The dirtiest part is going to be the reprocessing of used fuel from old generation reactors and breeding blankets from breeder reactors. This is one of the parts you dont want to have in countries that would make a mess for us if they had nuclear weapons but probably would develop in a good direction with power.
You would want to have the reactors close to home in a post peak oil future to get reliable electricity, high paying jobs and to utilize high grade heat from the next generation of reactors for hydrogen production and low grade heat for district heating.
It is actually a pity the Swedish opinion isent a few years more advanced along the current trend. I would love to have German or Danish intrests building reactors in southern Sweden to export electricity to their owners. There is a public opinion window for getting these goodies before the German opinion probably changes and they want them at home. And the Danes would not have to start all the supporting institutions if they build in their neighbouring country.
30 years should be plenty of time for developing new breeders and reprocessing technologies if we start right away.
This means that Finland and Sweden probably will have started their repositories for used nuclear fuel a few years before a possible breeding boom. But 500 m deep bedrock caverns are usable as overdesigned repositories for fission products.
Wonder if the G8 would trust the nordic countries with their own reprocessing plant in Sweden or Finland? I guess it would be wise to participate in research and the building of pilot plants within G8 countries. We probably have a reputation of being dependable but other countries might complain if they dont get the honour. And we had a nuclear arms program in Sweden in the 50:s and 60:s that dident go as far as producing weapons, that might make someone uncomfortable.
I think the idea is the fuel reprocessing facilities for spent fuel and from the breeders to be within G8 countries, most probably with Russia in the back of their minds. If fuel reprocession is embraced (and if there is whatever amount of sanity in the world we live in, it will) then waste management becomes to huge extent trivial, but still I think they will try to let it stay in Russia or dump it back where it originated.
IMO long before hydrogen, nuclear power will be used to produce liquid fuels - for example nuclear-assisted CTL or methanol from coal. This will make the schema export reactors to China - import methanol, borrowing the difference (OK, again from China) work for a while. IMO, EU politicians will resist local nuclear power till it becomes impossible to avoid it - there is too much inertia in the system and nobody is willing to risk his cosy chair for problems far beyond his/her election horizon.
Just a quick comment - the French generate something like 80% of their electricity from nuclear, and there is absolutely no political movement in France to move away from nuclear power. Opposition to nuclear power is not an EU position - but it very definitely is a German one.
Wind Could be Third of French Energy Mix
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FRANCE : July 11, 2006
PARIS - France's wind power share in electricity consumption could jump to 30 percent by 2030 provided the government removes bureaucratic hurdles, France's wind power association said on Monday.
Wind power makes up 0.25 percent of French electricity consumption with a production capacity of 1,000 MW.
A 2001 European Union directive requires EU members to bring their green electricity share to 21 percent of their power mix by 2010.
"The potential we have in France and the government-set tariffs allow us to believe that wind power could make up 30 percent of French electricity consumption by 2030," Jean-Yves Grandidier, head of the FEE union, told Reuters.
He said that the newly-set government's aim to reach 13,500 MW of wind power by 2013 was realistic provided Paris acts to remove administrative obstacles blocking the sector's progress.
"The biggest hurdles in developing wind power in France are the delays in granting building permits, the price rise of turbines and the acoustic laws which are badly adapted to our industry," Grandidier said.
He said that local authorities were taking up to two years to grant building permits of wind farms that should normally take five months.
"Local authorities are struggling to position themselves with regards to wind power projects," he said. "In some regions we are experiencing unofficial moratoriums," he added.
Wind power has come under fire in many regions where turbines are blamed for destroying landscapes and for noise.
"But recent opinion polls show that 80 percent of the public now supports the development of wind power so I'm confident we will progress fast," Grandider said.
The French government has set since 2001 fixed rates for land-produced wind power to incite companies to invest in the renewable energy.
The government on Monday fixed the new purchasing of land-produced wind power tariff at 82 euros (US$104.8) per megawatt hour (against 83.6 euros previously) and a newly-set offshore wind power tariff of 130 euros.
"Fixed tariffs provide a real incentive to produce but the lowering of the land-produced wind power tariff could harm units based in low wind areas," Grandidier said.
