The Volt will Jolt our Power Grid....

Ontario Power Generation promised that, and blew it. Those who privately invested in solar farms were stuck with a stranded investment. The CBC Fifth Estate show on that topic pokes a lot of jabs at Hydro One, or whatever they call themselves this week

AECL was well on the way, in cooperation with the French, to develop technologies to reprocess and reburn the waste. The entire point of CANDU was to do only the initial fuel cycle on natural (Unenriched) uranium

Subsequent fuel cycles would be with reprocessed fuels and the much more plentiful thorium. A lot of that high level waste would be reburned in the normal CANDU fuel cycle. This article provides a good background on the French example

IEEE Spectrum: Nuclear Wasteland

Even the UN OECD's NEA admit that the CANDU design is best suited for transmutation of high level waste

http://www.nea.fr/html/pt/iempt10/presentation/SS07Dyck.pdf

But for whatever reason, work in this field is now stalled. I don't understand how Canada could have gone from world leader in nuclear technology, to dropping off the radar

 

Let me take a potshot at this then.

Firstly, the French nuclear industry has demonstrated that recycling spent nuclear waste is not only possible, but efficient and safe. Yes, you need to guard against the kooks and terrorists, but we do that anyway while storing our waste at the bottom of huge 'swimming' pools.

Secondly, for that irreducible amount of waste that cannot be recycled practically, there is a 100% safe location to dispose of it that we have the technology today to send it to. Nobody seems to realize that there is an enormous nuclear reactor only 98 million miles away that can make mincemeat of any quantity of radioactive waste we want to send its way.

hope this helps

[edit]
Thanks Jayman for providing those links...saw them after I posted.
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I'm not going to get into a pissing contest about this ala the global warming thread but,,,,,

My statement was: Until it can be proved that either the waste is 100% (or nearly so,,) for what ever life it needs to be OR you can demonstrate to me how you plan on storing dangerous waste for however long is required to make it safe, in such a fashion that will be safe from natural disasters (fairly easy given enough money) but also from human disasters, (nearly impossible, given enough resources/desire to get to it for evil purposes.

We are talking 10's of thousands of years here, and I cannot conceive of a political/social system that can/will endure over that time frame to protect future generations. One only has to look at the collapse of the USSR to realize the possibility of a loose nuke going into the wrong hands is fairly large. It has only been ~60 years since the Soviets had Nukes, and ~15 since the Soviet state fell apart. Georgians, Ukrainians, all manner of of 'stans through central Asia could all let loose a weapon with out "government" sanction.

As I say, prove to me that it can be done safely, then I'll change my mind.

Icarus

 

I agree with icarus about the waste and security issues. The U.S. has yet to get serious about dealing with nuclear waste. Until the public is serious about implementing a solution to that, it remains off the table as far as I'm concerned.

The Volt certainly will not pose a serious problem for the power grid, not in the miniscule numbers that are being discussed. Even if the numbers were several orders of magnitude larger, there are already enough efficiency improvements possible in the average existing home to offset ALL of the increased electrical demand. Add to that distributed production from wind and solar that will continue to come online and it is apparent that this is really a non-issue.

 

Well, we have to do *something* with that waste. Just leaving it sit around in giant swimming pools is insane. There is just as much a terrorist threat to those giant swimming pools full of glowing spent bundles, as there is to a reprocessing plant

If reprocessing was done with CANDU reactors, in essence turning them into breeder reactors, the high level waste volume would be reduced at least 90%

Additionally, since CANDU had always been intended to do so, its one of the few reactor designs in the world to be able to do an initial fuel cycle on natural uranium. The uranium enrichment process needed by most light pressurized water reactors also adds to the actinides waste stream

So even if every nuclear power plant in the world was closed down tomorrow, we're still dealing with all those fuel bundles, and all those giant swimming pools full of spent fuel. The nutty thing is - with the exception of the French who make token efforts to reprocess, hardly any reprocessing is being done

Just as I think its nutty that our sewage treatment plants don't take advantage of the large supply of "fuel" - the s*** - to make methane, I also think its nutty that we don't do anything about reprocessing all those spent fuel bundles

Burying the bundles deep underground is NOT a solution!

