Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 09/25/2008 11:26:42 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
here may be a workable way to solve most of America's energy problems, end dependence on foreign oil and dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions with little pain.
Remarkably, while proposals for renewed offshore oil drilling, new atomic power plants, expanded carbon trading and other proposed tactics abound in this year's presidential campaign, no one mentions the single most promising technique.
This may be because its name contains the word "reactor." Combined with the fact that it depends on a sophisticated form of nuclear technology, that appears to make the notion of power plants using the Integral Fast Reactor anathema to today's politicians.
But it shouldn't. For this technology is demonstrably safer than any existing nuclear power plant, depends almost completely on recycling for its fuel and would make virtually no contribution to worldwide climate change.
Yes, there are serious problems with today's version of nuclear power. The most difficult to solve is waste disposal, with almost no one wanting his or her backyard to be a dumping ground for spent radioactive fuel rods that will stay "hot" for eons. There are long-standing worries about effects of nuclear plants or their waste on water tables and ocean water temperatures. There are terrorism concerns. And there's the possibility - slim, but still present - of a meltdown or explosion loosing clouds of radioactivity into the air for many miles around. This has never happened in an American-designed atomic plant, but that doesn't stop people or politicians from worrying.
Meanwhile, no such concerns apply to the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR), designed at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois and its Idaho satellite facility during the 1980 s and '90 s at a cost of more than 1 billion taxpayer dollars.
(Excerpt) Read more at presstelegram.com ...
fyi
Integral Fast Reactors: Source of Safe, Abundant, Non-Polluting Power
*********************EXCERPT********************
December 2001
by George S. Stanford, Ph.D.
What is the IFR?
You mean, "What was the IFR?"
O.K., what was the IFR?
IFR stands for Integral Fast Reactor. It was a power-reactor-development program, built around a revolutionary concept for generating nuclear power - not only a new type of reactor, but an entire new nuclear fuel cycle. The reactor part of that fuel cycle was called the ALMR - Advanced Liquid Metal Reactor. In what many see as an ill-conceived move, proof-of-concept research on the IFR/ALMR was discontinued by the U.S. government in 1994, only three years before completion.
You might soon see references to the AFR, which stands for "Advanced Fast Reactor." It's a concept very similar to the IFR, with some improvements thrown in.
How was the IFR idea different from the concepts underlying traditional nuclear-power fuel cycles?
All of those fuel cycles were derived from technologies developed to meet special military needs: naval propulsion, uranium enrichment, weapons-plutonium production, and plutonium separation. Waste disposal has been approached as "someone else's problem." The IFR concept is directed strictly to meeting the needs of civilian power generation. It is an integrated, weapons-incompatible, proliferation-resistant cycle that is "closed" - it encompasses the entire fuel cycle, including fuel production and fabrication, power generation, reprocessing and waste management.
Do we need a new kind of reactor? What's wrong with what we have now?
IFRs could reduce or eliminate significant difficulties that beset thermal-reactor fuel cycles - problems or concerns with:
* production and build-up of plutonium
* short-term management of plutonium
* disposition and long-term management of plutonium
* plutonium in national and international commerce
* other proliferation concerns
* long-term waste management
* environmental effects
* resource conservation
* long-term energy supply
* safety
Advanced Fast Reactor:
A Next-Generation Nuclear Energy Concept
**************************EXCERPT************************
Yoon I. Chang
Associate Laboratory Director for Engineering Research
Argonne National Laboratory
Argonne, IL 60439
Adapted from a talk delivered at Argonne National Laboratory
on September 28, 2001
There is a growing international consensus that to be broadly acceptable for the 21st century and beyond, the next-generation advanced reactor system must meet these five criteria:
The only currently known concept that can meet all five requirements simultaneously is the Advanced Fast Reactor (AFR), a system that includes a closed fuel cycle based on pyroprocessing.
The AFR concept is being developed at Argonne National Laboratory, as an extension of earlier work done on the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR). That work was undertaken specifically to resolve some pressing technical issues in safety, waste management, nonproliferation, and economics. Also important, however, was the fundamental fact that the efficient utilization of uranium resources is crucial to the long-term sustainability of nuclear energy.
