Nuclear Holy Grail

[Marina Schwarz + 1,576]

A Nobel Prize winner says it might be possible to cut the lifespan of radioactive waste to minutes. Here. Now that wouldn't be very good news for renewables, would it?

[Rasmus Jorgensen + 1,169]

6 hours ago, Marina Schwarz said:

A Nobel Prize winner says it might be possible to cut the lifespan of radioactive waste to minutes. Here. Now that wouldn't be very good news for renewables, would it?

It really depends on the cost for developing this. And whether somebody will throw money at it. 

And on a sidenote - if it was cheap enough it would be equally bad for FF, why do you only see it as bad news for renewables? 

[Marina Schwarz + 1,576]

Because it's renewables that are being hailed as the energy of the future, not fossil fuels. 

[Rasmus Jorgensen + 1,169]

2 hours ago, Marina Schwarz said:

Because it's renewables that are being hailed as the energy of the future, not fossil fuels. 

Uranium and fossil fuels are both finite, so with a long enough perspective none of them will be the fuel of future. 

[Marina Schwarz + 1,576]

So are the materials from which solar panels and wind turbines are made. Nothing lasts forever.

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,129]

4 hours ago, Rasmus Jorgensen said:

Uranium and fossil fuels are both finite, so with a long enough perspective none of them will be the fuel of future. 

Current ancient pressure water crap reactors use U235.... 0.07% of available Uranium at pathetically low energy conversion...  Modern reactor will be liquid fuel, liquid salt, Thorium/U233 breeder thermal reactors.  For your information that is 99.3% of available Uranium and 100% of Thorium which is a waste product out of every mine on earth totaling many times the volume of all known Uranium.  It is found on 100% of the surface of the earth.  You are standing/sitting on some right now.  On top of this, the Breeder thermal reactors are MANY times more efficient and create very short life daughter products.  Article claims even shorter...

It would never run out.  The earth's magnetic field would die first before we ran out of Uranium, let alone Thorium. 

[Rasmus Jorgensen + 1,169]

2 minutes ago, Wastral said:

Current ancient pressure water crap reactors use U235.... 0.07% of available Uranium at pathetically low energy conversion...  Modern reactor will be liquid fuel, liquid salt, Thorium/U233 breeder thermal reactors.  For your information that is 99.3% of available Uranium and 100% of Thorium which is a waste product out of every mine on earth totaling many times the volume of all known Uranium.  It is found on 100% of the surface of the earth.  You are standing/sitting on some right now.  On top of this, the Breeder thermal reactors are MANY times more efficient and create very short life daughter products.  Article claims even shorter...

It would never run out.  The earth's magnetic field would die first before we ran out of Uranium, let alone Thorium. 

Thank you for pointing this out. Seriously.  

However, the context for this article seemed to be that by reducing the lifespan of nuclear waste then current nuclear tech would be competetive. i understand that molten salt reactors could essentially also dispose of nuclear waste.

I am in no way against nuclear.

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,129]

2 minutes ago, Rasmus Jorgensen said:

Thank you for pointing this out. Seriously.  

However, the context for this article seemed to be that by reducing the lifespan of nuclear waste then current nuclear tech would be competetive. i understand that molten salt reactors could essentially also dispose of nuclear waste.

I am in no way against nuclear.

As far as I am concerned we should be pouring Billions into making the Thorium liquid salt liquid fuel reactors a reality and decommission the dangerous pressure water reactors ASAP.  What is near criminal is the USA nearly had a complete reactor working in the 70's where they were doing long term corrosion testing and only had to implement the removal of daughter products(tritium mainly).  Have personally worked on the modular reactor concepts and they are even worse than what we have today and barely any safer by the advent that their efficiency is even poorer. 

PS: The nuclear waste as a problem is an absurd joke of epic proportions.  It is a pathetic excuse.  Drill a hole for a couple million bucks 20,000ft down, dump in, cover.  End of Story.  Dead simple.  And on a humorous note: There is more nuclear "waste" in a single coal fly ash pile from a coal fired plant than the entirety of the worlds nuclear "waste".  Its just not "as" radioactive...

[jagdish dhall + 2]

I am not very clear how the laser would change a nucleus . I would tend to depend on chemical processing and recycling. Some fission products leftover could be treated by laser, if feasible, or buried deep.

[BenFranklin'sSpectacles + 762]

On 4/3/2019 at 2:21 AM, Rasmus Jorgensen said:

Uranium and fossil fuels are both finite, so with a long enough perspective none of them will be the fuel of future. 

Yes, but:
1)  We have a lot more Uranium than we do fossil fuels.  Enough to last millenia, in fact. 
2)  We can also burn thorium, which is twice as abundant as Uranium. 
3)  Current reactors only use 1-2% of the Uranium.  Recycling - which is already done in Canada - can increase that somewhat.  Fast-neutron breeder reactors could increase it to nearly 100%. 
4)  Because fuel costs of nuclear reactors is so low, the price of uranium or thorium could spike several fold without significantly impacting energy prices.  That means we could economically extract fuel from the ocean - a near limitless supply. 

Nuclear fuel would last orders of magnitude longer than fossil fuels, at which point technology will be unrecognizable to us.  It's a bit disingenuous to compare nuclear to fossil fuels. 

[BenFranklin'sSpectacles + 762]

On 4/3/2019 at 7:19 AM, Rasmus Jorgensen said:

Thank you for pointing this out. Seriously.  

However, the context for this article seemed to be that by reducing the lifespan of nuclear waste then current nuclear tech would be competetive. i understand that molten salt reactors could essentially also dispose of nuclear waste.

I am in no way against nuclear.

France already reprocesses their nuclear "waste", which dramatically reduces its half life.  I believe current reprocessing technology drops radioactivity levels such that, within 1000 years (the blink of an eye in geological terms), radiation levels are below those present when the fuel was mined. 

In other words, if we were truly worried about radiation, we'd be digging up all the radioactive isotopes, burning them for fuel, and reprocessing them.