What Happens when Oil Runs Out?

[eclipsenow]

...the indians/ native americans --- just like natives in other lands also: eskimoes, africans, indonesians, etc etc etc
used the land and resources wisely, so they were not diminished.

Except that hunter gatherer societies only supported about 1% of the people alive today. You want a 99% dieoff? That's a 'Christian' view of sustainability for you is it?

Power hungry, money hungry, 'corporate type entities' (anti-christ), came along
and devastated the land, the people, the cultures INSTEAD OF caring for it, or for them, instead of bringing the "GOOD NEWS" they brought death, robbery, and destruction...

I'm not defending corporations generally, but in some cases corporate research as well as government research has actually increased food production and been able to feed the growing population. However, yes, we've made a mess of the place. It's time to look for food systems that actually repair the world, instead of destroying it.

< shrugs > simple.
as always.
trust God, return to His Word, Pray (INSTEAD OF PREY), and obey Him.

We're talking about massive shifts in culture and public social policy and energy infrastructure. To dumb it down to the personal walk of faith is not faithful, but missing the point. Do you really want 99% of the population to die? Also, when are you going to read those wikipedia links I gave you? Breeder reactors are not only real, but they have been built in the past and we have 400 reactor-years experience with them. True GENIV breeder reactors are still on the way, but a whole variety of earlier generation breeders already exist. We KNOW how to build safe, clean, abundant power systems that eat nuclear waste and process the final fission products (real waste) into ceramic plates that only have to be buried about 300 years before they're safe. This is not hypothetical. This is history. This is fact!

 

[yeshuaslavejeff]

Except that hunter gatherer societies only supported about 1% of the people alive today. You want a 99% dieoff? That's a 'Christian' view of sustainability for you is it?

Strawman, unsupportable distraction, I think this is called, trying to divert attention away from the important vital points with unimportant skewed opinion and projecting false information at the same time, probably totally unaware (i.e. unwittingly).
The basis of such a statement is built upon so much that is "spun" from politics and corporate mis-information, over so many years, it won't be easy ever to get to the truth unless it is diligently sought and tested,
and
certainly not feasible here in the limited space and time and constraints of this forum. (probably anyway)

 

[yeshuaslavejeff]

The deforestation of Europe is documented many places.

(I hate the word "strawman" , btw) But this is the second post in 5 minutes to use it myself. i.e. repeat my previous post.

 

[eclipsenow]

Strawman, unsupportable distraction, I think this is called, trying to divert attention away from the important vital points with unimportant skewed opinion and projecting false information at the same time, probably totally unaware (i.e. unwittingly).

Incorrect. I have quite valid scientific papers supporting my view. Did you know it takes on average 10 calories of oil and gas energy to grow 1 calorie of food? It is used to make the fertiliser we use, pump the water we need, plough and sow and harvest the crops we grow? And that's not even counting the cooking! So when you eat a McDonald's hamburger, it actually took TEN TIMES the energy you're eating to grow it, on average. A hunter gatherer society simply cannot support the numbers alive today.

The basis of such a statement is built upon so much that is "spun" from politics and corporate mis-information,

Absolute rubbish, it's the science of agriculture! And as I have shown, nuclear power is the safest way to supply all the clean energy we need, and you have not responded to the positive data I submitted about nuclear power above.

 

[eclipsenow]

Your solution to the first is fast breeder reactors, which can convert the waste U238 to Plutonium that can then be used as a fuel. That seems like a win-win. We take this toxic waste, burn it as fuel, and get rid of it. Unfortunately it is not that easy. The International Panel of Fissile Materials is an independent organization of scientists evaluating such reactors, and they are not nearly as sanguine to the concept as you. Previously I linked to their document http://fissilematerials.org/library/rr08.pdf which is a complete evaluation of the technology. Also you can see their blog, IPFM Blog.

Sorry, I'm not convinced by reference to a long PDF without you spelling out your specific concerns, especially when wikipedia describes the group as:

The International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM), established in 2006, is a group of independent nuclear experts from 18 countries: Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Iran, Japan, the Netherlands, Mexico, Norway, Pakistan, South Korea, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.[1] It aims to advance international initiatives to “secure and to sharply reduce all stocks of highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium, the key materials in nuclear weapons, and to limit any further production”.[2]

FIRST, the Integral Fast Reactor is not even my favourite breeder reactor design! It's just the closest to commercial design, the one that we know more about than any other breeder. But there is an alternative, one that has even better safety features: no sodium! Instead, there is an option using hot liquid salt! 5 minutes you must watch! (Kirk Sorenson clips edited down to 5 minutes).

