Fuck 54 degrees in Aus....

[MiM]

A 200KW car-sized nuke plant would be very interesting.

"would be" as a contrast to "is"

[MiM]

A 200KW car-sized nuke plant would be very interesting.

"would be" as a contrast to "is"

Apart from the obvious danger of radiation leakage in car accidents, those reactors would need to run on almost pure U-235 (or similar fissile material), to be practical. That means that all a terrorist would need to do to get the materials for his nuke, would be to steal a few hundred cars, or so.

[Jason]

I was only speaking of a small nuclear reactor like the one posted by macdoc. Nuclear powered cars are impractical on a number of levels - for the time being.

[macdoc]

2 meters long and 0.6 meters across

what you want it in your knapsack??

[MiM]

2 meters long and 0.6 meters across

what you want it in your knapsack??

. That's the size of the core, not of the whole thing

[Blind groper]

OH! In 1980 Sweden decided that they would be free of nuclear power in 2010. They produce much more nuclear electricity now than then.

Long may it last, and may it increase dramatically. Nuclear power is one that produces minimal greenhouse gases, is safer, less environmentally harmful, and cheaper than most alternatives. The world needs more nuclear power. A lot more.

There are even mini reactors on the drawing board, suitable for supplying safe, relatively cheap and abundant electricity to small isolated towns and districts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_4S

[macdoc]

It's built to be transportable by truck or helicopter with the housing constructed in place. Not sure what you consider the "whole thing". A steam turbine is not high tech.

There is good overview of the field here tho not in detail
http://www.gizmag.com/small-modular-nuc ... ors/20860/

[Jason]

OH! In 1980 Sweden decided that they would be free of nuclear power in 2010. They produce much more nuclear electricity now than then.

Long may it last, and may it increase dramatically. Nuclear power is one that produces minimal greenhouse gases, is safer, less environmentally harmful, and cheaper than most alternatives. The world needs more nuclear power. A lot more.

There are even mini reactors on the drawing board, suitable for supplying safe, relatively cheap and abundant electricity to small isolated towns and districts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_4S

The problem with nukes is disposing of the wastes safely. I suggest developing massive railguns for launching space barges into the sun.

[Blind groper]

The problem with nukes is disposing of the wastes safely. I suggest developing massive railguns for launching space barges into the sun.

Getting rid of waste safely is a political problem - not a technical one. That is : getting around the millions of idiots crying, "No, no!"

Simple solution. Put the nuclear waste into safe containers and drop them into the bloody great holes left by abandoned open cast mines in central Australia or Southern Africa, where there is desert, no people, and a geology so stable that no earthquake or volcano will happen for at least a million years. Cover them with dirt. Leave for 10,000 years. No problem. Except for the previously mentioned idiots.

I could describe other, equally good solutions too, except that they are all opposed by myriads of morons.

[Jason]

Hmm.. I think I still have an edition of SciAm that discussed the issues with disposing of nuclear waste around here somewhere. Leakage was one of the big ones I believe.

[Blind groper]

Leakage is a big problem in places like Yucca Mountain. To get leakage, you need water. That is why I suggested the driest places on the planet.

If you start with an abandoned open cast mine, you will know immediately. If there is leakage, the hole will already contain a pond or small lake, from water seeping into it.

[JimC]

1100? Sheesh. The engine in that bike is almost as big as the one in my first car!

Bigger than mine! (a mini with an 850 cc engine)

[pErvinalia]

I hate to say it, but I've pretty much given up on the whole global warming thing. Over a decade ago climatologists were warning us not just that it's coming, but that it was happening right now and was already having demonstrable effects. But here in the US most people didn't believe it and because of some effective efforts by monied interests, the public saw it as some sort of evil conspiracy and/or an colossal error by bumbling scientists, and one of our two political parties perpetuated those myths and used them for political gain. The end result was we not only did nothing, we thumbed our nose at the rest of the world and kept chuggin' on.

Now here we are over a decade later and the problem is getting worse, just as we were warned and over time the effects are becoming more and more prominent.

Given all the warnings were we given and how unambiguously clear the data has been all along, I'm kinda at the point where all I can say is, "We're getting exactly what we deserve".

Yep. We are going over the climate cliff, without doubt. The only question is how high is that cliff going to be. Neoliberalism is going to be the death of us (well a fuckload of us, anyway).

[JimC]

I hate to say it, but I've pretty much given up on the whole global warming thing. Over a decade ago climatologists were warning us not just that it's coming, but that it was happening right now and was already having demonstrable effects. But here in the US most people didn't believe it and because of some effective efforts by monied interests, the public saw it as some sort of evil conspiracy and/or an colossal error by bumbling scientists, and one of our two political parties perpetuated those myths and used them for political gain. The end result was we not only did nothing, we thumbed our nose at the rest of the world and kept chuggin' on.

