The Volt will Jolt our Power Grid....

[jayman]

Originally Posted by icarus

What you are all missing is the function of smart cars and smart grids.

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

Originally Posted by icarus

Finally, for those that expound the virtues of Nukes in any fashion, consider this. Until you can convince me that waste can be made inert such that it is not deadly for 1000's of years it is a non starter. The idea of storing it deep in the earth is all well and good, but to think that could be made secure for 1000's of years from every nut job/fanatic who wants to get it and make some sort of statement is nuts. We can't keep anything really safe.

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/pr...n/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

[MJFrog]

Originally Posted by icarus

What you are all missing is the function of smart cars and smart grids.

<snip>

Finally, for those that expound the virtues of Nukes in any fashion, consider this. Until you can convince me that waste can be made inert such that it is not deadly for 1000's of years it is a non starter. The idea of storing it deep in the earth is all well and good, but to think that could be made secure for 1000's of years from every nut job/fanatic who wants to get it and make some sort of statement is nuts. We can't keep anything really safe.

Icarus

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.

HTH

[edit]
Thanks Jayman for providing those links...saw them after I posted.
[/edit]

[icarus]

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

[Shawn Clark]

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.

[jayman]

Originally Posted by icarus

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

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!

[icarus]

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

[ShellyT]

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.

[a_gray_prius]

Originally Posted by icarus

Finally, for those that expound the virtues of Nukes in any fashion, consider this. Until you can convince me that waste can be made inert such that it is not deadly for 1000's of years it is a non starter. The idea of storing it deep in the earth is all well and good, but to think that could be made secure for 1000's of years from every nut job/fanatic who wants to get it and make some sort of statement is nuts. We can't keep anything really safe.

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....

[jayman]

Originally Posted by icarus

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!

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

Originally Posted by ShellyT

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.

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

Originally Posted by a_gray_prius

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,

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

[patsparks]

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

yeah right!