SECOND, I had a quick scan of the usual concerns from your anti-IRF paper, and they're all exaggerated. EG: Pyroprocessing *cannot* proliferate nuclear weapons in any compliant nation that allows inspection, as the equipment to corrupt this process would stand out like a sore thumb. I suggest re-reading my thread about pyroprocessing above. Any regime that wants to build nuclear weapons will breed weapons grade material any way they want, and will not build a significant capital investment like the pyroprocessing room just to try and disguise it. It's just old fashioned nuke-fear, exaggerating the 'horror' of a nuclear meltdown.

THIRD, how on EARTH is nuclear power UNSAFE? I don't get it. Look at the numbers. “….when coal goes right it kills more people than nuclear power does when it goes wrong. It kills more people every week than nuclear power has in its entire history. And that’s before we take climate change into account.”
The Heart of the Matter

Let's say it again: even today's nuclear, including Chernobyl and Fukushima, is vastly safer than coal! Coal kill's 2 Chernobyl's worth of victims EVERY DAY! Did you know most of the Fukushima exclusion zone is well under 50 milliSieverts a year? Well under. 50 mSv is the borderline where extra health impacts are barely detected. Not only that, but even based on the Linear No Threshold model (which is an extremely conservative and alarmist way of estimating how many people will die of cancer from EXTREMELY TINY extra doses of radiation, like trying to count how many minutes of life you might lose smoking 1 cigar), this is the result.

A June 2012 Stanford University study estimated, using a linear no-threshold model, that the radioactivity release from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant could cause 130 deaths from cancer globally (the lower bound for the estimate being 15 and the upper bound 1100) and 199 cancer cases in total (the lower bound being 24 and the upper bound 1800), most of which are estimated to occur in Japan. Radiation exposure to workers at the plant was projected to result in 2 to 12 deaths.[16]​

In fact, they're letting people move within 4km of the reactors! But coal? Again, Dr Hansen calculated nuclear power has ALREADY saved 1.8 MILLION lives in America.

DEATHS PER TERRAWATT

Sounds like an interesting read. Thanks. Although I am all for wind and solar, people are mistaken if they think it can easily replace fossil fuels. Tom Murphy hits a lot of the problems at his Do the Math | Using physics and estimation to assess energy, growth, options—by Tom Murphy site.

Tom Murphy can be helpful, but I saw a space-expert completely take down his "We won't be mining space" argument. He over-estimated the fuel required by several orders of magnitude.

The article I quoted says that breeder reactors could have a "small nuclear explosion." Ok, that is not an atomic bomb, but it is nothing to sneeze at.

I just searched the word 'explosion' in the PDF, and nothing about an actual nuclear explosion was apparent. (Because it CANNOT happen - it's simply against the laws of physics, like saying a toddler playing with a bouncy ball could hit that ball with such force it's going to have the impact of an SLR 7.62mm NATO Full Metal Jacket travelling at 823 meters per second!)

We can mass produce nukes, France did it in 15 years and cleaned up 3/4 of their grid.
We can replace gasoline with EV's, and diesel with Blue Crude. But there's another contender...


Recyclable boron powder!

Boron can be a metal powder or pellet that can be burned and then recycled afterwards as a replacement for oil or diesel. It does not leak like hydrogen.

It only burns in a very high-oxygen environment, making it inert, safe, and easy to store for years. Oxygen tanks or miniaturised oxygen concentrators would be attached to car engines. In high oxygen, boron is 4 times as energy dense as gasoline . It “takes a quart of boron to match the energy in a gallon of gasoline.” (Dr James Hansen, link below).

Boron is an effective energy carrier, but is not the energy source. Think of it as a battery. Once it is burned, nuclear power plants would power the smelts where they melt it down and strip the rust off, and recycled boron would be cheaper than petroleum products.

Boron solves the chicken and egg problem of a hydrogen economy. All it takes is one boron recycling centre in the country, and then people can mail used boron to it for recycling. It is so safe and cheap to mail that even with the cost of mail and recycling, it would still be cheaper than oil. Initially you could buy 2 or 3 tanks worth of boron, and then just recycle those forever. Eventually as the boron economy grew you would swap old for new at your local garage or shops.

