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kristopher

(29,798 posts)
Fri Mar 2, 2012, 10:01 AM Mar 2012

$8.3 B: A Big Price Tag For a DOE Dice Roll

$8.3 B: A Big Price Tag For a DOE Dice Roll

Kelly Vaughn
Senior PR Coordinator
February 27, 2012

Energy Secretary Steven Chu said this month he expects to finalize an $8.3 billion DOE loan guarantee for Southern Company’s two new nuclear reactors. This announcement comes on the heels of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s recent decision to approve one of the projects in Waynesboro, Georgia—the first time the commission has approved construction of a new nuclear reactor since 1978.

...

Some argue that transitioning to a clean, affordable, and secure electric system should include an “all options on the table” approach, and that all available low-carbon technologies—nuclear, carbon capture and sequestration, natural gas, and renewables—should be pursued simultaneously and with equal rigor. RMI disagrees.

In a rapidly shifting industry facing dramatically changing demands and technology options, massive, capital-intensive projects that lock electricity providers into one option for 50 years or more are not a smart move. Despite the carbon benefits, pursuing nuclear does not address critical issues around security, financial stability, and competition.

Companies making multi-billion-dollar, multi-decade bets have the opportunity to place the right ones now. Reinventing Fire, RMI’s roadmap to a clean-energy future, points out that the greatest drivers of transformational change to our current electric system may not be carbon legislation, but rather disruptive technologies like low-cost solar power and increasing customer engagement and control...


http://blog.rmi.org/a_big_price_tag_for_a_DOE_dice_roll

Reinventing Fire:
http://rmi.org/reinventingfire
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$8.3 B: A Big Price Tag For a DOE Dice Roll (Original Post) kristopher Mar 2012 OP
Imagine an $8.3 billion investment in renewables... democrat_patriot Mar 2012 #1
Right now; no where. But it doesn't have to be that way. PamW Mar 2012 #2
"... like the “too cheap to meter” slogan of the 1950s" kristopher Mar 2012 #3
WRONG AS ALWAYS!! PamW Mar 2012 #4
BAD DATA! PamW Mar 2012 #5
THE MYTHOLOGY AND MESSY REALITY OF NUCLEAR FUEL REPROCESSING, Page 37 kristopher Mar 2012 #6
Reading comprehension again. PamW Mar 2012 #7
"the US could do what other nations that have nuclear power are doing; reprocess and recycle" kristopher Mar 2012 #8
very simple statementt PamW Mar 2012 #9

PamW

(1,825 posts)
2. Right now; no where. But it doesn't have to be that way.
Fri Mar 2, 2012, 11:34 AM
Mar 2012

Right now; no where. However, it doesn't have to be that way. The USA could do what other nations that have nuclear power are doing; reprocess and recycle. Spent fuel is 96% U-238. That U-238 is no more radioactive than the day it was dug out of the ground. Therefore, if we separate it from the rest of the waste, then we could put it right back into the ground where we got it from - no harm, no foul. That reduces the amount of "waste" by a factor of 25.

The problem, of course, is the long-lived actinides like Plutonium. However, the actinides are burnable fuel for a reactor. What would you do with unburned wood when you cleaned out your fireplace? You'd put it right back into the fireplace to be burned on the next cycle. If you kept doing that, you would only have ashes to dispose of.

That's exactly what other nations do. Read how this works in the following interview for PBS's Frontline with nuclear physicist Dr. Charles Till, at the time, Associate Director of Argonne National Laboratory:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interviews/till.html

Q: And you repeat the process.

A: Eventually, what happens is that you wind up with only fission products, that the waste is only fission products that have, most have lives of hours, days, months, some a few tens of years. There are a few very long-lived ones that are not very radioactive.

It's the actinides like Plutonium that have the muti-thousand year lifetimes that make nuclear waste so difficult to dispose of. However, if you burn the actinides like Plutonium as Dr. Till suggests (analogous to recycling unburned wood in your fireplace), then you don't have long-lived isotopes in your waste stream. You only have short-lived isotopes as Dr. Till details.

PamW

kristopher

(29,798 posts)
3. "... like the “too cheap to meter” slogan of the 1950s"
Fri Mar 2, 2012, 03:55 PM
Mar 2012
9. To propose, as some have done, that most of the uranium resource value in existing spent fuel could be used is in the realm of economic mythology, like the “too cheap to meter” slogan of the 1950s.

Reprocessing plus breeder reactors are much more expensive than light water reactors today, which in turn cost more than wind-generated electricity. To use most of the uranium resource, breeder reactors would have to move to the center of U.S. electricity generation. It cannot be done using light water reactors. Even a single penny in excess generation cost per kilowatt-hour in a breeder reactor-reprocessing system would lead to an added $8 trillion in costs if essentially all the uranium, including the uranium-238, and the plutonium in the 100,000 metric tons of spent fuel that existing U.S. reactors have generated or will generate during their licensed lifetimes is to be used as fuel. At present, the economic hurdle is far greater than a penny per kWh. Further, it would take hundreds of years to accomplish the task, involving the separation of tens of thousands of nuclear bombs worth of fissile material every year. The inspection, verification, and materials accounting problems of the adoption of the approach globally would present problems that are far greater than any concerns to date, which have been significant. It will also require storage of a significant part of the spent fuel for very long periods – likely in the hundreds of years. On-site storage is the most secure management option available today. But extending on-site storage to hundreds of years will create its own economic and security concerns. This is the principal reason that direct deep geologic disposal of spent fuel should be developed.