"But wind power is the electricity sector growing the fastest in the world so we are very optimistic," he said.
Grandidier said he believes that France could soon catch up with Germany and Spain, which have Europe's largest wind power sectors.
"Spain has 10,000 MW already installed and a target to double that figure by 2010," he said. "So I don't think our forecast is unfeasible," he concluded.
Hello,
at least in the region I live in, the main opposition to nuclear power is the waste disposal question - and this cuts across essentially all political parties. (I wrote a bit about this in a comment below). Whether this disgust at creating such a long term environmental problem will be overcome by a desire to keep the lights on (plus lots and lots of lobbying by companies like Siemens) is an open question.
However, you are quite correct in assuming that Germans will happily buy nuclear generated electricity - EnBW is technically one of Germany's largest electrical companies, but it is actually owned by Electricite de France - and the French are massively nuclear in terms of generating electricity. Surprisingly, much of EnBW's electricity just magically appears, without anyone asking where it comes from - though it is not a secret. Better, recently a national Green political figure just joined EnBW's board - nothing like putting an environmentally sound face on a massive nuclear electrical generation company.
If anyone wishes to call the Germans hyprocritical NIMBY types, please be my guest - but also notice that France generally placed as many of its nuclear reactors as close to the German border as possible decades ago, so that if an accident happened, the wind might spare the French having to clean up the results.
Eurpeans are cynical, pragmatic, and always looking out for their own best interests. No wonder OPEC is complaining about how Europe is discriminating against oil through high taxation - it wasn't supposed to work that way in our modern globalized capitalist world. Everyone was just supposed to buy OPEC's oil until it ran out - which it isn't, by the way, according to OPEC.
If you are interested, by the way, Schroeder tried to sell off an old breeder facility to the Chinese - it was cancelled due to massive pressure, more or less equally balanced between domestic and international concerns.
Maybe the Swedes can pick up one unused breeder reactor cheap - something like 1.5 billion euros is the number I vaguely remember. The Germans are getting good at this shipping old industrial facilities to other places - old coal fired steel mills, coking plants, oil refineries (one near Karlsruhe was sent to India maybe 7 years ago). What the Germans aren't selling are the wind turbine production facilities or the solar cells fabs.
You may see a pattern here - dirty, old industrial facilities are being sold to countries without much concern about trivialities like air or water pollution, and cleaner alternatives are being built up.
Of course, there is a fair amount of doubt whether alternative energy forms like wind will actually be able to power an industrial society - and Germans do know their engineering. I too expect Germans to use some form of nuclear power in the future - I just doubt that it will resemble the dinosuar technology which is happily being revived by companies with excellent political connections.
You might be waiting a while then - the history of breeder reactors till now is not very encouraging (especially sodium designs, which tend to end up leaking, then burning). The physics seem easy enough, but the engineering details up till now are not.
The fact the technology is generally so bad (though different breeder designs have worked, even over years, it must be noted) is one reason the Germans wanted to get rid of theirs, actually.
Breeder reactors, producing ready made material for bombs, are opposed for reasons which go to one of the main problems with any nuclear program - you get more bang for your buck with nuclear than any other option. Just ask the Iranians or North Koreans or Pakistanis or ....
Yes, sodium is bad. I use it mainly for science tricks to entertain sixth and seventh graders, for that it is great.
We have learned much from our (and others') mistakes with breeders.
My engineer friends and I may be all wet, but IMO, the time of the breeder is here and now.
Easy?
No.
Complex and expensive safeguards needed?
You bet.
Nevertheless, on a cost-benefit basis, when I do the numbers, breeders look good.
Other people start with different premises and come up with different numbers.
I could be quite wrong. But at least, please let us seriously consider breeders--along with wind, solar, old-fashiond nuclear power generation, coal sequestration, biofuels, and whatever else we can think of.
I think it is too early for this one. In fact I think that it would be a huge mistake for bringing it up now, because it would put loads of fuel in the tank of those opposing nuclear power, with (or without) any reasons at all. The most likely result will be continued opposition and delay of the nuclear power altogether.