You can store extra boron in your garage for years. Your car could operate as a backup power station during blackouts. This is not that big a deal here in Australia but in North America could be the difference between life and death in a snowstorm and power outage.

Boron to replace oil is discussed in Prescription for the Planet, a book Dr James Hansen recommends. See Chapter 5 “The fifth element” on page 155.
http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/prescription-for-the-planet.html

James Hansen has summarised it here. (Page 8) I've copied and pasted it below.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/20080804_TripReport.pdf

More technical specifications by Graham Cowan, who calls them ‘ash ingots’ or pellets
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/235_248.pdf

 

[Radrook]

If a Barnum and Baily clown is about to hurl horse manure into this big fan that is pointing in our direction it is best to change seats.

 

[yeshuaslavejeff]

If a Barnum and Baily clown is about to hurl horse manure into this big fan that is pointing in our direction it is best to change seats.

That's funny somehow ...

"hunter gatherer societies only supported about 1% of the people alive today." That statement is so obviously true.

No sir, the fact that population was once much smaller than it is today is not something being spun out of politics and corporate information. It is a fact.

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How can you tell if something is of God? I've had doubts that this is of God.

With men it is impossible.
But with God all things are possible. (not what men want, no, but what is good and true and holy and right as God Plans and Purposes His Way Always) ....


Back later, if YHWH permits, to clarify a little bit.... SHALOM !

 

[eclipsenow]

But with God all things are possible. (not what men want, no, but what is good and true and holy and right as God Plans and Purposes His Way Always)

On this logic thrift goes out the window. A Christian person can run up a huge credit card bill without worrying about greed or the sustainability of their lifestyles, and just say "Don't worry about it, God will rescue me from the consequences of my actions!" All the normal rules we read about wise living from Proverbs go out the window. No need for the Proverb, "Go to the ant you sluggard! Consider it's ways and be wise..." etc. All the normal cause-and-effect sequences we see in nature go out the window as well. There is no respect for logic, for the bible, for Christian wisdom or anything. God will just rescue, no matter what we do.
Apparently you've forgotten that God created a cause-and-effect universe, with covenants and consequences.

 

[eclipsenow]

[Staff edit at member's request].

 

[eclipsenow]

You are lying. I have repeated two times that the PDF says breeder reactors can cause nuclear explosions. You simply ignore what I say.​

I ignore what you say because I searched the word 'explosion' through the PDF and no where does it say nuclear reactors can cause a nuclear explosion. Please quote the page number where it DOES, or right back at you: you're lying! (This is a really immature way to argue, and I'm insane for copying it).

You are lying. I am worried about deaths from coal.​

OK, I'm glad you said that and will retract that from my thinking. If you're concerned about coal killing 2 Chernobyl's a day, then isn't it worth considering nuclear power?

I'm happy to discuss any further points with you, and will even retract any statements that might have been posted in haste or in emotion late at night. But if you're just going to chant "You're lying" several dozen times, that's actually against forum rules, and I'll not be dignifying it with a response. Any rational person can see that I robustly responded to all your anti-nuclear accusations with evidence, and you just refer to one PDF and quote 'the vibe of the thing' without referring to the specific paragraphs that most concerned you. That would be like me referring agnostics to the bible and just saying "read that, it's the vibe of the thing" to convince them, and then not discussing it with them any further.
But also, any rational person can also see that this conversation is quite important to me, and that sometimes I get a little emotional when writing late at night. I'm happy to retract any character attacks that you felt were unkind or incorrect, if you will discuss them with me. But just sticking your fingers in your ears and chanting "You're lying" is not only against forum rules, it's not very adult, is it?

 

[eclipsenow]

You are wrong when you say I did not give you a page number where the PDF talks about nuclear explosions. In post 173 above I said,

On the middle of page 9 you will read " if the core heats up to the point of collapse, it can assume a more critical configuration and blow itself apart in a small nuclear explosion" (http://fissilematerials.org/library/rr08.pdf)​

But that does not stop you from saying I never gave you a reference.

