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Nuclear Power Plants

jj

Penultimate Amazing
J
Joined
Oct 11, 2001
Messages
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Something I've pointed out to the luddites over and over about our present stupid use of nuclear power was examined carefully in the last SciAm.

It basically, with references, makes the same point I have made over and over, which is that nuclear power plants (I mean fission, I'll believe in fusion when I actually see it happen) use about 5% of the fuel energy, and leave the rest to decay for 10,000 years, when in fact we could trivially build reactors and some simple processing to extract non-weapons-grade fissionables that would breed depleted uranium and get us down to about 1% waste, instead of 95%, and at the same time reduce the waste stream from 10,000 years of 95% of the fuel to 1% of the fuel for 250 years.

For many years, the USA has done the absolutely dumbest thing possible on the planet earth with its nuclear fuel, by calling it 'waste' and being stupid.

Maybe it's time to get over the stupidity and use the fuel we want to heat a mountain out west with, instead?
 
jj said:
Something I've pointed out to the luddites over and over about our present stupid use of nuclear power was examined carefully in the last SciAm.

It basically, with references, makes the same point I have made over and over, which is that nuclear power plants (I mean fission, I'll believe in fusion when I actually see it happen) use about 5% of the fuel energy, and leave the rest to decay for 10,000 years, when in fact we could trivially build reactors and some simple processing to extract non-weapons-grade fissionables that would breed depleted uranium and get us down to about 1% waste, instead of 95%, and at the same time reduce the waste stream from 10,000 years of 95% of the fuel to 1% of the fuel for 250 years.

For many years, the USA has done the absolutely dumbest thing possible on the planet earth with its nuclear fuel, by calling it 'waste' and being stupid.

Maybe it's time to get over the stupidity and use the fuel we want to heat a mountain out west with, instead?
Click to expand...
JJ, could you clarify that a bit? I seem to be a bit thick-headed today. :p
 
jj said:
Something I've pointed out to the luddites over and over about our present stupid use of nuclear power was examined carefully in the last SciAm.

It basically, with references, makes the same point I have made over and over, which is that nuclear power plants (I mean fission, I'll believe in fusion when I actually see it happen) use about 5% of the fuel energy, and leave the rest to decay for 10,000 years, when in fact we could trivially build reactors and some simple processing to extract non-weapons-grade fissionables that would breed depleted uranium and get us down to about 1% waste, instead of 95%, and at the same time reduce the waste stream from 10,000 years of 95% of the fuel to 1% of the fuel for 250 years.

For many years, the USA has done the absolutely dumbest thing possible on the planet earth with its nuclear fuel, by calling it 'waste' and being stupid.

Maybe it's time to get over the stupidity and use the fuel we want to heat a mountain out west with, instead?
Click to expand...

I thought that a lot of the junk (volume-wise) that is proposed for disposal in Yucca Mountain is low level stuff like contaminated gloves and coveralls and old X-ray machine parts.

It would certainly make sense to recycle the fuel grade stuff. I don't know anything about the mechanics of that. Got any recommendations for remedial reference material?
 
fishbob said:
I thought that a lot of the junk (volume-wise) that is proposed for disposal in Yucca Mountain is low level stuff like contaminated gloves and coveralls and old X-ray machine parts.

It would certainly make sense to recycle the fuel grade stuff. I don't know anything about the mechanics of that. Got any recommendations for remedial reference material?
Click to expand...

The article in Scientific American can describe it well and has a whole lot of references at the end.

But basically, when the primary use for a fuel rod in a fission reactor in the USA is "spent" we've used about 5% of the available energy, and a great deal of the radioactivity that remains from the used fuel is from medium to long-livend transuranic elements that ARE FUEL but we throw them out after holding them until they decay, instead. We do this by law, we banned the use of the other 95% of the fuel by federal law.
 
N.B. It's the December 2005 Scientific American.
 
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