Nuclear could be an issue that unites the world, because it best results (in terms of costs and safety) will be reached if we achieve a much higher level of international cooperation. IMO the coming years will decide whether we will get there the easy way or the hard way.
We believe what we believe to a large extent based on who we talk to. From age 22 to 30, a majority of my friends were nuclear engineers and nuclear physicists working at the Lawrence Radiation Lab and also Livermore.
I'd be delighted to tell you some funny stories about Site 300, but the Fibbies (F.B.I.) already claim that my dossier exceeds 2,000 pages, and IMO, that is enough.
You do. NOW. Why? Because you replied to a comment of mine.
I have associated with a great many people: Mainly for that reason the Fibbies keep my prints on file and (probably) somehow monitor (most likely through the NSA) all of my TOD comments.
Ho hum.
I lived through the Joseph McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover eras. Times now are way way way much better.
Of my former students, two work for the FBI, one worked for the Secret Service, another for The Internal Revenue Service (He carried a gold badge and a gun) and one girl for NSA.
Intelligence is big business in the U.S. I asked the IRS agent for a favor in regard to finding out about my file. In return, I visited his mother in a nursing home and sang songs to her.
AFAIK, CANDU reactors can used LWR "burnt" fuel without repeocessing (just make sure packaging fits) and also breed 0.7 to 0.8 for 1 with thorium. Using used "waste" fuel makes a 70% breeding ratio look good.
CANDU is a very safe design. Just a fuel hog (unimportant with used fuel) and low heat densities (smaller reactors).
If you "repackage" LWR fuel into CANDU you are reprocessing. In fact, you have to chop it up and dissolve it in nitric acid to make new UO2 pellets of the right size. Might as well take out the fission fragments to clean it up while you're at it.
The residual uranium and new plutonium once cleaned is still more reactive than the natural uranium which CANDUs are designed to use.
However, the CANDU is a sow of a reactor. I've worked on them and they are complicated, expensive, and low performance compared to modern light water reactors. Throughly engineered, I will say, but hardly of interest to US utilities given current and projected yellowcake and SWU costs.
It seems entirely possible to take the same pellets and put them into CANDU fuel rods. Basically a matter of diameter. Use robots or remote control and take them out of old fuel bundle and put them in the new.
Just design the CANDU to use a common Westinghouse or GE diameter fuel.
If fuel stays cheap, there will be limited appeal, I agree. But we have LOTS of "free fuel" and cheap thorium.
The U233 bred from Th could be used in LWR (perhaps 70% breeding factor). A solution to the uranium "shortage".
Granted the author has a bias, but this piece
describes two different dry processes for using spent LWR fuel in CANDU reactors.
Much of the complexity in the basic CANDU design
appears to me to be the result of allowing refueling while
the reactor is operating.
Can we design a heavy-water reactor that keeps what I regard as the main benefit of the CANDU design --
flexibility of fuel cycles, from unenriched uranium to used LWR fuel to thorium --
while simplifying it?
k Nation (Jim Kunstler)
GAIA Host Collective
You would want to have the reactors close to home in a post peak oil future to get reliable electricity, high paying jobs and to utilize high grade heat from the next generation of reactors for hydrogen production and low grade heat for district heating.
It is actually a pity the Swedish opinion isent a few years more advanced along the current trend. I would love to have German or Danish intrests building reactors in southern Sweden to export electricity to their owners. There is a public opinion window for getting these goodies before the German opinion probably changes and they want them at home. And the Danes would not have to start all the supporting institutions if they build in their neighbouring country.
30 years should be plenty of time for developing new breeders and reprocessing technologies if we start right away.
This means that Finland and Sweden probably will have started their repositories for used nuclear fuel a few years before a possible breeding boom. But 500 m deep bedrock caverns are usable as overdesigned repositories for fission products.
Wonder if the G8 would trust the nordic countries with their own reprocessing plant in Sweden or Finland? I guess it would be wise to participate in research and the building of pilot plants within G8 countries. We probably have a reputation of being dependable but other countries might complain if they dont get the honour. And we had a nuclear arms program in Sweden in the 50:s and 60:s that dident go as far as producing weapons, that might make someone uncomfortable.