I apologise for implying you were misreading the document - I was reading that post during my lunch break and must have rushed a bit. Sadly, it is there. Sadly, those scientists have phrased that part badly. They probably mean some form of thermal explosion in the core, or hydrogen explosion from hydrogen that built up outside the cores from excessive heat, as we saw at Fukushima. These are NOT nuclear explosions. If the authors actually meant what they wrote, a literal nuclear explosion, then run away from that paper as fast as you can because they are lying! A nuclear reactor is just not set up for a nuclear bomb. First, the breeder reactors we're talking about might contain plutonium, but it's mixed in with all the other fissile materials. It's pure enough to 'burn', but not to go 'boom'. No 'boom'. Second, you need a detonator - either small plutonium shells to explode inwards or a bullet configuration, to explosively trigger the fast nuclear reaction. There's more at Gizmodo, but

Here's how Gizmodo puts it in March 2011, as the Fukushima plant was melting down!

As Japan's Fukushima power plant continues to struggle with massive equipment failure and radiation release that could well reach Chernobyl levels, we can take some small comfort in the knowledge that a full-on nuclear explosion is completely impossible. Here's why.​

Why A Nuclear Reactor Will Never Become A Bomb

This conversation is over. I know what it is like to talk to some people here. They say something wrong about what has been said, and when we correct the record, they respond with two untruths. When we correct those two untruths, they respond with four. When we correct those four, they respond with eight. There comes a time when it becomes apparent that any further discussion with this person is a waste of time. I have come to that point on this thread. If you are interested in what I have to say, then respond to what I say. But I have no need to respond to an endless litany of untruths about what I am saying. That is a waste of everybody's time.

An 'endless litany of untruths' is simply untrue! But I'm happy to admit there was a long post above where I was a bit cranky, and I apologise. It was post 174 and I would delete it if I could. I know you have legitimate concerns about the world energy supply. I was a peak oiler myself, and actually presented peak oil material to the NSW Parliament in 2005. I was utterly freaked out by it, because in the absence of big government action to address the coming transport fuel shortages, society could be in for a Greater Depression! I just don't think we have to go Mad Max, the way some peak oil doomers carry on, but that we might be able to get there with some rationing. But we can do this quite smoothly IF citizens like you and me get together and demand action before peak oil really starts to bite.

 

[eclipsenow]

Apology accepted.

Cheers.

You can't delete the post, but you could edit out the offensive parts. If you do that, I will remove most of post 175. Or we can just leave that in the past and move on.

Sadly, there is no edit button, just report! It seems 2 day old posts can't be edited. I've reported myself to the moderators and asked them just to delete that post.

I do find the concept of using nuclear to produce diesel fuel interesting, and would like to discuss that further.

Great, although I'm not a chemist. I only collect the papers I find most interesting, but I have good reasons to accept that this is possible.

Regarding breeder reactors, I am not an expert, so even if you could convince me it is OK, that is not what science is about. It is not about persuading the uninformed. It is about persuading those who understand the science well. That is why I mention the study by leading scientists warning about breeder reactors.

My problem with that is I'm not convinced they are leading scientists because of the paragraph about nuclear explosions. In a world where any group of people can form an online group and co-write a paper together, one has to be very careful about sources. The fact that they said a melt down could cause a nuclear-explosion triggered my alarm bells! They're not credible! I'm highly suspicious of that article now. I have met many nuclear engineers online, and they would laugh that suggestion out of the room. Sorry, but the entire paper should be thrown out of court as inadmissible evidence. Suggesting a nuclear power plant could cause a nuclear explosion is an outright lie against the laws of physics, a scandalous lie.

So what's the real difference between low- and high-enriched uranium? Why couldn't low-enriched uranium create an explosion that's just not quite as severe as its high-enriched equivalent? For that, we must turn to another term that is frequently mentioned but infrequently understood, and that's critical mass. The term simply means that there's enough fissile material present to sustain a chain reaction, and a supercritical mass is where enough material is present for the fission rate to increase.

Although mass is obviously an important factor here - hence the name - it's possible to alter the point of criticality by varying other attributes of the material, including shape and density. A nuclear weapon is designed to release all its energy in one incredibly destructive blast, which means the material wants to be as densely packed with fissile material as possible, and the material should be packed into as homogeneous a sphere as possible.