10. No reprocessing program can obviate the need for a deep geologic repository.

Even complete fissioning of all actinides – an unrealistic proposition – will leave behind large amounts of very long-lived fission and activation products like iodine-129, cesium-135, and chlorine-36 that will pose risks far into the future much beyond the 24,100-year half- life of plutonium-239.


THE MYTHOLOGY AND MESSY REALITY OF NUCLEAR FUEL REPROCESSING, Page 6,7
Arjun Makhijani, Ph.D. April 8, 2010
On the Web at http://www.ieer.org/reports/reprocessing2010.pdf

PamW

(1,825 posts)
4. WRONG AS ALWAYS!!
Sat Mar 3, 2012, 06:22 PM
Mar 2012

I've lost count of the number of times I've refuted this LIE by kristopher.

The nuclear industry never said that electricity would be too cheap to meter. In fact, it wasn't even said about the fission reactor power plants run by the nuclear industry.

That old yarn was said by a Government official, the former chairman of the AEC, Lewis Strauss:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Strauss

In 1954, Strauss predicted that atomic power would make electricity "too cheap to meter." He was referring to Project Sherwood, a secret program to develop power from hydrogen fusion, not uranium fission reactors as is commonly believed

Kris also uses these sources from "second rate" scientists like Makhijani. I quote REAL SCIENTIST that are really out doing scientific research; like at the national labs. Dr. Till is one such scientist.

As you can see, Mahijani is behind the times because he refers to the process making potential nuclear weapons fuel. Even if he were correct, who cares if we reprocess in the USA. The USA has all the weapons material it needs and discontinued making bomb material decades ago. So even if the material were available, the USA has all it needs, so this material won't be used in bombs. ( Reprocessing would be done by the Government, like Enrichment is. Enrichment, which also has the potential to create weapons fuel, is done by a Government-owned corporation, the United States Enrichment Corporation. Even if the reprocessing were done privately, it would be overseen by the Government so weapons material could not be exported in violation of LAW. The US Government doesn't want more weapons material, and you can't ship it to someone else, so diversion of weapons material isn't even profitable. )

Evidently kris didn't read Dr. Till's interview. The IFR reprocessing process creates material containing Plutonium that is IMPOSSIBLE to use in bombs:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interviews/till.html

Q: So it would be very difficult to handle for weapons, would it?

A: It's impossible to handle for weapons, as it stands.

It's highly radioactive. It's highly heat producing. It has all of the characteristics that make it extremely, well, make it impossible for someone to make a weapon.

Makhijani is NOT an expert on nuclear weapons, and what can and can not be used as bomb fuel.

The ONLY experts in the USA that know this highly classified field of science are the scientists at the national labs that design the US weapons, Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore. Lawrence Livermore certified in a report to Congress that the Argonne / IFR process produces material that can NOT be used to make bombs. Senators Simon and Kempthorne referred to this report when they refuted an editorial by the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/07/05/opinion/l-new-reactor-solves-plutonium-problem-586307.html

A recent Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory study indicates that fuel from this reactor is more proliferation-resistant than spent commercial fuel, which also contains plutonium.

The weapons labs were able to make a bomb out of spent fuel from a Generation I nuclear power reactor back in the early '60s. The burnup of the fuel was less than 20,000 Megawatt-Days / metric tonne. In the '70s, nuclear reactors were burning fuel to about 45,000 Megawatt-Days / metric tonne and with the threat gone, the DOE declassified the '60s weapon study. Today, nuclear reactors routinely burn fuel to 55,000 to 60,000 Megawatt-Days / metric tonne.

Only die-hard anti-nukes still propagate this OUTRIGHT LIE based on OBSOLETE data from the early '60s.

PamW


PamW

(1,825 posts)
5. BAD DATA!
Sat Mar 3, 2012, 08:53 PM
Mar 2012

Reprocessing plus breeder reactors are much more expensive than light water reactors today, which in turn cost more than wind-generated electricity.
===========================

Fast reactors would be somewhat more expensive, but Argonne National Lab, the only Lab to operate a fast reactor doesn't consider them prohibitively so. Besides, Argonne calculates that we only need a handful of fast reactors to serve as "actinide burners" for a fleet of light water reactors.

The costs given are also bad. Light water reactors compete with coal at a bussbar cost of about 2 cents per kwh. Wind doesn't compete with that. Wind competes with gas at about 5 cents per kwh.

