Scientists outline 20-year Master Plan for Global Nuclear Renaissance

[Dogmudgeon]

This is a report of a study that appears in today's Science. ("Generating the Option of a Two-Stage Nuclear Renaissance")

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100812151634.htm">Scientists Outline a 20-Year Master Plan for the Global Renaissance of Nuclear Energy
ScienceDaily (Aug. 12, 2010)

Scientists outline a 20-year master plan for the global renaissance of nuclear energy that could see nuclear reactors with replaceable parts, portable mini-reactors, and ship-borne reactors supplying countries with clean energy, in research published August 12 in the journal Science.

The scientists, from Imperial College London and the University of Cambridge, suggest a two-stage plan in their review paper that could see countries with existing nuclear infrastructure replacing or extending the life of nuclear power stations, followed by a second phase of global expansion in the industry by the year 2030. The team say their roadmap could fill an energy gap as old nuclear, gas and coal fired plants around the world are decommissioned, while helping to reduce the planet's dependency on fossil fuels.

Professor Robin Grimes, from the Department of Materials at Imperial College London, says: "Our study explores the exciting opportunities that a renaissance in nuclear energy could bring to the world. Imagine portable nuclear power plants at the end of their working lives that can be safely shipped back by to the manufacturer for recycling, eliminating the need for countries to deal with radioactive waste. With the right investment, these new technologies could be feasible. Concerns about climate change, energy security and depleting fossil fuel reserves have spurred a revival of interest in nuclear power generation and our research sets out a strategy for growing the industry long-term, while processing and transporting nuclear waste in a safe and responsible way."

The researchers suggest in their study that based on how technologies are developing, new types of reactors could come online that are much more efficient than current reactors by 2030. At the moment, most countries have light water reactors, which only use a small percentage of the uranium for energy, which means that the uranium is used inefficiently. The team suggest that new 'fast reactors' could be developed that could use uranium approximately 15 times more efficiently, which would mean that uranium supplies could last longer, ensuring energy security for countries.

...

Professor Grimes adds: "In the past, there has been the perception in the community that nuclear technology has not been safe. However, what most people don't appreciate is just how much emphasis the nuclear industry places on safety. In fact, safety is at the very core of the industry. With continual improvements to reactor design, nuclear energy will further cement its position as an important part of our energy supply in the future."

...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100812151634.htm">Read the entire article at Science Daily.

--d!

[phantom power]

1. bwahahahahaaaaaaaaaaa! Our master plan begins!

oops, did I say that?

[Donnachaidh]

2. "just how much emphasis the nuclear industry places on safety"

Yeah, as much as BP places on safety....


:rofl:


Say -- who FUNDED this pollyanna thinks Nuclear Power is GREAT report?

[Kolesar]

4. That is what Bill Nye "the Science Guy" said

Imagine if we built 1000 nuclear plants to solve our energy crisis. The probability of an "accident" would be quite high. People with the ethics of BP, Halliburton, and Transocean management will creep their way into management. Time is money.

Hell, it already happened at Davis Besse nuclear plant in Oak Harbor, Ohio.

[TheWraith]

9. Nonsense.

That's no different from the Cheney motto that if there's a 1% chance of something happening, then you have to treat it as a certainty. Probability doesn't work that way. Right now there's 438 nuclear plants in operation which run 24 hours a day, 365 days a year without serious incident. And a further 61 under construction. More to the point, we're getting better at it; the odds of a major accident are going down, not up.

[bananas]

10. Thanks for mentioning that - I looked up what Bill Nye had to say

I found a website with his tv episode on nuclear power: http://www.gamequarium.org/cgi-bin/search/linfo.cgi?id=3757
(It's in three 8-minute parts, I think they have parts 2 and 3 swapped around).

I also found a recent interview on a DOE website:

http://www.energyempowers.gov/post/bill-nye-the-science-guy.aspx

The Renewable Energy Guy: Q&A with scientist and TV personality Bill Nye
June 10, 2010

<snip>

Q: Why do you believe is it important for Americans to invest in renewable energy?

A: We just can’t keep putting all this CO2 into the atmosphere, and we’re so dependent on fossil fuels. We have five times more renewable energy in wind in North Dakota than we use in the United States. North Dakota could be the Saudi Arabia of wind!