That's absolutely nothing like the design of reactor cores, which is meant to produce a steady, controlled release of energy, and even the sort of energy buildup needed to produce a meltdown can't ever attain the speed and intensity needed for an explosive nuclear energy release. The geometric arrangement of uranium-235 in a nuclear reactor is just fundamentally not conducive to the spherical arrangement needed for an explosive chain reaction, and the amount of non-fissile uranium-238 in reactor-grade uranium also stops any runaway reactions dead in their tracks.
Why A Nuclear Reactor Will Never Become A Bomb​

Summation:
1. Uranium is not a natural explosive.
2. Reactor fuels are 30-90 times too dilute in fissionable isotopes to make a bomb.
3. It is impossible for any power plant reactor to experience a nuclear explosion.
4. Walt Disney's "ping pong balls" demonstration of a chain reaction only works for bombs.

Nuclear Chain Reaction | Bomb Grade Uranium | Natural Uranium

To prove it is viable, that is the case one needs to refute. Finding someone on the Internet you can convince is not the same as making a case that would pass peer review.

I'm not sure what you mean here: the paper you cite is simply not credible precisely because it claimed that a nuclear power plant can cause a nuclear explosion. I will not convince those authors of anything, because they're either:-
1. intentionally lying,
2. or don't understand the science enough themselves for their opinion to matter in the first place!

All I can tell you is that the human race already has 400 breeder reactor years (reactors multiplied by the number of years they were run) experience with breeder reactors. Some of them are not my favourite configurations, but they are being built. Here's my quick summary of what's happening in the 2 main categories of breeder reactor. Don't feel you have to read all the wiki's, just read slowly through my descriptions and summaries to get the big picture.

Breeder reactors burn the longer lived actinides in nuclear waste, eventually burning the nuclear waste down to the fission products which only stay hot for 300 years.
Breeder reactor - Wikipedia

We have over 400 reactor years experience with the fast-reactor category alone, and some nations already have them in operation.
Fast Neutron Reactors | FBR - World Nuclear Association
There are two main categories of breeder reactor.

CATEGORY ONE: Fast Neutron reactors.
Fast-neutron reactor - Wikipedia

Russia had the old BN-350, and then built the Bn-600. Note: the Japanese paid Russia a billion for the technical specs on their old BN-600, and “The operation of the reactor is an international study in progress; Russia, France, Japan, and the United Kingdom currently participate.”
BN-600 reactor - Wikipedia

They just opened the BN-800 (and sold the plans to China).
BN-800 reactor - Wikipedia

They are building 11 new normal reactors over the next few years, including 2 whopping great BN-1200 breeder reactors! They already have plans to retrofit the fuel supply to burn nuclear waste from other plants.
Russia to build 11 new nuclear reactors by 2030

G.E. have the PRISM ready for commercial prototype testing (as the original proof-of-concept testing was done decades ago in the EBR2). They are basically ready to deploy in the first country that will let them.
PRISM (reactor) - Wikipedia

China will mass produce breeder nukes cheaper than coal in just 5 years!
China seriously looking at supercritical water cooled reactors – they could be low cost enough to get China to stop building new coal starting in 2025 | NextBigFuture.com

CATEGORY TWO: Thermal (slow neutron) reactors run hotter
My favourite thermal reactor is the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor which CANNOT 'melt down', as it is already a liquid! See China's plans!
China-U.S. Nuclear Collaboration, Though Controversial, Moves Ahead

Watch this 5 minute video if you have time. It cannot melt down, already a liquid, it produces enough heat to run fertiliser, mining, smelting, desalination and other industrial process and produce electricity as a side-product!

ENOUGH FUEL?
America has enough nuclear waste to run her for 1,000 years and this has been estimated to be worth $30 TRILLION dollars!
The Integral Fast Reactor – Summary for Policy Makers

The United Kingdom has enough waste to run her for 500 years.
New generation of nuclear reactors could consume radioactive waste as fuel

When we finally run out of today’s nuclear waste to burn in 500 years my guess is we might not even need fission reactors any more, as we might have 24 hour reliable baseload space-based solar or even fusion power by then. But if we do still need to use IFR’s and LFTR’s, what then? Uranium from seawater is 'renewable' in the sense that erosion constantly tops up the uranium particles floating in the ocean, 3 times faster than we could use it. It will last us a billion years.

WASTE? Once the actinides are burned out, the fission products only stay 'hot' for 300 years. Just vitrify it into waterproof ceramic blocks, and store in carpark depth bunkers. Done. Trivial. Not an issue!

