Nuclear Energy Development and Slowing Climate Change

[wtmusic]

[div style="float: left; padding-right: 12px; text-align: center;"][br]Engineers install moderator blocks for[br]Oak Ridge's Molten Salt Reactor[br]Experiment."For political reasons, the U.S. funding for nuclear power research has been shrinking steadily. This is due to two factors: fear of nuclear power, and a choice made during the Nixon administration. The original development of nuclear fission technology was to enable building bombs, then powering submarines. Using nuclear power to generate electricity came afterword. The design of nuclear power plants of those early days was the light-water reactor (LWR). This design has undergone significant improvements, but in the 1950s and ’60s, scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) came up with another reactor design. The new design made meltdown impossible, and the waste was 1,000 times less than the LWR. In fact, this new design could use the waste of the old design as fuel. The new design didn’t need large amounts of water the way the LWR does, and could desalinate water while generating electricity. The new design didn’t even need uranium for fuel. A prototype was built, and ran for five years to prove the design would work.

When the Air Force came to ORNL scientists back in the late ’50s and asked them to develop a nuclear power plant for a bomber, the scientists were forced to create a reactor that was light, small, and safe. It would have to be one that would eliminate some issues of the LWR. The new design they came up with was the molten salt reactor (MSR). The scientists built a small proof-of-concept reactor for the Air Force, but then funding was cut as long-range bombers were replaced with ICBMs. In the 1960s, ORNL received funding for the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE). The scientists argued for continuing development of the molten salt reactor but the military and bureaucratic momentum were behind the LWR.

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Enter the 21st century and a young NASA scientist who was given the job of finding a way to power a colony on the moon. His name is Kirk Sorensen. He knew this power source would likely have to be nuclear—given that the moon has no wind and two weeks of darkness every month—but the prevailing LWR designs all called for water, lots of water. One day while visiting a colleague’s office, he noticed a book titled Molten Salt Reactors and asked to borrow it. He took it home and became consumed in its 1,000 pages of technical jargon and data. Sorensen was so enthralled with the design that he started a grassroots movement that today has scientists and engineers working on their own time to refine and develop the design. Their design is called the Liquid Fuel Thorium Reactor (LFTR), a type of molten salt reactor that burns thorium, a plentiful and cheap fuel."

http://ansnuclearcafe.org/2013/08/21/nuclear-energy-development-and-slowing-climate-change/

[PDJane]

1. There were, are, and will be deaths from Fukishima.

There were also birth defects and cancers from Fukishima. It would be nice to ignore them, but they are there. Moreover, the plume of radiation from the leaking reactor in the ocean and in the groundwater can't be ignored. It doesn't help your side of the argument to ignore them.

[phantom power]

2. 18,000 humans were killed by coal today.

[PDJane]

4. And this makes the birth defects from nuclear, as opposed to renewable resources, OK?

[wtmusic]

6. Do you have peer-reviewed evidence of birth defects from nuclear power?

Thanks.

[wtmusic]

8. Radiation-induced cancer takes years to appear.

"Radiation can cause cancer in most parts of the body, in all animals, and at any age, although radiation-induced solid tumors usually take 10–15 years, and can take up to 40 years, to become clinically manifest."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation-induced_cancer

So when you claim there were "birth defects and cancers from Fukushima" you're not helping your side of the argument.

I agree that there will be deaths from Fukushima. There are already millions of times more deaths from global warming, and nuclear energy has the potential to limit it.

[PDJane]

10. Actually, depending on where and how the exposure occurred, the cancers can appear within months,

if not weeks. Dr. Doug Rokke noted these effects in his time in Iraq; he was tasked with cleaning up after the American military. His bio is here: http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2008/04/17/02335.html.

Interview here: http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/our-planet-our-selves/594

Speech: http://grassrootspeace.org/DuRokkeGreece.pdf

More staff exposed: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-12/fukushima-workers-exposed-to-radiation-from-spray.html.

Director of Fukushima dead: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/09/masao-yoshida-dead_n_3565387.html Yes, they said it wasn't related to his exposure. No, that's not credible.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57573501/navy-vets-say-fukushima-meltdown-made-them-sick/



Staff at the plant have either died or are suffering from cancers. I would point out that denying it happens until there is a peer-reviewed paper on the subject will wait until someone has the gumption to go against the nuclear industry and the governments who want to hide what radiation does.

Am I afraid? No. But I am well aware of the number of people who will suffer because of this.

[wtmusic]

15. There is nothing here, Jane.

Nothing about "cancers appearing within months if not weeks":

"Yoshida was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, which due to the rapidness of its onset was determined to be unrelated to the nuclear accident."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masao_Yoshida_%28nuclear_engineer%29

Are you an expert in radiology or radiomedicine? The experts say you're wrong.

"Staff at the plant have either died or are suffering from cancers."