PamW

kristopher

(29,798 posts)
6. THE MYTHOLOGY AND MESSY REALITY OF NUCLEAR FUEL REPROCESSING, Page 37
Sat Mar 3, 2012, 09:31 PM
Mar 2012
G. Reprocessing and spent fuel stocks from existing U.S. reactors
As we have seen, statements that 90 or 95 percent of the material in spent fuel can be used are completely invalid without breeder reactors. In this section we will examine some of the implications of a policy that seeks to deal with existing spent fuel by trying to convert the mass of the material into fuel and using it for energy, assuming that breeder reactors will work and can be deployed on a large scale.

We start with a heuristic calculation. A 1,000-megawatt nuclear power reactor fissions about one metric ton of heavy metal per year in the course of energy generation. At present, there are over 60,000 metric tons of spent fuel in the United States. With reactor re-licensing, the total amount of spent fuel could amount to well over 100,000 metric tons by the time the reactors are retired; 95-plus percent of the content of this spent fuel is uranium or transuranic elements (mainly plutonium). We will use a round number of 100,000 metric tons92 of uranium and plutonium content in spent fuel that would be converted into fuel. This corresponds approximately to statements that 90 or 95 percent of existing spent fuel has “energy value” and hence should not be regarded as waste. For instance, such a scheme would appear to be the one that Dr. Miller had in mind and that NRC Commissioner Bill Magwood made explicit in his discussions of spent fuel management.93

Setting aside for the moment a variety of difficult issues, including those associated with the rate of conversion of uranium-238 into plutonium, it is easy to see that it would take 100,000 reactor years (assuming 1,000 megawatt reactors) to convert the heavy metal content of spent fuel from the existing fleet of U.S. power reactors into fission products in a manner that extracts essentially all the physically possible energy value in it.

Assume a reactor operating life of 50 years, accumulating 100,000 reactor years would mean building 2,000 reactors to extract the energy in the total spent fuel from the existing fleet of reactors. This is about 20 times the size of the existing U.S. nuclear power system. It is four times the total electricity generation of the United States and seven or eight times the baseload requirements under the present centralized electricity dispatch system. If the material is consumed in a smaller number of reactors, the time to consume it would be proportionally increased. For instance, it would take 200 years to consume the material in 500 reactors.

The matter gets more complex when the time required to breed plutonium out of uranium-238 is taken into account....


THE MYTHOLOGY AND MESSY REALITY OF NUCLEAR FUEL REPROCESSING, Page 37
Arjun Makhijani, Ph.D. April 8, 2010
On the Web at http://www.ieer.org/reports/reprocessing2010.pdf

PamW

(1,825 posts)
7. Reading comprehension again.
Mon Mar 5, 2012, 11:33 AM
Mar 2012

As we have seen, statements that 90 or 95 percent of the material in spent fuel can be used are completely invalid without breeder reactors.
===================================

Go back and read my post again. I didn't say that we could "use" the 96% of the spent fuel that is U-238. I said we could bury it!!!

You've refuted nothing with the above claim. Many claim there is this huge problem with the volume of nuclear waste. However, 96% of it is U-238 that is no more radioactive than when we dug it out of the ground. We could just put it back, and it would be the same as if we had never dug it up.

Read what I wrote:

Right now; no where. However, it doesn't have to be that way. The USA could do what other nations that have nuclear power are doing; reprocess and recycle. Spent fuel is 96% U-238. That U-238 is no more radioactive than the day it was dug out of the ground. Therefore, if we separate it from the rest of the waste, then we could put it right back into the ground where we got it from - no harm, no foul. That reduces the amount of "waste" by a factor of 25.

Now where did I say that I was advocating "using" the 96% that is U-238?

We could; if we had fast reactors; we could use all that U-238.

However, that wasn't the point I was making. In the absence of fast reactors to actually use the U-238; we can bury it.

So we'll have to classify the above post as "non-responsive" and a "non-sequitur".

PamW

kristopher

(29,798 posts)
8. "the US could do what other nations that have nuclear power are doing; reprocess and recycle"
Mon Mar 5, 2012, 12:06 PM
Mar 2012

You make claims that are all over the place, Pam.

The state of other nations' reprocessing and recycling efforts are also dealt with, and the facts are not helpful to your efforts at promoting nuclear reactors:
THE MYTHOLOGY AND MESSY REALITY OF NUCLEAR FUEL REPROCESSING,
Arjun Makhijani, Ph.D. April 8, 2010
On the Web at http://www.ieer.org/reports/reprocessing2010.pdf

PamW

(1,825 posts)
9. very simple statementt
Mon Mar 5, 2012, 12:14 PM
Mar 2012

I make claims that are based on SCIENCE and "not all over the place" ( probably looks that way to those that don't know science )

The point is other nations, France, Japan, UK, Sweden..." either reprocess or have some other nation reprocess.

The USA could do that too.

First, Arjun is NOT a nuclear physicist; he gets a LOT wrong!!!
Although the anti-nukes like what he says; it doesn't make him right.

The fact is that, as Dr. Till states; reprocessing / recycling changes long-lived waste to short-lived waste.

Thanks for pointing out that we could have 200 years of nuclear power without mining any more uranium; using what we have on hand.

No mining disasters, no more radiation for miners that anti-nukes complain about. We could just use what we have above ground
right now for about 200 years with fast reactors.

Thank You ever so much for making an issue of that!!

PamW

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