 

[eclipsenow]

Here's a video about the diesel

 

[eclipsenow]

Sorry, the International Panel on Fissile Materials is not a group of wannabe scientists. They are leading experts in the field. You can look at their credentials here: Members

Yes, there's a lot of public affairs experts and a few physicists and even a nuclear physicist. But they phrased that part of the document really poorly. I didn't even do high school physics, but focussed on humanities, and even I can see that nuclear power plants cannot cause a nuclear explosion. Why don't you write to them and ask what the trigger mechanism is? What highly enriched material will approach another highly enriched material about as fast as a bullet? It's a nuclear REACTOR designed NOT to do this, not a NUCLEAR BOMB!

Yet somehow you trust You Tube videos and not this group of PhDs in nuclear physics? How so? One would think they are qualified to talk about this field.

I'm sure it was just poorly worded. As I said above, even I can tell you outright, there's no trigger mechanism. It cannot happen. Also, if you read my posts above carefully, you'll see I did not reference a youtuber. ;-)

Here's a summary from the Centre for Nuclear Sciences:

# 2: A nuclear reactor can explode like a nuclear bomb.

Truth: It is impossible for a reactor to explode like a nuclear weapon; these weapons contain very special materials in very particular configurations, neither of which are present in a nuclear reactor.​

Top 10 Myths About Nuclear Energy

Also, this article shows how reactor grade plutonium can be very different from bomb grade

No, sir, again, this PDF is the statement of qualified experts.

Maybe other elements are worth engaging, but not the paragraph about a nuclear explosion. It cannot happen. It was a typo. Or worse, it was a lie. I don't know, and prefer in this instance to be a bit more charitable.

Note that they are not saying fast neutron reactors are atomic bombs.

I would hope not!

Rather the issue is that fast neutron reactors continue to react if they lose their coolant. This is different from conventional slow neutron reactors. Those are cooled by water, and the reaction basically stops if they lose coolant. TMI, Chernobyl, and Fukushima were conventional slow neutron reactors, so when they lost coolant, the reaction started to shut down on its own.

LWR's: there might be some slowing due to loss of moderator, but moderator rods also have something to do with it so the reaction continues, the whole thing overheats, and then there's a meltdown.

Not so with fast neutron reactors. They will continue to react in the absence of coolant, and they could build up temperature and pressure in the vessel until no practical enclosure will contain them, exploding the vessel, and throwing dangerous radioactive materials out in an explosion. This is what those scientists are warning about. If TMI had been a fast neutron reactor, it would have been a much more serious situation.

Then why didn't they say 'thermal pressure explosion' or something like that? They said 'nuclear explosion', conjuring images of Hiroshima. That's either poor writing or deliberately misleading. I don't want to just 'trust' a bunch of people that seem to be producing an ideologically warped piece of prose like that. But I'm genuinely glad it sounds like you agree that it could not cause a nuclear explosion.

I don't mind you getting excited about fast neutron reeactors.

If they had been at Chernobyl and Fukushima, the western world wouldn't know those words. A sodium leak would be serious, but also very very rare. The experts are talking about once-in-an-ice-age events. So while there are certain worse case disasters we can dream up, do they happen enough to worry about? In the meantime, coal is causing climate change, is running out, and is killing about 650 Chernobyl's a year worth of lung and throat cancer victims. A Chernobyl a generation has got to be better than nearly 2 a day! But even that's extremely high. It might be a Chernobyl every 10 thousand years with the new designs. Energy is dangerous, yet we love it. Driving is dangerous, yet we love it. I don't think any of the risk posited in your paper rule out not just accepting, but embracing Integral Fast Reactors with strict pyroprocessing on site. Instead of being a proliferation risk, breeders could be a massive market for governments to sell expensive old warheads to. In the Megaton's to Megawatts program, Russia sold 16,000 bombs worth of material to America to burn in American reactors. About 10% of American electricity ran on old Soviet bombs for 20 years. That's like powering the whole of Australia for 2 decades on old bombs! Awesome hey?

Don't just accept IFR's, embrace them! They're going to save millions of lives!

But we cannot ignore it when a team of experts in the field warn that such reactors have special dangers.

I have read such alarmist reports before, and the section on reprocessing nuclear fuel as a proliferation risk WAS taken seriously. Decades ago, by the EBR2 team that designed a great reactor that these experts sound like they don't understand!