IMO long before hydrogen, nuclear power will be used to produce liquid fuels - for example nuclear-assisted CTL or methanol from coal. This will make the schema export reactors to China - import methanol, borrowing the difference (OK, again from China) work for a while. IMO, EU politicians will resist local nuclear power till it becomes impossible to avoid it - there is too much inertia in the system and nobody is willing to risk his cosy chair for problems far beyond his/her election horizon.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FRANCE : July 11, 2006
PARIS - France's wind power share in electricity consumption could jump to 30 percent by 2030 provided the government removes bureaucratic hurdles, France's wind power association said on Monday.
Wind power makes up 0.25 percent of French electricity consumption with a production capacity of 1,000 MW.
A 2001 European Union directive requires EU members to bring their green electricity share to 21 percent of their power mix by 2010.
"The potential we have in France and the government-set tariffs allow us to believe that wind power could make up 30 percent of French electricity consumption by 2030," Jean-Yves Grandidier, head of the FEE union, told Reuters.
He said that the newly-set government's aim to reach 13,500 MW of wind power by 2013 was realistic provided Paris acts to remove administrative obstacles blocking the sector's progress.
"The biggest hurdles in developing wind power in France are the delays in granting building permits, the price rise of turbines and the acoustic laws which are badly adapted to our industry," Grandidier said.
He said that local authorities were taking up to two years to grant building permits of wind farms that should normally take five months.
"Local authorities are struggling to position themselves with regards to wind power projects," he said. "In some regions we are experiencing unofficial moratoriums," he added.
Wind power has come under fire in many regions where turbines are blamed for destroying landscapes and for noise.
"But recent opinion polls show that 80 percent of the public now supports the development of wind power so I'm confident we will progress fast," Grandider said.
The French government has set since 2001 fixed rates for land-produced wind power to incite companies to invest in the renewable energy.
The government on Monday fixed the new purchasing of land-produced wind power tariff at 82 euros (US$104.8) per megawatt hour (against 83.6 euros previously) and a newly-set offshore wind power tariff of 130 euros.
"Fixed tariffs provide a real incentive to produce but the lowering of the land-produced wind power tariff could harm units based in low wind areas," Grandidier said.
"But wind power is the electricity sector growing the fastest in the world so we are very optimistic," he said.
Grandidier said he believes that France could soon catch up with Germany and Spain, which have Europe's largest wind power sectors.
"Spain has 10,000 MW already installed and a target to double that figure by 2010," he said. "So I don't think our forecast is unfeasible," he concluded.
Story by Muriel Boselli
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/37189/story.htm
at least in the region I live in, the main opposition to nuclear power is the waste disposal question - and this cuts across essentially all political parties. (I wrote a bit about this in a comment below). Whether this disgust at creating such a long term environmental problem will be overcome by a desire to keep the lights on (plus lots and lots of lobbying by companies like Siemens) is an open question.
However, you are quite correct in assuming that Germans will happily buy nuclear generated electricity - EnBW is technically one of Germany's largest electrical companies, but it is actually owned by Electricite de France - and the French are massively nuclear in terms of generating electricity. Surprisingly, much of EnBW's electricity just magically appears, without anyone asking where it comes from - though it is not a secret. Better, recently a national Green political figure just joined EnBW's board - nothing like putting an environmentally sound face on a massive nuclear electrical generation company.
If anyone wishes to call the Germans hyprocritical NIMBY types, please be my guest - but also notice that France generally placed as many of its nuclear reactors as close to the German border as possible decades ago, so that if an accident happened, the wind might spare the French having to clean up the results.
Eurpeans are cynical, pragmatic, and always looking out for their own best interests. No wonder OPEC is complaining about how Europe is discriminating against oil through high taxation - it wasn't supposed to work that way in our modern globalized capitalist world. Everyone was just supposed to buy OPEC's oil until it ran out - which it isn't, by the way, according to OPEC.