Now here we are over a decade later and the problem is getting worse, just as we were warned and over time the effects are becoming more and more prominent.

Given all the warnings were we given and how unambiguously clear the data has been all along, I'm kinda at the point where all I can say is, "We're getting exactly what we deserve".

Yep. We are going over the climate cliff, without doubt. The only question is who high is that cliff going to be. Neoliberalism is going to be the death of us (well a fuckload of us, anyway).

But I've just saved the planet! My solar panels were switched on yesterday! And I remembered to switch off a light, earlier today!

[macdoc]

Nuclear waste - and why they closed Yucca mountain.

a) after 60 years of nuclear power in the US the entire high level nuclear waste - ie rods would cover a football field 3 meters deep. That's it - it's physically a small amount.
b) low level waste is easy to handle in a number of ways up to and including vitrification.

What to do with the fuel rods.

Use the fucking things. They retain 95% of their original energy and can ( and are being remanufactured ) but remanufacture costs more than mining new ones. So they sit there heating water in the pools. But they are crown jewels.
The contain enough recoverable energy to run the US power grid for 400 years without mining any more uranium.

Here is one technique

Nuclear power is currently the cheapest form of producing clean electricity, however it is inefficient and leaves waste products that are potentially very dangerous and a pain to dispose of. Current technology only uses less than five percent of the uranium found in a fuel rod, after which the ‘spent’ fuel rod must be replaced with a new one, and stored in pools for thousands of years until it is safe.

The main reason why so little of the uranium is used in the fuel rod is that most nuclear plants use light-water reactors (LWR) which are relatively safe and cheap, but very inefficient at using all the available energy in the fuel rod.

Scientists at the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory think they have found a way to access the remaining 95% of the uranium in the fuel rod. Their technique could produce hundreds to thousands of years worth of carbon free energy just by reusing the uranium that has already been mined, and is currently considered ‘spent’.

Their new technology is called pyroprocessing. It takes the ‘spent’ fuel rod, which leaves the reactor in a hard ceramic form, and chops it up into small pieces in order to convert it back into metal. The metal is then placed in a vat of molten salts, called an electrorefiner, where an electric current is used to separate the uranium from the truly spent fuel. The uranium is then used to recreate a new fuel rod, and the junk is cast into stable glass discs and placed into permanent storage. Whilst the waste material must still be put into permanent storage, this need only be for a few hundred years rather than the thousands of years normally required.

The problem facing new technologies trying to enter the nuclear industry is that uranium is so cheap that it’s actually cheaper to just use the fuel once, and dispose of it after, rather than recycle it. This is because new methods to be used in the nuclear industry must first be researched, tested, and approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), a process which is both expensive and time consuming. Currently the NRC is familiar with LWR technology and offer little incentive to research or design new technology or new types of reactors.

and fast breeders which are even better at making use of it is another. The remaining waste after reuse is only 10% of the original and has a much short half life as the dangerous isotopes were used in the energy process.

Now the Chinese, the Indians, the Russians and the South Koreans are building these reactors.
With a fast [breeder] reactor, you get much more than 100 times the energy from the same amount of uranium. With fast [breeder] reactors you can use current nuclear waste as fuel. With fast [breeder] reactors, we can shut down all the world's coal mines. We can stop ripping up the boreal forests for tar sands in Canada and elsewhere. Bill Clinton blew it.
Fast [breeder] reactors will run on what is called depleted uranium, or on nuclear waste. There is enough of this already mined not only to shut all the world's coal mines - but also to make the Olympic Dam expansion unnecessary.

http://lftrsuk.blogspot.ca/2012/07/bree ... world.html

So you don't bury the crown jewels. There is nuclear and chemical waste everywhere in an industrial and medical society. Peoples fear of nuclear is ridiculous. There are people living in cities where the background radiation is higher than the allowable dose for a nuclear plant worker.
We live and evolved in a sea of radiation.
I've had radiation to cure me hundreds of times higher than any allowable dose for a nuclear worker and that was a "just in case" treatment. (think of getting an internal sunburn ).

ALL technology carries risks - nuclear carries very little risk given the benefits.

Coal on the other hand....kills 10s of thousands per year and it killing the biome.....but where are the protests and fears.??
A coal plant emits 1 times the radiation of a nuclear plant on top of heavy metals and other destructive materials into both the air and water.

These little nukes are terrific - hey Pioneer is out cruising interstellar space powered by a nuclear battery and that was what - 40 years ago.

Anti-nukers are fuckheads.

I'd park one of those little reactors in my garage in a heartbeat.