But take a look at this next thread. If we build the enough of today's once-through non-breeder reactors over the next few decades to mitigate climate change, and 'normal' reactors can keep us going until then, we might not even need to go the IFR route. Read this, watch the 5 minute video, and get back to me. This could be the perfect reactor!

 

[Radrook]

Here's a video about the diesel

Thanks for the informative video.

 

[eclipsenow]

I had posted a link and you could had read their credentials if you wanted to. Instead you publish false statements about their credentials. Why?

I didn't, I was just summarising.

Why is "small nuclear explosion" a misnomer?

Public perception, that's why. There's reactor pressure explosions expelling nuclear material, then there's NUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS!

It's bad writing, issue-driven writing, misleading writing.
They should be ashamed.

But somehow you quibble over the name, rather than discuss the risk.

I'm happy to discuss the risk. It's a bit like an Australian bushfire that races through an area and the town gets burned to the ground. It takes a year or so to rebuild. A nuclear accident is roughly like that, except for maybe (within the limits of detectable science and statistics), maybe, a tiny fraction of a percent increased rate of cancer afterwards.
Chernobyl, Fukushima, radiation — Oh my!

Considering we could have the cure for cancer soon, what's the panic? The way medicine is galloping along, we might not even have to evacuate an effected area for a year. Evacuate for a year, then move back in. Done! (See my radiation page above for the radiation stats).

But we could use some common sense and build the new reactors underground so that a total meltdown explosion results in exactly ZERO radiation pollution. Under 3 minutes.

​

 

[eclipsenow]

You know, it's getting a bit old that every time your appeal to authority fails with me you just turn around and call me a liar.

Alexander Glaser is an Associate Professor with a joint appointment in Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and its Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE)....​

He's a bit like me: hates bad nukes and nuclear bombs, wants to see GOOD nukes and anti-proliferation reprocessing of nuclear fuel loads. Love it! Go Alexander, I wish you well.
Alexander Glaser

Zia Mian is a Research Scientist in Princeton University's Program on Science and Global Security and directs its Project on Peace and Security in South Asia. He has a Ph.D. in physics (1991) from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. His research interests are in nuclear-weapon and nuclear-energy policy in South Asia. He is a Co-Editor of Science & Global Security. As of 1 January 2015, he is a co-chair of IPFM.
​

Wikipedia says: "Dr. Zia Mian is also a prominent peace activist and a strong supporter of non-nuclear proliferation,nuclear disarmament, and peaceful use of nuclear technology"

Pavel Podvig (Russia) is a researcher at the Program on Science and Global Security and a Senior Research Fellow at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR). ...​

Has a generic physics degree, but his Phd and interests mainly lie in the politics of proliferation, not the operation of nuclear reactors. ZERO experience in nuclear reactors, more of a political theorist, if you'd looked at his blog or actual Princeton page.

M. V. Ramana (India) is a Professional Specialist with a joint appointment in Princeton University's Program on Science and Global Security and its Nuclear Futures Laboratory. He has a Ph.D. in physics (1994) from Boston University and has held research positions at the University of Toronto and MIT. His research has focused on India's nuclear energy and weapon programs.​

This guy reads like a Who's who of anti-nuclear activism: generic degrees in physics but no degree as a nuclear engineer and no time in the industry. Instead he's a fear monger rabbiting on about the same old myths. As one reviewer of his book wrote:

Kudos for the research done to explain nuclear energy and it's components in a very lucid way.
However the strong anti nuclear establishment bias vitiates this effort and detracts. From the quality of this work. A pity!​

Now that I have thoroughly reviewed your panel of 'experts', with 2 of the 4 shockingly being pro-GOOD nuclear and anti-BAD nuclear, exactly as Dr James Hansen, Dr Barry Brooke, and myself all are, can you tell us why they wrote the deceptive words "small nuclear explosion"? Because I'm afraid there's only one way an uninformed lay person would read that.

Also, let's operate under some really crude assumptions here. There have been 2 bad "nuclear explosions" (actually reactor meltdowns) in about half a century of nuclear power. Let's pretend (and this is a BIG pretend!) that we're stuck with old Generation 2 Light Water Reactors, and have not progressed to passive safety sodium or liquid salt reactors. Let's pretend that we HAVE to have 1 nuclear accident on the scale of Chernobyl every generation forever if we're going to maintain the modern world on nuclear power. (An INSANE pretence). Would that be better or worse than climate change? How bad is that radiation? How many people died as a result of Chernobyl? Would you live there if a really good job came up and your family and friends would move there? How radioactive is it, and is there actually any scientific basis for maintaining such a large exclusion zone?