No, they're not, and you have nothing to support that.

I'm glad you're not afraid, because you have nothing to be afraid of.

[PDJane]

16. Actually, we do. But it's ok, denial is a fine place for you.

The load of radiation is increasing, and low-level, constant radiation is as dangerous as large bursts of the stuff. That's been known for decades; large bursts mean that the dna can repair itself. Low level radiation mean it doesn't.

We're not good at seeing what is there. Yes, the powers that be said his cancer wasn't from radiation. That's meant to be comforting, but I don't believe it. Rokke's group got sick very quickly, and the deaths from DU in Iraq are continuing to increase.

It's a stupid thing to play with, as is tar sands and fracking. We need to wise up, or get better at being Gods.

[NYC_SKP]

3. All controversy aside, it's a rather sad story how our fears prevented our deployment of safer tech.

Absent the fears and the politics and bureaucracy of energy, we might have at least built a few proof-of-concept plants and thus made strong arguments for decommissioning LWRs.

Of course, in the end, once we solve the storage challenge we should be able all but eliminate fossil plants and nukes.

Yes, there's that much sun and that much wind, there just isn't that much will, yet.

[kristopher]

5. "Our fears" didn't prevent anything

The rationale presented in the OP is simplistic beyond belief. The consensus in the nuclear industry is that thorium technologies (which are not proven nor finalized in spite of the claims made) have at least as many drawbacks as once-through uranium technology.

The only reason it's rearing its ugly head now is the collapse of the nuclear revival. This is a massive industry desperately in search of something to sell - or at least, something they can use to keep public largesse flowing.

[NYC_SKP]

7. Sure they did. Our fears have prevented and continue to prevent all manner of progress.

Thankfully, people like Elon Musk have the vision (and the war chest) to push on.

Fears run the world.

And here I thought you'd like the part I wrote about storage and the end of thermal plants, fossil and nukes.

[kristopher]

9. The effort you made was appreciated

But you made the fears remark in the context of the OP - which is overtly misstating the history of nuclear power. There are a host of problems that have not been resolved with the LFTR and "fear" has nothing to do with lack of support for the technology.

Do you want to see a couple of similar "miracle" nuclear technologies that received total and unconditional support? Look at the Monju program in Japan and the CANDU reactors in Canada.

[bananas]

13. Elon Musk was honest - he didn't blame "fear", he said "It's super-damn hard."

"There's a reason no one has invented a fully reusable rocket before," Musk explained. "It's super-damn hard."

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/08/01/spacex-founder-on-how-to-get-to-mars/

It is anti-science to blame "fear" when the reason is "it's super-damn hard."

The reason we aren't on the Moon and Mars isn't because of "fear",
it's because "it's super-damn hard" (and that makes it super-damn expensive).

And Musk always acknowledges that he might not be able to do it.

To blame it on "fear" is anti-science, it diminishes the super-damn effort made by scientists to accomplish these things.

Musk almost went bankrupt pursuing this.
And he knows he still might not succeed.

The reason we don't have safer reactors is because "it's super-damn hard."

[NYC_SKP]

14. What prevented GM and Ford from pursuing hybrids and EVs?

And it practically drove them into bankruptcy.

Fear of what investors would think, chicken shit no guts shortsighted idiocy, and fear.

Sure, super-damned hard is in play, too, but the two aren't mutually exclusive.

[bananas]

11. Please don't fall for the hype and historical revisionism.

They're trying to re-write history.

Billions have been spent on R&D of "safer tech" - for example the Pebble Bed Reactor, another "thorium" reactor.

And we did build proof-of-concept plants - they still sucked worse than LWR's.

The reason more R&D went into Pebble Bed than Molten Salt is because every country which evaluated them came to the same conclusion - Molten Salt was a much more difficult technology than Pebble Bed.

And those evaluations were done by the US, UK, Germany, South Africa, India, China, Russia, France, Japan.

And they evaluated many other reactor technologies as well.

It has nothing to do with "fears" or "politics".

What's sad is that people don't appreciate how difficult these technologies are.

It's an anti-science attitude.

[NYC_SKP]

12. As I said in my reply, thermal plants can be and must be eliminated.

But I maintain that fear of technology and change, and politics, often if not always gets in the way of progress.

Right now, people in Appalachia are afraid of the government making them use insulation and CFLs, and in California there's resistance from the right AND from the left to Smart Meters.

Fear.

[PDJane]

17. It's utterly bizarre.

I have a smart meter. Have for two years or so. I use CFLs and I'm moving to LED bulbs as a better, more efficient, less polluting alternative (switching to CFLs without a recycling option is dumb, because they do have mercury in them).

I would like to see more research on various things, but moving things like tar sands oil, fracked gas, coal....it's not working, and we need to move to renewables. Yesterday would have been better. That isn't what the elite are willing to do, but it is the right thing to do.