If you are interested, by the way, Schroeder tried to sell off an old breeder facility to the Chinese - it was cancelled due to massive pressure, more or less equally balanced between domestic and international concerns.
Maybe the Swedes can pick up one unused breeder reactor cheap - something like 1.5 billion euros is the number I vaguely remember. The Germans are getting good at this shipping old industrial facilities to other places - old coal fired steel mills, coking plants, oil refineries (one near Karlsruhe was sent to India maybe 7 years ago). What the Germans aren't selling are the wind turbine production facilities or the solar cells fabs.
You may see a pattern here - dirty, old industrial facilities are being sold to countries without much concern about trivialities like air or water pollution, and cleaner alternatives are being built up.
Of course, there is a fair amount of doubt whether alternative energy forms like wind will actually be able to power an industrial society - and Germans do know their engineering. I too expect Germans to use some form of nuclear power in the future - I just doubt that it will resemble the dinosuar technology which is happily being revived by companies with excellent political connections.
No thanks, I would prefer one done with new calculations and lessons learned from previous builds. But I would not say no to a breeder in Sweden.
I like breeders.
But then again, I used to hang out with nuclear engineers, and perhaps they are biased.
The fact the technology is generally so bad (though different breeder designs have worked, even over years, it must be noted) is one reason the Germans wanted to get rid of theirs, actually.
Breeder reactors, producing ready made material for bombs, are opposed for reasons which go to one of the main problems with any nuclear program - you get more bang for your buck with nuclear than any other option. Just ask the Iranians or North Koreans or Pakistanis or ....
We have learned much from our (and others') mistakes with breeders.
My engineer friends and I may be all wet, but IMO, the time of the breeder is here and now.
Easy?
No.
Complex and expensive safeguards needed?
You bet.
Nevertheless, on a cost-benefit basis, when I do the numbers, breeders look good.
Other people start with different premises and come up with different numbers.
I could be quite wrong. But at least, please let us seriously consider breeders--along with wind, solar, old-fashiond nuclear power generation, coal sequestration, biofuels, and whatever else we can think of.
There is (obviously) no one "solution."
Silver BBs, not one silver bullet.
IMO, breeders are one more silver BB.
Nuclear could be an issue that unites the world, because it best results (in terms of costs and safety) will be reached if we achieve a much higher level of international cooperation. IMO the coming years will decide whether we will get there the easy way or the hard way.
We believe what we believe to a large extent based on who we talk to. From age 22 to 30, a majority of my friends were nuclear engineers and nuclear physicists working at the Lawrence Radiation Lab and also Livermore.
I'd be delighted to tell you some funny stories about Site 300, but the Fibbies (F.B.I.) already claim that my dossier exceeds 2,000 pages, and IMO, that is enough.
I have associated with a great many people: Mainly for that reason the Fibbies keep my prints on file and (probably) somehow monitor (most likely through the NSA) all of my TOD comments.
Ho hum.
I lived through the Joseph McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover eras. Times now are way way way much better.
I leave it at 50/50 FBI incompetence or you making up a good story wishing that you are important. Truth or fiction, either way you write well.
Any intelligence service analyzing me are welcome to call if you wonder about anything. laughs
Intelligence is big business in the U.S. I asked the IRS agent for a favor in regard to finding out about my file. In return, I visited his mother in a nursing home and sang songs to her.
CANDU is a very safe design. Just a fuel hog (unimportant with used fuel) and low heat densities (smaller reactors).
The residual uranium and new plutonium once cleaned is still more reactive than the natural uranium which CANDUs are designed to use.
However, the CANDU is a sow of a reactor. I've worked on them and they are complicated, expensive, and low performance compared to modern light water reactors. Throughly engineered, I will say, but hardly of interest to US utilities given current and projected yellowcake and SWU costs.
Just design the CANDU to use a common Westinghouse or GE diameter fuel.
If fuel stays cheap, there will be limited appeal, I agree. But we have LOTS of "free fuel" and cheap thorium.
The U233 bred from Th could be used in LWR (perhaps 70% breeding factor). A solution to the uranium "shortage".
You bet.
Complex and expensive == Doomed to fail