What's worse, catastrophic global warming or 1 Chernobyl every generation?

 

[Traveling teacher]

You wont have to worry about running out of oil for 100 years....
We will be exporting oil within a few years.....

I live in texas and with fracking we are producing 43% of americas oil.......
Fracking an old oil well has nearly 100% chance of hitting oil and can produce 1000-1500 barrels a day
Vs the old 30-50 barrells a day.....

 

[eclipsenow]

As an ex-peak oiler, I hear you! The recovery in American production has been astonishing. Too bad that oil particulates kill thousands every year, adding to the health burden, and that it makes climate change so much worse. But Elon Musk will eventually get electric cars so much cheaper, and the moment robot-taxi's arrive, we won't even be buying our own cars, let alone our own oil.

 

[eclipsenow]

I'm not being rude, as the vast majority of my life I was anti-nuclear out of sheer ignorance as well! There are 4 other reasons people are anti-nuclear, but from personal experience I this first one is the most powerful! As the Scientific American article says:

1. Ignorance: This simple reason remains remarkably pervasive. I am not trying to sound preachy or elitist here but reading two or three books would greatly benefit people who have a gut reaction against nuclear energy. The whole set of beliefs about any kind of radiation in any proportion being harmful, about nuclear plants releasing large amounts of radiation (when in reality they release fractions of what everyone naturally gets from the environment), about nuclear waste being a hideously convoluted and insoluble problem (the problem is largely political, not technical) can be dispelled by reading some basic books on radiation and nuclear energy. The most important revelation in this context is how, in our daily lives, we face risks that are hundreds of times greater than those from nuclear energy (transportation, air pollution etc.) without being nonplussed.

In the half century during which almost 500 nuclear power plants have been steadily humming and providing energy to millions, there have been only two serious accidents - Chernobyl and Fukushima - one of which was a truly rare event and the other was entirely preventable. The number of deaths from these two accidents are a small fraction of the number from almost every other energy source, not to mention from indoor and outdoor pollution arising from chemical and fossil fuel sources. In addition coal-fired plants emit much more radioactivity than any nuclear power plant. The small casualty rate from even the two worst nuclear accidents in history attests to the generally outstanding record of nuclear safety all over the world and in the US in particular. The large-scale adoption of nuclear energy in the US has been thwarted more by political inertia and gut fears rather than by a sound assessment of the costs and benefits. The high costs are mostly capital and have stemmed from unrealistic standards and layers of bureaucracy. If you typically think of problems like waste reprocessing or disposal that on the surface seem like insurmountable technical difficulties, delving deeper will usually reveal that the real issues are political and social. Nobody thinks that waste disposal and making nuclear plants failsafe are trivial issues, but deeper investigation almost always reveals that the situation is much better than most people think and that the principal opposition has been human, not scientific.

There's several objective books that presents a balanced view of the topic. As a starting point I would recommend Richard Rhodes's article in Foreign Affairs and his book Nuclear Renewal which talks about the extensive and safe deployment of nuclear energy by countries like France. Samuel Glasstone's timeless classic Sourcebook on Atomic Energy is still excellent on basics, so is Bernard Cohen's book. Gwyneth Cravens's very informative "Power to Save the World" is particularly noteworthy since Cravens was vociferously against nuclear power before she educated herself and found herself in favor of it; it's a remarkable example of how someone can change their mind in the face of evidence. Another informal, breezy and excellent treatment is Scott Heaberlin's A Case for Nuclear-Generated Electricity: (Or Why I Think Nuclear Power Is Cool and Why It Is Important That You Think So Too). For those who are ok with a slightly heavier dose of science, I would strongly recommend David Bodansky's Nuclear Energy. In addition there's some very promising new technologies on the horizon in the form of advanced new-generation reactor designs and new thorium-based fuel cycles. These developments are geared toward increasing safety (both passive safety and proliferation resistance) and efficiency and reducing cost. Liquid fluoride thorium reactors are especially noteworthy in this regard and Richard Martin's "Superfuel" does a very good job of explaining their function and advantages. The main obstacle to the testing and use of these designs is again political rather than scientific.​