Energy is the engine of the economy, and hence of prosperity. Figure 1 shows that in North America, we enjoy a very high per-capita GDP and a very high electricity generating capacity. The per-capita electrical energy consumption in other OECD countries is only half of ours, but it is very important to note that it is still an order of magnitude higher than that of more than three quarters of the world= s population.
Unless you are one of the Mole People or a C.H.U.D. or a troglodyte, the Yucca Mountain repository isn't in anybody's "backyard".
3. THE CARTER POLICYOn April 7, 1977, President Jimmy Carter announced that the United States would defer indefinitely the reprocessing of spent nuclear reactor fuel. He stated that after extensive examination of the issues, he had reached the conclusion that this action was necessary to reduce the serious threat of nuclear weapons proliferation, and that by setting this example, the U. S. would encourage other nations to follow its lead.
It sounds like an idea that should at least be tried in an experimental setting in the Southwest desert, close enough to benefit a fairly populated area. I noticed the article suggested that a 2nd cooling loop would “likely” solve the problem.
When discussing nuclear reactors, “likely” isn’t going to get these built near people with concerns. That is why they need to build experimental reactors and extract data and prove these can be operated safely and efficiently. If that liquid Sodium makes contact with the air that is going to be a problem. I think this would work well provided it is properly maintained. Like most things, it in itself is safe but the human factor, complacency and becoming lax on procedure usually have to be added to the equation.
Liquid Sodium is nothing to mess with, let alone radioactive liquid sodium!
How many people here have ever seen what happens to raw sodium (pure Na) when it's exposed to air at room temperature? When it's exposed to water?
Take that “oxidation experiment” to new heights by making it radioactive and liquid at several hundred degrees C.
Any leak, any pin prick, and the detonation will make Chernobyl look like a campfire in comparison.
Nope... A different cooling mechanism is needed.
Thanks E.
Texas oil regulators approve emergency expenditure
Star-Telegram | Sep. 24, 2008 | Associated Press
Posted on 09/25/2008 8:42:56 AM PDT by thackney
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2090248/posts
Spent nuclear fuel rods are safe if kept in water.
They could dump them in the deep ocean trenches and no harm would come of it.
[The Carter EO was pursuant to a GreenPiece study (can you say, “BP”?), although it was nominally funded by the Ford Foundation.]
Not surprising in the least.
It’s sad how few folks know BP outproduces American oil, per 2006 stats, by over 4 to 1.
““...Such reactors would be cooled with liquid sodium, so they would not require massive water supplies and therefore can be located almost anywhere (read: isolated, desolate areas far from the large populations that might use the energy they produce)....”
Elias may be a syndicated columnist but he knows nothing about nuclear reactors.
True. Did you know that now most nuclear power plants are storing their excess waste fuel in AIR-cooled natural circulation containers?
The French have been using sodium cooled fast breeder reactors for decades and France produces about 80% of their electricity from nuclear power.
1. Chernobyl was caused by nuclear runaway and meltdown because of an improperly designed reactor and control system. The problems were long known about and no sane person would operate that kind of reactor. Modern fast reactors are designed to be passively safe, meaning that with complete hands off, they cannot have large power excursions, and if shut down, will passively cool themselves without additional efforts.
2. Sodium-air reactions are chemical reactions, and the problem is a fire, but it is not generally explosive. Sodium systems are low pressure systems so pipe integrity is easy to maintain. The design requirements are much less stringent than in a pressurized water system.
3. There are many instances around the world of the safe operation of sodium cooled reactors. The French Phenix and Super Phenix reactors and the Russian BN series are examples. The Japanese also have a sodium cooled fast reactor.
Leaks and pinpricks are an issue, but not the disaster you make them out to be, and will not result in a nuclear driven Chernobyl like disaster.
The principal reason for recycling reactor fuel is that with a single burn of low enrichment fuel you at best get about 2% of the total energy available from the original uranium before you toss it away. Eventually the world will want to achieve close to 100% utilization of the fission energy available in uranium and not just 2%. Uranium supplies are not infinite, and use up a lot of real estate. Even good conservatives don’t ruin more of nother earth than is needed for productive purposes.
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