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Breeding The Future

by Hal_10000

Obama has effectively cancelled the Yucca Mountain facility.

Do you hear that cheering? Would you believe it’s coming all the way from Nevada? It started when they found out that President Obama’s first proposed federal budget all but kills the Yucca Mountain National Nuclear Waste Repository by cutting of its seemingly endless flow of money.

“The yucca Mountain program will be scaled back to those costs necessary to answer inquiries from the Nuclear regulatory Commission, while the Administration devises a new strategy toward nuclear waste disposal,” wrote President Obama in the Department of Energy funding request section of his FY 2010 budget proposal.

It was the “new strategy toward nuclear waste disposal” part that made Nevadans and other Yucca Mountain opponents especially happy, because it served notice that Mr. Obama intended to follow through on his campaign promise to kill the controversial project, now two decades and billions of dollars in planning.

I have never understood the opposition to this. Yucca is extremely well-designed and safe.  The vehicles that will transport waste to Nevada are also extremely well-designed and safe.  If they were going to open a facility like that here in Pennsylvania, I’d be fine with it, as long as we got some cash from other states for handling their radioactive crud.  But people hear that magic word “nuclear” and completely lose their shit.  So much for a President who is guided by science and reason.

Whatever the drawbacks of Yucca Mountain, putting nuclear waste there is better than just stockpiling it at our nation’s nuclear plants, no?  What does Obama plan to do with our nuclear waste?  Wave his hands over and it and say, “Go and radiate no more.”?

Fortunately, science may, as usual be one step ahead, as Reason points out:

Well, there is already a strategy that will work, using fast breeder reactors to burn up waste and simultaneously produce more reactor fuel. At the nuclearinfo site, a group of Australian physicists explains:

Natural Uranium consists of 0.7% 235U and 99.3% 238U. All commercial Power reactors used in the world today utilize the 235U component in natural Uranium as the primary means of maintaining a chain reaction. The most troublesome component of nuclear waste are the tran-Uranic elements that occur when 238U captures a neutron and transmutes to 239Pu. Further neutron captures on this element lead to a buildup of long-lived transuranic nuclei. However 239Pu is also fertile and undergoes fission like 235U. Advanced reactor designs exploit this to convert the 238U to 239Pu. If the reactor avoids the slowing down, “thermalization” of neutrons, there are sufficient excess neutrons that it is possible to convert more 238U to 239Pu than 235U is consumed. These reactors use the unmoderated “fast” neutrons directly produced via the fission process.

Thus these reactors “breed” 239Pu from 238U and so produce more fuel than they consume. The use of fast-breeder technology makes it possible to increase the efficiency of Uranium use by over a factor of 50. It is then possible to exploit the vast quantities of depleted Uranium stockpiled around the world to generate electricity. In addition the excess neutrons can be used to transmute the long-lived transuranic waste from current Nuclear Power reactors to ever-heavier isotopes until they eventually fission. Thus these reactors can be used to “burn” the most troublesome component of nuclear waste.

There’s also reactors that breed thorium, thorium being far more plentiful than uranium.

Now a rational person reads the above and say, “Holy shit!  We can get rid of our nuclear waste and get lots of carbon-free energy!  And we don’t even have to string masses of electric lines across deserts!  Bring me a towel!” A radical green reads, sees all those numbers and elements and screams, “Ahhhh!  Mutants!”

Or something like that.

I also post this story to highlight one other aspect.  Our politicians are running around making vague promises about future technology in wind, solar and biofuel energy.  For all they know about the future, they might as well be promising us flying cars.  But here are the engineers with a great idea that the politicians haven’t even thought of.  Did you hear McCain or Obama talking about breeding in any context not involving abortion?  I mean, when you weren’t high?  didn’t think so.

This is why energy policy needs to be out of the hands of our government.  They can and should fund the bejeezus out of research—the more cutting edge the better (safe technology can get tons of conventional funding from industry).  I wouldn’t be totally surprised if some of these breakthroughs resulted from publicly-funded reseach.

But they can’t be picking and choosing, mandating and forbidding.  Let the marketplace—both economic and scientific—work its magic.

Comments

Posted by HARLEY on 03/01/09 at 11:50 AM from

There’s also reactors that breed thorium, thorium being far more plentiful than uranium.

I thought i read somewhere that thorium was harder to process and more toxic?.

I also post this story to highlight one other aspect.  Our politicians are running around making vague promises about future technology in wind, solar and biofuel energy.  For all they know about the future, they might as well be promising us flying cars.  But here are the engineers with a great idea that the politicians haven’t even thought of.  Did you hear McCain or Obama talking about breeding in any context not involving abortion?  I mean, when you weren’t high?  didn’t think so.

Breeder reactors are not sexy politically, only nerds like us give two shits, much like NASA and space operation in general.

Posted by Hal_10000 on 03/01/09 at 01:17 PM from

Breeder reactors are not sexy politically, only nerds like us give two shits, much like NASA and space operation in general.

If there were a way to harness sex to power our civilization, I would be all in favor of it.

Posted by HARLEY on 03/01/09 at 01:33 PM from

If there were a way to harness sex to power our civilization, I would be all in favor of it.

If we could harness the energy, we could put the State of Illinois on Pluto!

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