 

Jay,

My point is, understanding that "we have to do something with the waste", perhaps that instead of going forward with projects that ADD to that waste stream, we should prevent it in the first place!

As I say, if you can prove to me that we can make it safe, then fine, but clearly it is not now safe not does is there any technology readily available to make it so. That said then, don't make more!

The French glass vitrification, stored in deep earth vaults may be safe as far as it goes, but you cannot convince me that you can keep all the neer do wells away from it essentially forever!

Icarus

 

How much mercury have we dumped into the environment from coal burning? How long until it works it way out of the natural system, if ever? What of the radioactive isotopes also spewed out of those plants? Then there is the mining of the fuel for them, which is on a larger scale than uranium.

There is no 100% guarantee in anything.

We, and the rest of the world, are going to need more power. Renewable power sources aren't mature enough to completely replace traditional ones yet. Hopefully, they will soon. So we won't have the rely on coal or nuke for long, but until then, we have to pick our poison. I rather the one people are afraid of, with its anal regulations and security.

As to failed states and nutjobs, nukes weren't the only Happy Fun Toy of the Cold War. Both sides had bio weapons, not just against people, but also the food supply. Something that wipes out the wheat or corn crop has far more repercussions than a dirty bomb in a city. We can move a city. They don't have to be lucky enough to stumble across any Happy Fun Toy leftovers. Some hoof and mouth via Africa will do wonders to our economy.

 

My impression (from Slashdot articles) was that it was possible to dramatically reduce the half-lives of spent nuclear power materials, but doing so (using breeder reactors to do the recycling, I think) would also produce high-grade fissile material, which was a non-starter when the policy was set (due to concern over nuclear proliferation). Correct me if I'm wrong here....

 

I understand where you're coming from. However, it's FAR worse that - with the exception of the French - we now do NOTHING. Again, even if every nuclear power plant on the planet was immediately shut down, we still have to deal with those current fuel bundles, spent fuel bundles cheerfully glowing away in giant swimming pools, and other actinides

If we used CANDU reactors with mixed thorium fuel loads, and spent fuel to "reburn" or transmutate the thorium, we would take care of at least 90% of the present volume of high level actinides. Then entire point as to why the Canadian taxpayer shoveled tens of billions of dollars into CANDU was precisely for that purpose: CANDU is a "breeder" that uses natural - unenriched - uranium, supposedly for the initial fuel cycle alone

Subsequent fuel cycles were to "reburn" spent bundles, with thorium. The end result, through transmutation, is at least 90% lower volume of high level actinides. This brief requires a subscription, but you can get the gist of it

ScienceDirect - Nuclear Engineering and Design : Increased fuel burn up in a CANDU thorium reactor using weapon grade plutonium

This is a bit more indepth, but also from AECL

http://canteach.candu.org/library/20054415.pdf

Argonne National Laboratory also looked into using the CANDU reactors to reburn waste and weapons grade material

Information Bridge: DOE Scientific and Technical Information - Sponsored by OSTI

In the end, we have to do something. It boggles my mind that Canada, a country that was squarely at the very top of nuclear technology, let it all slip away

The scary thing, is if there had been a "limited" nuclear war with the former Soviet Union, they would have sent special ICBM's loaded with various bioweapons to finish the job: some of these weapons were to attack people, most were to attack crops and food animals

The secretive Biopreparat had labs scattered all over the former Soviet Union. Many are still secret and closed, long after the former USSR supposedly signed the treaty on biological weapons

Using CANDU heavy water reactors, the spent bundles and weapons stockpiles are "reburned" or transmutated using thorium. The plutonium that results isn't suitable for nuclear weapons

 

Send spent radioactive waste to the sun, a great idea and perfectly safe!

yeah right!

