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EvilTeach
Sea Gull
Joined: Mar 15, 2007
Age: 48
Posts: 208
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D1nk0
Phoenix
Joined: Dec 12, 2007
Age: 29
Posts: 1589
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 Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 9:35 am Post subject: |
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| Alexey wrote: | | autisticstar wrote: | | Does anyone here know the difference between fusion and fission? |
Nuclear fission is used on modern nuclear power plants; it is chain reaction of uranium or plutonium decay induced by neutrons. But it produces very dangerous radioactive waste.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fission
Nuclear fusion is the transformation of light nuclei to more heavier (e.g. hydrogen to helium). It doesn't produce radioactive waste, but there is no fusion power plant now. Fusion is going inside Sun and when the "hydrogen" (fusion) bomb explodes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion
I think that nuclear fission is more realistic perspective in the nearest future. If reactors on fast neutrons become more widespread, the deposits of nuclear "fuel" will serve us during 50000 years. But fusion is much more attrative, because it is the unlimited source of energy (from heavy water). |
Nuclear Power is the ONLY source we have for generating power that produces energy-rich waste. Dont you see?
AS LONG as Nuclear Waste remains radioactive, it can STILL be used to generate electricity!  What need to be done is for it to be concentrated into dense solid bars which would form the cores of nuclear batteries.  |
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Escuerd
Blue Jay
Joined: May 02, 2008
Age: 24
Posts: 97
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| Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 10:53 am Post subject: |
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| D1nk0 wrote: | Nuclear Power is the ONLY source we have for generating power that produces energy-rich waste. Dont you see?
AS LONG as Nuclear Waste remains radioactive, it can STILL be used to generate electricity! What need to be done is for it to be concentrated into dense solid bars which would form the cores of nuclear batteries. |
Amen bro. I was actually just thinking the same.
There'd probably have to be a critical mass (if you'll pardon the expression) of radioactive waste being produced before people will decide to do something with it. Then, there's a lot of understandable fear about it, because radioactive contamination can do awful things. But one can take precautions, and use it to do some good instead of just heating up concrete in the Nevada desert.
Then again, I haven't yet given any serious thought to the technical considerations, but I can't imagine they'd be insurmountable, or even that the obstacles would keep this from being economically worthwhile (at some point). |
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Alex440
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker
Joined: Nov 16, 2007
Age: 17
Posts: 59
Location: New Zealand
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| Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 6:13 am Post subject: |
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| EvilTeach wrote: | Nuclear is still the way to go.
The amount of pollution is effectively zero with respect to coal fired power.
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Haha, Agreed. "Clean, Green New Zealand" is a country of nuclearphobes (neologism) because of an association between nuclear weapons and nuclear powerplants. Everyone believes that if a nuclear plant was built in New Zealand the environment would be totally destroyed by meltdowns or something. Stupidly, nuclear power is the very "cleanest, greenest" source of energy we could have. We've got dozens of hydro dams, I think about 17 on the Waikato river alone. We have plenty of coal-fired stations, even a geothermal, but we're currently building wind farms because of a lack of energy. Nuclear power would solve New Zealand's and the world's energy problems. If only everyone would wake up  |
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yesplease
Velociraptor
Joined: Dec 29, 2006
Age: 102
Posts: 414
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| Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 1:46 am Post subject: |
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| Alex440 wrote: | | Haha, Agreed. "Clean, Green New Zealand" is a country of nuclearphobes (neologism) because of an association between nuclear weapons and nuclear powerplants. Everyone believes that if a nuclear plant was built in New Zealand the environment would be totally destroyed by meltdowns or something. |
Sadly, no one applies the same standard to fossil fuels and guns. Just think of how many, both directly and indirectly, combustion has killed.  |
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Encyclopedia
Raven
Joined: Apr 12, 2008
Posts: 110
Location: Utah
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| Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 2:17 am Post subject: |
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| EvilTeach wrote: | | The safety issues can be addressed by pebble bed reactors. |
I pebble bed reactors have too many problems for me to consider them "safe." I think integral fast reactors are the way to go. (That is, unless we figure out sustainable fusion first.) IFR are about 100 more efficient than light water reactors because they burn the fuel more completely, which leaves less radioactive waste, and that with a much shorter half-life. They don't need enriched uranium, and could actually burn any actinide, including thorium, which is three times more abundant than uranium anyway. IFRs are passively safe and neither the fuel or waste can be used to make a nuclear weapon, because it has so many different isotopes mixed together that it would be ever harder to extract purified plutonium or enriched uranium from that than from natural ore.
The only significant safety issue is the liquid sodium coolant. Pure sodium is highly reactive, and could start a fire if there was a leak, but the whole point of using a metal coolant is so it doesn't have to be pressurized. Since we can reliably make pressurized water reactors, the plumbing on an IFR should be relatively easy to build.
I think the only reason that IFRs haven't taken off is that it's currently cheaper to bury "spent" fuel than to build a better reactor and pyroprocess the fuel to burn it completely. That's a very short-term view, however. If laws were changed so that the power companies had to pay for all the damage fossil fuel pollution causes, and pay to maintain storage for their "spent" fuel, and if permits to build a nuclear plant weren't so easy to revoke, I think we would be using a lot of IFRs. |
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EvilTeach
Sea Gull
Joined: Mar 15, 2007
Age: 48
Posts: 208
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| Posted: Thu May 29, 2008 9:39 am Post subject: |
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So far, I have not been able to find any downside to pebble bed safety.
What are you talking about Encyclopedia?
The dangerous fission by products cited early, amount to about a cubic meter per year,
and they can easily be recycled. Compare that to the tons of lead, sulfer and other toxic materials
that are released directly into the environment by a coal fired plant.
There is no contest between the two. |
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TallyMan
Ghost in the machine
Joined: Mar 31, 2008
Age: 148
Posts: 5270
Location: Everywhere, nowhere and everywhen
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| Posted: Thu May 29, 2008 1:06 pm Post subject: |
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