Plus, when a wind turbine collapses, it’s no big deal. It’s broken you have to repair it. Maybe the tower or something came loose or rusted, but…not only did nobody get hurt, it’s just really not that serious of a problem compared to this oil blow out or the kind of thing that could go wrong when we have a substantial number of nuclear power plants.

<snip>

[BeFree]

3. I can't wait...

...very soon I hope to get my own little nuke plant.

Have solar, wind, and fossil fueled plants, but none of those scare my neighbors. When I get my nuke plant they will be scared, because then I can take out the whole hood in two seconds.



I just hope my neighbors don't acquire such a generator, first.


<grin>

[txlibdem]

5. Pretty unimpressive for a "grand vision" of a nuclear renaissance

Their plan is to 1. Extend the life of existing reactors and 2. To make self-contained mini reactors. And that's it. While I agree with their plan in principle, it just doesn't go far enough to make a true nuclear renaissance possible.

They should have included modular reactors like the pebble bed modular reactor. They are designed to be mass produced, thus avoiding the biggest problem with existing nuclear reactors - the huge cost of construction. They are also inherently safe, cannot melt down.

They should have included Thorium cycle reactors like the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR).

The LFTR is an extremely safe reactor design. It is self regulating. Core meltdown is absolutely not a problem. Continuous removal of radioactive gases insure that only small amounts of radioactive gases would be released in a worst case accident. Coolant leaks do not lead to fires or explosions. There would be little or no solid fission product release/radiation problem in the event of a leak. Because of the chemical properties of the liquid salt coolant/fuel attacks by terrorists using explosives or aircraft, would not create a wide dispersal of radioactive materials. The use of liquid salts eliminating a threat to public safety from terrorists attack on LFTRs.

http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2008/04/benefits-of-lftrs.html

[bananas]

12. The PBMR was another disaster.

South Africa finally gave up on it after the Julich report came out.
I've posted a number of articles about it in this forum.
Like LFTR, it was another extremely safe design that couldn't melt down - until they realized it could.
The LFTR is just another in a long series of hyped-up reactor technologies.

[madokie]

6. Sounds like a lot of hope and some prayer

mixed in with a whole lot of nuclear power industry bullshit to me

[bananas]

11. I'm surprised it passed peer review - I see two glaring errors right away

The very first sentence says: "In North America and Europe, the development of nuclear power stalled after the March 1979 Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania"
That's incorrect - the nuclear industry collapsed around 1974 due primarily to the oil embargo in 1973.
In 1974, reactor orders fell to a trickle, and cancellations of existing orders skyrocketed.
Cancellations are listed in NUREG-1350 Appendix C, "Canceled U.S. Commercial Nuclear Power Reactors" at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/sr1350/
Here's a chart of reactor orders from "The bumpy road to nuclear energy" http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/2009/0813/the-bumpy-road-to-nuclear-energy

That's a sidebar to the article "Nuclear power’s new debate: cost" http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/2009/0813/nuclear-power-s-new-debate-cost
which explains "No new nuclear plants have been ordered in the US since 1978. This is not because of protestors, but because of a lack of investor funding and Wall Street remembering the ghosts of nuclear power’s past – massive construction cost overruns, utility defaults, and bankruptcies."

The second error that jumped out was the statement "PSAs were introduced after the Three Mile Island incident".
That's incorrect, the first nuclear PSA came out around 1975, they were widely used in other engineering disciplines such as aerospace many years before that. I read it when it came out, it was widely discussed at the time, I discussed it with nuclear engineers I knew; it was supposed to show how safe reactors were, but actually showed how dangerous they were, and that a large build-out of nuclear power would result in frequent disasters like TMI and Chernobyl (which hadn't happened yet). A lot of nuclear engineers changed careers around 1976 because they realized it would never be a growth industry, the number of reactors (and hence jobs) would be limited for safety reasons. (also, they didn't want to be responsible for the kind of large-scale disaster that might be caused).

So this article in Science has two glaring errors about the history of nuclear energy, how can they get the future right if they don't understand the past?

[damntexdem]

7. Oh, kumbaya, and all that.

I'm so glad that everything is fixed and we're all going to enter the energy-happy future.

Take your meds and smile radiantly.

And next, I want to sell you a nice, radioactive bridge to nowhere.

;-)

[leveymg]

8. I still haven't gotten my atomic flying car and "electricity so cheap" it isn't metered.