them the stop gap solution until in the future fusion is fantastically, phenomenally favored with features galore.

In order to win the Nobel Peace Prize you must submit your idea to a major Uni involved with such plans and testings, your idea may well be the door that unlocks many other areas, all it takes is an idea to recharge the batteries.
I've done it, sent and had replies from Cambridge Uni where Steven Hawking teaches.
No nobel peace prize yet, but working on it.

[Jovial Monk]

Not a new idea, I have been fascinated by the idea and promise of fusion power since my Physics I & II days at Adelaide Uni in the 60s. Breeder reactors have been around for yonks too.

The good thing about the Hadron Collider—it has provided some info useful to fusion power and they are investigating the use of lasers to control the fusion reaction.

Fusion has been achieved many times, that isn’t the problem. To work, fusion has to occur inside a “magnetic bottle” inside a vacuum in a container. Trouble so far has been the protons and helium nuclei escape the magnetic bottle, touch the sides of the container and lose their energy.

Hope it can be achieved: fancy buying a new car, pouring in a litre of distilled water and that is the only fuel needed for 20 years!

[boxy]

I wouldn't count on fusion being available within a 100 year timeframe...

[Viking King.]

Running the car on a bottle of distilled water for 20 yrs would be ok for you an I, but to give that idea to a Uni then that Uni tells the gov't and motor industry about it, then that idea is taken away and put on the shelf like every other money saving, energy saving, life saving plan that has been proven to work, if it takes money away from the gov't (tax) it gets locked away.
Look at not so long ago when a backyard enthusiest built the wobble engine, where it could convert from 1200cc -2400cc by moving the piston back and forth, they took his idea and rights to it, paid him a few dollars to make him happy and that was the end of it, there is so much taken that could improve our lives but if it stops money to the gov't, it is put on the shelf.

[Jovial Monk]

Muammar Boxhead shows his ignorance.

Very true VK but you forget one thing: peak oil, carbon tax/ETS = $2/L petrol in not that long a time frame, $10/L not that many years away and people will be screaming for ways they can keep getting stuck in gridlock. For that matter, you forget the NBN which will encourage telecommuting at the expense of the real thing. The GFC has masked these realities a bit.

And car engines that go from 8 to 4 cyl and back are now standard features

[Viking King.]

The way things are going global, won't be long we will be back to horse and buggy costing a gallon of hay a day.

[Jovial Monk]

Drunk driving will no longer be an offense then, the horse will bring you home

[Outlaw Yogi]

Nuke is going to play a role in our energy production and emissions lowering, end of story.

We can't afford nuke power, actually nobody can, that's why it has never existed without ripping off the taxpayer and electricity consumers via construction grants and operating subsidies. Considering how GHG emissions intensive and absurdly expensive nuclear fuel processing is (required for light water reactors to function), begs the question, why pay upto 4 times the price for electricity for 5% less GHG emissions than switching to natural gas?

Nuke is a dud, and that's the whole story.

The idea is to keep the active and spent rods as cool as possible, putting them down a disused mine shaft won't help at all, it is hot underground,
one other way "MIGHT" work, deep freeze them, put them on a non returnable rocket, send off to far beyond the other side of the sun,

The Ruskis tried that in the 70s. The rocket fell over during launching and killed 70 odd of their nuke specialists.

The fuel rods can be reduced in size, will reduce the radioactive reactions heaps and can be stored in watertanks in the mine shafts.

Is this your Alice in Wonderland scenario?

As mentioned earlier, the reactor plants are a few gens old, but it is also said that Japan has maintained to the highest degree and more, the safety and integrity of the plants, which is why they as yet have not been exposed or damaged.

Are you serious?

Japan nuclear firm admits missing safety checks at disaster-hit plant
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ma ... cks-missed

According to documents from Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), the company repeatedly missed safety checks over a 10-year period up to two weeks before the 11 March disaster, and allowed uranium fuel rods to pile up inside the 40-year-old facility.

Steam Rises From Stricken Japan Plant; Radiation Concern Persists
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Steam ... story.html
Reproduced @
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/03/22-0

Reuters earlier reported that the Fukushima plant was storing more uranium than it was originally designed to hold and that it had repeatedly missed mandatory safety checks over the past decade, according to company documents and outside experts.

Questions have also been raised about whether TEPCO officials waited too long to pump sea water into the reactors and abandon hope of saving the equipment in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami.

Away from the plant, mounting evidence of radiation in vegetables, water and milk stirred concerns among Japanese and abroad despite officials' assurances that the levels were not dangerous.

TEPCO said radiation was found in the Pacific Ocean nearby, not surprising given rain and the hosing of reactors with seawater. TEPCO officials have said some of the water from the hosing was spilling into the sea.

Radioactive iodine in the sea samples was 126.7 times the allowed limit, while caesium was 24.8 times over, Kyodo said. That still posed no immediate danger, TEPCO said.

I am pretty sure the spent rods were just kept in a pool on top of reactor 4, no special cooling.

Thankyou for demonstrating you know absolutely nothing about nuke power and just parrot nuke industry fairytales.

[Outlaw Yogi]

Again, uranium is on the way out, thorium will be the nuclear fuel of the future. Good thing we have tons of thorium, eh?

So 1st you advocate fast breeders, which the waste from is plutonium that is deadly for 25,000 years. And now you advocate thorium fueled pebble bed reactors, which the waste from remains toxic for 4.5 billion years.

The Germans have had problems with their pebble bed reactor, and India refuses comment on its pebble bed reactor.

Pebble bed reactor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor

Production of fuel
All kernels are precipitated from a sol-gel, then washed, dried and calcined. U.S. kernels use uranium carbide, while German (AVR) kernels use uranium dioxide.

Criticisms of the reactor design
Since the fuel is contained in graphite pebbles, the volume of radioactive waste is much greater, but contains about the same radioactivity when measured in becquerels per kilowatt-hour. ... In 2008, a report[12][13] about safety aspects of the AVR reactor in Germany and some general features of pebble bed reactors have drawn attention. The claims are under contention.[14] Main points of discussion are

* No possibility to place standard measurement equipment in the pebble bed core, i.e. pebble bed = black box
* Contamination of the cooling circuit with metallic fission products (Sr-90, Cs-137) due to the insufficient retention capabilities of fuel pebbles for metallic fission products. Even modern fuel elements do not sufficiently retain strontium and cesium.
* improper temperatures in the core (more than 200 °C above calculated values)
* necessity of a pressure retaining containment
* unresolved problems with dust formation by pebble friction (dust acts as a mobile fission product carrier)