 

Sending it on a one-way rocket ride to the sun is not only wasteful, but dangerous too. At the very least, you'd want a launch facility in an isolated area, where if the rocket kerplodes, you're not raining down that high level actinides on people

I really hope they don't use rockets. If they did, a facility like the Johnston Island site would have to be used. No way I'd want them to use Vandenberg or the usual sites

 

Sending anything on a direct one-way ride to the sun is also far more expensive, in terms of rocket fuel required, than a direct one-way ride out of the solar system.

Indirect routes both ways, by playing planetary billiards, are less expensive but more risky.

It also seems wasteful to permanently expel such potentially useful, barely-used fuel resources. Earthbound dumps / repositories would allow future generations to mine and re-use it for the remaining stored energy.

 

Jay,

I am not arguing that we do nothing, I am arguing we should stop producing the shit until we have a way to deal with it. The idea of embracing MORE nuke facilities is just crazy if we haven't solved this!

To those that want to send it off into space! What, we haven't screwed up our planet enough, we have to ship our shit somewhere else? Isn't that always the way, "I don't have to deal with it, we'll just ship it out of site (sight) out of mind!"

Additionally, do you want a challenger type disaster going on with a few hundred pounds/tons of nuke wast falling who knows where? Boy! sounds like a smart idea to me, (if you are a moron!)

For all the trouble, why can't we invest in a few million MW of PV? At todays cost of ~3watt retail, probably 1/3 that wholesale in MW quantities it really is a no brainer. Couple that with a couple billion dollars to invest in GOOD conservation, a few billion smart grid technology, a few more billions in PEVs and you would have a pretty good start to solving a bunch of different problems. What does a new NUKE plant cost? How many years is it active for? Is there a reason you can't get insurance for a nuke? let along financing to build a new one.

Icarus

 

Last nuclear plant cost estimates I've seen for the U.S. were not particularly attractive. I'm old enough that I still recall the cost overruns and "stranded cost" of the last round of nuke buildouts so I have zero confidence in any numbers the industry publishes on the matter....or at least I would start with a 3X multiplier for any cost per kwh they publish.

Since the disposal side of the cost picture has not been adequately factored in, nuke has the same basic problem as fossil fuels (but with other scary problems as well.) It might look cheap to produce once it is built, but nobody is paying for the clean up...yet.

Double the cost estimate for the nuke plant, and put that incremental amount specifically toward a dedicated clean up/sequestration fund and then we might have a semi-accurate measurement of the real cost of nuclear power.

 

Can you spell whoops?

Washington Public Supply System,,, the largest bond default in history?


Icarus

 

My apologies for sending this thread so far OT with my suggestion of disposing of nuclear waste in the sun. I have started thread Nuclear waste in Space, disposal of... and would request that further OT comments regarding this be directed to that thread.

Thanks.

 

The problem is, outside of France, no major country (US or Canada) can even politically deal with the spent fuel. Why is it that in North America we can become paralyzed with indecision?

I could care less if you're discussing large-scale hydroelectric, coal power, natural gas, bunker fuel, etc, there are definite long term environmental impacts

Even back when there were definite dual-purpose nuclear reactors, eg at Hanford, reprocessing was only the most rudimentary to retrieve plutonium. The high level actinides were either flushed into the Columbia, or pumped onsite into million gallon single wall - later dual wall - tank farms.

Canada is very much complicit in the supply of weapons grade plutonium. This dates back to the very start of the Cold War. There is still a legacy of uranium tailings in northern Saskatchewan, and Elliot Lake Ontario, that have yet to be dealt with

To be able to reduce the high level actinides by 90-95% should be a no-brainer sort of project. But for whatever reason, the politicians - in their "infinite wisdom" - have decided to leave the spent bundles happily glowing away in giant swimming pools

 

Oh, sorry. For a moment there I thought you were referring to Ontario Hydro, when they went Tango Uniform

 

Apparently there's still a really good chance the Volt won't even be produced and IF it does get produced it certainly isn't going to sell very well. That's what I got from this board anyway.

Even if it sold in large numbers the grid would still be just fine. Most people would charge at night when the power is in less demand and less expensive. Literally, half the homes in the U.S. would have to start charging an electric car every day to jolt the power grid and frankly that aint gonna happen any time soon.

 

I agree