186 comments on Energy Transitions Past and Future
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186 comments on Energy Transitions Past and Future
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GAIA Host Collective
Worse and worse. I thought the plan was to put reactors down all over the world and reprocess the fuel in nuclear weapons states. You're just walking right into it.
Look, this really isn't important. Getting coal from the mine to the power plant probably reduces its EROEI by a good bit (in fig. 6 the value for coal is mouth-of-the-mine while that for oil is likely delivered), but that is not the case for moving solar panels around or nuclear fuel unless there is an accident. Silicon is superior to uranium by a bit but neither have the problems carbon for combustion has. I have heard of plans to ship uranium ore. That could be stupid I guess.
Chris
I know thats what a lot of people want to do, but I think its just a good way to waste money. Spent fuel doesn't hurt anyone while sitting in dry storage casks in a cordoned off parking lot of the power plant, and should stay there for the next several hundred years. You don't save money by reprocessing and you complicate the fuel cycle. As far as I can tell it has some potential for being a money saver in some fluid fuel reactor regimes, but with operating reactors today theres just no reason to do it except politics.
Not anymore stupid than shipping coal. All uranium mines today have ores that have higher energy density than coal when burned in LWRs.
It is worth noting that we've been over some other ground in response to this same article about a year ago: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2856#comment-224123
The reason for controling spent fuel in non-nuclear weapons states is to avoid proliferation problems. So, on-site storage is not what people have in mind.
Chris